by Jodi Thomas
Not wanting to admit it, she quickly noticed he was certainly more muscular than she remembered. Strong and powerful, he stood tall and straight like a towering spruce. One thing that would never change was his dark blue eyes, which would make any woman want to invite him into her private chambers.
She had managed to embarrass herself beyond belief; not to mention she could barely hear what was said. She’d let her curiosity override her sensibility. Why hadn’t she just walked away when she discovered he was in the Sundance? She should have never tried to catch a peep of him to see if the rumors about him were true. Now she was caught up in a mess of her own making.
As she approached the area between Campbell’s Millinery Shop and the stage line, two people stepped from the shadows. Each grabbed an arm and pulled her into the alley.
“Shush, don’t make a fuss.”
Laurel recognized the voice belonging to Ruby Wilson, but she wouldn’t have recognized her if she hadn’t spoken, because she was dressed like a delivery boy. Ruby released Laurel’s arm.
“What in Hades is going on, Ruby?”
The person holding her other arm let go. Laurel jerked her head in that direction and came face-to-face with the second Wilson sister, Pearl, who looked like an urchin directly off the street.
“What are you two up to?” Laurel straightened her leather vest and rubbed one arm, then the other. “Unless things have changed since I left town, Halloween’s over and it’s nearly Valentine’s Day, so what are you dressed up for? And you didn’t have to scare the dawdling out of me either. We’ve been friends for as long as I can remember.”
Ruby spoke first. “We need to talk to you before you go home and blab everything you heard at the Sundance to your aunt and uncle.”
“First off, I don’t blab! Both of you should know that. I might be a little more frank than most, but I certainly do not tell tales out of school, plus I couldn’t hear much of anything to go blab about anyway.” Frustrated, she stirred up a tiny cloud of dust with the toe of her boot.
“Okay, so you don’t blab, but since you haven’t been back in town but a few days, there are a lot of things you don’t know.” Pearl took a step forward and looked up and down the street. “We gotta talk, Laurel.”
“It’s obvious there’s a lot of things around here that I didn’t know about.” One thing that crossed her mind was the realization that her uncle and Hunter were in cahoots over the need for a railroad. “So let’s talk, but not in an alley. I have to go over to the livery first.” Her wish to take her bay out again for a leisurely outing had turned to a need for a long, hard ride with nobody but her horse and the sunset to keep her company. “Then we can meet anywhere you want. By the costumes you two are wearing, I’m sure you want to go to your house to change.”
“Well, that getup you’re wearing doesn’t look that much better,” said Ruby.
Pearl looked up and down the street again. “Wearing all that citified garb.”
“It’s the latest fashion from back East,” Laurel said much more proudly than she felt.
Both Wilson girls cackled. “And we’re wearing the latest fashions from back here,” Ruby said.
All three joined in on a good-natured laugh. The Wilson sisters had no idea just how badly Laurel needed to share a little bit of merriment with friends.
“We aren’t going to our house; we’re going out to the Triple C to talk to Mrs. Campbell.”
“Melba Ruth Campbell?”
Both sisters nodded.
Ruby plastered a mischievous smile on her face. “You didn’t think I was meanin’ that Hunter had gotten hitched, did you?”
“Well, as I already said, I have been gone a long time, so anything could have happened. But I had planned on seeing Mrs. Campbell today anyway.” What she wanted to say was simply that there was no way in hell she wanted to take a chance on having another confrontation with the devilishly handsome rogue rancher today ... or any other day, for that matter.
“He won’t be there. Didn’t you see Greta Garrett panting after him? She, along with about every woman under the age of forty who can still breathe, has been swooning over him for as long as we can remember. He’ll be over at his saloon most of the night, probably with her hangin’ on to him like he might slip into one of the spittoons or something worse.” The sisters looked at each other and burst into laughter.
“You remember her, don’t you?” Pearl asked.
