Secondhand Bride (7 page)

J
eb worked shirtless in the afternoon sun, sweating and cursing occasionally, under his breath, while he dug post holes for the new fence line between Holt’s place— the Circle C—and the Triple M. Rafe had made a big production of dragging him out of the Arizona Hotel, claiming he needed help with the cattle, but then he’d changed his mind. Next thing he knew, Jeb was breaking hard ground with a dull shovel. Being low man on the McKettrick totem pole, and having no desire to hit the trail again, he’d had no choice but to give in.

He was so caught up in his roiling thoughts that he didn’t hear the horse approaching, didn’t know he wasn’t alone, with the buckboard and team, until a long, familiar shadow fell over him.

He stopped digging, let the shovel fall to the dirt, and dragged one arm across his forehead.

“Looks like you drew the shit detail, boy,” Angus observed, swinging himself down from the saddle and hooking his thumbs under his gun belt. “Most likely, you deserve it though.”

Jeb struggled to hold on to his temper. It wasn’t smart to sass the old man; he might have given Rafe the foreman’s job, with Kade second-in-command, but in reality Angus still ran the Triple M, and he used an iron hand to do it. “Thanks,” Jeb said tersely. “That makes me feel
a lot
better.”

Angus laughed, took his canteen from the saddle, and held it out. “Sorry it isn’t whiskey,” he said. “I reckon you could use some right about now.”

Jeb took the canteen, though grudgingly, screwed off the lid, and drank deeply of the cold well water, tasting faintly of canvas and metal. He poured the rest over his back, chest, and shoulders, and handed the empty vessel back to Angus with a shoving motion. “You’re right about that. Do you have some business with me, Pa, or did you just come out here to make everything worse?”

Angus looked a little less amused. “I’ve got business, all right,” he drawled. “I want to know why Chloe is staying in town if she’s really your wife.”

“She isn’t my wife,” Jeb said, and spat. He realized he was standing just as Angus was, with his thumbs under his gun belt, and shifted his position.

The old man resettled his hat, plainly peevish. “Seems to me you ought to get your story straight, boy, and stick by it,” he said. “For weeks, you’ve been claiming you were married. Then along comes one of the Furies, mad enough to snatch you baldheaded, and telling me she’s your bride. What in the Sam Hill is going on here?”

Jeb thrust splayed fingers through his dusty, sweatmatted hair. “I wish I knew,” he said, abjectly miserable.

“Might help if the two of us jaw about it a little,” Angus offered, gruffly magnanimous. “Maybe we can work it through together.”

“I married her all right,” Jeb admitted. “Damn fool that I was.”

“Well, then, that settles one question.”

Jeb shook his head. “Not really,” he said. “Right after the ceremony was over, Chloe and I, well, we were going to start our honeymoon.” He stopped, cleared his throat, looked everywhere but at his father’s face. “I saw her to the room, carried her over the threshold, and all that.” He paused again, gave a bitter laugh. “I decided we ought to have some of that fancy French wine to celebrate with, so I went out to scout some up. I was on my way back when a fella came up to me outside the hotel and said he had something I ought to see. I was in a hurry, but I stopped. He showed me something, all right. It was a picture, framed and fancy—Chloe, all dressed up as a bride, standing right beside the man I was talking to in the street. He said she was
his
wife, and damned if he didn’t have the proof.”

Angus waited.

Jeb muttered a string of curses.

“Let’s hear the rest,” Angus prompted. His tone was even; Jeb couldn’t tell whether he thought the story was funny or downright sad. Hell, he wasn’t sure of the distinction himself.

“I felt like I’d been kicked in the belly by a mule,” Jeb said, still avoiding the old man’s gaze, but he could feel it on him, just the same, steady and level. “I made for the nearest saloon, bought my way into a poker game, and drank up half the whiskey in the place.”

“Some men would have gone right to Chloe and asked her straight out what was going on,” Angus reasoned.

“I couldn’t face her,” Jeb confessed. “Anyway, she came and found me in a back room at the Broken Stirrup, and we had it out, in front of God and everybody. I spent the night in some cheap boardinghouse and steered clear of her until Kade showed up a week later and talked me into coming back here.”

Now it was Angus who spat. “I don’t reckon I need to tell you what I think of the way you treated her,” he said.

Jeb picked up the shovel, jammed it into the hole, and flung out a spray of dirt. “No,” he agreed, “you don’t. But you probably will, anyhow. And what about the way she treated me?”

