The Cowboy's Mail Order Bride (27 page)

Max took the suitcases out of the back of the van and carried them inside the hotel. Stacy met him inside the door and whispered, “Do they know?”

He shook his head. “Best kept secret in all of Fannin County.”

Stacy hugged Dotty. “I was afraid you’d back out. Jeremiah is away tonight and tomorrow on business, and I thought this would be a wonderful time for us to get better acquainted. If he gets back in time, he plans to join us for supper.”

“Clarice wanted to back out, but I made her keep her word and here we are. We both need a change of pace from that quiet house. Since Emily left, it’s like a morgue. Lord, girl, this is one damn fancy place.”

Stacy raised her hand and a bellboy came right over to take their bags to their room. “First thing we’re going to do is go to the spa. We’ll be there until suppertime.”

“A real spa with massages and the whole works?” Clarice asked.

Stacy threw her arms around their shoulders. “Yes, a real one complete with mud baths. We’re about to sink ourselves into three tubs full of wonderful mineral-enhanced mud and rest in it for one hour while aromatherapy candles burn around us.”

“That’ll be my cue to leave. Ain’t no way you’re going to talk me into sinking my body in a tub full of mud,” Max said. “I’ll be back tomorrow at noon to get y’all. Have fun.”

“Looks like we’re in your hands for twenty-four hours.” Clarice smiled. “I always wondered what it’d be like to soak in one of them tubs filled with warm mud.”

Stacy led them through the lobby and down a hallway toward the spa. “When you leave you’re going to be relaxed and making reservations to come back in a month.”

“Maybe by then Emily will be home and we can bring her.” Clarice sighed.

“I would love that. I really did like her. I think we could be good friends.” Stacy ushered them into a waiting room where a receptionist looked up and raised an eyebrow.

“We have appointments for the afternoon. Stacy Mendoza,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am, with lunch, right?”

Stacy nodded. “And a bottle of champagne with that.”

The cute little receptionist smiled. “If you ladies will follow me, we’ll get you into robes and ready for your mud baths.”

“I’m hungry as hell,” Dotty whispered.

“Lunch is served on the side of the tubs. You’re going to love it,” Stacy said. “Miz Dotty, you take this changing room. See, there’s a towel on the hook. Clarice, this one belongs to you.”

When Stacy was in her cubicle, she called Jeremiah and asked, “News?”

“The eagle is ahead of me, flying east with a full load. I’m going to veer south when we get to Wichita Falls.”

“Eagle, my ass! The phones aren’t bugged. And, darlin’, you’d better be at this hotel in time for supper. I’m not sleeping without you. I told your mama that you might be coming to eat with us and her whole face lit up. She’ll be delighted.”

“Yes, ma’am. Will you be the one in a sexy black nightie thing?”

“No, I’m the one in a red lacy nightie thing, and if you make eyes at a woman in a black one, I’ll have to scratch her eyes out.”

In the next cubicle over, Dotty pulled out her cell phone and called Clarice. “She’s on her way home,” she whispered.

“Well, praise the Lord. I knew she wouldn’t leave us for good. Are you really going to get in a bathtub full of mud or can we plead sick and go home?”

“They need tonight, so we’ll play along with their plan and yes, we’re going to sink our sagging asses down in the mud bath.” Dotty giggled. “It’s going to happen, Clarice. We’re going to get her for our very own.”

***

Greg sat on the porch for all of two minutes before he began to pace back and forth from one end to the other. A cool breeze ruffled the tree limbs, but he didn’t feel a thing through his denim jacket. There was a different story going on in his heart. Was this the way that Marvin felt? Did he rush to the bus station every day to see if the westbound Greyhound had brought Clarice to him? Did he declare every thirty seconds that he’d never marry if he couldn’t have the woman he wanted?

