Secondhand Bride (10 page)

J
eb was just about to go looking for Chloe when she drew up in front of the hotel in a buckboard, with Old Billy, from the livery stable, at the reins. He stepped out onto the sidewalk, prepared to argue if she’d taken it into her head to leave town, though he supposed he should have been hoping for just that. Her going would certainly simplify matters, and complicate them at the same time.

He took off his hat to shove a hand through his hair, replaced it as he approached the wagon. When he reached up to help Chloe down, she hesitated for an instant, then took his hand.

“Where are you going?” he asked bluntly.

She took a few seconds to deliberate, probably working out how much she ought to say. “Dr. Boylen offered me a teaching position,” she said. “There’s a cottage included, and I’m here to get my things.”

Jeb didn’t know whether to object or be pleased. If she was telling the truth, and their marriage wasn’t a fraud, he didn’t want his wife working for a living. And though a part of him wished she’d never come to Indian Rock in the first place, the thought of her going elsewhere was no damn good, either.

Once, he reflected ruefully, he’d known exactly what he thought about everything. Since he’d met Chloe, life had become one big conundrum.

“Does Doc know you got fired from the last one?” he asked, then could have kicked himself for stirring up a hornets’ nest.

Her face tightened, and she realigned her shoulders, as if bracing herself against him. “Yes,” she said shortly. “So if you have any ideas about spoiling
this
job like you did the last one, you’re too late.”

Jeb rubbed the back of his neck with one hand, purely frustrated. “Chloe, I didn’t mean to do that. It was just plain bad luck that the head of the school board happened to be in that poker game at the Broken Stirrup.”

Old Billy waited, shifting from one foot to the other on the sidewalk in front of the hotel. “I ain’t got all day,” the smith complained. “Where do I find them bags?”

Chloe picked up her skirts and made to slip past Jeb and join Old Billy, but Jeb took hold of her arm.

“You’re going to live in the cottage behind the schoolhouse, all by yourself?”

She answered in a brisk whisper. “Of
course
I’m going to live by myself.”

She tugged, but Jeb didn’t let her go. “Chloe, for all that there are good people here, this is still a wild town. All sorts of cowboys and drifters come through. You ought to stay on at the hotel if you won’t live at the ranch.”

She blinked. “Live at the ranch?” she echoed. “Why would I do that? It’s miles from town and, besides, according to you, we’re not married.”

“You’d be safer there,” Jeb insisted. “You’d have a room of your own. As for this job—”

“
As for this job
,” she interrupted, “I’ve already accepted it. You needn’t take any responsibility for me at all. I can take care of myself.”

How did they always get into these snarls? He’d begun this conversation with the best of intentions, and right away it had gone down the wrong trail. “Chloe—”

She pulled free and swept past him. “I’ll show you where to find my things,” she said to Old Billy. Jeb might have vanished like smoke in a hard wind for all the notice she paid him after that.

Determined not to be put off so easily, he followed the pair through the lobby and up the stairs and helped Billy lug the trunks, valises, boxes, and reticules down to the waiting buckboard. Chloe supervised, taking care never to let her gaze connect with his, and made the final descent with them, a hatbox in each hand.

At the schoolhouse, they unloaded the whole shooting match again and carried it around back to the cottage. When everything was inside, Chloe thanked Old Billy and paid him a dollar. He hastened away, but Jeb lingered.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Chloe said. He wondered if she was as painfully conscious of the brass bed as he was. The thing seemed to dominate the room. “It isn’t proper, and I don’t need you wrecking my reputation all over again.”

Jeb knew she was right—at least where propriety was concerned—but he couldn’t bring himself to say so, or to leave, as he should have. “A lot of folks know we went through with a wedding ceremony, even if it was a sham. That’ll cause just as much talk. They’ll wonder why we’re not living together.” He paused, hat in hand. “I’m not your enemy, Chloe.”

“You’re not my friend, either,” Chloe pointed out, busying herself with one of the trunks. “As for what people will think, I’m surprised you care. It’s not as if you’ve ever acted like a husband.”

He went to her, turned her to face him, catching sight of the contents of the trunks as he did so. Books. Piles of them. He looked into her eyes. “I could remedy that easily enough,” he said. And then, before she could protest, he kissed her.

At first, she set her palms against his chest and tried to push him away, just as she’d done the night before, when he’d kissed her in the street, but then he felt a softening in her. She slid her arms around his neck and kissed him back in earnest.

“Chloe,” he said, when they both came up for air.

She drew back, out of his embrace, smoothed her hair, then her skirts. “Oh, no, you don’t, Jeb McKettrick. You are
not
going to get me into that bed. And you are not going to cost me this job, either. I want you to leave, right now.”

“If we’re married,” he reasoned, knowing he’d already lost this battle, “what’s the harm?”

“You know damn well what the ‘harm’ is,” she bristled. “You don’t trust me any farther than you can throw me, and you’re not willing to acknowledge me as your legal wife.”