Angus didn’t move, and he let the question pass unanswered. Out of the corner of his eye, Jeb could see that the old coot had his arms folded again, and the brim of his weather-beaten hat shadowed his face. “Chloe seemed pretty sure she was your wife,” he said, “not that other fella’s.”

“She’s a good liar and an even better actress.” Jeb hit a rock with the end of the shovel, and the impact reverberated up both his arms to ache in his shoulders.

“One way or the other,” Angus persisted quietly, “this isn’t something you can run away from. You need to settle it, boy. For your own sake, and for hers.”

Jeb gripped the shovel handle in both his blistered hands and sent it flying back over his head. It landed beyond the barbed-wire fence, on Circle C property, with a resounding clank. “I’m not running away!” he yelled.

“That isn’t the way I heard it,” Angus said.

Rafe and Kade. Damn them. They’d probably had a good time telling the old man how Chloe Wakefield chased their little brother all the way from town and finally cornered him behind the bunkhouse.

“Go and talk to her,” Angus said.

“It’s no damn use!” Jeb raged. “Chloe and I don’t
talk
, we yell at each other!”

Angus smiled as he turned away. “That’s encouraging,” he said. “And fetch back that shovel before you head for town. Contrary to common opinion around this place, I’m not made of money.”

G
et back to the ranch. Go to town. Jeb wished Rafe and Angus would get together and agree on what the hell he was supposed to do. If this was a taste of what it was going to be like when either Rafe or Kade took full control of the ranch, he might as well shoot himself.

Angrily, he collected his tools, including the shovel, and threw them into the bed of the buckboard. After shrugging back into his shirt, he climbed up, took the reins, released the brake lever, and drove the horses hard for home. Mandy was in the barn when he got there, brushing down a fine pinto gelding—she’d made Kade give her fifty head of good horseflesh and most of the money in his bank account after they were married, because of some agreement between them—and for the first time in recent memory, Jeb got some sympathy.

Mandy smiled. “Aren’t you in a state?” she asked lightly, coming out of the stall to talk. She was wearing pants, boots, and a chambray shirt from the trunks of outgrown clothes Concepcion kept in the springhouse.

“I’ve been in better moods,” Jeb admitted.

She laughed. “It’s Chloe, I suppose.”

“Chloe, and Rafe, and my bullheaded old polecat of a father—”

“Poor Jeb,” Mandy said, but her eyes were dancing. She looked him over thoughtfully. “If you’re going to pay a call on Chloe, you’d better clean up first. You’re a sight.” She waved him in the direction of the house. “Go on,” she shooed. “I’ll unhitch the wagon and put the team away.”

“There’ll be no end to the grief if Kade finds out I let you do a man’s work,” Jeb said. He wanted a bath and a shave, though, now that she’d brought the possibilities to mind. He felt like he was wearing half the territory on his hide.

“I’ll handle Kade,” Mandy said, with well-founded confidence. Every cowhand on the ranch jumped when Kade whistled, but with Mandy, he was a different man.

Jeb hesitated another moment, then shrugged, left the team to Mandy, and made for the house. After a session with the razor, one of Concepcion’s savory meals, and a good soaping and sluicing in the creek, he felt better, and he was almost in a good mood when he reached the outskirts of Indian Rock, about sunset.

He stopped at the Bloody Basin for a shot of whiskey before squaring his shoulders and setting his course for the Arizona Hotel, where he figured he’d find Chloe. If she was pregnant, he’d decided on the way to town, he might be willing to live as a bigamist, at least for a while. He grinned, thinking of the looks on Rafe’s and Kade’s faces when he told them they’d be working for him in a few months’ time. He’d see that they got their fill of digging post holes, rounding up strays, and stringing barbwire.

Oh, yes, revenge would be sweet.

He found his ladylove in the lobby, sipping tea from a china cup and reading a book. There were little spectacles perched on the end of her nose and, as he drew closer, he saw that her eyes were red-rimmed.

She closed the book with a snap and snatched off the glasses. “Well,” she said imperiously, “you’re back.”

He exercised forbearance and did not point out the obviousness of that statement. He even took off his hat. “Have you been crying?” he asked, though he hadn’t intended to voice that particular thought.

“No,” she said.

“Liar.”

“If you’ve come here to insult me, Jeb McKettrick, I will thank you to leave. I’ve had quite enough disturbing news in the past twenty-four hours.”

He sighed, drew up another chair, and sat facing her so that their knees were almost touching. “I’m not here to bother you, Chloe,” he said truthfully. “I was hoping we could talk. Without tearing into each other, I mean.”

