Dare-Devil Daisy: Mail Order Brides Rescue Series, Book #5

by Grafford, Jo

  “I do.” He smiled, and the worry lines cleared from his forehead. “It’s not the shortest story. I doubt you have the time for it.”

  She didn’t, but she caught her breath at his smile. Dear, heavens! The man had a lethal smile. Most women she knew would have swooned beneath its charm.

  He set down his tea on a side table and leaned in her direction, resting his elbows on his knees. “The short version is, I’ve been running this business with my brother, Colt, ever since our sister, MaryAnne, disappeared out West.”

  “Disappeared!” Olivia, who’d raised her cup for another sip, left her tea suspended in mid-air.

  “She signed a mail-order bride contract with a dubious firm before my brother and I could stop her, rode a train to Arizona, and we haven’t seen her since.” His voice turned rough. “It was a few years ago.”

  “I am sorry for your loss.” Her own troubles suddenly seemed less acute.

  His brown eyes turned flinty. “I am not ready to claim a loss, Miss, er…”

  “Olivia Rothschild,” she supplied, forgetting she’d intended to keep that detail to herself.

  To his credit, Jordan Branson didn’t flicker an eyelid at the sound of her name, though he surely must have recognized it. Her name, face, and exploits had been splashed across every gossip rag in the East at some point or another.

  He nodded to acknowledge her tardy introduction, but continued his vent. “Neither is Colt. Until someone sends us a body to bury, we will continue to hope. And search,” he added grimly. His jaw clenched as he settled back in his seat.

  She nodded, approving of his determination and grit. Now, that’s true love! And a purpose worth fighting for! One she might partake in, herself, if she chose to disappear a few months instead of marrying against her will. The thoughts formed and took shape in her mind. Words bubbled forth next and came tumbling out. “Although I’ve no wish to sign any of your horrifying contracts, perhaps we could help each other.”

  His mouth twisted. “I appreciate your optimism, Miss Rothschild, but I highly doubt it.” The raking gaze he cast over her person was clear. He knew who she was and didn’t take her any more seriously than her aunt did.

  Well, that was going to change! Olivia straightened her spine. She was tired of being dismissed as a useless debutante. She was tired of having her life planned out for her, as if she didn’t possess the God-give intellect to make a single decision for herself. La, if she was being honest with herself, she was tired of Boston, itself!

  She folded her hands in her lap and leaned forward. “As it turns out, I’ve decided to leave town a few months, until the rumors surrounding my latest indiscretion die down.” He could think what he wanted of that! She was done with pretenses. “There is no reason I cannot make a trip West and use my extensive resources to help you look for your sister.” She arched a brow at him, daring him to contradict her. Even he could not deny her access to wealth and contacts.

  “Make a trip West?” Jordan Branson hooked a finger in his collar and tugged. “To look for a young woman you’ve never met?” He shook his head. His expression reflected a strange mixture of doubt and hope. “I reckon it’s my turn to ask why.”

  She smiled and spread her hands, knowing she had his attention at last — his real and undivided attention. “I’ve no wish to continue living the life of a debutante. I want a project I can throw my heart and energy into.” She briefly caught her lower lip between her teeth, hoping she didn’t sound too naive to a man of his vast matchmaking experience. “I want to do something good for a change.” There. She braced herself for the holes he would surely shoot in her idea.

  All she received was a look of pure male fascination and another one of his slow, devastating smiles. “From what I’ve heard about you, Miss Rothschild, you might actually be up to the task.”

  Her heart flip-flopped in her chest at his smile, though a flush rose to her cheeks at his words. She knew he did not necessarily mean them as a compliment. “Please assure me you’re not referring to a certain deplorable nickname of mine.” She watched for his reaction through lowered lashes.

  His smile widened, and he steepled his fingers. “Whatever do you mean, Outrageous Olivia?”

  She groaned and averted her flaming face. “Yes. That one.” On one hand, she was mortified. On the other hand, it was strangely liberating to hear her nickname spoken aloud without a sliver of judgment. The man seemed more amused than scandalized by her reputation.