Max called at fifteen minutes until three and said he was on the way home. Clarice and Dotty were at the hotel with Stacy and it looked like they were in for an experience. “Mud baths! Can you believe it? They’re actually going to sink their bodies into a tub of mud, Greg. Women! Fuss at us if we get muddy working cattle on a rainy day and they go get in a tub of mud to beautify themselves. Don’t make a bit of sense to me. Did she get there yet?”

“No, but it’s still early and she might have gotten into traffic,” Greg said. “I’ll wait until four before I call her.”

“And then?” Max asked.

“I’m getting in my truck and going to Happy to beg,” Greg answered.

At two minutes until three he raced upstairs to the bathroom. “I can’t meet her with my legs crossed. I should’ve known better than to drink a whole pitcher of sweet tea while I’ve been waiting.”

Simba and Bocephus met him halfway up the stairs and he had to slow down or trip over them. He grabbed them up in his arms, put them in her bedroom, and shut the door.

***

Emily got tangled up in construction work for twenty miles between Wichita Falls and Henrietta. She found herself in a long line of one-lane traffic with concrete barricades on either side of her truck, a semi behind her, and a man with a cell phone stuck to his ear in front of her. The speed limit said fifty-five miles per hour but up ahead of the fellow talking on his phone was a big vintage Caddy going thirty miles per hour.

She had slept later than she’d planned and then even though she’d forbidden anything to do with good-byes, the whole crew at the ranch had lined up beside her truck for farewell hugs. She left with tears streaming down her face and pulled over a mile down the road to get herself under control. Now she was half an hour behind the schedule of arriving at the ranch in good time and there was a slow-moving Caddy in front of her. Was fate telling her this was not a good decision?

“No!” She slapped the steering wheel.

And boom, the traffic started flowing, two lines opened up, and she pulled out around in the left lane and passed everything in sight, including the slow-moving Caddy.

Statistics said that cops didn’t stop anyone going four to five miles over the speed limit. That day stats were wrong. The arresting officer gave her a warning instead of a ticket, but it set her back fifteen more minutes.

It was two minutes after three when she parked in front of the house. Louis came running around the house with his hand held out. “Miz Emily, I’ll take your truck keys and go take care of your horse. Looks like a fine animal, but I’m not supposed to stand around and yak.”

She grabbed her purse and tossed the keys to Louis. The truck was already on its way toward the horse stables when she looked down and saw the bright yellow sticky notes on the sidewalk marking the path up the steps and to the front door. Each one had one word on it and she read as she walked. Welcome. Home. My. Darling. I. Missed. You. So. Much. I. Love. You. I. Need. You. I. Want. You. In. My. Life. Forever. The door sported dozens upon dozens of sticky notes making a big heart and on each one was written: Greg Loves Emily.

She reached out with one finger and rang the doorbell.

She heard footsteps and then the door opened.

Greg looked so good when he opened the door that she wanted to throw herself in his arms, but they weren’t open.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

“I’m supposed to meet a sexy cowboy on this porch at three, but I got tied up in traffic and I’m a little late. Is he here?”

He stepped out onto the porch, dropped down on one knee, and held out a red velvet box. He snapped it open to reveal a square-cut sapphire surrounded by sparkling diamonds and said, “Emily Cooper, I can’t imagine living without you in my life. I love you. Will you marry me?”

He slipped the ring on her finger. “The sapphire reminded me of your eyes. The diamonds reminded me of the stars sparkling in the sky from the window in the attic room. I love you.”

Tears flowed down her cheeks. “Yes, yes, yes. It’s perfect and I love it almost as much as I do you.”

He stood up slowly, wrapped his arms around her, and kissed her with so much hungry passion and promise that it fairly well took her breath away. “I love you, Emily. Promise you’ll never leave me again.”

“I promise. My heart couldn’t take that much misery two times without dying. I think I started falling in love with you the first time I saw your picture with that sticky note attached to the side of it. I know I did when you showed up in the dining room that next evening, and I love the notes on the sidewalk and the door,” she said.

He swept her up in his arms and started inside the house.

“Be careful. I don’t want a single sticky note destroyed. They’ll go into my very first box to go in our attic,” she said.

