by Merry Farmer
“I… Well… That is to say…”
“She is,” the other man confirmed, studying Cody with a suspicious rake from head to toe. “Who exactly are you and how do you know Miriam?”
Like a whip being cracked, everything fell into place. “I’m Cody Montrose. This woman was supposed to marry me.”
Miriam’s full, luscious mouth dropped open, though nothing but a squeak came out. Heat surged through Cody again.
The other man glanced between the two of them as if he wasn’t completely taken by surprise. He hesitated for a moment, then held out a hand. “Miles Kopanari. Miriam mentioned briefly that she knew a few people in this town. I had no idea she still had an attachment to a fiancé.”
“Not anymore,” Cody snapped before he could stop himself. “She chickened out on me. High-tailed it and ran.” He fixed a frustrated stare on Miriam, suddenly twice as angry that she’d deprived him of her beauty and her feistiness. Even though a voice in the back of his head said he had no right to be angry.
Miriam’s flush of panic resolved into her own brand of anger. “Well, what was I supposed to do?” she barked. “Get off a train in the middle of nowhere, in a place where I knew no one, and marry a man I’d never so much as clapped eyes on before?”
She had a point, but Cody crossed his arms and shrugged. “Women do it all the time these days.”
“Not this woman.” Miriam too crossed her arms, matching him glare for glare. “Some of us have more delicacy and discernment than that.”
“Yeah,” Cody fired back. “And less backbone.”
Miriam yelped. “I have a distinguished and stalwart backbone, Mr. Montrose. I’ll have you know that I have employed my backbone on many an occasion simply to survive in this world.”
“Is that so?” Cody swayed a step closer to her, pulling himself up to his full height. Funny how the day had suddenly gotten so much hotter. “Is it backbone that caused you to leave a man to humiliation and teasing by his friends?”
“Do you not think that a woman would be wise to have second thoughts about a man who had already rejected one bride?” Miriam fired back.
Cody winced. Of course she would have known about his mix-up when Wendy came to Haskell. Wendy was supposed to marry him, but he had, in fact, rejected her based on the color of her skin.
“I was just helping fate along,” he defended himself. “Wendy is far happier with Travis than she ever would have been with me.”
“And what if I would have been happier with someone else too?” she asked. “Or did you expect me to bow to your wishes and be your wife, whether we were right for each other or not?”
“You could have at least gotten off the train and talked to me about it,” Cody said.
Miriam flinched, guilt flooding her beautiful face. “Have you…” She pressed her lips together, then tried again. “Don’t you think…” That attempt didn’t work either. “Well,” she said at last, planting her hands on her hips. “I got off the train this time.”
Cody barked out a laugh. A funny, electric sensation zipped through him. He liked her. He liked her a lot.
As fast as that thought came to him, he shoved it away. This woman had humiliated him, and he wasn’t going to take that lying down. Especially not when the man who had introduced himself as Miles Kopanari—and dangit, he’d been rude and hadn’t shaken the man’s hand when a handshake was offered—was watching the two of them with barely-concealed amusement. Worse still, another man that looked Mexican had strolled up to watch the scene too. Cody’d dug a hole for himself, and now he had to get out.
“You want a place to stay?” He shifted his weight, doing his best to block out his audience in favor of staring down his former would-be bride. “The hotel’s that way.” He flung out a hand in the general direction of The Cattleman Hotel.
“Um…could you be more specific?” Miriam asked, her voice suddenly tiny.
Cody puffed out a breath, almost all of his ire dissolving and being replaced by a frustrating need to hold and protect the flashy, shapely woman in front of him. “Head up Main Street until you get to the town hall, then turn right on Elizabeth Street. It’s only about a hundred or so feet over. White-painted porch and a big sign. You can’t miss it,” he grumbled.
“Thanks.” Miriam tilted her chin up, looking like she might cry.
Dammit.
“You’ll have to see yourself over there,” Cody went on, reaching deep to recover the anger he thought he should have in the situation. “I’m going for a drink.”
He twisted away from the platform and started marching toward Main Street.