  She could have kissed him for his kind acceptance of who she was. Wait, stop! No more kisses. No more even thinking about kisses. A kiss was what had gotten her into this mess in the first place!

  <<< To be continued… >>>

  Mail Order Brides Rescue Series #6:

  Outrageous Olivia

  Coming soon to ebook and paperback on Amazon + FREE in KU!

  Much love,

  Jo

  Sneak Preview: Wanted Bounty Hunter

  November, 1900 — Silverpines, Oregon

  Rachel West shivered as she stepped onto the train platform. It wasn’t the chill of the late autumn breeze so much as the feeling of stepping on ghosts that shook her up on the inside. For a moment, she fought the urge to spin around in her designer boots, sprint back to her private cabin on the train, and keep on riding.

  She’d been away for eight long years from the one town in the world that felt like home. Or should have…

  Squinting against the glare of the morning sun, she turned in a full circle, trying to find one familiar structure or one familiar face from her treasure trove of memories.

  And utterly failed.

  A spurt of panic gurgled through her mid-section at the sight of the new-looking cafe facing her. A freshly painted butcher’s storefront rested to the left of it, and a post office was located just across a side street from it. They had to be new, because the paint was so bright and un-peeling, and none of their roofs boasted the usual slight ripple of unevenness that so many buildings take on once they’ve had the chance to settle.

  Her head swiveled. There was also a book store she didn’t remember standing next to the post office. It was an inviting little building with a big, cheery picture window crowded with books. Normally, she would have tossed all her earthly cares to the winds and made a beeline for the cozy nook for book lovers, but she was too busy pondering the notion that she might have made a horrible mistake at disembarking.

  Why, even the depot building squatting behind her looked new! Had she misunderstood the announcement and gotten off at the wrong stop altogether?

  “Rachel? Is it really you?”

  She jolted at the soft, lilting alto wafting across the train platform. Nothing around her looked familiar, but she’d recognize that voice anywhere.

  “Penelope Wallace!” she cried joyfully, whirling to face her childhood friend. She was in the right town after all, even if it didn’t look right.

  “It’s Cooper now. Penelope Cooper.”

  They threw themselves in each other’s arms with squeals of sheer delight, and Rachel experienced a pang of remorse at the knowledge it had been more than two years since they’d last exchanged letters, maybe three. Good heavens, how the time had flown!

  To avoid making any awkward excuses for her lack of correspondence, Rachel fell back on her good manners and well of natural charm. “Eight years hasn’t changed you one bit. You don’t look a day older than sixteen.” The moment the words sailed from her mouth, she regretted them; because it was painfully clear that Penelope had indeed changed.

  She still looked young and girlish, but the sparkle that had always lurked in her wide, innocent eyes — despite how hard her temperamental, overly controlling mama had tried to extinguish it — was entirely gone. In its place was bone-weariness and the bruising shadows born of hard times. A recent tragedy, if Rachel were to venture a guess. They were the same kind of shadows she witnessed in her own eyes every time she stood in front of a mirror.

  “How is your mother
?” she asked hastily, bracing herself for the worst kind of news.

  Penelope made a snorting sound, and her pink petal lips quirked up at the corners. “Still as sour as vinegar and prickly as a cactus.”

  Rachel laughed and tasted the sweet tang of relief on her tongue. “Some people never change, I suppose.” Though way too many people did, in fact, do exactly that.

  Such as her own parents who’d died in a carriage accident the next town over, and her great-aunt who’d swept into Silverpines on her sixteen birthday and whisked her back to the East Coast to finish raising her…who was also now gone, and her husband who had cherished and adored her for two whole months before succumbing to a fever and left her widowed and childless at the age of twenty-four…

  With an inward shake, Rachel forced her agonizing memories back to the darker recesses of her mind and tried to focus on what her friend was saying.

  “Yes, indeed. Mama still carries a grudge against the world the size of California for all the things she’s suffered.” Her voice dropped to nearly a whisper. “Though the good Lord knows we’ve all suffered this past year.” Her pallor turned a sickly gray to match the plain, wool gown she was wearing.