“Yes. I just found out, if you can imagine it, she’s my cousin’s best friend.” Cold chills ran through Laurel at the thought because she hadn’t figured out yet whether she had been told of the friendship as a warning or if it was her cousin being such a braggadocio. “I walked up about the time she waltzed out of the Sundance. I’m sure she didn’t see me because her nose was turned up like she smelled animal excrement in the air.”
“You mean bull crap.” Ruby laughed at Laurel’s boardinghouse verbiage.
“Exactly. She has not changed an iota, just gotten bigger, hum—you know, her ta-tas ...” She trailed off, knowing they knew exactly what part of Greta she was referring to. “I presume she is as much of a femme fatale as we all expected she’d turn out to be.”
“Well, if that means a woman of ill repute—”
“Plain ol’ whore to me.” Ruby corrected her sister. “Our buggy is over at the livery. So let’s get a wiggle on. We don’t have long before sunset to get out to the Triple C and get back to town.” Ruby took off her hat and unpinned her hair, letting it fall over her shoulders before resetting her dirty, battered hat in place. “That feels better.”
“Ruby,” said Pearl, “Laurel can tie her horse on the back of our buggy and ride with us, can’t she?”
In short order the bay trotted behind the Wilson sisters’ buggy, and the three women were on their way to the Campbell place, no more than a good forty-minute ride from town.
Laurel listened to the sisters’ attempts to fill her in on everything that had happened in Farley Springs over the last six years when in truth, more than anything else, she wanted to know about Hunter Campbell and his enormous success. Finishing school had exposed her to the finer parts of being a lady, but hadn’t corralled her curiosity.
That same inquisitiveness got the best of Laurel. “The first thing I noticed when I walked down Main Street is that every other building has the name Campbell on it. When I left, Hunter and his parents were barely making payroll running cattle on their ranch and helping out at the Sundance.”
Ruby held a firm grip on the ribbons. “Hunter nearly killed himself working days at the ranch growing the herd and then at the Sundance at night helping out his ma—”
“And she worked for your uncle, too.” Pearl squirmed in her seat. “But you knew that, of course.”
“No, I didn’t.” Laurel wondered how many more things she didn’t know. “What did she do?”
Ruby answered, “She kept house for your aunt for a while, and once your uncle found out she knew numbers, he hired her at the bank. She wasn’t there long, as I recall. Something happened, I think, because she left suddenly—”
“It was right after Mr. Campbell died,” Pearl interjected.
“I didn’t realize he had passed.” Strange, disquieting thoughts began racing through Laurel’s mind.
“Back to your question about Hunter’s success ...” Ruby seemed to be deliberately changing the subject. “You know Hunter could make a coyote roll over and let him scratch his tummy with nothing but a smile and a wink. I guess that charm is what made him into the businessman he is today. A very successful one, too. One thing for sure, he doesn’t mix gambling and ranching. When he plays poker, he takes no prisoners. If anyone bellies up to his table, they’d better be a good player because he’ll take ’um for every penny they have plus some. And when he’s out on the ranch, it’s all about winning, too, but in a different sort of way. You should know that since he kicked your uncle’s butt from here to the Rio Grande and back when he ran for mayor—”<
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“Of course she knows it.” Ruby frowned at her sibling.
“I didn’t, but that explains a few things,” said Laurel.
“Didn’t your aunt and uncle keep in touch with you while you were up in New York at that highfalutin’ college? Heard you got some kind of degree as good as any man.” Ruby sounded impressed.
“No on the first matter. And yes on the second.” Laurel took a deep breath and tried to chase away the not-too-fond memories of her life in New York.
After finishing school, with grand flare her aunt and uncle had escorted her to the dean of the elite, private Elmira College. Before leaving town, they had introduced her to the higher echelon of influential people to make certain she would receive invitations to the finest social events where the privileged attended. She’d never heard from either of them directly since they’d walked out of her life.
She shuddered, remembering how month after month she’d receive an envelope at her boardinghouse from her Uncle Gideon. Inside was always a draft for the same measly amount that constituted her monthly allowance from her parents’ estate. After a couple of months, she became accustomed to expecting not a single word of affection written on the parchment inside.
