A Mail-Order Christmas Bride

by Livia J. Washburn

  Instead, he held it out to her. She took it and climbed unsteadily to her feet as she opened the bag.

  She reached inside, grasped the .41 caliber derringer, brought it up, and fired one of the barrels into the middle of Jake Banning’s face.

  Banning’s head jerked back, but he didn’t fall even though he was already dead on his feet. He just stood there swaying instead. Abby whirled around and tried to bring the derringer to bear on Dobbs so she could fire the other barrel, but Dobbs had already yanked his revolver from its holster. Flame spouted from its barrel as the weapon’s blast filled the room.

  Abby felt the bullet’s impact. She wasn’t sure where she was hit, but it was hard enough to knock her down.

  Shawn surged to his feet and charged past her, still tied to the chair but taking it with him. He lowered his head and roared furiously. Dobbs’s gun went off again as Shawn plowed into him. The collision drove the rustler and would-be killer backward. Shawn kept ramming into Dobbs until the back of the man’s head hit the fireplace mantel with a soggy thump.

  Dobbs fell into the fire, scattering sparks and chunks of burning firewood around him. The fact that he didn’t leap up from the flames told Abby that he was dead, too.

  She felt a hot, wet heat filling her, stealing the strength from her muscles, but as Shawn swung away from Dobbs and cried, “Abby! My God, Abby!”, that gave her the resolve to stand up. She stumbled toward him, clutched at him as he said, “You’re shot!”

  “Go after...Hudson,” she gasped. “Save...Wes.”

  She slid down his body, unable to stay on her feet any longer.

  His face ravaged by fear, anger, and grief, Shawn threw himself back against the side of the fireplace, crashing into the stone until the chair splintered and fell apart. He yanked the ropes off his wrists and ankles and dashed to the door. He threw it open and ran out into the night.

  Abby rolled onto her side and then her stomach. She was too weak to stand up, but she was able to push and pull herself along with her hands and feet until she could look out the door. Snow blew in through the opening, but through that gauzy white curtain, in the light that spilled through the doorway, she saw Cecil Hudson struggling to stay in the saddle of a spooked horse and hang on to Wes at the same time.

  Suddenly, Wes tore free and fell to the ground. Shawn was beside him in an instant, scooping him up, away from the horse’s flashing hooves. Behind him, Hudson raised a gun and pointed it at Shawn’s back.

  Even over the howl of the wind, Abby heard the frenzied squawking as Chester came sailing out of the night. The goose’s wings flailed at Hudson and caused the shot he fired to go wild. That blast was enough to make the horse bolt and take off in a dead run, vanishing into the storm.

  With a trembling Wes cradled against him, Shawn ran back into the house. He set Wes on the floor and dropped to his knees beside Abby, rolling her onto her back and then drawing her up into his lap.

  “Pa, is she gonna be all right, is she gonna be all right?”

  Shawn was trembling, too. Abby felt the little vibrations going through his body as he held her against him.

  “She has to be,” he choked out. “She has to be.”

  She tilted her head back so she could look up into his face.

  “Shawn...” she whispered. “I’m...sorry...”

  “You don’t have to be,” he told her. “You didn’t know. You were just...doing your job.”

  “I...did know...I knew you love Wes...and that I love you...”

  Her eyelids slid closed, but before oblivion claimed her, she heard Shawn say, “I love you, too.”

  She went into the darkness with a smile on her face.

  ****

  And she came out of it an unknowable time later to see Shawn sitting in a chair beside the bed where she lay. His head was tipped forward and his eyes were closed.

  He was asleep, she realized.

  And she was still alive.

  “Shawn,” she said. Her voice sounded surprisingly strong to her ears.

  His head jerked up and his eyes opened. Then they got even wider as he realized she was awake.

  “Thank God!” he said as he leaned forward and clasped one of her hands in both of his.

  “You’re all right?” she asked. “Wes is...all right?”

  “We’re both fine,” he told her. “It’s Christmas morning and there’s a foot of snow on the ground, but everything’s all right.”