When he started up the steps, she gasped, “Not here, darlin’. Let’s go to the attic.”

“Nana and Dotty are gone until tomorrow. Jeremiah and Stacy came to our rescue. I thought we’d make a trip to the courthouse tomorrow morning and when they get home we can break the news to them. But believe me, there will be one of those receptions at the church within a week, so get ready for it.”

“Small price to pay if I never have to say good-bye again. After you make wild passionate love to me, we could go to the courthouse today,” she whispered.

A sticky note heart, done up in pink, adorned the headboard of his bed. On every single one were three words: She said yes!

He laid her on deep blue satin sheets that matched the color of her eyes. The curtains were drawn and dozens of lit candles threw out soft light. He pulled off his glasses, stretched out beside her, and drew her into his arms. “Tomorrow is early enough. I don’t want to share you with anyone, not even a court clerk or judge today.”

She smiled as his lips found hers. Someday she’d tell her green-eyed daughters that she was a mail-order bride and maybe she’d let them look at her letters all tied with a pretty red bow even if she didn’t let them read a single one of them. But right then she just wanted to cuddle up with Greg and know that she was going to spend every day for the rest of her life with him.

Dear Reader,

This book has a very special place in my heart. About fifty years ago my best friend, Karen Garrison, was dating a boy who was in the Army. He was sent to Germany and they wrote to each other every day. Airmail stamps cost eight cents in those days, and it took a week to get from Germany to Tishomingo, Oklahoma.

In one of her letters he sent a picture of a group of several of his new friends, and I picked out the one I wanted. She got the address from her boyfriend, and I wrote the first letter. Brazen hussy I was, even back then. About a year later she received an engagement ring in the mail, and her boyfriend came home for a couple of weeks. They got married and she went back to Germany with him.

Meanwhile, I was still writing to the fellow I had picked out in the picture and another year went by. One day a lovely proposal and an engagement ring came in the mail. I got on a Greyhound bus and went to Pennsylvania to meet him. We were married six weeks later, and folks said it would never last. That was forty-seven years ago and we’re still together.

So now when people say they have found this brand-new dating program on the Internet, I just smile. Husband and I were the prototypes for that program! And I have a whole big stack of letters plus a proposal right there on paper to prove it.

Emily Cooper, in
The
Cowboy’s Mail Order Bride
, is on a mission. When an old letter is found stuck to the inside of a sixty-year-old mailbag that’s been stuffed into an antique desk at the Happy, Texas, post office and taken back to her grandfather, well, a can of worms is opened up. Grandfather makes her promise to deliver not only that letter but a whole box of letters that he’d received from a woman who was not her grandmother.

Now she’s taken the letters home to Ravenna, Texas, and history is about to be made.

Enjoy the ride!

Thanks again to the Sourcebooks staff who continue to help me turn my ideas into books. Thanks to my agent, Erin Niumata, who continues to sell my works and believe in me. And thanks to every one of you who continue to read my books.

I hope that Emily Cooper, with her sass, and Greg Adams, with his sexy swagger, steal your hearts.

Until next time,

Happy Reading!

Carolyn
Brown

If you love Carolyn Brown’s hot cowboys, then read on for an excerpt from her heartwarming and hilarious women’s fiction.

The Red-Hot Chili Cook-Off

Coming soon from Sourcebooks Landmark.

Some men are just born stupid. Some don’t get infected until later in life, but they’ll all get a case of it sometime. It’s in their DNA and can’t be helped.

Carlene could testify with her right hand raised to God and the left on the Good Book that her husband, Lenny, had been born with the disease and it had worsened with the years. Proof was held between her thumb and forefinger like a dead rat in the form of a pair of bikini underwear. They damn sure didn’t belong to her. Hells bells, she couldn’t get one leg in those tiny little things. And they did not belong to Lenny, either. Even if he had become an overnight cross-dresser, his ass wouldn’t fit into that skimpy pair of under-britches, not even if he greased himself down with bacon drippings.