All of her educational expenses were paid directly to the college by the trustee of her parents’ estate—her Uncle Gideon Duncan. She had never gotten over the feeling that she’d been sent away for an education and her only family had forgotten she existed.
That was why, after Christmas, she was taken by surprise when she received a letter from her uncle stating how much she was missed and wanting her to return home. He even promised her a job at the bank, which so far had not come up in conversation. A ticket to Farley Springs had been enclosed.
“Laurel,” Ruby almost shouted. “Hello, Laurel ... I think we lost you.”
“No, I just got lost in the beauty of the countryside. I’d forgotten how blue the Texas sky is.” She changed the subject back to Hunter as quickly as possible. “I understand how Hunter did well with the ranch, but how did he acquire all of the other businesses? Two saloons, the millinery shop, the mercantile, and I bet there are others that don’t have the Campbell name on them.”
“It shouldn’t take a girl with some big-fandangled college degree to figure that one out,” Ruby quipped. “He won them gambling.”
Pearl, who hadn’t said a lot so far, chimed in, “But it isn’t like you think. He did win most of them in high-stakes games of chance, but then handed over most of them to either one of the Campbells or he turned them back to the poor, losing poker player with the understanding that he would keep a small interest in the business.”
“I see.” Laurel smiled. “Things haven’t changed very much since I left town after all.”
All three ladies seemed to lapse into their own thoughts.
With the abundance of moisture over the winter and the early spring, as Laurel was told by the sisters, the prairie was carpeted with red-orange Indian paintbrush and spotted with waist-high yucca plants, promising the most beautiful springtime yet.
In the distance, the main house of the Campbell Ranch came into sight, a huge two-story plantation-style house with a wraparound veranda. So different from the long, low prairie-style homestead where Hunter’s parents had raised him and his sister.
When the Wilson buggy pulled up in front of the main house, a lanky, toothless ranch hand met them and helped them down from their carriage, then untied Laurel’s horse. “Mrs. Campbell is waitin’ for you all in the parlor.” He turned to Laurel and said, “Good to see you again, Miss Womack. I’ll see to your bay. He sure has a good-lookin’ black mane and tail.”
“I think so, too. His name is Buckey.”
Laurel followed Ruby and Pearl up the stairs.
When she reached the front porch, she stopped. Taking a lace hankie from her pocket, she dabbed away some of the perspiration from her forehead. She didn’t want to look all hot and sticky for Mrs. Campbell.
For early spring, it was certainly a warm day.
A rich, deep-timbered voice she’d know anywhere called from somewhere off to the right of the door.
Laurel whirled in its direction.
Hunter leaned against the porch railing and shot her his familiar, charismatic smile that would set any woman’s heart to racing.
Dressed in a black Stetson that had seen a lot of seasons, a chambray shirt, and tight-fittin’ work pants, with a gun belt holstering a single Colt hanging over slim hips, he looked nothing of the suave, debonair businessman she’d seen earlier in the day.
Tipping his hat, he said, “Nice to see you again, Miss Laurel. Welcome to the Triple C ... but only if you don’t tell me to go to hell for saying so.”
Chapter 4
Laurel and Hunter stood on the porch only inches apart, but it could have been miles between them from the way they reacted to each other. She deliberately set her chin in defiance. He stood with his arms folded across his chest.
A blue jay hovered low over the ground and made his presence known with his distinct, harsh call, which seemed to mimic the screams of a hawk.
“I apologize,” Laurel and Hunter said in unison.
“Ladies first.” He successfully disarmed her with his open, friendly smile.
“I shouldn’t have said what I did in town. I was, uh ...” She wasn’t sure exactly how to explain away her frustrations without admitting that what happened was her fault. She took a deep breath to scrounge up enough courage to offer an acceptable explanation. “I stopped by to see your mother. But when I realized a meeting was taking place, I was hesitant to come in. I simply should have left, so I owe you an apology.” She swallowed hard, finding it more difficult than it should be to say, “I’m sorry.”
