He squeezed his temples. She was the General’s bride-to-be. His father had always been adamant that women were to be revered, cherished and protected. Chayston felt that way, too, which is why he never let on what had happened with Becca.
This wasn’t about Becca though, it was about Violet, and that was worse.
He hadn’t just kissed Violet. He’d wanted her. Still did. But she wasn’t his to want. She was engaged. Engaged. To his father.
Chayston glanced around the office. It would be a month or more before Roy returned, and he had some serious decisions to make before then. Returning to the ranch was no longer an option, not with Violet as a stepmother.
The sound of the door opening behind the desk he sat at had his already-tight muscles straining, and once again he lifted his gaze to the outer door, wishing for the millionth time the blizzard had blown itself out. As it was, he couldn’t even step off the boardwalk. Winters were serious matters in Montana, and everyone who’d lived through one held them in high regard. When weather like this hit, no one moved. Many a life had been snuffed short by foolish behavior during a snowstorm. Blizzards even took precedence at the ranch. A rope would have been strung from the bunkhouse to the barn, to see to those animals, but the herds would be on their own until the weather cleared.
“There’s coffee done, if you’d like some, and I made gravy to go with last night’s biscuits.”
Another wave of regret washed over him at how timid and hesitant she sounded.
“I’m fine,” he said.
“All right,” she answered. “It’s on the stove if you change your mind.”
Like that was an option. Chayston pushed away from the desk, but only went as far as the corner, where he picked up a pile of wanted posters.
* * *
A while later, after he’d read every sheet—but couldn’t have named even one of the profiled outlaws if pressed—a presence had him looking up.
Violet set down a cup and a plate. “It’s getting cold.”
“Thank you,” he said, trying to sound as normal as possible.
The relief in her eyes sent his heart tumbling into his stomach. He ate, and afterward carried the empty dishes into the other room.
“Just leave them there, on the table,” she said. “I’ll wash them when I’m finished.”
He’d heard her rustling about but had pretended not to. Just as he’d pretended not to notice how fetching she looked in the purple dress she was wearing. He should set the dishes down and leave but couldn’t bring himself to do it. “What are you making now?” he asked, gesturing to the bowl she held in one arm while stirring with the other hand.
“I thought I’d make you some Christmas cookies,” she said.
He spun around to face away from her. Last year made him hate Christmas. This year it would be forced upon him...complete with Christmas cookies.
Hours later, after shuffling the papers around his desk numerous times, beating the dust out of the mattress, sweeping the jail cells and doing anything else he could find to do, he walked into the living quarters. The smell of baking permeated every room and he couldn’t ignore it any longer. The table was covered with little gingerbread people, all decorated up with raisins and icing. He loved gingerbread and raisins. Damn it.
“Help yourself,” she said, near the stove again.
A bowl of soup had been left on his desk while he’d been beating out the mattresses earlier, but this smelled even better.
“I only used a little bit of the ham for the soup,” she said. “I’m baking the rest of it with carrots and potatoes for supper.”
Was she purposely trying to drive him crazy? Cooking. Baking. Looking downright adorable. He snatched up a cookie, and then took two more before going back into the office.
He’d barely sat down when she appeared in the doorway. “I truly don’t know how my boots got in my trunk.”
“I know,” he admitted. She was too genuine, too sincere to be deceitful, leaving him to wonder what had actually happened.
“You do?”
He held up a cookie. “You don’t seem like the conniving type. Baking cookies and all.”
There was a hint of disbelief in her eyes, as well as a touch of mirth. “I hope you like them.”
He bit the head off one, chewed and swallowed. “They’ll do.” They would have to be about the best cookies he’d ever eaten, wouldn’t they.
Biting her lip as if hiding a grin, she retreated to the kitchen.
Finishing the cookie, he rose and followed her. He was the sheriff and should investigate such things. “So,” he asked from the doorway, “who do you think hid them? Your boots and money?”
Her face grew serious and sad. “I don’t know. If it wasn’t impossible, I’d suspect Eleanor.”
“Your stepsister?” he asked, munching on another cookie. “Why?”
“Because she’s spiteful.” Her expression turned distressing and her cheeks flushed slightly. “She thought I was enamored of her husband.”
“And you weren’t?” he prodded.
“No.”
She was stacking the cookies on a plate, and glanced up at him, somewhat wary. Chayston held his tongue, letting her come up with her own conclusion if she should say more or not.
“He was the reason my stepfather wrote to your father,” she said.
Chayston crossed the room and filled a cup with coffee. Her hair, though a portion was pinned back, hung down her back in a cascade of spirals almost to her waist. He could only imagine it had been the opposite—that the brother-in-law was enamored of her. He couldn’t really blame the guy.
“Eleanor never liked my mother or me. John said he wanted to know I’d be taken care of after he died, and asked if I’d do him a favor.”
