Secondhand Bride (5 page)

Chloe closed her eyes for a moment, bracing herself, but Jeb did not come inside. Becky asked him what he thought he was doing, and his answer was indecipherable. He hurled the rest of Chloe’s belongings into the lobby, and that, apparently, was that.

“Great Scot,” Becky said, closing the door after the last reticule. “I’ve never seen Jeb in such a state. He’s usually so easygoing. What on earth happened?”

Chloe sighed. “It’s a very long story,” she replied, “and, frankly, I haven’t the stamina to recount it just now. I’m perishing for a room, a cup of tea, and a hot bath.”

Becky smiled, and this time there was nothing shaky about the effort, though her eyes betrayed a variety of misgivings. “You’ve come to the right place, then,” she said. “We have a great deal to talk about, Chloe, but it can certainly wait until morning.”

Chloe was full of questions, but, thanks to the most recent round with Jeb McKettrick, she was almost totally spent. She simply nodded.

Becky showed her to a small but pretty room at the top of the stairs, and presently a Chinese man brought her bags up, one by one. While Chloe was unpacking, Becky appeared with a tea tray, set it on the small table under the window, and studied her newest guest with thoughtful eyes.

“We’ve been renovating the hotel,” she said, at last. “There’s a bathtub, with hot and cold running water, just down the hall.”

Not since she’d sneaked out of Sacramento had Chloe availed herself of such a luxury. Before her ignoble dismissal from her teaching position in Tombstone, courtesy of Jeb, she’d lived in a cheap rooming house, where she’d employed a sponge and basin for purposes of personal hygiene, after carrying and heating her own water.

“That sounds lovely,” she said.

Becky was still watching her intently, and a frown had formed between her perfect eyebrows. “Chloe—”

“Yes?” Chloe prompted, suppressing a sigh.

“You know that John passed away a few months ago, don’t you?” The question was gently put and held a degree of dread.

Chloe’s throat seemed to swell shut. She blinked back tears and nodded. “Jeb told me,” she managed.

“You didn’t get the telegram Kade sent?”

Chloe stopped, with a nightgown in her hands, and faced Becky directly. “It was delayed,” she said. “Someone at the telegraph office found it and brought it to me, just yesterday. I came immediately.”

“That explains it, then,” Becky said softly, and her eyes glistened again. Then, seemingly by force of will, she rallied. “Sit down and have your tea, dear. I’ll go and see that the bathroom is ready.” She crossed to the door, put one hand on the knob.

“Becky?” Chloe ventured.

Becky stopped, without turning around.

“I’d give anything to have been here to say good-bye.”

“I know,” Becky said, and went out, closing the door behind her.

W
hen Chloe made her way downstairs the next morning, rested and ravenous, and thus in search of breakfast, she was disconcerted to find Jeb dozing on one of the leather-covered settees in the lobby. His hat rested over his eyes, cowboy-style, and he was fully dressed. He hadn’t even bothered to remove his boots, which extended some distance beyond the arm of the sofa.

Chloe resisted an unseemly but compelling urge to bat both his feet to the floor, but she was half-afraid he’d think he was being set upon by brigands and come up shooting. She’d seen, in Tombstone, how fast that .45 of his could spring into his hand, and the memory gave her chills. She doubted it had ever occurred to him that, fast as he was, there surely must be someone out there who was faster.

She put the thought aside, touched her hair, now washed and brushed and bound into a tidy chignon, and smoothed her black sateen skirt with both hands. She was wearing her best white shirtwaist, with her grandmother’s cameo pinned at the throat, and wanted to be perceived as a lady when she met with Becky again.

“Jeb McKettrick,” she said primly, “wake up. Immediately.”

He groped for the hat with one hand and lifted it just high enough to uncover an eye. “You,” he said, almost accusingly.

As if
she
were the one out of place, not him. “What are you doing here?”

He took the time to yawn and stretch, and the combination was so damnably sensual that Chloe’s body got to remembering again, with no prompting at all from her mind. He swung his legs down off the sofa and sat up. “I told you last night I meant to protect Becky,” he said, but there was a twinkle in his azure eyes.

She considered snatching up a sofa pillow and whacking him with it, but she needed the teaching job, having spent most of her savings since being ousted in Tombstone, which meant a degree of decorum was called for, lest word get back to the committee. Assuming she hadn’t already ruined her chances by creating a spectacle the day before, of course. “From what I’ve seen of Becky,” she said, “she is quite capable of looking after herself.”