“Inconceivable,” she said, but her mouth twitched a little at one corner and, in the next instant, she actually hauled off and smiled. “You look very handsome,” she added.

It wasn’t the first time Jeb had been told he was handsome—he’d been trading on it for years—but the effect was entirely new. He felt shy as a schoolboy all of a sudden, and oddly tongue-tied, and that unnerved him. “You don’t look so bad yourself,” he said.

She gave a pealing laugh.

He turned his hat between his fingers and searched for words that might be accepted in a peaceable spirit. “Chloe, you said there was a child—”

She looked away.

“Is there?” he pressed, but without rancor.

She met his gaze, shook her head. “No,” she said, and he thought he heard a note of regret in her voice.

He hung his head for a moment, surprised by the depth of his disappointment.

“You want that ranch very badly, don’t you?” Chloe asked. He might have expected recrimination, since she’d already accused him of using her as a means to an end; but she spoke gently, almost tenderly.

He looked up, searching her face. If he lived to be a thousand, he’d never figure this woman out, and that was part of her appeal. She was a mystery, a challenge, and a pure hellcat between the sheets. “Yes,” he said.

“Why didn’t you tell me the real reason you wanted to get married?” She reached for her teacup, but it rattled in the saucer, so she turned loose of it and folded her hands in her lap. “I thought it all happened awfully fast. Our courtship, I mean.”

“I guess I figured you’d tell me to go to hell,” he answered. “Say you were a woman, not a broodmare, or something along those lines.”

Her smile was strangely fragile. “Well, I might have,” she admitted. “But the truth is always best, don’t you think?”

He considered the question and refrained from pointing out that she hadn’t been such a believer in telling the straight story back in Tombstone. “Not always,” he said, and left it at that. “Chloe, why were you crying? Was it because of John?”

She nodded. “Did you know he was my father?” she asked, almost meekly, as if she feared the answer.

He shook his head. “No.” He reached out, took her hand. “Come on,” he said, hoping she wouldn’t balk. “Let’s go for a walk.”

She didn’t try to pull away, which was encouraging, but as he ran the pad of his thumb across her fingers, he realized that the ring he’d given her was gone, which was
dis
couraging. Not that he’d worn his own; it was tucked away in his bureau drawer at home. He’d wanted to toss it in the creek more than once, but something had stopped him.

Damn, but it was a complicated business, this being a man. Women had it easy.

I
t didn’t escape Chloe’s notice, for all her befuddlement of feelings, that when Jeb led her out of the hotel for their evening walk, he headed in the opposite direction from the cemetery. The street was quiet, the store-fronts dark, though the Bloody Basin was doing a rousing business, with tinny piano music pouring past its swinging doors.

Perhaps thinking, as she was, that it would be better if they didn’t talk about themselves, and thus their differences, Jeb pointed out various landmarks.

“That’s the jailhouse, over there,” he said, indicating a pockmarked facade with brick sidewalls and a single dimly lit window. “Looks like Sam Fee has a prisoner, or he’d be gone home by now.” He stopped, surveying the place, and shook his head. “Kade was marshal for a while, after John took sick. Damn near got himself killed, but we’d have lost the Triple M for sure if it hadn’t been for him and Mandy.”

Chloe made her way past the mention of John, though it brushed against her spirit like a shadow. “What happened?” She wasn’t ready to talk about her father and all the years that had been wasted because she hadn’t known who he really was. The resentment she felt toward her mother would need some time to heal, too, and she’d be demanding an explanation first chance she got, for sure and certain.

“It’s complicated,” Jeb said, taking her hand and moving on again. “What it boils down to is, there were some outlaws trying to start up a range war. They stole some gold that belonged to us, and Kade and Mandy got it back.”

The next stop on the grand tour of Indian Rock was Mamie Sussex’s rooming house. “Mamie has a flock of redheaded kids,” Jeb said, with amused affection. “Harry’s a special favorite of Kade’s—used to help him with his marshaling sometimes. He made a fair deputy, for a ten-year-old.”

Chloe smiled at the mention of children; as a teacher, she naturally had a special affinity for them. “They must keep their mother busy,” she observed. She was trying not to think about how good it felt to be talking about ordinary things with Jeb, with her hand resting in his. Best not get too cozy, though.

“It would be a mercy to her and the whole town if they were in school,” Jeb said, with a slight grin. “They’re full of mischief. There isn’t any teacher, though.”

She supposed she should have told him she meant to inquire about the job, but she didn’t. She was enjoying the temporary cessation of hostilities a bit too much.

