He steered her out of the barn to the next building. “This is the mess hall and the kitchen. The cook’s quarters are over there. He’s a fifty-year-old former cowboy, so I won’t show you his quarters, either. None of the guys go there if they can possibly avoid it, and I don’t think Sutton would mind much if you avoided it, too.”
She laughed. “Thanks. Is he a good cook?”
“He’s all right for a bunch of cowboys.” He conducted her outside and across the yard to the opposite building. “This is the bunk house. This is where all the guys live when they’re not at work.”
He showed her into a huge room lined with bunks. No one occupied it in the middle of the day, and Cici’s heart took its last and final dive into her shoes. She couldn’t live in here with a bunch of roughnecks. She just couldn’t, no matter how much she liked Kelvin.
She couldn’t look anymore. She cast her eyes down at the floor and waited for Kelvin to take her away from all this. He stood in the doorway and said nothing. He must not have realized the effect it had on her.
All of a sudden, he bent down and peered into her face. “What’s the matter? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she replied. She could force a smile when she looked at him. Anything was better than looking at that room.
“Something’s bothering you,” he countered. “You were over the moon on the way out here, and now you can hardly smile. What happened to set you off? Tell me the truth.”
“Nothing set me off. I mean, it’s a very nice ranch, I’m sure. I just don’t think I could ever live here. It’s not what I had in mind when I agreed to come out and meet you here.”
“Live here!” he cried. “We wouldn’t live here.”
“We wouldn’t?” she asked.
“Are you out of your tree?” he fired back. “I would never ask you to live here. I would never have written into the Matrimonial Times in search of a wife if this was all I had to offer. I would never ask a woman to live here—never!”
“Then where would we live?” she asked.
“Come on. I’ll show you.”
He took her back to the barn and handed her into the buggy. He took the reins and backed the horse into the sunshine. “I only stopped here to show you what it’s like. If we got married—and I say if—you would probably never come down here. You definitely wouldn’t take your meals from Sutton, and you would stay in the bunk house over my dead body!”
He drove around the main ranch buildings to a side road that undulated over low sloping hills to a different part of the ranch. From here, Cici couldn’t even see the horrible old buildings she just visited.
The road curved next to a wooded stream where wildflowers and majestic cedar trees grew along the water’s edge. A fragrant breeze gusted off the stream and cooled the stifling heat of the prairie.
Kelvin turned a corner, and the buggy purred up to the door of the most beautiful little cottage Cici ever laid eyes on. Her heart exploded with love for the place the instant she set eyes on it. White gingerbread trim decorated its eaves to a neat gable with a window set into the shingles. A lovely white fence surrounded a flower garden on one side and a vegetable garden on the other.
Kelvin hopped down. This time, instead of offering his hand, he circled her waist with both his big hands and swept her to the ground. He didn’t realize what he’d done until she stood in front of him. He blushed and turned away without the lingering gaze.
He strode through the gate to the cottage door. “The previous manager lived here with his wife and children for twenty years. They raised six kids here until they all grew up and moved away. I’ve always stayed down at the bunk house with the other cowboys, but if you and I get married, we’ll live here. You’ll be miles away from the dust and manure of the ranch, and you can make this little place your own. Isn’t it cute? I just love this place. I’ve been dreaming of bringing a wife home to this house ever since I first met Betsy in Jed’s kitchen.”
Cici stood back and stared at the house. She hardly dared look inside for fear she would love it too much. She would give anything to live here.
Kelvin frowned at her from the porch. “What’s wrong? Isn’t it nice enough?”
She broke out of her trance and hurried up the path to where he stood. She couldn’t control her mouth to form the words. “Oh, it’s so beautiful, I can hardly stand it. It’s so much nicer than I ever dared hope.”
“Wait ‘til you take a look inside.” He opened the door and drew her into the house.
