He tipped his hat again, then nudged his horse down the street at a quiet amble. Charlene walked on, bemused by the crowd waiting outside the Apple Tree. Striding amid them, smiling a little, saying politely, “Excuse me,” from time to time, she made her way through the dozen or so women to the door. They, for the most part, were of her own age at twenty-two, some older, some younger, and not all of them were single.
Ducking her head, she opened the door on the bell’s little jingle, and quickly closed the door behind her. “Jean, did you see –”
Looking up, Charlene stopped dead in her tracks.
Talking to Jean and Harold he turned at the sound of her voice. His looks were beyond striking. Tall with the grace of a hunting cougar, she swallowed hard. Eyes the color of dark storm clouds pierced through her, sleek black hair hung to his shoulders from under a wide-brimmed hat. Broad shoulders beneath his brown coat appeared impossibly strong, his cheekbones high, his nose like a hawk’s.
Taking a step forward, Charlene almost fell down in a swoon.
Chapter Two
Tyler immediately swept his hat from his head. Offering the young lady a short bow, he said, “Good afternoon, miss.”
His heart raced. Never before had he seen a girl of such raw beauty, a creature that appeared so delicate, and yet unearthly strong. Large hazel eyes in a heart-shaped face stared into his for a long moment. Her red hair hung in a thick braid over her shoulder to her hip, and he swore her waist was so tiny he could fit both his hands around it.
The girl returned a quick, polite curtsey, then walked toward them. “Um, there’s a –” she began, half turning to point toward the door. Mrs. Maple hustled from behind the counter, beaming, and settled her arm around the girl’s shoulders before she could finish her sentence. “Charlene, I want you to meet someone.”
Guiding the girl toward him, she went on, “This is Mr. Tyler Price, he is new in town. Mr. Price, this is Miss Charlene Quinn, who works for us.”
Tyler gently squeezed the small hand held out to him in formal greeting, his lips quirked upward. “A pleasure to meet you, Miss Quinn.”
“Likewise, Mr. Price.”
“Mr. Price recently moved to Bandera,” Mrs. Maple continued brightly, “isn’t that so?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Tyler replied, unable to take his eyes off the girl, despite how rude it was. “I purchased an old ranch by the Medina River.”
Miss Quinn nodded. “The Mill Ranch. Yes, it is a very nice piece of land. Now if you will excuse me, I really should be working. Good day, Mr. Price.”
She offered a brief nod and no smile. He watched her vanish behind the curtain and into the back room, and could not help but admire her grace of movement, the gentle sway of her hips under her skirt. That is one fine looking lady. He turned back to Mr. and Mrs. Maple, and found both eyeing him, Mr. Maple with amusement, Mrs. Maple with calculation.
“Ah,” he said, clearing his throat. “Where were we?”
“You were in the midst of placing your order for supplies,” Mr. Maple said, grinning faintly. “So far I have coffee, beans, salt, sugar, flour. What else?”
“Uh.”
Tyler forced himself to redirect his thoughts back to the matter at hand and not on Miss Quinn’s petite backside. “Yes, do you have nails?”
“Yes, sir. Come in ten-pound sacks.”
“One of those and a hammer. The shingles are loose on the ranch house’s roof.”
Continuing down his mental list of everything he needed, Tyler finally felt satisfied that he had everything. Feeling a bit uncomfortable under Mrs. Maple’s scrutiny, he paid for his goods, then took what was immediately available out to his buckboard. Fetching a deep sigh, he noted the women of the town still lingered around the front of the store.
He tried a smile. “Ladies.”
Several giggled, covering their lips with their hands as he stowed his belongings in the wagon. “Mr. Price?”
He turned, finding a young lady in a pink sunbonnet near his elbow, staring up at him as though she gazed at the Lord himself. She stuck out her hand for his shake. “I’m Marsha Taylor. It’s good to meet you.”
He tipped his hat. “The pleasure is all mine, Miss Taylor.”
Though she was pretty, as were most of these women who hoped to attract his attention, he noted not one could hold a candle to Miss Quinn. While she did not appear exactly cold toward him, nor did she appear welcoming, either, he recognized the stunned look in her eyes when she first set them on him.
Tyler knew his looks generated a great deal of comment and admiration from women. Having long since grown a thick skin when it came to that aspect of himself, he did his best to ignore it. He considered it just a part of him, like having two hands and two feet, and only when he was younger did his own handsomeness and women throwing themselves at him go to his head.
However, at times like these when having women crowd around him, staring, did he start to become annoyed. He and Mr. Maple were forced to carry his sacks of goods through a pack of females who did not seem inclined to give way. Finally, Mr. Maple had had enough, to Tyler’s amusement.
“Ladies,” the shopkeeper said, his voice carrying, “now unless you are planning to go inside and buy a trinket or a bolt of cloth from my wife, you are loitering in front of my store. Please move along.”
With disappointed mutters, the small crowd dispersed, smiling at him over their shoulders. They wandered back down the street, talking and laughing among themselves. Tyler shook his head. “Sorry about that.”