  Rachel reached for her friend’s hands and squeezed them. “I’m so sorry. I heard about the earthquakes. It’s one of the reasons I came back.” She’d daydreamed for months about returning to Silverpines to help with the rebuilding, imagining she could put to good use her inheritance, teaching credentials, and experience working at one of the poshest finishing schools in Boston.

  Penelope’s fingers tightened on hers. “Oh, dear! Is that all you heard? The quakes were merely the beginning of our troubles.” She drew a shaky breath before plunging on. “The mines collapsed, and the mud slides claimed most of our menfolk, my husband included. Then there was the big fire last April that wiped out a sizable section of town. We’re rebuilding as fast as we can, but those things take time and money and lots of hard work.” She sighed and nodded across the street to take in the new cafe, post office, and book store.

  So they were all new buildings. “I’m so sorry about your husband,” she said quickly, feeling guilty all over again about their lack of recent correspondence. It looked as if she’d missed her friend’s engagement, wedding, and the funeral that had followed.

  Penelope nodded and ducked her head, blinking rapidly. “I married Cliff Cooper, God rest his soul.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Rachel said again, amazed to discover any woman had wanted to marry the heartless, uncouth prankster she remembered Cliff to be from their school days. “I, ah…” It was painful to speak of it, but Penelope deserved no less than her utmost honesty now that she was moving back to town. “I lost my husband, too. Matthew West.” She swallowed hard. It would be so easy to lean forward a few more inches to sob her heartache against her friend’s shoulder, but Penelope had suffered enough. They both had. Tears wouldn’t bring either of their husbands back. “It was a fever that took him from this world.”

  Her friend blinked hard as if trying to keep the moisture in her eyes at bay. “Both of us married since the last time we wrote, and now we’re widows,” she mused softly. A sad smile tugged at her lips as if she found comfort in sharing her pain with a fellow sufferer. “Dare I ask what brings you to Silverpines, of all places?”

  “Memories, I suppose.” Rachel wasn’t quite sure how to put her feelings into words. “When my great aunt passed, there was suddenly no reason whatsoever for me to remain in Boston. So I decided to come home.”

  Home. The word came out on a bittersweet note. The truth was Rachel didn’t really belong anywhere anymore. She’d been uprooted from Silverpines at the age of sixteen and transplanted into a much bigger city back East, but she’d never fully fit in. As her Great Aunt Gertie liked to say with great asperity, you can take the girl out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the girl. Alas, no amount of dancing lessons and social graces had been able to transform her niece into a true society girl.

  “Home?” Penelope’s voice rose in excitement. “Do you mean you’re here to stay?” She glanced around Rachel’s shoulder, and her eyes widened at the growing pile of luggage on the platform. “Dear me! It appears you’ve brought half of Boston with you.”

  Rachel shrugged and admitted sheepishly, “That is only my autumn wardrobe. My furniture and other belongings will arrive in a few more days.”

  “Other belongings!” Penelope looked astounded. “Where in tarnation do you expect to put all that? It’ll never fit at the hotel, and I can’t think of a boarding house big enough to hold it, either.” She withdrew her hands from her friend’s and fisted them on her hips. A frown wrinkled her brow. “I could maybe talk to a few friends about finding you a place to store some of it until you can come up with a more permanent solution.”

  Wondering if this was the part where she should confide the news about her vast inheritance to her friend, Rachel opened her black silk reticule and withdrew a few bills. “Here.” She handed the money to the two workmen waiting patiently by her mound of luggage. “Pray deliver my things to the Silverpines Inn. I have a reservation.” She also had an appointment this morning with the town banker, Joel Richards, to discuss the purchase of a vacant old mansion on the northern edge of town. If things went the way she hoped, she’d be holding the keys to the future Silverpines Finishing School for Young Ladies before nightfall.

  Noting the generous denominations on the bills Rachel handed the workmen, Penelope turned suspicious eyes on her. “Exactly how much furniture are we talking about?”