Cici stood in the doorway. No words could express how she felt about the little house. A fresh-scrubbed wooden table rested on the clean pine board floor. A rocking chair with a woven rush seat faced the enormous stone fireplace. A wrought-iron hook hung over the fire itself, and a gleaming black cookstove stood across the room.
A loft room covered half the house where the gable window let light into the upstairs bed chamber. A pile of fresh-split firewood stacked in a basket by the stove, and iron cooking pots and pans hung on hooks in the kitchen.
“How did this place get so clean?” Cici asked. “When did the last manage move away?”
“Oh, he quit about four years ago,” Kelvin told him. “No one has lived here since then, but when I decided to get me a wife, I started to clean it up. I decided to get it ready for whatever special lady would live here, and I wanted to make it as nice as it could be for the day when she came out to take a look at it. What do you think? Do you like it?”
Cici swallowed the lump in her throat. “I love it. I really do.”
Kelvin beamed. “I’m glad. I want it to be as nice as you are.”
“You did an amazing job,” she told him. “It’s every bit the home I hoped for.”
He put out his hand, and somehow, their hands found each other in mid-air. “Do you think you might like to live here?”
“I would love to live here,” she breathed. “I would love it more than anything.”
“Good,” he exclaimed. “Maybe when you get to know me a little better, you will.”
She turned her gaze on him. She thought she knew him pretty well already. Any man who would do something like this for his future bride, even when he didn’t know who she was, must be a very special man himself.
4
Cici took one last look around the cottage. She didn’t want to leave, but she wasn’t married to Kelvin yet. She wasn’t any more prepared to go to the church with him on her second day than she was on her first.
She closed the door and returned to the buggy where Kelvin waited. He handed her up and took his place. “What do you say to a little drive farther out into the country? We haven’t been gone from town more than an hour, and this part of the ranch is a lot nicer than the rest of it. We could take a walk or something.”
She nudged him with her elbow. “Or something?”
He slapped the reins on the horse’s back and chuckled to himself. “I can see I’m going to have to keep my eye on you.”
The buggy spun down the road traveling parallel to the stream. The scenery got nicer the farther they went. They left behind the hard-packed prairie baking under the blistering sun.
The road twined between the trees in cool dappled shade. Cici turned up her eyes to the greenery waving against the clear blue. She could get used to this. She could look forward to walking along this stream in the hot afternoons after she finished her housework.
The buggy crossed a low plank bridge to the other side of the stream. Kelvin stopped the horse in the shade and helped Cici down. Without thinking, they joined hands, and he led her farther up the road on the other side to the open fields.
They strolled for a while with no aim in mind. How nice it was, just to walk hand in hand through this beautiful country. Cici loved everything about it, including Kelvin. She kicked herself for even thinking that. She’d known the man less than two days. She couldn’t start thinking of him that way, but that’s the way she felt right now.
She didn’t tell him that, t
hough. Better to let him think she still hadn’t made up her mind. He strolled to the middle of the field before he stopped to face her. His warm hand fit perfectly into hers. Him moving closer and glancing down at her mouth couldn’t be more right. Nothing could be wrong when she was with him.
He bent close. His lips hovered above her mouth. Her pulse quickened at the thought of kissing him out here under the open sky when pounding horses’ hooves startled her out of her skin. She jumped away from him.
Kelvin looked toward the sound. A dozen mounted men rode across the far end of the field heading away from the ranch itself. Kelvin frowned. “What in tarnation…?”
“What’s going on?” Cici asked.
“Whatever’s going on,” he replied, “it’s something that shouldn’t be going on. They aren’t the ranch cowboys. I don’t know them. They shouldn’t be out here. They’re trespassing.”
“What are they doing here?” she asked.
“I don’t know, but I’m gonna find out.” He dropped her hand. All the excitement and anticipation of a moment before vanished in a split second.
Kelvin set off with long, determined strides across the field. He headed for the spot where the strangers disappeared into the trees. Cici had to run to catch up with him.
