Not the Marrying Kind

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A Secret Cravings Publishing Book

Sensual Romance

Not the Marrying Kind

Copyright © 2014 Christina Cole

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-63105-069-5

First Ebook Publication: January 2014

Cover design by Dawné Dominique

Edited by Julie Reilly

Proofread by Rene Flowers

All cover art and logo copyright © 2014 by
Secret Cravings Publishing

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Forget Me Not
, paranormal erotic
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A war is brewing, a war that could destroy an
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Sunset, Colorado, 1872

“That’s not the way Mama does it.”

Mischief danced in the little girl’s blue
eyes. Her cheeks were flushed—a sure sign she was up to
something—but her angelic face and strawberry-blonde ringlets gave
the appearance of innocence. She clasped her hands in front of her
and smiled sweetly at her older sister.

Kat Phillips stood in front of the oven.
Heat spilled through the tiny kitchen, making it hard to breathe in
the stifling air. The tightly-cinched corset she wore didn’t help
either. She was in no mood for any of Emily Sue’s pranks.

“Doesn’t matter,” she said with an air of
confidence. “Mama’s not here, and this is the way I do it.”

The kitchen was not her domain, and the
confidence was a sham. Dressed as she was in a ruffled gingham gown
with frilly petticoats beneath the long skirts and a hideous bustle
accentuating her behind, Kat felt as out of place as she looked, a
silly goose among a flock of chickens, pretending to be a hen.

She knew little about cooking, less about
baking, and most likely her twelve-year-old sister was playing
tricks again…wasn’t she?

Emily’s ringlets bobbed as she frowned and
shook her head.

“You’re supposed to add sugar.”

“Sugar?” Kat glanced toward the tin
canister, unsure. “I don’t think so. These apples are sweet enough
the way they are. Now, scoot.” She shooed her little sister away.
“I’ve got to get this pie in the oven, and I’d say the biscuits
should be about ready to come out.”

Her stubborn sister didn’t budge.

“Mama says you’ll never get a husband unless
you learn to cook.”

“Well, Miss Smarty-pants, it so happens I
don’t want a husband.” Kat pushed a lock of sweat-damp red hair
away from her cheek. Earlier, she’d braided it, coiled it, and
plaited it atop her head in what were intended to be fashionable
loops. Already she was coming undone and her hair along with
it.

“Liar.” Emily folded her arms. “Every woman
wants a husband.”

“That’s nonsense. Now, step back.” With her
patience growing thinner moment by moment, Kat’s words were a clear
warning. She grabbed a dishrag and reached for the oven door.

“That won’t work. You’ll burn yourself. You
better put those on.” Emily pointed to a pair of thick, quilted
mitts.

“Scat!” Kat snapped the dishrag and chased
her annoying little sister from the room. She headed for the stove,
then stopped, picked up the mitts, and slipped her hands inside.
Slowly, she opened the oven door. Heat rushed at her, nearly
knocking her across the cluttered kitchen. Her mother would scold
her for making such a mess, but Kat was doing the best she could
under the circumstances. She staggered backward, tripped on the
spindly legs of a chair, and went down, landing on the hard wooden
floor with a thump of her bustled bottom and a
whoosh
of her
long skirts and petticoats.

Clumsy, awkward clothes! She hated fancy
dresses, but it was Thursday night, company was coming, and Pa
insisted she gussy up for dinner.

Muttering under her breath, Kat scrambled to
her feet. She cast a cautious look over her shoulder and groaned.
Earlier, she’d dropped an egg while beating up her batch of
biscuits. Yep. She’d managed to fall in the exact same spot, and
now she’d have a most unattractive stain in a most embarrassing
place.

Had she been the sort of woman who cried,
she would have done so, but cursing was more Kat’s style.

“Damn, damn, damn,” she muttered. “And
double damn,” she threw in for good measure, grateful Emily was no
longer close by, and grateful, too, that her father’s room was far
enough away he couldn’t hear the expletives pouring from her
mouth.

She’d never had a civilized tongue. Growing
up, she’d spent most of her time with her brother, Robb—God rest
his soul—and together they’d hung out with the ranch hands,
emulating their casual, laid-back manner and their colorful use of
language.

A simple
damn—
even a
double
damn—
was a mild expression compared to some of the oaths she
knew.

Kat eyed the stove again. Her wary gaze
focused on the oven door. With careful steps, she edged closer.

After re-adjusting the mitts, she reached
out, opened the door once more and peeked inside, disappointed by
the burnt, misshapen lumps of dough that were supposed to be
biscuits.

Damn it to hell! If her mother expected her
to cook a decent meal, she should have at least left some
instructions instead of hoping Kat would somehow figure it out on
her own.

But that’s how Amanda Phillips was. Folks
learned best by doing, she believed. But no matter how many meals
Kat tried to cook, the results always came out the same. In a word,
disastrous. She got flustered and clumsy, couldn’t keep herself or
her ingredients organized, and she never could wrangle the right
temperature out of that confounded wood stove.

Fortunately, her mother usually did all the
cooking, serving up wholesome, delicious meals for her family and
for the men who lived and worked at the Rocking P Ranch.

Of course, that was before. Things were a
lot different now.

Things had changed around the ranch, and
around the nearby little town of Sunset, as well, which was why
Amanda was away from home so much of the time. Ever since old Doc
Carder gave up the ghost and went to his reward in the great
beyond, there wasn’t a physician to be found between Sunset and
Denver, except for Abner Kellerman. No woman in her right mind
would want that old drunk birthing babies, so it was Amanda
Phillips who stepped in, visited the women in town, and saw to it
that the next generation arrived safely into the world.

Unfortunately, newborns seldom chose
convenient moments to emerge from their mothers’ wombs, and the
dinner-hour, as often as not, seemed their favorite time, second
only to middle-of-the-night arrivals.

“Reverend Kendrick’s coming to dinner, you
know.”

At the sound of the voice, Kat whirled
around. The pan of biscuits slipped from her hands and clattered to
the floor.

“Emily Sue, you’ve got to stop sneaking up
on me that way!”

“I wasn’t sneaking.”

“Yes, you were.” She stooped down to
retrieve the biscuits. Hard as rocks! She picked them up and tossed
them into the garbage bin. “And of course the reverend is coming to
dinner. He always comes to dinner on Thursday evenings.”

“Mama says he’d make a fine husband.”

“Already told you, I don’t want a husband.”
Even if she did, it sure as Hades wouldn’t be Virgil Kendrick.
“Now, you’d better go wash up before I paddle your butt—” Her hand
flew to her mouth. “Your behind, I mean. You didn’t hear me say
butt
, right?”

Emily rolled her big blue eyes. Someday,
when the little girl grew up, she’d have an entire repertoire of
feminine wiles and flirtatious gestures, Kat suspected. Now, a
dramatic sigh slipped from her rosebud mouth. “Of course I heard
what you said, but give me a nickel and I won’t tell Pa.”

“A nickel? That’s outrageous. I’ll give you
two pennies, no more.” She fished two copper coins out of a
wide-mouthed Mason jar Mama kept on the table. Tithing money went
into the jar every time somebody paid Mama for her services. Ten
percent, given to God. Pa put tithing money into the jar, too,
whenever he got paid for odd jobs. Of course, when the government
paid in full on the beef contracts, all of that money went right
into the bank, and Pa made a fine show of writing a check for the
family’s tithing and handing it over to Reverend Kendrick.