“Apology accepted. I should have been more cordial a minute ago myself.”
Laurel met his smile, and the hand that was offered. “Friends?”
“Friends.” He tipped his hat. “Have a great day, Laurel Dean.”
Slipping back into the shadows of the porch, she watched Hunter swagger his way toward the cowboy who was untying her horse from the buggy.
“I’m on my way to the barn, Slim,” Hunter said as he came up even with the lanky ranch hand. “I’ll see to Miss Womack’s gelding.”
“I figured you’d be at the Coyote Bluff this afternoon.” Slim handed over the reins.
“Nope. Got troubles up near the river, and I need to go out there and see to them. Part of the fence is down and there’s a heifer having problems birthing. Don’t have much time before dark, so I’m headin’ that way right now.”
“You got good hands out there that are capable of handling it,” said Slim.
“Yep, but can’t take a chance on losing the calf and certainly not the heifer. Every head is money in the bank.”
The pair, leading Buckey, sauntered in the direction of the corral and out of earshot.
The front screen door opened, startling Laurel.
Ruby stepped out. “What’s keeping you?” She raised an eyebrow and nodded in the direction of Hunter. “Oh, I see what, or I should say who, caught your attention. I didn’t think Hunter would be here, but it makes it convenient for you, just in case you wanna eavesdrop on him some more.” Amused at her own humor, Ruby smiled with an air of pleasure.
Not finding anything funny about her friend’s comment, Laurel straightened her shoulders and took a couple of steps toward the entryway. When she was even with Ruby, Laurel leaned over and whispered, “For your information, I couldn’t care less about that man. I was wiping perspiration from my forehead.”
“You mean sweat?” Ruby corrected.
Laurel shot her a benign smile as if dealing with an impolite child, then walked past her.
Heavy oak French doors led into the well-furnished parlor. Ceiling-to-floor bookcases filled with leather-bound volumes covered one wall. The rest of the room was papered in shades of blue and white, reminding Laurel of the bluebonnet fields of the Hill Country
.
“There you are, Laurel Dean.” Mrs. Campbell appeared, carrying a silver tray with a porcelain tea set and a plate of tiny fried pies.
After setting the refreshments on the low table in front of the settee, she gathered Laurel into her arms and they exchanged hugs. Apparently not satisfied, the older woman set Laurel out at arm’s length and looked her up and down, stopping at her gawd-awful boots. Mrs. Campbell raised an eyebrow. As she released Laurel, her smile widened in approval. “You look well, dear.”
“As do you, Mrs. Campbell.” Laurel reached out and took the hand of the youthful-looking woman who was tastefully dressed and nearly as tall as her son.
Laurel offered condolences at the loss of Mr. Campbell, then said, “I’ve really missed you.”
The only thing that had changed since Laurel had last seen the older woman was her hair, which looked like a beautiful snowdrift.
“We’ve all grown up, Laurel Dean, so call me Melba Ruth.” A flash of humor crossed her face. “Makes me feel younger. Ladies, we don’t stand on formalities in this house, so please make yourself at home.” She sat on one end of the settee and patted the empty space next to her. “Laurel Dean, have a seat.”
Melba Ruth served tea to first Ruby then Pearl, who settled in chairs on each side of a small parlor table covered with a finely crocheted doily.
To Laurel’s plate she added an extra fried pie. “I made these when I knew you were coming out.”
“Apple?” Laurel smiled. “I remember making them with you when I lived here before. You always said the little ones taste better than the bigger ones.”
“You thought so, too.” While taking care of her hostess duties, Melba Ruth chatted like a magpie, asking one question and barely waiting for an answer before posing another one.
“Thank you, girls, for coming all the way out here. I didn’t want to meet in town, for all the reasons you know.” She took a sip of her tea. “So tell me what the men’s meeting was all about. I asked Hunter, but of course, he dodged my question and ducked out without giving me an answer.” She looked at Ruby, then over to her sister. “Cute disguises, girls.”