“Did you invite them?”
Tyler gazed at the heavyset Mr. Maple with brown hair and silver at his temples and grinned. “No, sir.”
“Then it’s not your fault. Come on, let’s get the rest of your supplies loaded.”
Under Mrs. Maple’s watchful eye, her chestnut hair also lined with tendrils of gray, Tyler carried sacks of his goods over his shoulder to toss into the buckboard. Wishing the delightful Miss Quinn would show herself again, Tyler was not so lucky in that regard. The Maples had informed him she had worked for them for the last year and a half, and they loved her as they would their own daughter.
“There you are, Mr. Price,” Mr. Maple said as they threw the last sack onto the pile.
“Tyler, please.”
The other man grinned as they shook hands. “Harold.”
“A right pleasure, Harold. Give my regards to your missus.”
“I will. And to Miss Quinn.”
Tyler climbed into the seat of the buckboard, picked up his reins, and released the hand brake. He eyed Harold sidelong. “Beautiful girl,” he said, his tone neutral.
“Might make a man a good wife,” Harold said, the grin still on his face, his hands in his pockets, “should a man be so inclined.”
“Good to know.”
Tyler touched his fingers to his hat brim in a quick salute. “Harold.”
Whistling through his teeth at the mules, he slapped their rumps with the reins. They started off down the dirt-packed main street at a quick trot, carrying him past the bank, the assayer’s office, the hotel – a huge white sprawling building. Yet, before he reached the end of town, heading toward his new home, a man on a rangy dun gelding blocked his path.
“Whoa,” Tyler called to the mules, reining them in. He recognized the star badge on the man’s leather vest. “Can I help you?”
The sheriff reined the horse around beside his seat, sticking out his hand. “Victor Barker, Mr. Price,” he said as Tyler accepted his hand to shake. “Thought to stop and introduce myself. Care for a beer before you head on back to your place?”
“Only if you’re buying.”
“I am.”
Turning the mule team around in the middle of the street, Tyler followed Sheriff Barker back down the street to the saloon. Reining them in, he jumped down from the buckboard’s high seat and tied the lead mule’s bridle to the post. Following Barker into the dim and cool saloon, he breathed in the odors of sawdust and bee
r, listening to the piano player pound out a song he didn’t recognize.
“Beer, please,” Barker called out as they crossed the dingy wood flooring.
Leading him to a table, Barker sat down and placed his hat on the stained wood planks. Tyler did the same as the barmaid brought them two foaming beers in tall mugs. The sheriff dropped a few coins into her hand and watched her return to the bar. After taking a long draught of his beer, Barker said, “It be a right hot day, Mr. Price.”
“Tyler. And yes it is. I hear it isn’t even as hot as it will get in these parts.”
“Call me Vic,” Barker went on, nodding his silver head. “Yes, sir, you came to one of the hottest regions in Texas.”
“Good thing I like the heat,” Tyler said, drinking his beer with gulps. “Bandera seems like a nice town. Good ranching community.”
“That it is.” Victor gave him a long look from rather piercing blue eyes. “Where do you hail from, Tyler?”
“Colorado, mostly. Spent a few years in west Texas, El Paso, then decided to move here. The ranch I bought came dirt cheap, as you may have heard.”
“So, you’re looking to settle down? Raise a family?”
Tyler sat back in his chair with a grin. “Are you headed somewhere with this, Vic?”
“Lots of nice girls in Bandera, Tyler,” Victor replied, his tone bland, and sipped his beer.
“Why do I get the idea you’re pointing me toward one or two in particular?”
Victor shrugged, nonchalant. “I ain’t. But I can give you the skinny on a few of our single misses should you be so, well, let’s say, interested.”
“All right.” Tyler leaned his arms on the table. “Let’s us pretend that I am indeed searching for a wife, hypothetical like. So. Tell me about Charlene Quinn.”
Victor nodded and drank his beer. “Very good choice to start with. Lovely girl, comes from a good family. But a terrible shame.”
“What terrible shame?”
“About a year and a half ago, I believe it was,” Victor replied, lowering his voice slightly, his eyes on Tyler’s, “the Quinn family ranch house caught fire. Of Mr. and Mrs. Quinn and their three children, only Mrs. and Miss Quinn survived.”
“Oh, Lord.”
“Yep.” Victor nodded. “Dan Quinn and their two boys, Dan Junior and Russell, all died. Mrs. Quinn sits in the house at the end of town, moping, while Charlene works her fingers to the bone to support her.”
“What happened to their ranch, their land?”
“Bank took it. Now all the Quinn women have is each other.”
Tyler stared at the wooden wall of the saloon, trying to imagine losing half his family, and it brought back the tearing sense of loss when he thought of Mary. “That is so sad.”
“Yep. Sure is.”
“I met Miss Quinn,” Tyler went on, not looking at Victor out of fear his penetrating gaze might decipher what lay in Tyler’s head. “She seems like a strong lady.”
