The Cowboy's Mail Order Bride (2 page)

“Four of you?”

“Yep.” Dotty nodded. “Me and Rose and Madge all come to Texas right after the war was over more than sixty years ago. I got here first in January and the other two came on later that spring. It’s a long story how it all happened. Rose and Madge are cousins. Madge was writing to a soldier that she met through the church pen pal group. So she came out here to meet him, and then Rose came to visit and wound up married to a local guy too. Our husbands are all gone now and we are widows.”

“You were all kind of like mail-order brides?”

“Mainly me and Madge were, and Rose kind of got in on the deal like shirttail kin. Clarice is the only one of us that was raised right here in Ravenna,” Dotty said. “Now get on up there and get some rest.”

“Supper is at six?” Emily checked the clock and glanced at that picture one more time.

“Yes, it is.” Dotty smiled.

A two-hour nap, supper, some talk about her grandfather, and then back to the hotel. Tomorrow she would be on her way to Florida for a whole month on the beach.

“Oh, my!” Emily gasped when she opened the door into the bedroom.

Back when she was in high school she would have hocked her tomcat, Spurs, to have her own room like the one before her. A queen-sized four-poster bed covered with a pretty quilt and lacy bed ruffle sat on one side of the room. A big, deep recliner and a vanity with a three-way mirror were located over beside the door into the bathroom, which sported a deep claw-footed tub. She’d always shared the one bathroom in the small three-bedroom ranch house with two men who did not understand why one girl needed so much hair spray, lotion, bath oil, and her own pink razors to shave her legs.

She washed her hands, dried them, and then rubbed lotion into them—sweet-smelling lavender lotion that reminded her of Great-Aunt Molly, grandmother to her favorite cousin, Taylor.

Her grandfather’s words the day that he and Molly went to the courthouse together came back to her as she looked in the bathroom mirror. Molly had deeded her ranch to Taylor, and Marvin had given what was left of his adjoining ranch to Emily. On the way home he had said, “I’m not real sure your future is on Shine Canyon Ranch, Em.”

When she’d asked him why he’d say a thing like that, he’d just smiled and tapped his heart. “Ranchin’ is in your heart and you’ll always love it, but something in my soul tells me your future is not on Shine Canyon. When I’m gone, I want you to take a month and think things through before you commit to this land for the rest of your life. You’ll have a hard row to hoe even with family to help with just a hundred acres. I’m not sure in today’s economy that you’ll ever make it without taking a job in town, and that means ranchin’ at night after you work your ass off all day at your job.”

She blinked away the tears and turned away from the mirror. “A hundred acres might not be much, but it’s mine, Gramps. And I love the land as much as you did. I’m not afraid of hard work, and piece by piece I’ll buy our land back from Taylor. He promised he’d sell it to me when I could buy it, remember. That was the rule when you sold it to him.”

Lacy curtains covered the narrow window overlooking the backyard. She drew a corner back and peeked out. She dropped the curtain and took a step back, stumbled over a small footstool, and went down on one knee.

She wanted to cry, to curl up in a ball and weep, but she couldn’t. She limped over to the recliner, flipped the handle on the side, and leaned back as far as it would let her, looked up, and right there on top of the chest of drawers was another picture of Greg. A bust shot of him in his high school graduation robe and mortarboard hat with a tassel hanging to the side. The gold charm told her that he’d graduated two years before she did and that his school colors were orange and black. A sticky note attached to the side of the frame held the message, “I’ll bring home the best bull. Miss you!”

He was younger, but the eyes were the same and they still looked right into her soul like the picture down in the living room. She threw her arm over her face and forced herself to think about the beach, to hear the seagulls and the slapping of the waves against the sandbar. The soft smell of the lotion on her hands sparked a deep memory of her mother in her dreams. They were playing in the wildflowers like the ones in the picture of Greg Adams. She was a little girl with dark braids and a cotton dress. The grass was soft on her bare feet but cool, so it had to be spring. They’d sung the “Ring around the Rosy” song, then fallen back in the flowers. Her mother touched her cheek and said, “Don’t ever give up your wings. Always know that you can fly, my child.”

