by Merry Farmer
She touched his arm. “Oh, you’ll love it. Just wait until you see what I can do. I may have worked washing laundry for years, but I saw so many delightful things come through my washtub. I’ve always wanted to see how those bits and bobs could be used to make a home feel truly homey.” She glanced around the space one more time, heart filled with excitement. “I just know I can turn this room into a home.”
Sam didn’t answer. In fact, when she turned back to him with a smile, he looked as though he were having a hard time catching his breath. “This is a saloon,” he said. “It’s a place where men come to drink and to socialize.”
“Yes.” She blinked at him, wondering why he was explaining the obvious.
“Well—” He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “—it’s not the kind of place that needs to look ‘homey’.”
She let out a breathy laugh. “Well, of course the saloon part of the saloon doesn’t need to be homey. But this is our living space. This is our home.”
“True,” Sam agreed, somewhat reluctantly.
Julia shrugged. “So now that I’m here, you don’t have to worry about it looking like another storage room. I’ll make it look perfect in no time.”
Sam’s mouth worked, pursing then opening then pinching like he was trying to say something. He gave up whatever that was with a long breath, his shoulders dropping. “I need to get back to work. I’m sure Hubert will deliver your trunks and things soon so you can get settled.” He nodded, then turned to leave.
Julia followed him. Sam noticed the fact once they were out in the hall. He stopped and turned to her.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going with you,” she answered. “I’ll help in the saloon.”
He gaped at her like she’d made some kind of outrageous statement. “But it’s a saloon.”
Julia shrugged. “So? I’m sure I can find some way to help.”
“In a saloon?” Sam rested his weight on one hip, arms crossed.
“You’re the one that sent away for a wife, Sam. Did you think I would just sit with my hands folded in my lap in that one room all the time?”
He blinked, holding his breath, his gaze unfocused. After a long, guilty pause, he answered, “No.”
Julia arched a brow at him. She was willing to bet he hadn’t thought about it at all. “I’ll find some way to make myself useful,” she said, marching past him.
“Um….”
She listened as she walked down the hall, but Sam didn’t follow that syllable with anything. They stepped out of the hall and back into the main room of the saloon. The men who had been gifted with free drinks had returned to their tables and were chattering in a more animated way than they’d been when Julia first arrived. At the sight of her, they raised their glasses in salute. Julia beamed at their kindness and clasped a hand to her heart.
“Thank you all. What a kind welcome,” she said. “I hope I can—”
She didn’t get a chance to tell them that she hoped they could all be friends. Sam’s friend, Sheriff Knighton, stepped away from the bar with a bottle of beer as she stepped forward. They collided with enough force that Trey dropped his bottle. It smashed on the floor, sending glass and suds everywhere.
“Oh, dear,” Julia gasped and leapt back. In the process, she trod on Sam’s foot.
Sam let out a muffled curse and hopped away from her.
“I’m so sorry.” Julia reached for him, but stepped on a piece of wet glass from the smashed beer. The soles of her traveling boots were thick enough that the glass didn’t penetrate, but she did slip. She went tumbling into Sam, who managed to catch her, but lost his balance and fell against the edge of the bar.
Chan rushed forward with a cloth to clean the spilled beer at the same time, and as Sam tumbled, his head hit Chan’s nose with a sickening crunch. Chan shouted and pressed the cloth in his hand to his face, but within seconds Julia spotted red seeping around the edges of the dingy cloth.
“Oh, no! Oh, I’m so sorry, Mr. Chan.” Julia shoved herself out of Sam’s arms and reached toward Chan to help him, but Chan shouted something in Chinese and backpedaled into the area behind the bar as fast as he could.
It was the sound of Sheriff Knighton snorting in laughter that finally broke through Julia’s shock at the situation. “Yep, Sam,” Trey said. “Your life definitely isn’t about to get boring.”
Sam grumbled, sending his friend a look that Julia’s Uncle Lenny had always called “The Hairy Eyeball.” Before he could do anything more than yank himself to stand, using the corner of the bar as a support, the saloon door opened.