They were bright red with a sparkling sequin heart sewn on the triangular front. They’d come with a matching corset with garter straps and fishnet hose. Carlene recognized them, because she’d designed the outfit herself at her lingerie shop, Bless My Bloomers. They belonged to a petite, size-four brunette with big brown eyes who had giggled and pranced when she saw herself in the mirror wearing the getup.

Carlene jumped when her cell phone rang. The ring tone said it was Lenny, but she was still speechless, staring at the scrap of satin in her hand.

She dropped to her knees on the carpet and bent forward into a tight ball, her blond hair falling over her face. She felt as if someone had kicked her firmly in the gut and she couldn’t breathe. In a few seconds she managed a sitting position, wrapped her arms around her midsection, and sucked in air but it burned her lungs. The noise that came forth from her chest sounded like a wounded animal caught in a trap. Tears would have washed some of the pain away but they wouldn’t flow from her burning green eyes. Finally, she got control of the dry heaves and managed to pull herself up out of the heap of despair. Dear God, what was she going to do?

The brunette who’d bought the red-satin outfit had told her that she and her sugar daddy were going to Vegas, and she wanted something that would make him so hot he’d be ready to buy her an engagement ring. What was her name? Bailey? Brenda? No, something French, because Carlene remembered asking her about it. Bridget…that was it! Bridget had been to Vegas with Lenny. On how many other trips had he taken a bimbo with him and how many of them had been ten or fifteen years younger—and a size four, for God’s sake?

In seconds, the phone rang again. She picked it up and said, “Hello.” Her voice sounded like it was coming from the bottom of a well or, maybe, a sewer pipe.

“Carlene, I left my briefcase in my office. I slept on the sofa to keep from waking you since I got in so late last night. Bring it to me before you go to work, and hurry. There’s a contract in it that I need and the people will be here to sign in ten minutes. I’ll hold them off with coffee until you get here.”

No good-bye.

No thank you, darlin’.

Not even a please.

Did he talk to Bridget like that?

Anger joined shock and pain as she dropped the panties back in the briefcase and then removed the little card she’d made for him to find that morning. She’d written that she was sorry she had fallen asleep before he got home and that she’d make it up to him that night with champagne and wild sex. She stood up, straightening to her full statuesque height of just a couple of inches under the six-foot mark. Damn that sorry bastard to hell. How could he do this to her?

Ripping the note into confetti-sized pieces and throwing them in the air did nothing to appease her anger. Dozens of questions ran in circles through her mind. Had Lenny brought his twenty-something-year-old bimbo to her house for a romp on her bed while she was at work? Did that sorry sucker have sex with his mistress at noon and then with his wife that same night? Just how long had the affair been going on, anyway?

Among them all came one solid answer. She was not living in the same house with a lying, cheating, two-timing son of a bitch. She was leaving his ass and nothing or no one could convince her to stay another night under the same roof with him.

Five Red-Hot Chili Cook-Off trophies looked down from the mantle at her. She picked them up one by one and hurled them across the room. Not one of the damn plastic things broke, which made her even angrier, but she didn’t go to the garage and get a hammer to work them over. Instead, she turned into a feverish packing fiend. In less than half an hour her van looked like an overflowing Salvation Army donation hut. Clothing and shoes were stuffed into the back like sardines. Plastic grocery bags filled with items from her dresser drawers were stacked in the backseat, and the briefcase sat right beside her on the front seat.

She gave it looks meant to fry holes through the leather, but it just sat there as cool as Lenny. Damn his black soul to hell for all eternity. She hoped that he was given a place sitting naked on a barbed wire fence and every time he fell off the devil shot him with a cattle prod.

From their house in Cadillac, Texas, to Lenny’s car dealership in Sherman was exactly seven miles and she made it in a little less than five minutes. If it hadn’t been for good brakes on her van, she would have plowed right through the plate-glass windows and rammed into that pretty brand-spanking-new red Corvette in the showroom. Some days started off bad and got worse as they went along.