He clipped his words over his shoulder. “You should go back to the buggy. I’ll see what’s going on, and I’ll meet you back there in a minute.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” she fired back. “If you’re going, I’m going, too.”
He shook his head, but he didn’t stop walking. “You’re blamed stubborn, aren’t you? There’s no changing your mind once you set it on something. Just do me a favor and keep quiet. I don’t want them to know we’ve seen them.”
“You don’t have to worry about me,” she muttered.
He came to the trees and plunged into the dense woods along the stream. He slowed his pace and crept through the undergrowth. Cici followed him. She knew how to keep quiet in the woods. She moved one branch after another out of the way so they wouldn’t catch on her dress. She inched forward in the space left open by Kelvin’s passage.
All of a sudden, Kelvin dropped into a crouch behind some bushes. Cici made her way to his side, where she saw what he was looking at. The strange men tethered their horses to the trees and walked up and down the stream. They pointed in different directions and called back and forth to each other.
After some searching, they headed up the streaming away from where Kelvin and Cici hid. Cici expected Kelvin to follow them, but instead, he stood up and headed back the way they came.
“Who are they?” she asked when they came to the field. “What are they doing here?”
“They’re Merrill Fox’s men,” he replied. “I couldn’t see well enough from so far away, but once we got closer, I recognized a few of them. They attacked Jed and Betsy a few months back.”
Cici stopped in her tracks. “What?”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“You durned well better have told me,” she snapped back. “Are you telling me Merrill Fox sent some hired guns after Jed and Betsy. What for?”
Kelvin’s shoulders slumped and his chin fell onto his chest. He closed his eyes and let out a shaky sigh before he gathered the courage to face her. “Listen. It’s hard enough working for the man. I’m not even supposed to know, and here you are, just off the coach and already had a run-in with the Sheriff. It’s no good, I tell you. Just leave it alone and don’t push it.”
He started back toward the stream where he left the buggy. Cici took a flying leap and yanked him back by the arm. “You better start talking, Mister, or I’m won’t have anything more to do with you. If you expect me to marry you, then you better start by telling me all your dirty little secrets in ugly livid detail. What exactly are you not supposed to know that you don’t want to tell me?”
He shook his head, but Cici kept talking.
“You made me tell you when something was bothering me back at the bunk house. You wouldn’t leave it alone until I told you the truth. Now it’s your turn. You went to a lot of trouble to fix up that house so I would marry you and be your wife, so you better start treating me like one. We’re not going to have any secrets between us, Kelvin. That’s gonna be the first rule in any marriage that might happen between you and me. Get that through your head now before we go a step further.”
Kelvin whirled around, and his hands flew out to either side. “I’m not supposed to know about the treasure, okay, and you’re not supposed to know about it, either. There. I said it, and now you know. There’s supposed to be some huge treasure buried on this ranch, and Merrill Fox has been obsessed with it for years. He’s killed a lot of people trying to get his hands on it. He killed Martha Wilcox, Jed’s sister, and he almost killed Jed and Betsy, too. Those men are searching for it. They’re picking up the work that Merrill’s son Wendell started. That’s what’s going on, and that’s what I know. Can we go now? I don’t want them to catch us both out here if it’s all the same to you.”
Cici’s eyebrows lifted. “Treasure? Are you serious?”
He set his mouth in a grim line, took her hand, and marched her back to the buggy. He didn’t say anything until they got there. “Get in.”
She got in. He took his place next to her and took the reins. He murmured to her, “We have to get out of here,” and urged the horse into a fast trot.
Cici’s heart pounded. That lovely little cottage sailed past. She never got a second look at it. She dared not speak until they came to the road. “Where are we going now?”
“Back to town,” he replied. “I have to take you back to the Hotel. I have to go out to the forge and tell Jed that Merrill is making another play for the treasure.”