“Miss Frost—I mean, Mrs. Standish—I have your trunk.” The young man who had been helping his father, the stationmaster, at the train platform heaved her trunk through the door. He stopped just inside the door, staring from Trey’s laughing face to the broken glass and beer on the floor to Sam and his glare to Chan, who still had the rag pressed to his face and was muttering in Chinese. “Is everything all right?” he asked.
No one jumped to reply, so Julia hopped into motion. “Oh, thank you, young man,” she said, although the porter must have been close to her own age. She stepped over the broken glass and beer, hearing the crunch of more glass breaking as the heels of her boots ground into it, and stumbled over one leg of a barstool that had been pushed away from the bar in the process of moving to greet him. “I appreciate your kindness. I should tip you.” She turned back to Sam—whose scowl had taken on a whole other level of impatience and was directed at her. “Do we have a few coins that we could tip this young man with?”
Sam let out a breath and finished standing. He brushed his hands along the front of his vest and kicked one of the larger pieces of glass away from the edge of the bar. “Thanks, Hubert. Help yourself to a drink.”
“You’re welcome,” Hubert answered, hesitantly at first. He glanced from Sam to Julia, his mouth twitching as he assessed the situation. He moved to set Julia’s trunk next to the bar, then slid into the stool at the end. “To tell you the truth, I could use a little libation right about now.”
Chan stopped dabbing at his nose with the cloth and slid down the bar to pour Hubert a glass of something. His nose had stopped bleeding, and to Julia’s eyes, it didn’t look broken. And she’d seen broken noses before. Especially the ones she’d caused. Sam stepped behind the bar to fetch a broom and dustpan, and Trey leaned over to retrieve a spare cloth, then bent to help Sam clean up the mess. Julia watched them for a few seconds, wondering what she could do to help.
She decided the best thing she could do was pull herself up onto the barstool beside Hubert. “What seems to be the trouble?” she asked. “Why would a young man like you feel the need for strong drink in the middle of a fine and sunny day?”
“I have a feeling plenty of men need a drink when you’re around,” Trey muttered, sending Julia a wink to show there were no hard feelings in his joke.
Julia considered his teasing a form of compliment, so she laughed and said, “True.” She turned back to Hubert. “But I don’t think that’s what’s bothering you. So go ahead and tell me. I’m very good at listening.”
Chan handed Hubert his drink, but Hubert didn’t seem to notice. His brow rose, and he blinked at Julia in surprise. “No one’s ever asked me about my problems before.”
“Yeah, and there’s a reason for that,” Chan added, sending Hubert a stern look.
“Oh?” Julia sat a little straighter. “What reason?”
“Woman trouble,” Chan said in a confidential voice.
Julia burst into a smile. “That’s my favorite kind.” She thought better of her comment, then added, “I mean, I know a lot of women—I am one—so I know how to solve trouble with them. So—” She folded her hands on the bar and smiled at Hubert. “—tell me all about it.”
Stunned, Hubert glanced from Julia to Sam as he worked behind her, to Chan and back to Julia. “I’ve never thought of telling another woman about it.”
�
�You don’t have to,” Sam said.
Julia swiveled in her chair to send him a scolding look. She would never understand why men didn’t like to talk about the things that bothered them.
Except perhaps Hubert. He sighed as if he’d been wanting to talk about his problems for a long time, but hadn’t had the chance. “It’s about my sweetheart,” he said. “Miss Bebe Bonneville.”
Chapter 3
Sam rolled his eyes, uncertain if he wanted to stick around and listen to Hubert’s plight or escape to the back by carrying Julia’s trunk to their living quarters.
“The thing is,” Hubert began, “I love Bebe. But her family is….” Hubert blew out a breath, pushing a hand through his hair.
Sam had crossed halfway to Julia’s trunk and snorted at Hubert’s comment. Making a sound was a bad idea. Julia grabbed him as soon as he reached her side, stopping him in his tracks.
