The Tenderfoot Bride

by Cheryl St. John

  "Oh, the poor thing!" Linnea exclaimed, tears forming in her eyes at the beautiful creatures' suffering.

  "I'll get the rest of the water." Nash darted away.

  "It's going to take two of us just to hold him still," Roy said.

  "Hand me that lead," Will ordered over his bare shoulder.

  Linnea immediately found the leather strap and gave it to him. He secured the horse's head and handed the rope to Roy. When he raised his arm, Linnea saw the blood smeared across his wide chest and flat stomach, and her ears rang. She'd seen gunshot wounds before, and they weren't pretty. She stared, but didn't see a hole in his flesh or note him experiencing any pain.

  It took a second for her mind to clear and for her to comprehend that the blood was from the foal's injuries.

  "Some rope now," he ordered with curt efficiency. "We'll tie his feet."

  Relieved in a way she didn't understand, Linnea turned and ran.

  Chapter Five

  Linnea located the tack room. On the wall inside the door she discovered an arrangement of branding irons, hoof clippers, iron currycombs and implements she couldn't identify. Quickly selecting a short length of grass rope, she returned to Will.

  The poor animal trembled now, trussed as he was, and his eyes rolled in fear. Will took the cloths and the first bucket, and began to gently wash the wounds.

  Linnea instinctively moved between the two men and let the foal smell her hand. Immediately his ears pricked forward and he nuzzled her palm. "Maybe you should cover his eyes," she suggested, surprising herself with her boldness.

  "There's a leather blinder inside the door of the tack room," Will said immediately.

  "I'll get it." Nash had returned. He brought the blinder and Will covered the animal's eyes.

  As Will cleaned the gaping wound, Linnea rubbed the foal's bony poll and nose, and spoke softly. "There's a pretty boy. We just want to help you."

  The colt wriggled until his head was in Linnea's lap. She captured him there and gently told him to lie still.

  "Keep talking to him. Your voice is settling him down," Will said. He turned to Nash. "Tell them to take the mare out of the barn if they have to. She's scaring him worse."

  Nash ran to do his bidding.

  "We'll have to stitch this up," Will said matter-of-factly. "He's not torn anywhere vital, but I don't think we'll get the bleeding to stop if we don't sew him."

  Linnea's eyes watered at the pronouncement.

  "Y'ever done it before?" Roy asked.

  "Sewed up a horse that got caught in some barbed wire once," Will replied. "I've stitched my own arm."

  Linnea wasn't normally queasy over wounds, but now her stomach lurched. She breathed through her mouth and swallowed hard. With compassionate strokes, she rubbed the colt's neck.

  "You don't have to stay," Will said quietly, the softest she'd ever heard him speak.

  She looked over at him and a glimmer of concern actually shone in his eyes. Maybe she had passed out and was dreaming it.

  "I'll stay," she replied. "You said my voice calms him." No, that was her voice, and she hadn't fainted.

  She couldn't watch, so after Nash brought the medical supplies and while Will painstakingly mended the long cut, Linnea stayed where she was, sitting on her knees and leaning over the foal's head. She talked and petted until her legs cramped. The barn had quieted, so she assumed the men had taken the mare out-of-doors. She told the young animal how beautiful he was, how shiny his coat was in the sun, how someday he would be saddled and trained and be a valuable mount to a lucky rider.

  When she ran out of things to say, she sang. She didn't know many songs, so she went through the hymns she'd heard and the songs the children had sung while they played outside the schoolhouse.

  Eventually Will had the worst injury mended, and the other cuts treated and bandaged. She turned her head and discovered Nash listening from outside the stall, Roy with a half smile on his face and Will washing his hands, arms and chest. "Nash,'' he said, drying off.

  "Yeah, boss?"

  "Got a clean stall ready?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Then let's put this fella in with his mama and let them both get some rest. He's weaned, but she'll keep him calm."

  Linnea discovered she couldn't move her legs. "Ooh," she moaned.

  "What is it?" Roy asked.

  "My legs went to sleep," she said in embarrassment.