“That she is,” Victor agreed, setting his empty mug on the table. “Little gal like that, losing her dad and her brothers, making sure her mother don’t want for nothing. The Maples, them that run the general store, they own that house the Quinn's live in, won’t take a dime for rent.”
“That is good of them. They seem like good, kind people.”
“That they are, Tyler, that they are.”
Tyler eyed him over the rim of his mug. “So, if I were interested, hypothetically, in finding a missus, who else can you tell me about?”
Victor pulled his pocket watch from his vest and squinted myopically down at it. “Look at the time, Tyler. We done chatted all my time away. You set right there and finish your beer and have a safe trip back to your place.”
Rising, Victor settled his hat on his head and then patted him on the shoulder as he walked from their table. He strode from the saloon, leaving Tyler to chuckle into his beer. “Now that was a pointed discussion, you old geezer,” he muttered.
Finishing, Tyler stood up and put his hat back on, then headed out into the blinding sunlight after the dim interior of the saloon. Squinting, he untied his mule from the post, then climbed up into the buckboard’s seat. Taking a moment to look toward the Apple Tree store, he caught a rapid glimpse of Miss Quinn helping to load packages into a buggy, and an old woman with a stooped back directing her.
After the goods were loaded, Miss Quinn helped the old woman into the seat, then waved as the buggy, pulled by a gray horse, rolled down the street. Tyler thought he saw her glance toward him, hesitate for a moment, then vanish back inside the store.
Tyler bowed in her direction. “Miss Quinn,” he murmured.
* * *
He could not get the image of Charlene Quinn’s face out of his mind. Tyler had met her once, and she was nothing to him. Still, that heart-shaped face, those huge hazel eyes haunted his every waking step. Nor, did he think, his thoughts of her stemmed from two different men dropping very obvious hints about Miss Quinn as a possible wife.
“I’m not interested in getting married,” he said, hammering nails into the shingles on the roof of what was now his home. “I just moved here for heaven’s sake. This house isn’t fit for a bride yet.”
Despite his insistence that he didn’t want or need a wife at the moment, or any desire to put on his courting plumage, Charlene still haunted him. Taking a moment, kneeling on the roof, he gazed out over the Medina River which flowed nearby. He had bought this five-hundred-acre property with the intention of someday marrying and starting a family, hoping to build it into a successful cattle ranch in this beautiful land.
“Do I want to get to know her now?”
Part of him did indeed want to see her again. After all, he merely had to close his eyes to see her again. Yet, this house’s roof leaked, the floors needed work, and he had only bits and pieces of furniture to fill it with. At the moment, his bed was a straw pallet.
Turning his head, he looked over the big barn, the sheds, and the corral which currently held only two horses and two mules. The ranch came with about a hundred head of cattle that had been roaming free and wild over the property since its prior owners had passed on. They needed branding, the young carted off to market, fences fixed and strengthened. The barn needed repairs, a garden planted, and a smokehouse built.
“All this and no one to share it with.”
Tyler, startled by what had just emerged from his own mouth, shook his head. “I don’t need a woman.”
A memory of Mary drifted into his mind – sweet, loving, beautiful Mary. He had been prepared to marry, settle down with Mary as his wife, raise little Tylers and Marys. But it was not to be. He had left his old life far behind and came here in the hopes of starting his life over. Tyler had a ranch now, money in the bank, and a past he wanted to forget.
Tyler chuckled to himself as he tossed the hammer up and down in his hand. “I don’t think she much liked me anyway. She sure didn’t act like the rest of the girls in town.”
And he was smart enough to know that was part of what drew him to Charlene. After that first shock of seeing him, she behaved as though he was just another customer, offering him politeness and no more. While the others fawned over him, she didn’t even come out of the back room. “I like her,” Tyler admitted to himself. “She’s different.”
Dropping the hammer, he ran his hands through his oily hair, slicked with sweat from the merciless heat and humidity. He worked shirtless, sweat trickling in streams down his chest and back. Reaching for a pitcher of water, he drank some of the lukewarm liquid, then poured the rest over his face and head. It failed to cool him by much.
Knowing how easily the humidity can kill a man, he worked for only a few more hours, then picked up his hammer, pitcher and shirt and climbed down the ladder to the ground. He stood in the shade of the house for a moment, relishing the cooler air on his wet flesh, then dropped everything on the front porch, but he picked up his rifle.
Heading to the river for a quick dunking and wa
sh, Tyler kept a sharp watch for rattlesnakes, water moccasins and copperheads, all venomous snakes that lived in this area of Texas. Though he was only a few miles from Bandera, he was a long way from help if he got himself snake bit. Whistling under his breath, he strode amid a grove of young mesquite trees, their sharp thorns reaching for him.
The Medina River flowed smoothly past him, just a few feet under the top of its banks. Though he had not witnessed it for himself, he had been told of the heavy rains earlier in the spring that made the river rise to the point it almost flooded the area. Knowing of a small pool where frogs and turtles liked to linger, as well as the serpents that dined on them, Tyler headed that way, thinking of bathing there.
An Unconventional Bride For The Rancher (Historical Western Romance) Page 2