“You should listen to this too,” she told him with wide-eyed innocence. “I’m sure Hubert here could use a man’s perspective.”
Sam winced and blew out a breath. “My advice is for him to stay as far away from the Bonnevilles as possible.” He sent Hubert a hard look to underscore the point.
“But—”
“How can you say that?” Julia cut Hubert off before he could argue with Sam. “This man is in love, and love is the most wonderful thing in the world. It shouldn’t matter what kind of family his sweetheart comes from.” She turned back to Hubert. “Are they beneath your station? Are they destitute but proud, and does your sweetheart, Bebe, feel as though she isn’t good enough for you?”
Sam laughed. He wasn’t the only one. Several of the men who’d been watching the drama had moved closer so that they could hear the conversation. They laughed too.
Hubert didn’t laugh. He shook his head. “It’s the other way around,” he explained to Julia. “The Bonnevilles are the second richest family in the area, aside from the Haskells. Rex Bonneville, Bebe’s father, doesn’t think I’m good enough for her. I’m just a stationmaster’s son, after all.”
Julia blinked at him and shook her head. “But you’re young, and from what I can see, you’re smart. Did you do well in school?”
Sam grimaced, wondering how he could stop his new wife from embarrassing herself and everyone else with her prying questions.
Then again, Hubert didn’t look embarrassed. He looked downright thoughtful.
“I did do well,” he said, rubbing his chin. “I mean, I had fun too, but Pops always made me study. He always said that a boy who studied hard grew into a man who could make something of himself.”
Sam found himself tilting his head to the side as though Athos had given the advice directly to him and he’d taken it to heart. Athos was right, after all.
“That’s beautiful.” Julia smiled. “Mr. Bonneville should see that you are a man with vast potential, a man who could make anything of himself.”
“You think?” Hubert sat a little straighter.
“Of course I think so.” Julia’s smile grew wider. “And you don’t plan to be a railroad porter your whole life, do you? You plan to make your fortune so that you and your sweetheart can have a wonderful life, don’t you?”
A flush appeared on Hubert’s face. “I…I didn’t really think about it like that.” He tilted his head to the side. “I suppose I could, though. I’ve always wanted to try my hand at newspaper reporting.”
“How exciting,” Julia said, glancing from Hubert to Sam, as if looking for encouragement.
“There was this writer fellow who passed through town a month or so back,” Hubert went on. “He got his start in newspapers, but writes dime novels now.”
“I remember him,” Chan interjected. “Stayed here a few nights to save money.”
Sam remembered the fellow too. He kept to himself, mumbling and scribbling away. “You’re not really that type,” he told Hubert. “And Howard might have built an office for a newspaper, but we don’t actually have one.”
“Yet,” Julia said, visibly excited. “What if you started one, Hubert?”
Hubert looked as though he would agree with her for half a second before his face fell. “I don’t have any experience,” he said. “I don’t know the first thing about how to make a newspaper.”
“But you could learn,” Julia said. “There are all sorts of places where you could learn that. And you could become a wealthy newspaper magnate with publications in several major cities. You could have homes from coast to coast, and you could marry your sweetheart with her father’s blessing and be one of the most powerful men in the country.” She told Hubert’s entire possible story in one breath and gasped at the end. “It will be so wonderful.”
She reached out and placed her hand over Hubert’s. Hubert smiled back at her, a light in his eyes that Sam hadn’t seen before. Which caused a prickling in his chest that he didn’t like. He refused to call it jealousy. He had nothing to worry about where Hubert was concerned, even though Julia was close to his age and they’d obviously taken to each other at first sight. Hubert only had eyes for Bebe, and Julia…
Julia was young and spritely and could wrap any man she wanted to around her innocent little finger. But she’d gone and married him, a rough and jaded man more than ten years her senior. The prickling in his chest focused into an aching sensation at the center of his heart.
But why should it? He cleared his throat and walked the rest of the way to where Julia’s trunk still sat at the end of the bar. He hadn’t sent away for her because he was looking to fall in love. Love was for a different kind of man than he was, a domesticated kind of man. He didn’t want anything to do with that kind of nonsense.
