Wild Western Women Mistletoe, Montana: Sweet Western Historical Holiday Box Set

by Caroline Clemmons

  “Here, take this, then give me your arms.” He handed his broom down to her.

  Miranda vanished for a moment as she disposed of the broom. When she reappeared, Randall reached down and scooped her up. The trapdoor wasn’t particularly wide, so he was able to deposit her on the other side, her legs dangling down into the attic along with his. As soon as she had a chance to look around, Miranda gasped.

  “Quite a spectacular view, isn’t it?” Randall grinned.

  “It’s not that,” she replied, clasping a gloved hand to her chest. “Look at all the snow!”

  Randall glanced around, losing a bit of his grin. Sure enough, as far as the eye could see—which wasn’t half as far as it should have been able to see since snow was still coming down and blowing around—everything was blanketed in white. Not just blanketed, buried.

  “I don’t think anyone is going to be able to get out any time soon,” Miranda gave voice to the thoughts Randall was having. “Why, look at the church. It looks as though it’s half gone.”

  He followed the line of her pointing to a church that looked like it’d been half swallowed by a sudden hill of snow. Traveler as he was, he twisted to seek out the train station. He couldn’t even find it amongst the lumps of buildings hiding under snow drifts.

  Once again, Miranda said exactly what he was thinking, “I don’t think anyone in Mistletoe is going to be going anywhere for quite some time.”

  Chapter 5

  By the time Miranda and Randall had determined the roof wouldn’t cave in under the weight of snow and shut and secured the trapdoor once more, the wind had picked up and the snow thickened. An hour later, the blizzard was back. Going out to see how the rest of Mistletoe was doing was out of the question. More snow drifted and banked against the front of the building, blocking the door. There was nothing for it but to give up, accept their fate, and do something productive.

  That productive thing became putting Mendel’s Marvelous Brushes to good use scrubbing the entire main room of the saloon from top to bottom.

  “I’ll pay you for everything we use,” Miranda assured Randall after lunch as the two of them scrubbed the floor on hands and knees. They’d pushed all of the tables and chairs to one side of the room and determined that they would wash every one of them thoroughly once they were done with the floor.

  “You don’t have to do that.” Randall pushed up to his haunches and wiped away a strand of sweaty hair that had fallen onto his forehead. His hair became even curlier when it was damp. Miranda found herself uncommonly captivated by that fact. At least their efforts were keeping them warm.

  “No, no. We’re using the brushes, so the saloon should pay for them,” she insisted. “There is a contingency fund for such things.”

  “Maybe, but you wouldn’t have bought them if we hadn’t been trapped in here by the storm.”

  Now it was Miranda’s turn to rock back into a squat to give him an incredulous look. “You don’t know that. Your presentation was very persuasive.”

  He laughed. The sound and the way it lit his face with charming self-mockery made Miranda even warmer. How could she ever have cared for someone like Vicky’s Micah when there was a man like Randall in the world? “Now you’re definitely being too nice.”

  Miranda plunked her fists—a wet, sudsy scrub brush in one of them—on her hips. “Are you arguing with me, Randy?”

  Randall cleared his throat and affected a high-brow voice as he said, “A smart man never argues, son. A smart man discovers ways to bring his opponents around to his point of view and to make them think it was their idea.”

  Miranda chuckled. “Who said that?”

  Randall’s brows twitched as he leaned forward to continue working. “My father, of course.”

  Miranda returned to scrubbing as well. She had the uncomfortable feeling that he’d nailed his father’s voice and mannerisms, and that the only reason he could do so was to keep from overflowing with resentment for the man.

  The rest of the day passed in similar work and companionship. Once the floor was scrubbed, they tackled the tables and chairs. When they were spotless and shining, they cleaned every inch of the bar, the counters behind it, and the stove and sink, including taking everything down from the shelves and cleaning those as well. It was suppertime by the time they finished. In spite of Randall’s protests, Miranda fulfilled her hostess duties and cooked a simple meal for him. They chatted for a while after cleaning up together, and once Randall had done his utmost to make sure the fire in Miranda’s apartment wouldn’t go out as it had the night before, they went to bed.

