Last Chance Bride

by Jillian Hart

  Chapter Two

  Libby waited patiently while Jacob checked her into the hotel, surprising her by paying ahead for the entire week. He stood solemnly, counting out bills.

  Every worried knot inside her unraveled. He was an admirable man. Strong. Dependable. He was a man strong enough to be tender.

  Last winter she had nearly dropped her newspaper at the sight of the advertisement. “Lonely widower seeks kindhearted woman for mother to six-year-old daughter.” Just the sight of those words gave her hope; a hope she needed so desperately. Kind. Wife. Mother. Images of a family fell into her mind like the snow from the sky outside the boarding house window.

  She had hoped he would never have to know. Honesty. He wanted honesty between them.

  “I’ll take her bags,” Jacob said in his low, rumbling voice that skidded down her spine like warm water.

  Libby watched him thank the desk clerk. He was wellspoken and polite; she liked that. He ambled toward her, sure and powerful, and the sight of him made her stomach twist.

  She followed him up the stairs and into the first room on the second floor. With every step she took, Libby knew she had to be honest with Jacob Stone. He deserved the truth.

  He set the bags on the foot of the bed, and she closed the door. A question lit his gray eyes.

  “You were honest with me,” she said, clenching her hands together. She didn’t want him to see how she trembled. “It’s the least I can do for you.”

  “I see.” He straightened, a wariness creeping into his face. “So, I’m not the only one with secrets.”

  “No.” Libby squared her shoulders and met his unflinching gaze. What she had to say would not be easy. “As you suspect I am not an innocent.”

  He neither grimaced nor judged her. Jacob Stone merely dipped his head slightly as he answered. “That does not matter to me.”

  “Good, because there’s more.” She would tell him the truth, and he would leave. Libby stared hard at the plank floor. “I don’t know, I mean, I’m not certain.”

  It’s too early to tell.

  “You don’t want to marry me?” he asked.

  She looked up into eyes filled with concern. His concern for her. She didn’t want to say what followed. Best to just blurt it out. “I could be pregnant.”

  “Pregnant?”

  “I’m not certain,” Libby hedged. He’s going to leave me.

  But Jacob Stone said nothing. He stared down at his large, empty hands. Libby stood motionless, her heart thudding painfully in her chest. She thought of Emma and that big sparkle of hope in the girl’s blue eyes.

  “This is unexpected news.” He spoke slowly, as if carefully weighing his words. “After all, we have been corresponding.”

  She could hear his condemnation. “I did not come here thinking I could pawn off another man’s child on you.” Although she had considered not telling him during the overland trip.

  “I didn’t think you would.” Jacob Stone faced her, his gaze no longer averted but leveled powerfully on hers. At that moment Libby could not deny the physical strength in the man nor the emotional power she felt with the blast of that gaze. He spoke. “In your letters you led me to understand you had no other prospects for marriage.”

  “I have none now,” Libby admitted sadly, feeling her heart drum ever harder in her chest.

  “Not even with the man who may have fathered a child with you?” Jacob stepped closer, so close she could see the black flecks of color in his gray eyes and smell the leather and smoke scent of him.

  “No.”

  “You could have written me about this.”

  “I didn’t know what to say,” Libby answered honestly. He looked both sad and angry at once with his thick fingers gripping the brim of his hat and his jaw set like stone. He would never understand. “You had the same problem, letting me believe you wanted a real wife.”

  He bowed his head. “Yes, I guess that’s true. We’re even then.”

  Silence fell between them like sunlight through the windowpanes.

  Libby braced herself. “If you decide you no longer have any interest in me, I thoroughly understand, Mr. Stone.”

  There, she had said it. Those words had taken more courage than she knew she had.

  Jacob Stone cleared his throat and didn’t speak. After a quick glance around the room, he lowered his eyes. Libby watched him, clearly a proper, hardworking and decent man, who had no doubt caught sight of the wide bed in the exact center of the room. A bed she was also aware of.