“What was the favor?”
“Leave Ohio,” she said quietly.
Chayston pieced together several things in his mind. “And marry the General?”
She nodded. “Why do you call him the General instead of Father?”
“From growing up at the fort,” Chayston answered. “Everyone, even my mother, called him the General. Both my sister and I called him that more often than Father.”
Her eyes grew wide. “You have a sister?”
He shook his head. “Did... She and my mother died while we still lived at the fort. Rheumatic fever.” That was part of what made not returning to the ranch difficult. Though still young enough now to run the place, someday his father wouldn’t be, and, as his son, it would be Chayston’s duty—and right—to take over. “My father’s a good man. Fair and honest. He’ll take good care of you.”
Her cheeks were once again crimson.
“I just hope you and I can come to an agreement on something,” he finished while he still could. No matter how attracted he was to her, he wouldn’t do what Seth had done to him.
“What’s that?”
“That what happened last night is forgotten, never mentioned.”
Even her neck turned red, yet she nodded. “I think that would be best.”
“Yes, it would,” he regretfully agreed, “for everyone’s sake.”
Chapter Six
It was another full day before the storm let up, and Violet found herself sitting in a wagon outfitted with sleigh runners and being pulled by two huge draft horses with jingle bells attached to their harnesses and sprigs of greenery tied in their manes. If not for the heaviness in her chest, she might have enjoy
ed how festive the stable owner had made the horses.
Though thankful she and Chayston had formed an agreement, it hadn’t taken away her memory of the kiss. They’d been civil to each other the past two days, but that somehow made her yearnings stronger, and the stain of it all had her about to jump right out of her skin. Maybe she was a jezebel. If so, marrying the General would help, wouldn’t it?
She had no idea, and that frightened her. She couldn’t let John down. Could not. Not after all he’d done for her. And she still wanted a family. A husband.
Eleanor had hated her and her mother for encroaching on John’s attention, and she couldn’t help but fear how Chayston would eventually look upon her once she married his father. Why was everything so complicated? All she wanted was people who accepted her love. They didn’t even have to love her in return. Eleanor sure hadn’t, yet Violet still thought of her as family—and always would.
She doubted, though, that she’d be able to think of Chayston as her stepson. That was almost absurd. She’d never be able to forget him though.
How could she? She’d be married to his father.
“There it is,” Chayston said.
Violet let her gaze wander toward several black dots amongst the snow in a valley below them. “Your father’s ranch?”
“Yes,” he said, “my father’s ranch. The Big Basin.”
The almost-despondent tone in his voice had her rubbing both arms as a shiver raced through her system. The eerie sensations that shiver began grew stronger a short time later as they glided into the ranch, where men emerged from every building.
Even without the fact he stood on the front porch of the huge house, Violet would have known her soon-to-be husband was the General. The man was simply an older version of Chayston.
At one time she’d hoped that. Now she wondered if it would make her marriage that much more difficult.
He descended the steps and made his way to the wagon by a shoveled path, even before the horses came to a complete stop. “Violet,” he said with a voice that was as close to Chayston’s as one could get. “You’re even lovelier than John insisted.” He reached up and encompassed her waist with two huge hands and lifted her right out of the wagon, not so unlike his son in that manner, too. Glancing over her head as he set her feet on the ground, he said, “I thought you’d wait until the roads were clear, son.”
His tone wasn’t gruff, but Chayston’s was when he replied, “I figured I better get her here as soon as possible.”
The General grinned as he lowered his gaze to her again. “I’m glad you’re here,” he said. “Welcome to the Big Basin.”
Her tongue was thick, yet feeling inclined to speak, Violet willed her voice not to crack. “Thank you, General Williams.”
“Call me Ralston,” he said. “Or just General, like everyone else.” Wrapping an arm around her shoulders, he turned her toward the house. “Come inside.”
Violet wanted to turn around to see where Chayston was, but feared that wouldn’t help her nerves at all. Instead, she walked beside the General, squeaking out answers as he asked about her journey. When he questioned how her hotel accommodations in Spring Valley had been, a fresh wave of the jitters assaulted her. “The hotel was full, sir.”
“Full?” he asked, opening the front door and ushering her inside.
“Yes, sir,”
“Where did you stay?”
The room before her spun slightly and Violet closed her eyes. She feared her answer might upset him, and that she didn’t want. Not because of herself, but of Chayston. Coming between the two of them made her wish she’d never left Ohio.
“She stayed at the sheriff’s office.”
Violet flinched at Chayston’s answer. The General, though, merely cast a friendly smile toward her before gesturing across the room.
“This is Anita,” he said, introducing the older woman standing near a swooping staircase. “She’s my housekeeper, cook and the wife of my foreman. You follow her upstairs, and she’ll help you get settled.”