  Maybe she wasn’t quite as strong as she had thought at first.

  “How badly...am I hurt?”

  “That bullet plowed a crease in your side. You lost some blood and you’re going to have to rest up for a good long while, but I think you’ll be fine.”

  She closed her eyes and let out a sigh. Lying here in a warm bed, with Shawn holding her hand...well, maybe getting shot was worth it.

  Then her eyes snapped open again.

  “Those terrible men,” she said. “And Hudson...”

  “The bodies are out in the barn. All three of them.”

  “Three...?”

  “Hudson only made it a hundred yards or so before that runaway horse threw him. He broke his neck when he landed.”

  “How horrible.”

  Shawn shrugged and said, “At least he won’t be coming after Wes and me again. I reckon that means Chandler will have to send somebody else after us, wherever Wes and I settle next.”

  “No.” Again Abby was surprised, this time by her vehemence. “We’re not going to let him get away with it.”

  “We?” Shawn repeated with a raised eyebrow.

  “Like I told you...we can fight this. With all the power of the agency behind us, we can get to the truth. We’ll find another judge who will listen to us and believe us, one who can’t be bribed.”

  “You really think you can get some eastern judge to take the word of a Texas cowboy? That’s one reason Chandler hated me in the first place, because I’m a Westerner. He didn’t think I was good enough for his daughter.”

  “You’re good enough for any woman,” Abby said. “But...I’m not sure I’m good enough for you.”

  “Don’t you say that! If it weren’t for you, likely we’d both be dead now and Wes would be on his way back to live with that wicked old man. You took a bullet for us.”

  “I’m the one who led Hudson to you in the first place.”

  Stubbornly, Shawn shook his head.

  “He was like a bulldog. He would’ve found us sooner or later. But you being here...you saved us, Abby.” Shawn’s hands tightened on hers. “You saved us in more ways than one. I figured we’d always be running and grieving...that’s why I couldn’t let myself be in love with you, no matter how much I wanted to. I didn’t want to saddle you with all our troubles.” He smiled. “Not some poor, mixed-up mail-order bride.”

  “I wished I really was your mail-order bride. You don’t know how many times I wished it.”

  “Maybe we can make part of that come true. Not the mail-order part...” He leaned over and kissed her tenderly, then whispered, “The bride part.”

  She tried to lift both arms to put them around his neck, but it hurt her bandaged side when she raised the left one. So she settled for winding the right one around his neck and drawing him closer to kiss him again.

  A floorboard creaked, and Wes pushed the door open a little more to peer in and ask, “Is Abby awake yet?” Then he laughed and said, “I reckon she must be!”

  Abby smiled into Shawn’s eyes and said, “He sounds like a good Texas boy already. If I have anything to say about it, he always will be.” Then, she went on. “Help me sit up.”

  As Shawn did so, Abby realized she was wearing one of her nightdresses. He must have put it on her after tending to her wound, she thought. The idea didn’t bother her. In fact, it seemed right, natural.

  As soon as she had recovered sufficiently, they would find out just how right and natural they could be together, she vowed.

  But there was something else to t
ake care of first. She beckoned Wes to the bed. When he stood there beside her, she said, “You still have that drawing you made, don’t you?”

  “Yeah.” He looked a little sheepish. “I was so mad I thought about throwin’ it in the fireplace, but I didn’t.”

  “I’m glad, because you have to add something to it. You need to have Chester in the picture, too.”

  “That crazy goose?” Shawn said. “You mean on a platter on the table for Christmas dinner?”

  “You know good and well that’s not what I mean! He may be this family’s Christmas goose from now on, but he’s not going to be a meal.”

  “Well, all right,” Shawn said. “Can you add him to the picture, Wes?”

  “Sure,” Wes said, nodding eagerly. “And I like what you said, Abby.”

  “You mean about Chester?” she asked.

  “No. When you said ‘this family’.”

  She reached with her good arm to draw him closer to her and rest his head on her shoulder, and as Shawn leaned in and nuzzled a kiss against her cheek, happiness filled her so much she was barely able to say, “I like it, too.”