  For a split second, Rachel glimpsed a sliver of Widow Wallace’s busybody ways in her daughter. She sighed, forcing the horrible thought away. No. Penelope was nothing like her gossipy mother. She was simply curious; and if they were going to be friends again, they needed to be completely honest with each other.

  “Aunt Gertie’s things were too lovely to part with, so I had them shipped here.” To be precise, they were being transported by train beneath the watchful care of her great-aunt’s gardener, cook, and housekeeper — all of whom she’d also been unable to part with. In the past eight years, they’d become like family to her.

  Penelope’s eyes widened further. “All of them?”

  “Yes, and she was quite the collector of antiques.” Rachel smiled fondly at the memory of her crotchety old aunt and her hodge-podge of rare and ornate souvenirs from all over the world. “I can’t wait to show you her pair of velvet fainting couches from France. She always swore they were from the castle ballroom of Napoleon Bonaparte himself.” In addition to the fainting couches, there were train cars headed their way full of four-poster beds drenched in real German lace, two grand pianos, three china cabinets, five full sets of china, an entire gallery of paintings and ancient family portraits, Oriental rugs, busts, vases, tapestries, and more. Mercy! She could only hope the mansion she would be touring today with Joel Richards was big enough to hold it all.

  “Fainting couches, eh?” Penelope sniffed. “Whatever do you intend to do with a pair of royal fainting couches here in Silverpines, Oregon?”

  It was a question Rachel was all too happy to answer. “I’m certified to teach now, Pen.” She grinned widely at her friend. “I’m going to open my own finishing school for young ladies.”

  “A finishing school?” the young woman asked doubtfully. “I’m not entirely certain I know what that means other than it sounds rather la-de-da for a town this size.”

  Rachel chuckled. “It will be a school focused on social graces. Yes, I’ll still teach math, grammar, and geography; but there will also be lessons on deportment and etiquette, French and Italian, dancing and singing, painting and sculpting, and my favorite — playing musical instruments. I will start off giving piano and violin lessons; but, in time, I hope to hire other instructors to teach more instruments.” Her mind was awash with ideas for lessons she couldn’t wait to try out on her new pupils.

  Penelope had gone silent during her g
ushing tirade about the new school. “Can you really do all that?” she finally asked in a hushed voice. “Play the violin and speak Italian and the like?”

  Rachel rolled her eyes. “Believe me, if you’d spent the past eight years with my Great Aunt Gertrude as your guardian, you’d be speaking French and Italian as well.” And a wee bit of Spanish, German, and Dutch. Her aunt had been all about turning her only niece into a cultured and refined high society girl.

  Her friend sniffed. “All I can speak is down-home Oregon, and that’s true of everyone else around here.” The train platform was swiftly emptying of Rachel’s luggage, which the workmen were fast loading into a wagon. “I wish you well with your school, my sweet friend. I truly do, but…” She shook her head with a bemused smile.

  It was clear she thought Rachel was way out of her element bringing her big city notions to a small town like Silverpines. “I, ah…it’s so good to see you again, but I must be going. I serve part-time as a nanny to Collin McGregor, and his mum will be expecting me soon. I only came this way to pick up the book she ordered as a birthday gift for him. I just happened to look up and see you across the way.”

  “I’m so glad you did.” Rachel reached out impulsively, and they embraced again. “I cannot tell you how good it is to see a familiar face. I’ve missed you, Pen.” She’d missed everything there was to miss about Silverpines. The small town atmosphere, the crowd of chattering mothers who took their young ones to the park for play dates, the noisy and somewhat chaotic schoolhouse where she’d spent so many happy hours, the small cottage across town where she’d lived her first sixteen years with her semi-invalid mother and miner father…. She’d work up the courage to pay a visit to that part of town soon but not today.

  Penelope’s shoulders relaxed. “I’ve missed you, too. Welcome home, my dear.” She pressed their cheeks together then stepped back to flutter a hand in goodbye.