  What must he think of her? She looked at the plain quilted coverlet, once white and already yellowing. Did Jacob Stone look at that bed and wonder what kind of woman she was?

  He strode across the small room and tugged open the window. A hot, dry breeze tumbled inside, but it was far from refreshing. The street noise from below blew in with the wind. Libby knew she would never be good enough for him, not now when he knew she had considered deceiving him.

  “I never wanted a wife.” He stood before the opened window, sunlight glinting on his dark hair, brightening it, and cast his face in shadow. “I took one look at you and I bolted.”

  “You ran?”

  “I’d ventured halfway down the street this morning before I realized my foolishness. I invited you out here, and yet I am terrified of you. You’re young and pretty. From your letters, I expected someone different. Older.”

  “I’m not all that pretty,” Libby spoke up, touched at once by his words. “I just want a home. A real one.”

  Jacob Stone remained silent, staring out the window still and motionless, outlined by the distant blue-white peaks of the Bitterroot mountains. What was he thinking?

  “I can’t give you what you want.” He didn’t turn to look at her. He stood broad-shouldered, his muscled legs parted, his booted feet planted on the bare plank boards. “We’ve spent over six months corresponding. That amount of time should tell you right there how unsure I am of making a marriage again.”

  Grief haunted his words, and the echoes of that grief hung in the air like the thick Montana dust. She hated seeing him hurt. Libby wanted to reach out and comfort him, but how could she? It was not her right.

  He turned, approaching, his jaw set, his gaze intense, a decision clear in his eyes. “Tell me something. Will he follow you here?”

  “No.”

  “Then it is none of my concern.” Jacob pinned her with his hard, assessing gaze. “You say you are not certain.”

  Libby blanched. “No. It is too early yet to know for sure either way.”

  “When will you know?”

  It was such a private question, and while Libby wanted to say so, she also knew he was affected by the answer. “Soon enough, maybe this week.”

  “Fine.” He frowned. Libby watched his gaze stray to her bags that were still on the bed where he’d left them. “You’ll stay here until you know the answer to my question. We will make the appropriate arrangements then.”

  He hadn’t sent her away outright. Libby’s breath caught. “If I’m not...will you still wish to marry me?”

  “I don’t know.” Jacob Stone pinned her with the full weight of his cool gaze. “I counted on this match working. Emma needs a mother. We’ve spent time exchanging letters, and you’ve traveled all this way. I don’t want to go through that again.”

  In those eyes Libby didn’t see hatred or condemnation, and it surprised her. Standing before him, aware of his height and his breadth and his strength, she saw not his handsomeness but the sadness in his eyes. And an understanding that touched her inside, in her heart where nothing had touched her for years.

  “Then there’s hope?” she asked.

  “I have no promises to give you.” Jacob shook his head. “You put me in an awkward situation. I don’t know how Emma will take this if you have to leave.”

  He didn’t want her now. Libby closed her eyes, tears hot beneath her lids. It was over.

  She heard the sounds of the door opening, of Jacob Stone�
��s boots striding out into the hall, of the door closing and latching. But when she opened her eyes, Libby still hoped to see him standing there at the window, a man with honesty and compassion ringing in his voice.

  Who was she fooling, Libby asked herself. Anyone could see she’d ruined her chances of marrying Jacob Stone. She brought up her unvirtuous situation. She caused him to be angry and forced him to walk out on her.

  Anyone could see he wasn’t coming back.

  Jacob pounded down the stairs and through the lobby, out into the glaring summer heat, inwardly cussing himself for what he’d done. But any way he looked at it—whether Elizabeth Hodges was pregnant or not—she was not the woman he wanted to raise his daughter.

  He marched down the long boardwalk, dodging Mrs. Holt carrying packages out of the mercantile, hardly aware of the traffic on the street and the ever present buzz of the sawmill at the end of town.

  He didn’t know her well enough to expect her to show up pregnant. No, possibly pregnant. She didn’t even know for sure.

  Then why the hell did she have to tell him?