  Will tossed the toweling aside. "You two take him, I'll help Mrs. McConaughy."

  Without another word, Roy and Nash lifted the foal and carried him out.

  Will glanced down the corridor. "Cimarron, clean this stall out before you turn in, will you?''

  "Sure thing, boss."

  "Then everyone get some sleep."

  The tall man bent and leaned over Linnea. She slanted a glance upward, taking in the expanse of tanned bare skin and the thatch of dark hair across his chest. Her heart thumped erratically. If she could have moved, she would have jumped away.

  His hair fell forward over his cheek. "Can you stand?"

  "I don't know. Oh!" Sharp needles shot up her calf at her clumsy attempt. She must have been sitting with her legs under her for an hour. What a useless dolt she was.

  Her boss knelt and again leaned toward her.

  Immediately Linnea curled into a ball, drawing her arms in and tucking her chin down. He lifted her effortlessly and her heart stopped beating for a full minute. In the recesses of her mind she recognized that she wasn't as afraid as she would have been a day ago. She'd watched him tenderly minister to the young horse, seen a side of him he'd kept well hidden until this night. Now he meant to help her.

  The scent and warmth of his skin assaulted her senses. A tight panicky feeling came over her, and she told herself he wasn't angry with her. He had no reason to harm her. No reason to do anything to her. She wasn't his wife. She wasn't his enemy. She was his cook.

  A breeze caught his hair and blew it against her cheek. At the unexpected contact, a shiver caressed her skin from the spot where his silky hair touched to her shoulders and down her arms. Behind her back and knees his arms were solid and warm. Against her side and hip, his hard chest and belly radiated heat. His body was stronger and more muscled than her husband's had been, and she couldn't remember Pratt ever carrying her. Shoving, poking, slapping, but not carrying her. This potent reaction she was having was not fear.

  In the kitchen he placed her on her feet and held her upper arm while she steadied herself with a hand on the back of a wooden chair. Linnea dared a glance up at him. He studied her in return, taking in her face as though for the first time. A muscle in his square jaw ticked.

  The day's growth of beard made him look fiercer than usual. His mouth was a hard line, his jaw solid. She deliberately avoided looking at his bare chest, and her cheeks warmed at the mere thought. She could still feel his strength and heat along her body where he'd held her.

  "Did you kill the coyote?" she asked.

  Will returned the widow McConaughy's uncomfortable gaze. "Yes. It's dead."

  She nodded.

  Against his better judgment, he remembered how he'd pounded on her door with no response and tried the handle to find the bureau pushed up against the wood. Had she found him that terrifying? What did she think he would do?

  He recalled her running down the hall after him, asking who'd been shot. In his puzzlement at the question, he'd turned to discover her in a threadbare nightgown, that ugly shawl around her shoulders. The sight of her slim calves and bare feet had struck him with an arousal so strong and sudden, he'd had no blood left for his brain to function.

  His reaction had shocked him. She was the last woman who should have given him a physical jolt that disturbing and unexpected. She was a brown little mouse, not a seductress.

  And then she had shocked him—by carrying out every order efficiently and competently, and then by turning huge compassionate eyes on the foal and unreservedly comforting the animal. Why that surprised
him more than the biscuits and the roasts and the pies and the clean bedding, he had no idea.

  Those other tasks were the things she'd been hired for, after all, and a middle-of-the-night emergency might have thrown her off, but it hadn't. Words of thanks were on his tongue when he caught himself just in time. He wasn't getting soft now. Her presence spelled trouble.

  Her sweet singing had not only calmed the horses, but allayed the tension between the men. Will frowned. The effect she'd have on his men would be no good. An unmarried young woman on a ranch added up to trouble.

  "Can you walk back to your room?"

  She stepped gingerly from one foot to the other. "Yes."

  She turned, showing him her thick braid and her narrow back, and moved away a bit unsteadily.

  Will found a pan of water on the stove, gathered towels, and carried them up to his room. Scrubbing his hands, nails and arms with soap, he considered the fact that his cook had not failed as miserably as . he'd believed she would. Miraculously, she'd held up for a week, and had even handled an emergency adequately. Perhaps she wasn't going to be as easily discouraged as he'd imagined.