Neither said another word all the way back to town. Kelvin whizzed down Main Street and reined to a stop in front of the Hotel. Cici took a handful of her skirts to stand up when his shoulders slumped. “I’m really sorry,” he murmured. “I never should have invited you out here to meet me with all this going on. I understand if you don’t want to marry me now. I wouldn’t want to get mixed up in all this stuff if I was you.”
Cici sighed. “It is a lot to take in all of a sudden, but I’m glad you told me.”
“You are?”
“I’m glad I know the whole story,” she replied. “I would be even more upset if I married you and found out after the fact. If I’m going to marry you, I want to know everything up front. I want to know exactly what I’m getting into. I can’t have you lying to me or covering things up to make it look better than it is. If we’re going to get married, it has to be done honestly.”
He hung his head. “Yeah, I know. I guess I’m more sorry about that than anything. I never should have tried to keep it hidden from you.”
Without thinking, she put out her hand and squeezed his. They held hands so much today, it just sort of came naturally now. “It’s you I want to marry—the real you—not some fake prop-up. Don’t think I’ll run away if I find out the real you. Think instead I’ll want to marry you even more, kind of like I did when I found out what you did to that house.”
He cast a quick glance her way. “Really?”
“Really.”
His face brightened, and he sat up straighter. “All right. It’s a deal.”
She turned to face front to get out of the buggy.
“Hey, Cici?” Kelvin called.
“Yes?”
“Don’t forget about our date tonight,” he replied. “Seven o’clock, remember?”
She couldn’t hold back her smile. “I can’t wait.”
She gathered her skirts to stand up when a man strode around the corner of the Hotel building. He stopped right in the middle of the porch and looked up at them. “Well, isn’t this just so special—two love-birds sitting together in a tree. I just love that. It makes my heart go all warm and soggy, like.”
Kelvin’s face hardened in a mask of cruel hatred. “What do y
ou want, Sheriff?”
“You can start by telling me what you two are doing, riding around together in that contraption,” the Sheriff replied.
Kelvin started to say something when Cici laid her hand on his arm. “Don’t answer that. Don’t dignify his ridiculous posturing with a remark.”
“What you call my ridiculous posturing is me keeping law and order in this town,” the Sheriff told her, “and if I think either of you is disturbing the peace or subverting the public good, I can arrest you on the spot and jail you indefinitely until I see fit to set you at liberty. I’d advise you to keep that mouth of yours under control, young lady, before you find yourself in a situation you don’t like.”
Kelvin surged out of his seat. “How dare you!”
Cici held him back. “Ignore him. He’s a puffed up toad with an inflated sense of his own authority. I’ll see you at seven, Kelvin.”
She got ready to stand up again when the Sheriff spoke. “I doubt you two will be going anywhere, now or later. Merrill wants to see you up at his house, Kirk. I doubt you’ll be back in time for your romantic encounter.”
“I better go,” Kelvin told Cici. “It probably has something to do with the ranch. I’m manager, I have to go see what he wants. I’m sure it’s nothing. You go inside, and I’ll see you later.”
“You don’t have to worry about the little lady,” the Sheriff sang out. “I’ll keep her company until you come back.”
Cici gasped out loud. She glanced at Kelvin and read the truth in his eyes. The Sheriff planned something for her after Kelvin left, and Cici didn’t want to find out what it was.
Kelvin’s voice dropped a register. “You’re coming with me. It’s not safe to leave you here.”
Cici settled back in the seat, and Kelvin backed the horse away from the porch. A moment later, they whirred back up Main Street going the direction they came.
5
Kelvin drove up a long curving driveway lined with stately trees. He parked the buggy in front of the biggest building Cici ever laid eyes on. No one could call this a house. It looked more like the Lincoln Memorial—not that she ever saw the Lincoln Memorial, either. It looked like she imagined the Lincoln Memorial would look if she ever saw it. It reminded her of what she imagined Buckingham Palace would look like it if she ever saw that.
The Forgotten Bride (Brides 0f Brimstone Book 2) Page 3