Then out of nowhere there was a door right in the middle of the pasture of wild, colorful flowers, and there was a yellow cat peeking around the corner. A mouse darted through the cat’s front legs and was coming right at her when she sat straight up in bed and her eyes popped wide open.

“Damn it! I don’t get to dream about Mama very often. Why’d you bring that thing into my dreams?” she asked.

Someone rapped gently on the door, but she thought it was part of the dream until it happened again. She cocked her head to one side and said, “Come in.”

Clarice pushed inside and sat down on the vanity bench. “Thank you. It’s been more than an hour and I was hoping you were awake. Would you please tell me more about Marvin? I read the letter and it said what I thought it would. Strange, that something sixty years old can still be so bittersweet.”

“Is it all right if I sit on the bed?” Emily asked. “This chair would be a lot more comfortable for you than that bench.”

“Honey, this is your room right now. Make yourself at home.”

“Is that your grandson in that picture too?” Emily asked.

Clarice nodded. “When he graduated from high school. He leaves me little notes when he has to be gone. It’s to convince me that he’s coming back. I have a fear that he’ll change his mind about ranchin’. Now please tell me about Marvin.”

Emily kicked off her boots and crawled up in the middle of the bed. She crossed her legs Indian-style, kept her gaze on Clarice and off the picture on the chest, and said, “He fought cancer for five years and last week the battle ended. It won. I thought he’d kick it for sure right up until that last week. He was diagnosed the week I graduated from college five years ago. I had planned on coming back to the ranch anyway, so it didn’t change my life drastically. I took care of him. He was always too stubborn to hire a foreman, so I took care of that too. As the ranch dwindled to pay for his bills, there was less ranchin’ and more caretakin’.”

“How many children did he have?” Clarice asked.

Emily held up one finger. “Just one son, my father. But Nana’s family lived on the next farm over. She came from a family that had five girls, so I had lots of family around me and lots of cousins to play with when I was growing up. My father died nine years ago in a horse accident. I was a senior in high school and the shock was horrible. Even worse than when Mama died, but I was just barely four that year and too little to really understand what an aneurism was. He was fine that morning at breakfast, and that evening he was gone. I thought it was the worst thing I’d ever endure, but watching Gramps go by degrees was even tougher. How many children did you have, Miz Clarice?”

“Just one son, Bart. He and his wife, Nancy, only had one child—Greg. He’s thirty now. And you?”

“Twenty-eight,” Emily answered.

“Did Marvin ever mention me?” Clarice asked softly.

“He talked about you that last week and to you the last hours of his life. I really thought that you were probably dead and had come to help him cross over into eternity. He made me promise that I’d find out if you were alive and see to it that you got those letters and understood that he hadn’t been a jackass. It all started when the mailman drove out to the ranch with that letter they found at the post office,” Emily said.

“Thank you for keeping that promise. You’ll never know what this means to me. Did Marvin, was he, did he suffer?” Clarice dabbed at her eye.

Emily shook her head. “He was sick for a very long time, but for a while he was still able to be up and around. It wasn’t until that last round of chemo that he wasn’t able to at least sit on the porch swing with me every evening. At the end I prayed that God would take him on to a place where he wouldn’t hurt anymore. That sounds ugly, doesn’t it?”

Clarice shook her head. “No, it’s the way life is. Why didn’t he come to Ravenna all those years ago? He knew where I was.”

Emily shrugged. “I asked him that, but he just smiled and said that God must’ve had other plans for both of you or that letter wouldn’t have gotten lost.”

Clarice nodded. “Can’t undo history. I was happy with Lester Adams. We had a good life, raised a good son, and he married well. Now I have Greg to help me run the ranch. I’m glad you brought the letters home to me, Emily, and I’m glad you agreed to stay for supper.”

“Thank you,” Emily said.

“Want to come with me to the kitchen and help Dotty get things on the table?” Clarice asked.

“I’d love to.” Emily bounded off the bed, stomped her feet back into her boots, and followed Clarice on down the stairs.

***

Greg checked out every square inch of the big black bruiser of an Angus bull. He was one of the finest specimens he’d ever laid eyes on, and Lightning Ridge would be lucky to have him.