  Miranda was certain she wouldn’t sleep a wink, what with the cold and the continued wail of the wind. She’d forgotten to check how dire the snowfall of the day was before turning in for the night and just knew that worry would keep her eyes popped open. But whether it was the hard work she’d done all day or the comforting sounds of Randall on the other side of the thin wall that separated their bedrooms, she fell into a deep sleep within minutes.

  Randall was up before her once again the next morning. This time, he looked more rested as she shuffled into the main room of the apartment, the same blanket from the day before wrapped around her.

  “Good morning, Randi,” he teased her as he’d done the day before.

  “Good morning yourself, Randy,” she bantered in return. The silly exchange put a sunny smile on her face, in spite of the near dark that loomed out the curtained windows. “Are we still snowed in?”

  Randall straightened from where he had been stoking the kitchen stove. “It looks that way. I haven’t gone up to the attic to check through the trapdoor yet. Then again, I think we learned our lesson with that yesterday.”

  Miranda gave a wry laugh in reply and moved to the cupboard beside the stove to take out breakfast things.

  “I wouldn’t mind cooking breakfast today.” Randall’s brow lifted hopefully.

  Miranda bit her lip as she moved a canister of rolled oats from the cupboard to the counter beside the stove. “It really is my responsibility to cook for you, as hostess.”

  A vaguely pained look came to Randall’s eyes, but only for a moment. “Whatever you think is best.”

  He hesitated for a moment, swaying toward her. Miranda was struck by the sudden feeling that he might lean in and kiss her cheek. The way a husband would kiss his wife’s cheek in the morning. Come to think of it, the situation they found themselves in was intimate in that very way. The moment didn’t last long, though. Randall stepped away toward the hall.

  “Let me just go check to see how much snow we got overnight.”

  He disappeared down the hall. Miranda heard his footsteps echo faintly across the newly cleaned boards of the saloon. She smiled to herself as she fetched a pot and began making oatmeal. Running the blasted saloon wouldn’t be quite so terrible if she had Randall there to do it with her. Perhaps they could find a way to turn it into some kind of more respectable social hall or a…

  She sighed and added a dollop of butter to the saucepan. Those were futile thoughts. Randall was a traveling salesman. He needed to move on. As soon as the snow subsided and the train was able to make it through again, he would be on his way. The thought fell like a rock in her gut.

  She managed to regain her smile when Randall came back to report the snow had drifted all the way up almost to the top of the saloon’s front door, though she wouldn’t let herself think too deeply about why something that was a real danger made her so happy. Instead, she and Randall sat down to their breakfast, planning out what they would do that day. She’d only just done inventory a few days before he arrived, but they decided to do it again.

  By that afternoon, however, with the wind still blowing and the snow still making things impassable, they’d done everything that could possibly be done in the saloon proper.

  “We really shouldn’t keep the fire lit in the saloon itself,” Randall suggested after a somewhat disappointing lunch of boiled cabbage and salted ham. “Who knows
how long we’ll need our fuel supplies to last?”

  Our supplies. How long we’ll need them to last. The way his words wrapped themselves around her, they wouldn’t need much in the way of wood or coal at all.

  “Well,” she began hesitantly. “I still haven’t cleaned the rooms upstairs.” She’d been too filled with dread over what she might find in those rooms.

  As if Randall could read her thoughts, his expression grew mischievous and teasing. “Now’s the time. The heat from the saloon’s main chimney will have warmed up that part of the building, but if we let the fire go out, it’ll get awfully cold again.”

  Miranda pursed her lips and pretended to think about the prospect, but the spark in his eyes alone had already convinced her to tackle what she’d been avoiding. “All right. Let’s do it.”

  The tiny, second floor bedrooms ended up being everything she dreaded they would be. The linens hadn’t been washed in longer than she cared to think. They were stained and smelly in more of the rooms than not.