Jeb grinned, intensifying the lingering effects of the stretching and yawning, which brought Chloe’s temper to a slow, steady simmer. “That she is,” he agreed. “You’ve found me out, Miss Chloe. I reckon the truth is, I’m here to aggravate you as much as possible.”

“That’s probably the first honest thing you’ve said since we met,” Chloe retorted. “Well, you can go now, because you’ve aggravated me plenty.”

He let his gaze drift over her before rising languidly to his feet. “You cleaned up pretty well,” he observed.

Chloe folded her arms and tapped one foot.

He chuckled and shook his head. “You little hellion,” he said. Then he leaned in slightly and lowered his voice. “I considered pressing my rights as a husband last night, but I figured you’d scratch my eyes out if I crawled into your bed.”

“You’re d—darned right I would have,” Chloe said, though secretly she wasn’t so sure. She tended to lose all good sense when he kissed her and when they made love…

She gave herself a mental shake. They had
never
“made love,” they’d only torn each other’s clothes off and coupled, always in a sweaty tangle of arms and legs.

Chloe fanned herself with one hand. Jeb grinned, as if he knew exactly what was going on in her mind.

She would have killed him, school committee be damned, if Becky hadn’t come down the stairs just then.

“Well,” said that worthy woman, “if it isn’t Mr. McKettrick. I would have thought you’d be in jail by now, given the state of your temper when I saw you last.” She smiled. “Join us for breakfast?”

“I wouldn’t think of refusing,” he said, looking at Chloe while he spoke.

She tried to singe him with her eyes. “I can’t think why you’d want to sit down to a meal with a lying, sneaking cheat like me,” she said.

“Oh, dear,” Becky objected, though mildly. “You didn’t really say that, did you, Jeb?”

He smiled endearingly. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “I surely did. And I meant every word.”

Chloe had to stay herself forcibly from picking up a sofa pillow. What had she ever seen in this man? Her body answered the question quickly enough, but her heart was less forthcoming. “Go away,” she whispered, though she had no real hope that Becky wouldn’t hear. She was standing too near and listening too intently.

“It would be rude to turn down such a generous invitation,” he said, with a slight nod in Becky’s direction. “Besides, I could eat a bull elk.” His eyes gleamed with mockery as he looked down into Chloe’s flushed face. “Thanks to you, Mrs. McKettrick, I missed supper last night.”

“It’s your own fault,” Chloe snapped. “You could have stayed at the ranch, where you belong.”

“Mrs. McKettrick?” Becky asked.

“My name is Wakefield,” Chloe said.

“That isn’t what you told my father yesterday, out behind the bunkhouse,” Jeb pointed out affably.

Chloe felt her cheeks catch fire; it was the curse of a redheaded woman, this blushing so easily. If only she’d been a blonde.

“Let’s have breakfast,” Becky reiterated. Plainly, she’d had considerable experience at keeping the peace, though the hotel didn’t look like the kind of place that would attract rowdies. Boasting a porcelain bathtub and hot and cold running water as it did, not to mention a sink and a commode that flushed, it would have been considered well-appointed, even in Sacramento.

“I couldn’t eat a bite,” Chloe protested, with a searing glance at Jeb. It was a lie, of course. She had awakened several times in the night with her stomach gnawing at her backbone, and once or twice she’d been desperate enough to consider sneaking down to the kitchen to raid the pantry. Only the fear of being thought a thief had kept her in her room.

“Guess that’s your choice,” Jeb said, and headed for what must have been the dining room.

Becky waited, smiling a little, for Chloe to swallow her damnable pride and join them. She did so, with a gulp, and when she caught the scents of fresh coffee and frying bacon wafting from the kitchen, she was completely lost. Pride, after all, makes for a poor breakfast.

Jeb had chosen a table next to the window, and he stood until both Becky and Chloe were seated, then sat down opposite them. A small woman bustled through the far doorway, carrying a heavy coffeepot in one hand and three mugs in the other, a finger hooked deftly through the handles.

“Good morning, Sarah,” Becky said cheerfully. “This is Chloe—er—Wakefield. Chloe, my friend, Sarah Fee. I couldn’t run this place without her.”

Sarah beamed, obviously valuing the compliment, and nodded a greeting to Chloe as she set the mugs on the table and poured coffee for the three of them. It was still quite early, so there were no other customers in the dining room. “Howdy,” Sarah said. “The special is bacon and eggs, with fried potatoes.”

“Sounds good,” Jeb said. It was a mystery to Chloe how he was so nice to other people, especially women, and so odious with her. Not that he’d
always
treated her badly. Oh, no. When he’d wanted something—specifically the Triple M—he’d been charm itself.