“There’s a saloon?” the Mexican called after him, adjusting a guitar case over his shoulder and jogging to catch up.
“Yeah, the Silver Dollar.”
The Mexican slapped a hand on his back as though they’d been friends for ages. “I’ll join you.”
“Sure,” Cody grumbled. Might as well have a drink with a stranger, he thought, twisting to glance over his shoulder. Miriam stood watching him, the man with the moustache saying something to her with a grin. Cody had a feeling his life had just taken a turn for the decidedly interesting.
Chapter Two
Miriam Long was a no-good, heartless, back-stabbing, little flirt. She’d made a deal with him, then she’d turned around and weaseled out on it. She’d gotten his hopes up, then turned around and left him in the lurch.
Cody kept telling himself that for the next twenty-four hours in an attempt to stop thinking about the encounter—and the flirting—at the train station. He grumbled as he ran through every possible argument he could come up with against the blond beauty who should have been his bride. A bitter wind blew outside, across the ranch, so he sat near a fire in the stable, oiling the ranch’s saddles and eating his heart out. How any woman could treat him so cruelly, then turn around and bat her eyelashes and flaunt her first-class wares at him was a mystery.
Of course, he kept trying to conveniently forget that he’d done pretty much the same thing to Wendy as Miriam had done to him. And that he’d been more than willing to flirt his heart out with Miriam before he knew who she was. It was the principle of the whole thing that bothered him. How could a woman who was so…womanly leave him upside down without a second thought?
“I can hear you grumbling all the way on the other side of the stable.” Luke Chance strode in from the yard where he’d been exercising the horses. In spite of the cold day, his face was pink with exertion, and he flapped the front of his coat to cool off. “What’s eating you?”
It was probably best if he let the whole thing go. Luke was a married man, after all. His wife, Eden, had known Miriam back at Hurst Home before coming west as a mail-order bride herself. She’d laughed and declared she had to visit Miriam right away when he’d told her in passing last night about the incident at the station. If Cody opened his mouth, the odds of Luke making fun of him were pretty high.
He couldn’t stop himself.
“What is it about women that makes them think they can be so sweet and saucy one minute, then turn into a heartbreaking shrew the next?” he asked with more ire than he’d intended.
Sure enough, Luke paused, shifted his weight to one hip, crossed his arms, and shook his head. “Yeah, Eden told me your bride is back in town. She’s gonna go over to the hotel to say hello this morning.”
Cody scowled, dipped the rag he was working with deep into the linseed oil, then attacked the saddle with a vengeance. “Miriam just showed up, dressed like a fashion plate, too pretty for her own good. What does she want from me anyhow?”
The rumbling sound that came from Luke was a little too close to a laugh for Cody’s comfort. “Did you ask her what she wanted?”
Cody clenched his jaw. “She asked me to direct her to the hotel.”
“But did you ask her why she came back to Haskell?”
Cody’s shoulders bunched as he rubbed the saddle hard enough to gouge a hole. “There were a mess of folks with her.
One guy, a Spaniard named Juan, had a drink with me at the Silver Dollar. He said they’re a traveling theatrical troupe.”
“So did you ask Miriam why she came back to Haskell?” Luke repeated, slower this time.
Cody took his time replying. “No. I guess it was just an accident. Her theatrical troupe…” He let the sentence die. There didn’t seem to be a point in explaining further. He’d already answered Luke’s question, whether he wanted to admit it or not.
His frustration began to wane, so he stirred it up again by digging into the saddle and saying, “A woman should make up her mind one way or another and not go waltzing back into some poor fellow’s life just as he’s getting over his heartache.”
Luke laughed outright. “How much heartache could you have worked up over a woman you’d never even met before?” He shifted his weight, rubbed his chin, then went on with, “Unless all that heartache popped up the moment you actually saw what you’d missed out on.”
“It did not!”
“Eden’s said before that Miriam is awfully pretty.”
“Just because a woman is beautiful beyond reckoning doesn’t mean I’m sore because she didn’t want me.”