  Then again, the reality of the situation may not have sunk in yet. Once the isolation and the heat and the tedious labor got to her, she'd take off in a cloud of dust. And if she didn't…why, then he'd be stuck with her because he'd given his word.

  As the following weeks passed, Will grew resigned to the fact that the widow McConaughy was not going to crack under the workload. He'd observed her carrying buckets of water and baskets of laundry, wrestling the steel tubs and chasing chickens she'd designated for the fry pan.

  And she was a damned good cook. There wasn't anything she'd fixed that he hadn't torn into like a ravenous wolf—except maybe the turnips. She had a passion for turnips and cut them into soups, sliced them into stews, and often just boiled them as a side dish.

  After Cimarron plowed a garden plot, she'd raked and hoed and prepared the ground for seed—planting yet more turnips. She always dressed in those awful baggy brown dresses, with the shirt and shawl. Though her garments were clean and pressed, she did nothing to draw attention to herself or her femininity. All of his clothing was washed and crisply ironed—each week she placed his things in neat stacks at the foot of his bed.

  His room was cleaned, the furniture and floor polished, the lamp chimneys washed and the wicks trimmed. He would have had to make up something to find fault with her housekeeping or her cooking.

  One evening, as he returned from the barn, he approached the house and heard men's laughter. He came upon Ben Taylor and Nash perched on the porch railing. Their expressions when he appeared were sheepish, and he didn't figure out why until he saw Linnea sitting in a rocker. In her lap, she held a red flannel shirt, meticulously stitching it with a needle and thread.

  In the matching rocker beside her sat Aggie, amusement turning up her wrinkled lips. Ever since Linnea's arrival, the old woman was always freshly groomed, with her clothing clean and pressed. And she obviously took perverse pleasure at his growing unease.

  The conversation had stopped upon his arrival. "What's this, a sewing circle?" he asked.

  "Miz McConaughy is fixin' my shirt," Nash said quickly.

  "She's gonna do mine next," Ben added.

  Will studied the group with a scowl.

  "My work's all done for the day," Linnea said quickly.

  "None of my concern what you do in your free time," he replied and entered the house, letting the screen door slam behind. Except when it involved his ranch hands lollygaging about on his porch, he thought in irritation.

  Aggie's cackle unnerved him, so he didn't even pause for a cup of coffee but headed straight for his room.

  A few days later he inadvertently learned that the men were paying her to launder their shirts. Roy had picked up his stack of laundry, paid Linnea, and was admiring the crisply ironed creases when Will came around the side of the house.

  He'd known Roy since their boyhood days in Indiana, and recognized a sheepish look when he saw it. He knew Roy well, as a friend, as a seasoned cowboy and trail partner and now as his ranch foreman.

  "Now you're taking in laundry, as well as sewing?" Will asked Linnea.

  She dropped the coins into her skirt pocket. "I haven't shirked any of my duties, and your clothing comes first, Mr. Tucker."

  Roy gave Will an irritating grin and moved backward down a step.

  "You're making such sissies of my men, you'll be readin"em bedtime stories before I know it."

  Her eyes widened, but she said nothing.

  "Thanks, Miz McConaughy,'' Roy said, tipped the brim of his hat, and loped down the stairs toward the bunkhouse, whistling.

  "Would you rather I didn't do the men's laundry?" she asked. "I saw it as a chance to set aside some extra money."

  "I haven't seen you spend a cent yet," he said. "There's a catalogue in the cabinet if you want to order clothing. Or one of the men can take you to town or pick up sewing supplies for you."

  Her cheeks turned fiery red, but she didn't respond.

  "As long as the work I pay you to do is done, I don't care if you tuck them into bed at night. Suit yourself," he said peevishly to the slip of a woman and tromped toward the barn.