“Don’t you have work to do?” Chloe asked Jeb, when Becky left the table briefly, a few minutes later, to speak to someone waiting at the registration desk.

“No,” Jeb answered, after taking and savoring a sip of coffee. “As a matter of fact, I’m mostly an irritant around the ranch these days.”

“I can believe that,” Chloe said.

“Always generous with a compliment,” Jeb replied smoothly.

“
I despise
you.”

“I know.”

Chloe, having raised her coffee halfway to her mouth, had to set it down again, lest she spill it. “Just go away. Please. I promise to divorce you as soon as I possibly can.”

“Why go to all the trouble of a divorce?” Jeb asked blithely. “Since we’re not married anyway.”

“We
are
married, more’s the pity!”

He raised an eyebrow. “Prove it.”

“Dammit, Jeb, you were there. We stood up before a preacher. We exchanged vows. What a joke
that
was.”

“Especially the part where you promised to love, honor, and obey.”

Chloe narrowed her eyes. “Suppose I’m expecting?” she asked, in a whisper, just to nettle him. Actually, she knew for certain that she wasn’t, but the tactic worked nicely anyway.

Jeb set his coffee cup down on the red-and-white-checked oilcloth covering the table with a resounding thump, spilling some of the contents and burning his thumb.

“What?”
he hissed.

She smiled coyly while he cursed under his breath and shook his hand, though she felt unaccountably stung. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t known what he’d been up to in Tombstone; Jeb wanted a wife and a child—Jack had taken pleasure in telling her that, after that humiliating debacle of a wedding night—and he’d have taken anybody who applied. “You heard me,” she said. He was a poker player; if he didn’t know a bluff when he saw one, well, that was his problem, not hers.

“Dammit, Chloe, if this is another one of your tricks—”

“What tricks would those be?” she asked sweetly, as Becky returned. Sarah was back, too, carrying their plates on a tray.

Jeb was pale; she’d gotten under his skin for sure. Interest and hostility glinted in his eyes, and Chloe almost wished she
was
carrying his child. It would have served him right, after what he’d put her through, to see her make a grand exit on an outbound stagecoach, to bear and raise the baby elsewhere.

“Are Sarah and I interrupting something?” Becky asked lightly.

“No,” Jeb said, uncharitably.

The food was delicious, and Chloe didn’t even try to pretend she wasn’t hungry. She didn’t say two words throughout the meal, though, and Jeb probably didn’t either, but Becky filled the space with chatter about the furniture she’d ordered for the new part of the hotel, a dress she’d bought for Emmeline, over at the mercantile, and the shameful price of bed linens.

They had barely finished eating when Rafe came striding in off the street, dressed for a long, cold ride and looking annoyed. His gaze sliced straight to Jeb.

“There you are,” he said, without a trace of cordiality.

Jeb shifted in his chair, his face hardening. “Rafe,” he said, by way of a greeting.

“Begging your pardon, Becky,” Rafe said, and acknowledged Chloe with a terse nod, “but I’ll have to deprive you of such genial company.” He glowered at Jeb. “You see,” he went on pointedly, “we’ve got a ranch to run, and with that new herd of cattle just in from Texas, we need every hand we can scrounge up. Even the slackers, like my little brother, here.”

Jeb hesitated, plainly wanting to stare Rafe down, but in the end he pushed back his chair, with a loud scraping sound, and stood up.

Chloe smiled broadly.

Jeb paused beside her chair, leaned down, and spoke directly into her face. “Don’t look so smug, Miss Chloe,” he drawled. “I’m not through with you, by any means.”

Having said that, he walked out.

“Sorry,” Rafe said, though whether he was addressing Chloe herself, or Becky, there was no telling. He followed Jeb onto the street, spurs clanking.

“So there
are
people who can cow Jeb McKettrick,” Chloe said, with some satisfaction.

“Rafe is foreman on the Triple M,” Becky answered. “For the time being, he gives the orders.” She smiled into her coffee cup, hesitated. “I can’t say John didn’t warn me,” she said musingly. Then she moved to the chair Jeb had occupied, across from Chloe. Her expression, full of merriment only moments before, turned solemn, and a hint of tears shone in her eyes.

The change alarmed Chloe; something dreadfully important was about to be said, her instincts told her that, and suddenly she felt like fleeing or putting her hands over her ears. She did neither.

“What is it?” she asked, very quietly.

Becky pulled a lace-trimmed handkerchief from the sleeve of her dress and dabbed at her eyes. “It’s about John,” she said.