  Because she was an honest woman.

  “Pa!” Emma hopped out onto the boardwalk in a swirl of red calico. “Where’s Miss Hodges?”

  Jacob’s heart wrenched at the sight of hope so bright in his daughter’s blue eyes. “She’s in her hotel room.”

  Better Emma know nothing of the type of woman who stepped off that stage.

  “Doing what?”

  “Unpacking. Resting from her long trip.”

  Emma sighed, sounding disappointed. “She’s still comin’ to supper, right?”

  Jacob felt the weight of the little girl’s hope settle on his shoulders. His heart wrenched. “I’m not sure, Emma.”

  “But you promised.” Her quietly spoken words struck him like an ax.

  “Yes, I guess I did.” He had so little to give her. How could he go back on his promise?

  Emma’s sweet smile stretched across her small face. “Pa, I want just one more thing.”

  “One more thing?” He rolled his eyes, teasing. “I’m afraid to ask. What is it?”

  She giggled. “I just want some new hair ribbons for tonight.”

  “Whew. I think we can do that. Have Jane help you.”

  “Oh, Pa. Thank you. I have to look my best for Miss Hodges.” Her entire heart shone in those words. She spun away, dashing back into the store, braids flying.

  He couldn’t disappoint Emma. Yet he couldn’t allow her to be hurt, either.

  Jacob stepped out into the street and gazed back at the hotel. How could Elizabeth go and ruin everything?

  Libby sank onto the soft mattress. She did the right thing, she knew it. Whatever lay ahead, she had faced her greatest fear. Now she could face herself. A lightness settled across her shoulders, and she felt calm for the first time in weeks. She’d done the right thing.

  When Jacob had written, asking her to marry him, she sat and cried over what she’d done. She feared she could never face him, nor tell him the truth about what happened. But as the long hours passed and the night deepened, Libby began to hope. Maybe it could still be. Maybe Jacob need never know. Perhaps she wasn’t pregnant.

  Libby had clung to that belief during the trying journey west, but as the nausea hit, she feared it was more than travel sickness. And she told herself it would be all right.

  Except now he didn’t want a wife in the real sense.

  Libby closed her eyes. She never meant to deceive him. She just wanted to love this man, the Jacob she’d created in her mind. She so wanted him to love her. Even now, she could not let go of hope.

  She could not bear to think she had lost him.

  Late that afternoon, washed and changed and nervous, Jacob took a step closer to the door and hesitated, standing like a fool in the middle of the narrow hotel corridor. Emma was home with Jane. A meal would be waiting.

  What would he say? He didn’t want to talk about it. He didn’t want to face the pretty and fragile woman he’d come to know through her letters. The woman he’d made up in his mind, so gentle and quietly humorous, would not have slept with another man.

  Anger thudded in his chest and he almost turned away. But he’d promised Emma. The remembered hope in her blue eyes kept him from running out of the hotel. He lifted his fist and knocked.

  “Who is it?” asked a quiet voice through the wood door. Elizabeth’s voice.

  “It’s Jacob.”

  The door swung open to reveal her thin, pale face. Kind blue eyes met his and he felt the impact straight to his gut. He caught a whiff of rose water, sweet and light, saw the careful coronet of tightly plaited braids crowning her head, heard the gasp of her breath telling him he’d surprised her.

  Hell, he surprised himself.

  “Can I come in? I want to talk with you.”

  “Yes.” Slim, graceful fingers gripped the edge of the door, pulling it open, allowing him room.

  He wanted to hate her for her duplicity. It would be easier if he could. Jacob slipped past her and stood in the middle of the room, the bed between them.

  Elizabeth carefully pushed the door to, but not shut. Silence settled between them. He fingered the hat he gripped in both hands.

  “Jacob,” she began. She looked breakable. “I’m sorry about this. I need you to believe that.”

  Sincerity burned in her eyes. He looked away. “I gave you a surprise, too. I’m sorry about that. I should have told you, I should have prepared you. You came all this way with expectations about a marriage and a family I can’t meet.”