He grinned weakly. “I think I could throw you quite a ways,” he said. “You don’t weigh very much.”

She didn’t smile. In fact, she turned her back on him and started grabbing up books, setting them on the shelves with a lot of thrusting and thumping. “Go
away
, Jeb,” she said, and he thought he heard tears in her voice. “I mean it. I want you to leave. Immediately.”

He hesitated. “All right,” he finally agreed. “I’ll go. But I’ll be back, Chloe. You can’t hide out in this cottage forever.”

“Go,” she said, and that time he was sure she was crying.

He wanted to take her into his arms again, but he didn’t dare. “I’ll be at the Triple M,” he said, pausing in the open doorway. “If you want me, send word.”

“Don’t watch the road for a messenger,” she said.

He sighed and went out, leaving a part of himself behind.

Jack Barrett watched as McKettrick vaulted the school-yard fence and crossed the street, headed toward the main part of town. He itched to shoot the bastard, then and there, but he knew he couldn’t indulge the impulse just yet. It was broad daylight, and he’d be caught for sure.

He turned his attention to the schoolhouse and smiled to himself. At least he knew where to find Chloe when he decided to pay his respects. In the meantime, he’d lie low. She wasn’t the only one who’d landed a job that day; he’d just met the foreman from the Circle C, a man named Henry Farness, and he’d signed on to ride fence lines and punch cattle.

It would be a change from bounty hunting and playing cards for a living, but he was a good rider, and a hand with a gun, and he knew how to bide his time. He also knew that the ranch belonged to Holt Cavanagh and recalled the name from his conversation with the little girl, alongside the stagecoach the night before. If Cavanagh was her daddy, like she’d said, and she ended up living out there on his ranch, he might run into her. To his way of thinking, that merely added spice to the game, and, anyway, she probably wouldn’t recognize him even if they met face-to-face.

He watched as McKettrick conferred with an old man and a very pregnant Mexican woman outside the Arizona Hotel, and wondered how many folks he’d have to kill before this thing was over.

Maybe he ought to go over to the schoolhouse, right now, and confront Chloe. Tell her the jig was up, and take her away. He had plenty of money, thanks to last night’s enterprise, and they could start over somewhere new, live high on the hog. She was used to that, having been raised in a Sacramento mansion, and he’d enjoy buying her pretty presents and the like. He’d show her she’d been right to marry him in the first place.

He felt his face harden. Chloe was a wildcat, and she’d surely make a fuss, at least at first, when she found out he’d followed her to Indian Rock. Might even tell somebody that he was a gunslinger, and that wouldn’t do. Folks in small towns tended to mistrust strangers, and he didn’t want anyone wondering if he’d been the one to hold up that stagecoach and gun down the woman and the driver.

He’d have to stay out of Jeb McKettrick’s way, too, for now at least. McKettrick would recognize him, after their meeting in Tombstone, and he’d get his back up for sure. That might precipitate events Jack wasn’t ready to deal with just yet, much as he wanted to jump right in.

No, sir, the bridegroom wouldn’t lay eyes on Jack Barrett until circumstances were exactly right and he was looking down the barrel of Jack’s gun. By then, it would be too late.

Chloe would grieve a while, once McKettrick was dead, but that was all right. Jack meant to console her as only a loving husband could do.

A nudge to his ribs made him reach, by habit, for his pistol, but fortunately, he realized it was only Farness, the Circle C foreman, and stayed his hand. Even forced a smile to his lips.

“You ready to ride?” Farness wanted to know. There was a look of consternation in his eyes, as though he might be trying to fit the pieces of something together in his mind.

This one’s trouble,
Jack thought, but he nodded, holding on to the smile. “Lead the way,” he said.

L
izzie stood at the base of the stairs, her head tipped back so she could take Holt in with those changeling eyes of hers. She was clad in a ready-made dress from the mercantile, hastily purchased by Emmeline, since her belongings had been left behind with the stagecoach, and her dark hair, a legacy from her mother, gleamed around her face. The rest of her features were feminine versions of his own; he would have known that stubborn jaw and straight nose anywhere.

“Are you my papa?” she asked, in a matter-of-fact tone. She was pretending to be strong, he sensed that. Wished he knew how to go about comforting her, getting across that she’d be all right from then on, because he’d see to it.

“I reckon so,” he replied awkwardly. He could feel Angus and Concepcion and Becky and Emmeline standing behind him, listening and watchful. What did they think he was going to do? Tell the kid she’d have to make her own way in the world, that he couldn’t be bothered?

He cast a brief, scathing look back at his father.
I’m not like you, old man
, he thought. It wasn’t entirely true, of course; his first impulse, after all, had been to pack Lizzie off to boarding school. What did he know about taking care of a child, especially a female? He might have followed through with his original idea, too, if it hadn’t been for Angus’s vow that he’d fetch her home to the Triple M if that happened.