  “Whew!” Miranda held her nose with one hand and a nasty, old sheet in the other as she carried it into the hall. “How could people live in these conditions?”

  As she dropped the sheet in the dry washtub that Randall had hauled up to the second floor hallway, he came out of the room with an armful of sheets. “Um, Miranda, I don’t think people lived here.”

  His words were monumentally scandalous, but his tone of voice was laced with humor and his eyes were bright. Miranda giggled even as she rolled her eyes. “It’s shameful, is what it is.”

  “Forgive me for arguing with you once again, Miss Clarke, but I believe this is, in fact, shameless.” He managed to speak with a combination of mock seriousness and impish teasing.

  Miranda pressed a hand to her mouth to cover her laughter, then jerked it away at the thought of what her hands had been touching moments before. That only increased her laughter, which caused Randall to break his pretend stern character to chuckle along with her.

  “What was Uncle Buford thinking?” Miranda shook her head and marched down the hall to the next room.

  “Probably that there is a good deal of fun to be had in being shameless,” Randall answered.

  Miranda squeaked and twisted to face him, unable to keep the smile out of her tone. “Scandal, Mr. Sinclair! Blasphemy!”

  Randall raised his brows. “Don’t tell me you’ve never been shameless on purpose just to have a good time.”

  All joking dropped from Miranda’s expression. “Never,” she answered, and for the first time in her life, she felt as though that was her loss.

  “We’ll just have to change that then.” Randall slipped up behind her and swept her into his arms.

  For one, glorious moment, Miranda thought he would clasp her in his arms and kiss her, like some dime novel hero. Her entire body thrilled with the prospect. She even softened her lips and gazed up into his eyes in preparation. But instead of making passionate love to her, he hopped right into the steps of a polka, wheeling her around the narrow hallway as if they were on the widest dance floor in town.

  “What are you doing?” she laughed as the initial shock of her disappointment in not being kissed wore off.

  “I’m shamelessly dancing with you in the middle of an upstairs hall in broad daylight.”

  Miranda laughed out loud at his ridiculousness. “But how can it be shameless if no one is here to see us?” she asked, even as their lively dance steps pushed the air right out of her lungs.

  He stopped his silly dancing so fast that Miranda’s head spun. “I suppose you’re right,” he said, back to being overly grave and serious once more. “Never mind that, then. We have whores’ bedchambers to clean out.”

  Miranda slapped both hands to her mouth in shock over his frank language as he let her go. She should have been horrified. She should have been furious over him being so blatant and indelicate with her. But all she could do was laugh. Laugh until her sides hurt. She’d never known anyone who could toss convention and propriety aside as deftly as Randall did and still remain unquestionably a gentleman. And she had no idea what she would do once he was gone.

  So far, the quest to clean up the upstairs rooms—or booths, as Randall was beginning to see them—had uncovered one riding whip, a handful of French letters, a phallus carved from soapstone, and more putrid sheets than Randall had ever wanted to see in one place. He managed to hide the more offensive items from Miranda’s sight by burying them in the pile of sheets they’d decided to throw out instead of attempt to salvage by washing in lye soap, but who knew what else was out there?

  “Now that the worst of it has been removed,” he began as they stood at one end of the hall as the afternoon sun sank toward the horizon, “the rooms almost look normal.”

  In fact, each one held a small bed and a tiny nightstand with one drawer. Now that the contents had been cleared out, they could pass for hotel rooms. Extremely cheap hotel rooms.

  “Do you think it would be possible to knock down some of these walls to make larger rooms?” Miranda asked, stepping inside the closed room and running her hand down the flimsy wall dividing it from the room next door.

  Something about the tender way she stroked the wall, the way her fingertips brushed it lightly, caressingly, sent a jolt of fire thundering through Randall. He adjusted his stance to hide the sudden tightness in his trousers and focused on her question.

  “Yes, you could do that. I doubt any of these walls are holding the structure up.”