He took his phone out of his shirt pocket to call his grandmother to tell her that he’d discovered the perfect new bloodline for the ranch, and found that Clarice had sent a picture. She hadn’t learned the art of texting with the new phone he’d gotten her, but apparently she had figured out how to take and send pictures.

He adjusted his glasses and stepped away from the bull pen to the shady side of the sale barn so he could see the picture. So that was Emily that Nana had called three times about in the past two hours. She’d been adamant that he stop what he was doing and look at the picture the last time she called.

According to Nana, Emily was an inch or two shorter than she was and had come to the house in jeans, boots, and a lightweight denim jacket. She didn’t have tattoos, and the only thing Nana could see that was pierced was her ears. He’d told his grandmother that there might be a whole raft of surprises under those jeans and jacket, but she was so excited about some old boyfriend she’d had back when she was a teenager that she didn’t hear a word Greg had to say. He held the phone up to get better light and had to admit that Emily was striking with all that dark hair and those crystal, clear blue eyes.

“So is your body covered with tats? Do you have a belly ring and a tongue stud?” he asked. “Are you a ranchin’ woman, or do you just like jeans and boots? Nana is quite taken with you, but I’ll never meet you in real person, so it doesn’t really matter, does it?”

His phone rang, surprising him so much that he almost dropped it. “Yes, Nana. I just saw the picture. You did a good job. What’s her name again—Emma? And Dotty called to tell me about the mouse. That would have been a sight to see, the way that Dotty hates those things,” he teased.

“It’s Emily,” Clarice said. “I told you already that her name is Emily. What do you think of her? Did you find all my notes? I only found two that you left me.”

“She is a very pretty lady. And yes, I found your notes and I left more than two, so you’d best start lookin’ around. It’s past time to clean off the fridge if you can’t even find a new note on it.” He chuckled.

“I have offered her that job we’ve been talkin’ about,” Clarice said bluntly.

“Nana! I called an ad in the newspaper to be published next week that we would take resumes for that job. And I had in mind that we’d hire a man for the job, not a woman that we don’t even know. Hell, we could have hired Prissy,” Greg said.

“Emily has got a degree in agriculture business and has been working on her grandfather’s ranch for five years. I don’t think any man could beat her credentials. And it’s just for a month. She’s got a hundred acres out in west Texas that she wants to get back to by the first of March. That way I get to see if I really want someone in the house to help me or not, and I get to know her better. So call the newspaper and take the ad out, and believe me, Prissy has a job and she won’t ever live on a ranch,” Clarice told him.

“Did Emily take the job?” Greg asked.

“She’s stayin’ at a hotel in Sherman until tomorrow. She’s going to think about it. Marvin died after a long battle with cancer and she took care of him. He made her promise to do two things: bring my letters home to me and take a month off. Her cousin is running things while she’s gone, but she will be going back. I swear she talks about that ranch like it’s a real person,” Clarice said.

“I still think a man would be better,” Greg said. “But if it’s just for a month, then whatever you think is fine, Nana. And Nana, you talk about Lightning Ridge the same way.”

Clarice laughed out loud. “I’m the over-romantic one, and you are like your grandpa, ever the businessman. That’s what makes us such good ranchin’ partners, Greg.”

“You are right about that. It takes both of us to run Lightning Ridge, doesn’t it?” Greg said.

He adored his grandmother even if she was more sentimental about everything since his grandfather passed five years before. A month with someone to help her in the office with the new computerized bookkeeping and to drive her and her friends around would show her just how valuable an assistant could be. And then they’d hire a man to do the job. It was a win-win situation.

But right now, he had a bull to buy. He said a few more words to his grandmother and hung up. On his way back into the sale barn he brought up Emily’s picture one more time. There was something about her eyes that was downright mesmerizing.

But still, a ranch was a business, and running one was hard work. Maybe Emily would work out just fine for a month, but Greg had a feeling that the whole reason his grandmother wanted her around was to drag up the past. She and Dotty seemed obsessed with it lately, constantly arguing about what had happened when they were younger or when someone had died or given birth. Maybe it was the fact that they were both eighty years old, or maybe all elderly folks relived their glory days as they got older. He got a kick out of their close friendship and a bigger one out of all four of the old gals—Clarice, Dotty, Rose, and Madge—that made up their circle.