That didn’t stop his heartstrings from plucking when he straightened, lifting Julia’s trunk, to find her smiling at him. She had a light about her that made the whole room brighter. It made him want to heft the trunk over his shoulders just to show off how strong he was. It made him want to be…want to be worthy of her.
Yep, a few little marriage vows and he’d plumb lost his mind.
“I’m gonna take this to the back room,” he muttered as he passed Julia on the way to the hallway.
“Thank you so much,” she said, twisting on her stool to watch him go. He smiled at her as he reached the doorway to the back. As soon as he turned the corner, he heard her say to Hubert, “Now, all you really need to do to win your sweetheart’s father over is to be a little ambitious.”
After a lovely afternoon spent in delightful conversation with the gentlemen that patronized Sam’s saloon, Julia was feeling more enthusiastic about her new life than she felt when she’d first seen the saloon.
“They’re such nice people,” she commented to Sam as she put away her things in the wardrobe beside his bed. Their bed. “I never imagined that men biding their time at a saloon could be so friendly.”
“Yeah, they were friendly, all right.” Sam sent her a flat look from the other side of the room, where he was washing off the dishes from their makeshift supper.
She paused what she was doing to study him. He didn’t seem as convinced as she was that the patrons of his saloon were lovely. And perhaps they were just a little noisy. Julia could hear the laughter, chatter, and piano-playing from the main part of the saloon through the walls. Chan was minding the bar that evening so that she and Sam could get to know each other better—something Julia was very much looking forward to. Sam, on the other hand, appeared to be in a bad mood.
“Don’t you like the men who spend time in your saloon?” she asked, putting the last of her underthings away on a shelf inside the wardrobe. When she was done, she shut the wardrobe door and turned to Sam.
He frowned at the last dish he was drying, set it aside, then turned to lean against the counter, looking at her. “It’s not about whether I like them or not. My job is to keep them happy while keeping them in line.”
“But haven’t you gotten to know them? Aren’t you friends with them?” She took a few steps toward him.
He looked as though he’d never considered anything like what she’d suggested. “I’m not the kind of man who makes a chum out of every roughneck and scoundrel that bellies up to my bar.”
Julia shook her head and shrugged. “But the men I met out there don’t seem like roughnecks and scoundrels. They seem much more like neighbors. You are friends with your neighbors, right?”
His face hardened with thought, then he moved toward the table to put the chairs back in place. “Friendship is for settled men,” he said.
“And you’re not settled?” Julia crossed her arms, trying to work out the puzzle in front of her. What Sam was saying didn’t fit with the impression she’d gotten of him.
“No, I’m not,” he insisted. “I run a frontier saloon. It’s a wild life.”
Julia knit her brow. “Haskell doesn’t seem all that wild to me. In fact, it seems like a peaceful, growing town. And isn’t Sheriff Knighton your friend? And Mr. Montrose?”
He finished with the chairs and glanced up at her with a frown. “It’s important for any saloonkeeper to be on good terms with the sheriff, in case he needs the help of a lawman to break up a fight.”
Julia wasn’t buying his excuse at all. She did her best to keep a straight face all the same. “And what about Mr. Montrose?”
Sam shrugged, glancing away from her, and moved to tidy up the corner where her empty trunk stood. “Travis runs the livery. It’s good business to know how to get drunk customers back to their homes and families late at night.”
“Whereas all you need to do to get back to your family at night is walk down the back hallway.” She grinned at him, then he winced.
“Look,” he said, striding toward her once the corner was neat. “My life has been a rugged one. I’ve lived most of my years by the skin of my teeth, out on the wild frontier. I’ve seen shoot-outs and riots that would turn your hair white.”
“And now you are a respected businessman living in a thriving town,” she added before he could go on.
He stopped halfway through taking a breath, mouth hanging open. His face slowly went red and his eyes glowed as if he were offended by something. At last, he closed his mouth and breathed out through his nose. “Domesticity is for old dogs and tame horses.”