  Linnea watched him go, embarrassed that he'd noticed her lack of appropriate clothing and angry that he'd been rude enough to mention it. She had more to worry about than pretty clothes. She had to make sure she could provide for herself, and setting aside as much as she could earn was her first priority.

  She had discovered that she could provide services that were respectable and profitable, and doing so made her feel better about herself than she had for a long time. She wished her extra work wasn't making her employer mad, but everything made him mad. Staying out of his way and taking care of herself was all she cared about. Her situation would change soon enough, and she had to be ready for it.

  One breezy warm afternoon a week later, Will found her taking clothing from the line. That day she'd worn her hair in a long braid down her back, and he noticed the sun on it as he approached her. He handed her a list he'd made up that morning.

  "What's this?" She frowned at the brown paper.

  "Cimarron's goin' to Rock Falls tomorrow. I want you to go along and buy those things for me. And any other supplies you need. Make a list. I have an account at the mercantile."

  She didn't meet his eyes, but nodded and tucked the paper into a pocket in the folds of her skirt.

  A wind had come up suddenly, the gusts blowing clouds westward. Will glanced at the sky.

  When he looked back, he discovered her studying the gray heavens with a funny line between her brows. "I don't think it's a storm," he said.

  She turned her gaze to his finally, and the unusual tawny gold flecks in her brown eyes caught him off guard. Definitely not mousy eyes. More like a cat's eyes—or a cougar's. Like warm spiced honey.

  He didn't like the direction his thoughts had taken. "Abruptly, he turned and took a few steps away.

  "I'm not fixing turnips tonight."

  He stopped. Turned back. "What?"

  "Turnips. You don't like them, do you?"

  The wind caught her skirts and flattened them against her legs. The tails of her shawl blew back from her shoulders and the fabric of her dress was pressed against her body, clearly outlining her shape. Breasts. Belly.

  An obvious mound protruded beneath her breasts.

  Will stared, recognition dawning with surging anger.

  Linnea tugged her shawl around her and turned away, reaching upward to remove a shirt from the line.

  His head filled with a roar.

  "What the hell?" Leaping from where he stood, he surged forward and pounced on her.

  Catching his approach from her side vision, she cringed and, with a startled shriek, took a step back, dropping the shirt. Her face had gone white. She raised a hand as if to ward off a blow.

  "Son of a miserable bitch…'' Not paying attentio
n to her terrified reaction, Will grabbed her with one arm around her back and spread his other hand flat over her stomach. Beneath her layers of clothing, her belly was an unmistakable hard, round protrusion.

  She trembled and struggled to pull away, grabbing for his wrist and scratching him in her panic. Her braid fell over his wrist like a silky caress, and her clean feminine scent rose in his nostrils. His physical reaction angered him even more.

  With his hand spread across her belly, her fingers gripping his wrist, and the wind whipping his hair toward her, their eyes met. Hers were wide and filled with genuine terror.

  His anger was so sharp, he tasted it on his tongue. Fury throbbed through his veins. What had this stupid woman been thinking in coming here?

  The widow McConaughy was going to have a baby.

  Chapter Six

  Linnea fought like a wild woman. Yanking from his grasp, she spun and turned away, and when he reached for her arm, she shrieked and clawed his hand. She started to run for the house, but then, as if thinking better of being caught inside, she picked up a crate sitting near the steps and threw it at him.

  Will knocked it away with his forearm and kept moving forward. Turning, she made a beeline for the trees behind the house. With her skirt hem raised to her knees, and terror driving her, she was fast. Turning abruptly, she escaped around the back of the barn. Quickly adjusting momentum and direction, he shot after her.

  Alarmed over Will Tucker's sudden moves and his furious outburst, Linnea ran as though her life depended on it. For a huge man he was amazingly agile and would be upon her any second. Heart pounding and out of breath, she found a hiding place in the dense shelter of sage brush behind the barn and crawled into a thicket, curling to make herself as small as possible.

  Trying to calm herself and remain silent, she took slow deep breaths, chaotic thoughts whirling in her mind. Running had been her first self-protective instinct, but hiding was foolish. He would find her, and he would be madder than ever that she'd run.