“The town council’s been trying to hire a schoolmarm for a while now,” he went on. “No luck. Indian Rock’s pretty isolated, and the pay isn’t much, so I guess the pickings are slim.”

Chloe felt a little trill of excitement, but caution made her tamp it down. Yes, she was a qualified teacher, a damn good one, in fact, and yes, she most certainly needed work, since her funds were all but exhausted, but word of her ignoble dismissal in Tombstone would surely catch up to her, sooner or later. As desperate as they were, the committee might turn her down flat.

She’d have no choice then but to go crawling back to Sacramento and live alone in Mr. Wakefield’s vast house. The prospect made her shudder, but with two divorces behind her, she’d be a pariah just about anywhere she went. “Tell me about Rafe and Emmeline,” she said, when the gap of silence had widened too far for comfort.

Jeb smiled, a mite wistfully, Chloe thought, and they sat down on a bench in front of the closed mercantile, still holding hands. “Now there’s a story,” he said. “When Pa informed us, on his birthday, that the first one of us to get married and present him with a grandchild would run the ranch, Rafe sent away for a bride, and Emmeline came out from Kansas City. Things were pretty rocky between them for a while, so he wrote off for another bride, just in case Emmeline didn’t work out.” He paused, chuckled. “Kade did the same, once he found out. The agency got mixed up and sent six of them. When they got here and found out Rafe was taken, they all set their caps for Kade. That made for some merriment, but most of them are gone now. Abigail stayed—she and Mamie run the rooming house together, and Sue Ellen Caruthers keeps house for Holt Cavanagh. I imagine he’ll marry her one of these days, just for something to do.”

Chloe mused a while, enjoying the comical picture Jeb had painted in her mind. It was purely a relief, after all her heavy thoughts. “What about you?” she asked presently. “Didn’t any of the brides fix their sights on you?”

He hesitated. “No,” he said. In profile, he looked serious, and when he turned his gaze on Chloe, she saw sadness there. “I told them I was already married.”

Chloe had spoken in haste; now, she could repent the impulse at leisure. “I see,” she said, changing the subject, sensing that there would be another storm if she didn’t. “Holt referred to you as his brother last night. Why does he call himself Cavanagh, and not McKettrick?”

Jeb’s jaw tightened. “He’s a
half
brother,” he said, somewhat tersely. “Pa was married to his mother, back in Texas. When she died, Pa left Holt with relatives and came up here, with a herd of cattle, to settle the Triple M. He met Ma, they got married, and Rafe, Kade, and I were born. Somehow, Pa neglected to mention, to us anyway, that he had another son.” He sighed, and the tension in his shoulders slackened a little. “Holt never forgave Pa for leaving him, I guess, and he took the name Cavanagh out of spite, most likely.”

“You don’t like him,” Chloe said.

“I don’t trust him,” Jeb replied. “He doesn’t have much to do with Pa, or any of us for that matter. He came here to make trouble, plain and simple, and it’s hard to like a man for that.”

“Maybe he just wants the rest of you to acknowledge him,” Chloe suggested carefully. She’d only met Mr. Cavanagh once, but she’d liked him instinctively. He was a gentleman, she knew that much, and she sensed a bold and stalwart spirit in him. And, like his half brothers, he wasn’t hard on the eye.

“It’ll be a while,” Jeb said grimly. He stared at the ground for a long time, and another silence settled between them. Chloe decided it would be a mistake to argue Holt’s case, though she was sorely tempted. People like Jeb, with strong families and deeded ground under their feet, tended to take such things for granted. Most likely, they didn’t know what it was to feel lonely.

It was Jeb who broke the impasse. “Guess I’d better get you back to the hotel,” he said. “Winter or summer, the high country gets cold at night.”

For her part, Chloe would have been glad to stay right there, close to Jeb, but it was a foolish notion, and she knew it. She’d built walls around her heart, after John Lewis left Sacramento that last time, and both Jack Barrett and Jeb McKettrick had breached them, taking her unawares. The result had been pain, humiliation, and the loss of a job she’d loved.

She wouldn’t make the same mistake again.

Except that Jeb kissed her, without warning, right there on the street. As before, her bones melted, and her blood thundered through her veins.

She pushed him away.

He caught her chin in his hand, made her look at him. “Remember how it was with us, Chloe?” he asked, his voice raspy and gruff.

She twisted free. “Are you willing to acknowledge me as your wife?” she demanded.

He didn’t answer.

Chloe turned away and headed for the hotel, hoping he would call her back, hoping he wouldn’t.

He didn’t.