  About the Author—Livia J. Washburn

  Livia Reasoner has been writing professionally for over 30 years. Under her maiden name Livia J. Washburn, she received the Private Eye Writers of America award and the American Mystery award for the first Lucas Hallam mystery, WILD NIGHT, and the Peacemaker for her short story, Charlie’s Pie. Her website is www.liviajwashburn.com

  She lives in the small Texas town she grew up in with her husband, NY Times bestselling author, James Reasoner and a pack of rescue dogs.

  A Long Way From St. Louis

  Kathleen Rice Adams

  A sprig of mistletoe and a change of scenery rekindle a forbidden flame.

  Chapter One

  If the lazy beast lounging on a bench beside the depot’s doors were any indication, the west was neither wooly nor wild. As a porter took her hand to assist her from the railway car, Elizabeth Adair stared. The cowboy’s worn boots crossed at the ends of denim-clad legs slung way out in front of him. Chin resting on his chest, hat covering his face, the man presented the perfect picture of indolence.

  Surely her husband-to-be employed a more industrious type of Texan.

  Her gaze fixed on the cowboy’s peculiar hat. A broad brim surrounded a crown with a dent carved down the center. Sweat stains decorated the buff-colored felt. Splotches of drying mud decorated the rest of him.

  Lazy and slovenly.

  Pellets of ice sprinkled from the gray sky, melting the instant they touched her traveling cloak. Already she shivered. Another few minutes in this horrid weather, and the garment would be soaked through.

  The porter raised his voice over the din of the bustling crowd. “Miss, let’s get you inside before you take a chill. I’ll bring your trunks right away.”

  Taking her by the elbow, he hastened toward doors fitted with dozens of glass panes. Ragtag children darted among the passengers hurrying for shelter. Without overcoats, the urchins must be freezing.

  She glanced around the platform. Where was her groom? She had assumed a wealthy rancher would meet his fiancée upon her arrival. Perhaps he waited within the depot’s presumed warmth. Her hope for a smattering of sophistication dwindled, but a woman in her circumstances could ill afford to be picky.

  A group of ragamuffins gathered around the cowboy. As the porter hustled her past, the Texan reached into his sheepskin jacket and withdrew a handful of peppermint sticks. A whiff of the candy’s scent evoked the memory of a young man she once knew—a ne’er-do-well removed from St. Louis at her father’s insistence, and none too soon.

  After depositing her beside a potbellied stove, the porter disappeared into the multitude. The tang of wood smoke drifted around her, so much more pleasant than the oily stench of coal. Peering through the throng, she slipped her hands from her muff and allowed the hand-warmer to settle against her waist on its long chain. She’d best reserve the accessory for special occasions. Judging by the people milling about the room, she doubted she’d find Persian lamb in Fort Worth unless she stooped to ordering from a mail-order catalog.

  Mail-order. At least the marriage contract removed her from the whispered speculation, the piteous glances.

  The shame heaped upon her by the parents she’d tried so hard to please.

  Elizabeth put her back to the frigid gusts that swept in every time the doors opened, extending gloved palms toward the warmth cast by the stove.

  Heavy steps tromped up behind her. Peppermint tickled her nose.

  “Bets?”

  A gasp leapt down her throat, colliding with her heart’s upward surge. Her palm flew to the base of her collar. Bets? Deep and smooth, the voice triggered a ten-year-old memory: If ye were aulder, little girl, I’d teach ye more than how to kiss.

  She whirled to find the lazy cowboy, his stained hat dangling from one hand. Her gaze rose to a face weathered by the elements, but the blue eyes, the crooked nose…

  Brendan Sheppard.

  ****

  The image of a beautiful, unattainable girl had burned through Brend’s memory more times than he could count. The full-grown woman staring up at him now both outdid and fell short of the recollection.

  Parted cupid’s-bow lips, nipped by the cold, still begged for an honest-to-God kiss. A strawberry curl fell beside cheeks burnished pink by the stove’s warmth.

  Inside his glove, the pleasure of velvety skin whispered across the backs of his knuckles. He flexed his hand.