Luke snorted. “Isn’t that what you just said you are upset about? Land sakes, Cody. One glimpse, and that woman has you wrapped around the axel. And you’d better watch out for that saddle too. You’re likely to rot the leather if you put any more oil on it.”
Cody flinched and looked down at the work in his hands. Sure enough, he’d rubbed so much linseed oil into one spot on the saddle that it looked as though some poor sap had soiled his britches on a drive. He suddenly knew which saddle would end up on his horse for every drive going forward, and exactly what all the jokes would be about around the campfire each night.
He set the saddle aside with a muttered curse. It was just his luck that as he did, there was a knock on the stable door, and Travis walked in.
“Sorry to interrupt you boys in your oh-so-important work.” Cody’s brother greeted him with a smirk and tipped his hat to Luke.
“You’re not interrupting anything,” Luke said. “I was just counseling your fool brother here about his woman problems.”
“I do not have woman problems,” Cody insisted.
“Oh yeah?” Travis beamed from ear to ear as he strolled up to them. “Is that why I’ve just delivered the wagon full of supplies that you abandoned at the train station yesterday?”
Cody blinked, sat straighter, then puffed out a breath and collapsed like a bellows that had run out of air. The supplies for the ranch. The whole reason he’d gone into Haskell and was at the train station when Miriam had arrived. He’d been supposed to pick up a shipment on that train and bring it out to the ranch, but Miriam had turned his head and mixed him all up. Drinking with Juan at the Silver Dollar hadn’t helped his memory either. He hadn’t gotten drunk—well, not that drunk—and was certain he’d ridden his own horse home for supper. Turned out he had taken saloon owner Sam Standish’s spare mare instead, and the wagon and supplies had completely slipped his mind.
“I got a little distracted,” he admitted, standing. “Where’s the wagon?”
“Mike and Billy are handling it.” Travis waved for him to sit down. Cody refused. “So. Miriam Long is back in town.”
“She was never in town in the first place,” Cody grumbled.
“Cody apparently took one look at her and was smitten,” Luke said, shifting to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Travis, the two of them studying Cody.
“Mmm. Wendy said she thought that might happen,” Travis said.
“Will you two shut up? Nothing happened, and I’m sore about it.”
Travis and Luke were silent for a moment, then burst into chuckles.
“I didn’t even know who she was,” Cody insisted, glaring at them. “She told me her name was Daphne Diamond. She looked at me with her eyes.”
Another round of snorts and chuckles sent Cody’s temper towering higher.
“How else was she going to look at you?” Travis asked.
“You know what I mean,” Cody growled. “Her eyes are blue.”
“Do blue eyes see better than other eyes?” Luke asked Travis, feigning innocence.
“And she has…she has curves,” Cody finished, jaw clamped so tight he almost couldn’t get the words out.
“Dangerous curves, I guess.” Travis shrugged.
“Well, you have to admit that a woman’s curves can be a surprisingly dangerous thing,” Luke added.
“Especially when that woman is your wife.” Travis winked.
“Or supposed to have been your wife,” Luke said.
They both turned back to Cody.
“So, uh, you two going to pick up where you left off?” Travis asked.
“No,” Cody barked so fast it made his neck hurt. His face grew hot, and the prickles down his back made him feel like he’d just told a whopping fib. He cleared his throat. “She didn’t even come back here to see me. She came back ’cuz she’s with a theatrical troupe that does stage shows and things.”
“Haskell doesn’t have a theater,” Travis said, rubbing his chin in thought.
“So I guess that’s not the reason she’s here, then,” Luke finished his thought.
Cody had had enough of the teasing. “Well, Miriam Long can keep herself to herself, as far as I’m concerned. I’ve got plenty of work to do here at—”
He twisted, intending to sit down again and continue with the saddle, but in the process he bumped the bench hard enough to knock the jar of linseed oil over. It spilled into the straw lining the stable floor with a viscous splash.
“Shoot, Cody, that was our last can of linseed oil,” Luke said.