The patriarch, stern as Moses on the slopes of the holy mountain, scowled right back at him and gestured impatiently toward Lizzie.

Holt drew a deep breath and faced his daughter again. “I’m real sorry about your aunt Geneva,” he said
. And your mama,
he added silently. The news of Olivia’s passing had left a hole in his insides; on some level, he’d always expected to see her again. Make things right somehow. Now it was too late.

Lizzie hoisted her chin. “Aunt Geneva wasn’t going to stay on in Indian Rock after she got me settled,” she said. “She told me you didn’t like her, and she didn’t like you much, either. She hoped you’d be nicer to me than you were to my mama.”

Holt felt his pa’s gaze burning into his backbone, but he wasn’t fool enough to turn around again. “I loved your mother,” he heard himself say.

Lizzie looked skeptical, and imperious into the bargain. She was going to be a handful, that much was clear, and he didn’t have the first idea how to cope. If it hadn’t been for his pride, he’d have let Angus and Concepcion take her to raise, but he knew they’d make a McKettrick out of her, and he’d wear an apron and a bonnet before he let that happen.

“Aunt Geneva said she’d rather eat poached snake eggs than hand me over to you, but she didn’t have a choice.”

Holt crouched, to put himself on the child’s level, and he couldn’t help grinning a little. “Poached snake eggs, is it?” he reflected, with a shake of his head. “Geneva was always definite in her opinions. But tell me—why did she think she didn’t have a choice?”

Lizzie paused to consider her answer, but her expression revealed nothing of what she was thinking. He figured she’d make a hell of a poker player—it ran in the family. “The doctor said she was sick. There was a lump growing inside her, and she didn’t reckon she had much time. She didn’t want me to be left alone.”

Holt’s voice scraped at his throat as it came out. “And your mother was already gone.”

Lizzie looked away, blinked, looked back, steady as a hangman. “Yes,” she said. “A fever took her.”

Holt wanted to touch Lizzie’s hand then, maybe even draw her into his arms, but he hadn’t earned the right to do that, and he knew she’d balk if he tried. “When was that?” he asked.

“Last winter.” Lizzie studied him hard, frowning. “You’ve got a house, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Holt answered, thinking of that sprawling, lonesome place, out in the middle of nowhere. He’d bought it out of spite, because he knew Angus wanted the land surrounding it, and every acre had been an albatross around his neck ever since. Dammit all to hell, if he’d just stayed in Texas, where he belonged, he might have found Olivia in time, managed to change things somehow…

“Good,” Lizzie answered. “Aunt Geneva said you mostly slept in places where you shouldn’t have, back when she knew you.” She paused. “I reckon she meant on the ground and in barns.”

Behind him, Angus chuckled, then made a whooshing sound, as if Concepcion had elbowed him. Bless the woman.

“You’ll have a roof over your head, a room and a bed and all you want to eat,” Holt promised.

Lizzie tilted her head to one side, and then proceeded to negotiate. “How about a dog?”

Holt nearly grinned. “We can probably rustle one up someplace,” he said.

“Old Blue just had a litter,” Angus put in. “I’ll bring one over as soon as they’re weaned.”

“Hush!” Concepcion said.

“And a pony,” Lizzie pressed, probably drawing confidence from the support of her grandfather. “I want a pony, too.”

“That depends on how well you ride,” Holt said firmly. He was determined not to lose control of this situation, assuming he hadn’t already.

“I ride,” Lizzie said, “like a Comanche.”

Angus laughed again, and he must have dodged Concepcion’s elbow because this time there was no loud expulsion of breath.

“We’ll see,” Holt said, as much for Angus’s benefit as for hers. If that old man thought he was going to meddle in this, he had manure for brains.

Lizzie wasn’t through with him yet. He wouldn’t have been surprised if the kid had asked for references. “Do you have a wife?”

Holt considered his housekeeper, Sue Ellen Caruthers, who had already proposed herself for the position. A leftover bride, she’d come to Indian Rock to marry either Rafe or Kade, he couldn’t remember which. The plan had come to naught, with Rafe already wed to Emmeline when she arrived, and Kade so besotted with Mandy that he couldn’t think straight. Sue Ellen had been testy on the subject ever since.

He shook his head. “No wife,” he said. Sue Ellen was a fair hand at the stove, and she kept the house clean enough, but she was possessed of a peevish and contrary nature. In point of fact, he’d sooner have hitched himself to a sow bear with a toothache.

Lizzie folded her arms, and it appeared that the negotiations had stalled. “A child needs a mother,” she said, sounding more like a forty-year-old midget than a little girl.

Emmeline gave a soft burble of laughter.

“For the time being,” Holt said firmly, and for the benefit of all who might take an interest in the matter, “you’re going to have to settle for a father.”

Lizzie huffed out a little sigh. “Well, all right,” she said, with sobering reluctance. “I guess you’ll do.”