Tears begged to be turned loose but she blinked them back. Be damned if he’d see her cry or reduced to a heap on the floor, either. It might happen, but he wouldn’t bask in the glory of seeing it.

Her hands shook and her jaw ached from clenching her teeth. She took a deep breath and pushed open the door of her van, remembering to grab his briefcase before she slammed the door shut. Her bravado left when she looked through the window and caught sight of him through the glass windows in his office right off the showroom floor. Her stomach churned and nausea set in again. Could a person love and hate someone at the same time?

Her legs felt like they were filled with steel when she pushed open the glass door and headed toward Lenny’s office. He looked up from behind his desk and with a flick of his wrist motioned for her to come on in.

She was still staring at him trying to figure out whether to beat him to death with the briefcase or just set it in the middle of the floor and get the hell out of there before she started weeping, when she saw a movement in her peripheral vision.

“Well, hello!” Bridget appeared from behind the Corvette parked just inside the doors. “It’s good to see you again.”

Either the woman did not know Carlene was Lenny’s wife or she was a fool who’d caught an acute case of stupid from Lenny Joe Lovelle. Either way, she was crazy as hell and didn’t value her hair or eyeballs. Anyone with two sane brain cells in their heads could see that Carlene Lovelle was a time bomb with a lit fuse.

Bridget’s eyes twinkled and she lowered her voice to say, “The red outfit drove my sweet sugar daddy right up the walls. Honey, we had the honeymoon suite and we didn’t hit the blackjack tables one time all weekend. He didn’t even leave to go to his business meetings. We spent the whole two days in that big round bed or else in the heart-shaped hot tub. It was our five-month anniversary and he said that he got luckier in that room than he ever did at the gambling tables. I’ll be back in to buy something else for the sixth month. We’re going to Florida to celebrate my twenty-second birthday as well as our anniversary. I’m thinking naughty nurse so get the bling out and I betcha I get my ring on that trip. Oh, and guess what else? We are both members of the mile high club now.”

Carlene plopped the briefcase down on the hood of the Corvette and wished that she’d bought one of those shiny metal ones for Lenny’s birthday instead of one made of soft kid leather. Hell, if she had a metal one, she really could beat him to death with it, but that fancy leather thing wouldn’t even leave bruises.

Bridget’s eyes widened out to the size of saucers when she saw the LJL initials on the top of the familiar case and had trouble staying in their sockets when Carlene popped it open. Right there on the top of a big manila envelope were the red panties.

Using a pen with the car dealership logo, Carlene picked up the underpants and threw them at the woman. Then she dumped documents, pens, sticky notes, and everything else in the briefcase onto the tile floor and stomped holes in the papers with her spike heels.

Bridget caught the scrap of red satin and all the color drained from her face. “What are you doing with my panties? And why do you have Lenny’s briefcase? Who in the hell are…oh, my, sweet Jesus!” She slapped a hand over her mouth. The panties hung on her pinky finger, and it looked like she was trying to swallow the evidence.

Carlene picked up the empty briefcase and lobbed it like a rocket toward the window between her and Lenny. It lost momentum and didn’t even crack the glass but it made him drop like bird shit behind his desk.

“I…I…” Bridget stammered.

Well, praise the Lord, her vocabulary now had two vowels. Maybe by the end of the day, she could add a consonant or two and be able to speak in whole sentences again.

Lenny must’ve jumped up as fast as he dropped because suddenly he was beside her. “My God, Carlene, what in the hell…oh!” He stopped dead.

His eyes darted from Bridget to Carlene. “I can explain. Bridget, honey, tell Uncle Sam to close the deal with Mr. and Mrs. Reynolds. He’ll have to reprint the contracts. And would you please clean up this mess before anyone sees it? Carlene, we’ll go discuss this over some coffee in the lounge.”