“No, it wasn’t—”
“You’ll have to ride into town to pick up more at Kline’s Mercantile.”
Cody’s mouth froze halfway through his protest. Go into town? Where Miriam was? The road from Paradise Ranch went right past The Cattleman Hotel. It was too cold for Miriam to be sitting out on the porch, but if he stopped in for a cup of coffee and to say hello to Theophilus Gunn after running his errand…
“Come on.” Travis slapped him on the back. “I’ll ride back with you.”
“Who said I was going to go on that fool errand?” Cody snapped.
“Your fool eyes,” Travis answered. “And the stupid blush you’re sporting. And the fact that Wendy will never forgive me if I don’t bring home a story about you and your ex-bride meeting up again tonight.”
“There’s no story,” Cody insisted, striding across the stable to bring his favorite mount out for the journey into town. “There’s not going to be a story either. Miriam Long chose not to marry me, and I have no intention of convincing her to rethink that decision, no matter how pretty she is.”
“Right,” Luke muttered to Travis, barely loud enough for Cody to hear. “And the seas are filled with sugar instead of salt.”
The knock that sounded at Miriam’s hotel room door nearly caused her to jump out of her skin.
“Who is it?” She leapt up from the bed—where she had been lounging with a dime novel since Eden left after calling in on her earlier—and dashed to the mirror over the fireplace. Her hair fell in a luxurious wave of gold down her back, her dress was tidy and fit well, and she pinched her cheeks to give them extra color.
“It’s Libby.”
Miriam let out a breath of disappointment—no, relief, it was relief—that for the second time that day her visitor wasn’t Cody, and skipped over to let her friend into the room.
“Libby!” She threw out her arms and hugged Libby—squeaking happily at the pregnant roundness of Libby’s belly—as if they’d known each other all their lives instead of for one intense conversation on a train. “It’s so wonderful to see you. My, how you look well. Life in Haskell must agree with you.”
Libby laughed as she came into the room, keeping the door open. “I heard you were in town, and I had to seek you out.”
> “You heard I was in town?” Forget pinching her cheeks, sudden excitement—and a good deal of panic—sent her pulse racing and the color rushing to her face naturally.
Libby answered her with a frank look, squeezing her arm. “Word travels fast in a town like this. Cody met you at the station yesterday, or so I hear, then went to the Silver Dollar with a member of your theatrical troupe. Athos Strong, the stationmaster, stopped by to join them after his train business was completed, and since Athos lives next door to my…my children’s grandparents.”
Miriam barely registered the hesitation over the grandparents. Her mind was already spinning in circles. “What did Cody say? Was he happy to see me? Was he angry? Eden doesn’t think he’s angry, but I don’t know. He seemed so angry when I was talking to him, but before he knew who I was… Well, if he was any other man, the afternoon might have turned out quite differently.”
“Miriam!” Libby laughed through her shock. “I had no idea you were such a fast woman,” she added in a whisper.
“Oh! I’m not, I swear it.” Her grin betrayed her. “But I must admit, I found Cody Montrose to be quite dashing. At least, before I discovered who he was.”
“And after?” Libby raised an eyebrow.
Tingles broke out along Miriam’s skin, particularly in delicate places. She stopped her grin before it could get away from her. “Let’s just say that if someone had sent me a portrait of the man before I left Hurst Home, I might not have cowered in my bench and moved on with the train last time I was in Haskell.”
Libby shook her head, the corners of her mouth twitching. “Come downstairs and have a snack with me in the restaurant. I’m hungry all the time these days with this one on the way.” She patted the bump of her belly. “We have so much to catch up on.”
As they left the room and walked down to the hotel’s elegant restaurant together, Libby told Miriam all about how she had become reacquainted with Mason Montrose. Not just reacquainted, but the two had married.
“I’m so happy for you,” Miriam beamed as they were seated at a small table by one of the hotel’s windows by a dashing, white-haired man that Libby called Mr. Gunn. “Oh, I simply knew your star-crossed romance would have a happy ending. Of all the people I know who deserve happiness, I’m so glad that you actually found it.”