  From the ostrich plume on her hat to the hem of a deep-blue skirt, Bets embodied the essence of elegance. But the flicker in the depths of dark-honey eyes… Somewhere inside the high-class lady she was born to be hid the girl who enjoyed flirting with danger.

  Wide eyes blinked, and a snub slid onto her face. She no longer had use for the riffraff who’d sneaked into the garden and stolen a kiss under a sprig of mistletoe she held over her head. A no-account much too common for a rich-man’s sixteen-year-old daughter had paid quite a price for that mistake. If ye were aulder, little girl…

  No doubt she’d rather not remember the incident, but she hadn’t forgotten…and she wasn’t a little girl anymore.

  A breath slid beneath the fingertips pressed to her cloak at her collarbone. When she hiked her chin, the fluffy plume on her hat bobbed. He sank his teeth into the inside corner of his mouth to squelch a grin.

  He’d waited a long time for this moment.

  She pointed a bland gaze at the bridge of his nose. “What are you doing here?”

  “Boss sent me into town to fetch a shipment for the ranch. What’re you doing here? Fort Worth’s a long way from St. Louis.”

  “I—” Her gaze darted away but snapped right back. “I came to join my husband.”

  “He didn’t meet you at the train?”

  “Of course he did.” If she raised her chin any higher, her neck would snap. “He’s fetching my trousseau.”

  “Ah, newlyweds.” Controlling his expression proved more difficult by the minute. “My best wishes to you and the groom.”

  She attempted to peek around him. “Thank you.”

  “I’ll wait with you until he returns.” A tic kicked up in his cheek. Damn that grin. “Fine lady like you shouldn’t be alone. This isn’t the kind of town that—”

  She smacked him with a barely disguised glare. “I do not require assistance from a man of your caliber.”

  “A man of my caliber.” If he narrowed one eye, he could still see the rebellious debutante at the society ball. “I don’t recall you objecting—”

  “Mr. Adair will return momentarily. Please go away.” She snapped the demand, then whirled in a flutter of petticoats. The silly feather on her hat waved a dismissal.

  Any second now, the laugh trying to burst from his throat would win the battle. “What does Mr. Adair look like? I’ll see if I can find him. Give him a hand with your…trousseau.”

  “No.” She sp
un so fast she nearly toppled. “If you don’t leave at once, I’ll see you run out of this town, too.”

  “Good luck.” A simple shift in his weight backed her up. “I’m not quite the rounder I was in my youth, but I can still hold my own. Out here, that’s respected.”

  He feinted forward again. She inched backward another step. He crowded her back even farther. “You get any closer to that stove, you’ll scorch your fancy skirt.”

  The hand she raised to smooth her hair trembled. “My husband—”

  “Divorced you last year.” He dropped the reins on the grin and winked. “That trousseau? Somebody paid a pretty penny to bring a bride to Texas.”

  The shock on her face was worth every cent.

  Chapter Two

  A dark mist threatened her vision by the time Elizabeth remembered to breathe. She’d agreed to marry one Jacobus Smith—a prosperous landowner who promised to give her the life she deserved.

  Not Brendan Sheppard, a hooligan, scoundrel, and thief.

  Her knees wobbled.

  The filthy brute took hold of her shoulders. “Steady there. Don’t want you collapsing on our wedding day. That would put a crimp in our wedding night.”

  “Unhand me at once.” An attempt to shrug free failed. “I’ve no intention of fainting.”

  The smirking cad relaxed his grip but didn’t turn her loose. “Could’ve fooled me.”

  “Fooling a fool is not difficult.”

  He winked. “Apparently not.”

  “If you do not release me this instant, I shall summon a policeman.”

  “Here?” He glanced around with a huff of amusement. “This town’s got a marshal and two deputies. None of them have time to hang around the train station.” Nevertheless, the abominable beast removed his paws from her person.

  Before she could strike his cheek, he clamped both of her wrists at her sides. A pang in her chest drew a gasp through her lips. Even through his gloves and hers, her skin remembered his touch.