Then he proved just how damned stupid he was by reaching out and touching her shoulder as if he could charm her into forgiveness. Well, Lenny Joe Lovelle wasn’t charming jack shit out of her that morning, and it would be a cold day in hell before she ever forgave him. Even Alma Grace, with all her religion and praying, would agree that the Good Book did not condone adultery or fornication—even though it didn’t mention skimpy under-britches.

She doubled up her fist and landed a good right hook in his left eye. He went down on his knees and yelled, “Why in the hell did you do that?”

“Because you touched me, you son of a bitch. If you ever lay a hand on me again, I will snatch you bald-headed and then start on your bimbo over there,” she yelled.

Shit! Had she really raised her voice right out in public like that? Carlene Carmichael Lovelle was a lady who did not air her dirty laundry, but dammit, he’d broken her heart, twisted it up into a pretzel, and now he was acting like it was nothing. She glared at him, hands on hips and back as straight as steel.

Bridget instinctively covered her hair with her hands, the panties now looking like dangly earrings as they floated down from fingertips to shoulders.

He stood up and narrowed his eyes. “Come on, Carlene, we have to talk.”

“You can talk to my lawyer.”

He laid a hand on her shoulder and smiled. “Darlin’…”

She slapped him with her open hand hard enough to put a blaze of red on his cheek, but he didn’t drop to the floor. “Dammit, Carlene. You are making a scene.”

“A scene. You want a scene? I’ll give you a damned scene that a sugar daddy can appreciate.” She placed the toe of her high-heeled shoe on the bumper of the Corvette and marched up across the hood, leaving dents that looked like hail had peppered down on the pretty red car. When she was standing on the top of it, she looked right at Bridget.

“Bridget,
honey
, you had better never show your face at Bless My Bloomers ever again.”

“Get off that car. You’ve already done thousands of dollars worth of damage. Sam is going to sue the hell out of you for this,” Lenny shouted.

Sam, a robust man with a rim of gray hair, a belly that hung out over his belt, and five-thousand-dollar eel cowboy boots, rushed out into the showroom. “My God, Carlene, have you lost your mind?”

“She’s gone crazy, Uncle Sam,” Lenny said.

“You want to see freakin’ crazy? I will show you crazy.” She stepped down to the hood and did a stomp dance. By the time she finished, the showroom was full. She took a deep bow and hopped down from the hood. “When I’m done, you’ll be damn lucky to have potatoes with your beans once a week, much less plan little weekend trips to honeymoon suites where you wallow around in a round bed with office girls rather than going to meetings. Dock his pay for the damage, Sam. You’d be wise to fire his ass, but since he’s your nephew, that won’t happen, will it?”

“Come on Carlene, it was just a fling. It only happened one time and I’ll never do it again,” Lenny whispered.

“Fling! Just a fling?” Bridget’s voice was as loud as a fire siren. “You promised me that you were leaving her. You promised me an engagement ring with a two-carat diamond as soon as you left your fat wife. You promised me we would have our own apartment by the time the chili cook-off happens and I could be your cheerleader for the event and you’d hang our picture above all those trophies in your office.”

“Well, he’s not leaving his fat wife. I’m leaving his cheating ass and he’s all yours. Better keep him on a short leash. He charming, but he’s a two-timin’ son of a bitch.” Carlene’s high heels sounded like fire crackers as she stormed out of the dealership.

She drove until she reached the outskirts of town, pulled over, and laid her head on the steering wheel. That lyin’ cheating bag of shit didn’t deserve her tears but they flowed down her cheeks anyway as she sat there with the engine running and the air conditioner turning her warm, salty tears as cold as her heart felt.

***

Monday morning was Josie Vargas’s favorite time of the week. She’d cooked all weekend, put up with whining grandkids and great-grandkids, sons in her living room arguing about football on the blaring television set, and daughters-in-law sipping iced tea at her kitchen table while they gossiped about people she didn’t even know. The most beautiful sight in the world was the taillights as they all went home Sunday night after supper. Maybe by Friday she’d be glad to see them again, but right then she rolled her eyes toward the ceiling and gave thanks that she’d only birthed two sons.