  She turned back to him. “The structure of the building is sound. It’s almost a shame it’s a saloon and not a house.”

  He had to do something to cool the heat that pumped through him every time that industrious look came into her eyes. That look and her stalwart spirit had kept him awake in the small hours of the night, debating whether he would like to master her or whether it would be far more enjoyable to let her have her way with him. He scrambled to find the most innocent, the most humorous light he could shed on things.

  “I can see this as a house filled with children, a nursery, as it were.” He cringed inwardly as his mind went straight to all the ways they could make those children.

  “Do you think?” Miranda’s expression lit with thought and something far more innocent than he could ever manage. “Do you think we could turn it into an orphanage of some sort?”

  And now his heart was melting into a gooey pool, even as another part of him grew decidedly more rigid. “I can imagine all the delightful young tots snuggling into bed on Christmas Eve night, eager to find out what Santa will bring for them.”

  Her eyes glittered with fondness as she stepped into the hall to stand beside him. “Goodnight, little Timmy,” she said, blowing a pretend kiss into the empty bedroom. She pivoted to face the doorway of the room across the hall. “Goodnight, Agnes. I’m sure Santa will bring you that doll you’ve wished for.”

  The power of her imagination was so beautiful and sweet that Randall could hardly stand it. There was only one thing he could do. “Goodnight, James.” He played along, taking her hand and heading slowly down the hall toward the staircase leading to the ground floor. “I just know there will be a set of tin soldiers with your name on it under the tree tomorrow.”

  “And a tiny tea set for you, Jane,” Miranda added. She giggled deep in her throat at the game.

  Randall’s heart squeezed in his chest. Never in all his years of traveling, in all of the mad schemes his father had pushed him into so that he could make something of himself, had he ever found the time to consider a wife and children. But now, as he and Miranda stepped slowly down the hall, waving and blowing kisses into empty rooms, a hope or longing or the sheer boredom of being trapped in a snowstorm overtook him. He found himself not only entertaining the idea of Miranda by his side forever and a parcel of children with them, he ached for it. Even though it made no sense. He’d known Miranda for less than two full days. But two days of close quarters felt more like two years.

&n
bsp; “Oh!” Miranda perked up as they reached the end of the hall. “We don’t have any Christmas decorations for the children.”

  The sweet joy of their make-believe tugged Randall along as if it was second nature. “We’ll just have to do something about that, then.”

  His imagination blossomed as he tightened his grip on Miranda’s hand and led her downstairs. There was precious little in a saloon that made for good Christmas decorations, but he wasn’t about to give up this idyll, not when Miranda seemed so happy.

  “Of course, the most important Christmas decoration is the tree,” he declared, heading for his trunk of brushes near the dwindling fire in the newly-clean saloon.

  Miranda helped him search through its contents, and together they discovered that brushes had quite a way of looking like pine boughs when you were desperate. In spite of their determination not to use the saloon’s main room because it was too costly to heat, they were soon constructing a mad Christmas tree made up of chairs and brooms, crates and smaller boxes, near the fireplace. It was an ugly monstrosity, but it was also a balm to the hints of misery and pitifulness they’d uncovered by cleaning up the saloon’s bedrooms.

  “I feel as though we should be singing carols as we decorate the tree,” Miranda said with a smile as she draped the rags she used to clean out glasses over the brushes and boxes to give the whole more of a Christmas tree shape.

  “We should.” Randall nodded, then launched into a hearty tenor rendition of “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing.”

  Miranda beamed and giggled, then joined in with her own sweet soprano. When she reached the words, “Joyful all ye nations rise,” Randall suddenly knew what true joy was.

  “Join the triumph of the skies,” he sang out clearly. His father would tell him he was being ridiculous. Anyone passing would think the two of them had lost their minds. The wind was still blowing, the saloon was growing so cold his fingers were numb. Miranda was close to being a complete stranger…and yet she wasn’t. A voice in his soul whispered that he was on track to have the best Christmas of his life.