  She blinked, embarrassment pinkening her pleasant face. “I’m the one who is wrong.”

  He couldn’t answer her. It took all his will to hold back the burning edge of rage—rage at her for being less than he had hoped, less than the mother Emma needed.

  “I received over fifty letters.” Hell, he shouldn’t have told her that.

  Surprise flickered in her eyes. “Fifty women wrote you?”

  “Emma and I read through every letter.”

  “I never imagined so many women would write you.”

  “Neither did I.” His breath caught. “Yours was the one she liked the most. So I wrote you.”

  She smiled, a softness crept across her plain oval face, changing her from pretty to beautiful.

  “I can’t tell you what your letters meant to me,” she said. “I was so alone, and suddenly I had someone to talk to, even if it was in writing.”

  His throat constricted. “Your letters meant a lot to Emma, too.”

  “I’m so glad.”

  Their gazes met. He saw sadness large enough to touch him.

  “Yours was the only advertisement I have ever answered,” she confessed. “Or that I ever wanted to.”

  She seemed so innocent, a touch shy. Beneath it all, she had to be a good woman. Jacob’s anger and disappointment tangled inside his chest, twisting painfully. He wanted to vent the rending confusion of his emotions. Hell if he knew what to say, and how to say it without hurting her. He’d never felt so helpless in his life.

  Maybe he should call this whole thing off. He could walk out the door and never look back.

  But he didn’t want to start looking for another woman. Elizabeth met every one of his requirements. She was kind, honest and gentle. And Emma wanted her. It was too late to go back, too soon to go forward.

  She ambled away from him with a swishing of her simple skirts. She wore a blue calico, he noticed now, nothing fancy or pretty, just a serviceable dress. This was the woman he’d imagined during those long months of correspondence.

  “I’ve brought a gift for Emma. May I give it to you? I want her to have it.”

  Jacob said nothing.

  Libby took that as an agreement as she crossed to the small bureau near the door. “I didn’t want to show up empty-handed. Now that things between us have changed...” Her throat closed. “I know I won’t be seeing her again, but this still belongs to her.”

  �
��You shouldn’t have gone to any trouble.”

  “Oh, it was no trouble, only pleasure.” She tugged out the drawer, risking a glance at him.

  He stood with hat in hand, his black hair neatly combed. He wore a crisp red flannel shirt and dark trousers and his boots shone, despite the thin light in the room.

  If only. Libby held back her heart as she extracted a wrapped bundle from the top bureau drawer and folded back the paper. She wanted Jacob’s friendship and his respect. How could she earn it now?

  Her hands trembled as she laid the doll on the dresser.

  “That is a lovely gift,” Jacob said, stepping forward to join her.

  Libby glanced up into the mirror’s reflection. With his head bent, she could see the cowlick at the back of his scalp. He seemed vulnerable somehow, despite his obvious strength and height and breadth. He lifted one thick-knuckled hand and brushed a finger across the doll’s happy cloth face and brown yarn braids.

  “You wrote me and said Emma had brown hair.”

  “Yes, I did.” He towered above her with emotion shining in his eyes. “This is an expensive doll.”

  “I purchased the fabric, but I made the doll,” Libby explained, pleased with her work. “I wanted something special to give Emma, something a mother might make for her daughter.”

  Jacob’s throat worked, and he turned away.

  She’d said the wrong thing. “I know I can’t expect anything from you, anything we agreed to months ago, but I made this doll for Emma, from my heart. It would mean everything to me if she could have it, no strings attached.”

  “Why?”

  Because losing dreams hurt. Libby carefully covered the doll with the brown paper. “I put my heart into making this for Emma. It belongs to her.”

  His jaw firmed, and he looked away without speaking. He wouldn’t accept the gift. Libby stared hard at her hands. She was alone now. Without Jacob, without a home. Perhaps she’d been foolish to tell him the truth when she wasn’t even certain. But in her heart Libby knew, she could never hurt Jacob.