Violet had no chance to respond before he started speaking again. “Chayston, see her things are hauled upstairs and meet me in my office.”
Chayston had known that was coming, and even welcomed it. Having already instructed men to carry her luggage, he turned and followed his father down the hall and into his office.
“The hotel in Spring Valley is never full.” The General moved straight to his desk, where he dropped his hat.
Chayston closed the door and removed his gloves but didn’t bother unbuttoning; he wouldn’t be staying that long. “I know, but Gertrude Guldbrandson wasn’t about to let Violet stay there. Seems your decision has the women in town a bit flustered.” Anticipating what his father would ask next, Chayston added, “Gertrude insisted I not try Ruth Sutton, either.”
“Nosey old bats.” The General cracked a grin as he crossed the room to gaze out the window. “So you took her to the jail.”
“I couldn’t leave her standing in the middle of the street.” Chayston ignored the jolt that shot through him. Violet hadn’t stood in the street. She’d been in his arms. The exact spot he wouldn’t mind finding her again. No matter how hard he tried, his desire for her grew and grew. The last two days had him coiled tighter than a new spring, and just as bouncy.
His father glanced his way. “I’m thinking a Christmas Day wedding. How’s that sound to you?”
Shitty.
Chayston bucked up in order to ask, “Do you think two weeks is enough time to get to know someone well enough to marry them?”
His father laughed. “I knew I’d marry your mother in the blink of an eye.” He leaned one hand against the window frame. “I was leading a troop through Charleston when I saw her sitting on a porch swing and stopped the march right there to ride my horse across her front lawn.”
Chayston had heard the story before, but chose not to interrupt, hoping memories might change his father’s mind.
“There were five of them, women close to Violet’s age, on that porch, and your mother shoved the rest aside to tell me to get out of her flower bed. She was so damn adorable, all flustered and snippety. I told her I’d move, but that I’d be back and she best be ready for a wedding when I returned.” With a smile that said he was remembering things fondly, the General continued, “Two months later we were married, and I took her North, and when the war ended, I brought her out here, where the Mason-Dixon line didn’t exist.”
The invisible land marker that had mattered to some had never come between his parents despite the number of times his father claimed he was from the North and Chayston’s mother the South. What did matter to Chayston was the invisible line that would forever keep him and Violet apart. It had created a battle inside him and left him on the losing side. “Well, if you like snippety, you’ll like Violet.”
The General chuckled. “She got on your nerves, did she?”
“I’d rather have been snowed in with a rabid dog.”
The General nodded then asked, “Any word when Roy’s returning? It’s been lonesome out here without you.”
“No,” Chayston said. “I’m assuming it’s still the first of February or so.” Though his gut clenched, he added, “You won’t be lonesome anymore. Not with Violet here.”
“She tell you who her father is?”
“Was,” Chayston corrected. “He died.”
After a respectful head bow, the General continued, “You remember John, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Chayston admitted. Unable not to voice it, he said, “Don’t you think she’s a bit young for you?”
His father’s expression grew serious. “John Lassiter saved your life when you were a baby. During an Indian uprising, a brave thought it would be acoup to steal my son. John rescued you and had you back at the fort before I returned from the bat
tle. From that moment on, your mother thought the sun rose and set on John’s head, and I considered him the best friend I’d ever have.”
Chayston hadn’t known that, but had known a strong bond existed between his parents and John.
Opening a desk drawer, his father pulled out several letters and laid them on the desk. “John wrote to me a couple of months ago. Told me he was dying, and that he’d found a husband for his daughter, Eleanor, which in his own words, hadn’t been easy. He wasn’t worried about her, though, not like he was Violet. She, he said, was tender and loving, and he feared what might happen to her once he was gone. It seemed Eleanor’s husband had eyes for Violet. John wanted her out of Ohio, and I told him to send her here. From his letters I understood it wasn’t just the husband, it was Eleanor’s hatred John feared. I told him to go in peace, that Violet would be welcomed at the Big Basin and protected from anyone who might try to harm her for the rest of her life.”
Having already assumed it was something along those lines, Chayston said, “I still don’t see why you agreed to marry her.”
“Read the letters,” his father said.
“No, thanks,” Chayston said, tugging on his gloves and heading for the door.
Chapter Seven
It had been over a week since Violet had stood at her bedroom window and watched Chayston drive away. Although she hadn’t seen him since, she thought about him nonstop. Couldn’t help it. Besides resembling his son in looks and actions, the General talked about Chayston a lot. The stories were endless, some funny and sweet, and others full of the mischievousness she believed still lived inside Chayston. Her stepfather was included in some of the storytelling, including how John had rescued Chayston as an infant.
That particular story allowed her to understand why the General had agreed to marry her—as repayment. One child’s rescue for another. In a way, it made her more beholden to fulfill her promise to John.
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