The Cowboy's Mail Order Bride

by Carolyn Brown

  “Oh, my!” Emily gasped when she opened the door into the bedroom.

  Back when she was in high school she would have hocked her tomcat, Spurs, to have her own room like the one before her. A queen-sized four-poster bed covered with a pretty quilt and lacy bed ruffle sat on one side of the room. A big, deep recliner and a vanity with a three-way mirror were located over beside the door into the bathroom, which sported a deep claw-footed tub. She’d always shared the one bathroom in the small three-bedroom ranch house with two men who did not understand why one girl needed so much hair spray, lotion, bath oil, and her own pink razors to shave her legs.

  She washed her hands, dried them, and then rubbed lotion into them—sweet-smelling lavender lotion that reminded her of Great-Aunt Molly, grandmother to her favorite cousin, Taylor.

  Her grandfather’s words the day that he and Molly went to the courthouse together came back to her as she looked in the bathroom mirror. Molly had deeded her ranch to Taylor, and Marvin had given what was left of his adjoining ranch to Emily. On the way home he had said, “I’m not real sure your future is on Shine Canyon Ranch, Em.”

  When she’d asked him why he’d say a thing like that, he’d just smiled and tapped his heart. “Ranchin’ is in your heart and you’ll always love it, but something in my soul tells me your future is not on Shine Canyon. When I’m gone, I want you to take a month and think things through before you commit to this land for the rest of your life. You’ll have a hard row to hoe even with family to help with just a hundred acres. I’m not sure in today’s economy that you’ll ever make it without taking a job in town, and that means ranchin’ at night after you work your ass off all day at your job.”

  She blinked away the tears and turned away from the mirror. “A hundred acres might not be much, but it’s mine, Gramps. And I love the land as much as you did. I’m not afraid of hard work, and piece by piece I’ll buy our land back from Taylor. He promised he’d sell it to me when I could buy it, remember. That was the rule when you sold it to him.”

  Lacy curtains covered the narrow window overlooking the backyard. She drew a corner back and peeked out. She dropped the curtain and took a step back, stumbled over a small footstool, and went down on one knee.

  She wanted to cry, to curl up in a ball and weep, but she couldn’t. She limped over to the recliner, flipped the handle on the side, and leaned back as far as it would let her, looked up, and right there on top of the chest of drawers was another picture of Greg. A bust shot of him in his high school graduation robe and mortarboard hat with a tassel hanging to the side. The gold charm told her that he’d graduated two years before she did and that his school colors were orange and black. A sticky note attached to the side of the frame held the message, “I’ll bring home the best bull. Miss you!”

  He was younger, but the eyes were the same and they still looked right into her soul like the picture down in the living room. She threw her arm over her face and forced herself to think about the beach, to hear the seagulls and the slapping of the waves against the sandbar. The soft smell of the lotion on her hands sparked a deep memory of her mother in her dreams. They were playing in the wildflowers like the ones in the picture of Greg Adams. She was a little girl with dark braids and a cotton dress. The grass was soft on her bare feet but cool, so it had to be spring. They’d sung the “Ring around the Rosy” song, then fallen back in the flowers. Her mother touched her cheek and said, “Don’t ever give up your wings. Always know that you can fly, my child.”

  Then out of nowhere there was a door right in the middle of the pasture of wild, colorful flowers, and there was a yellow cat peeking around the corner. A mouse darted through the cat’s front legs and was coming right at her when she sat straight up in bed and her eyes popped wide open.

  “Damn it! I don’t get to dream about Mama very often. Why’d you bring that thing into my dreams?” she asked.

  Someone rapped gently on the door, but she thought it was part of the dream until it happened again. She cocked her head to one side and said, “Come in.”

  Clarice pushed inside and sat down on the vanity bench. “Thank you. It’s been more than an hour and I was hoping you were awake. Would you please tell me more about Marvin? I read the letter and it said what I thought it would. Strange, that something sixty years old can still be so bittersweet.”

  “Is it all right if I sit on the bed?” Emily asked. “This chair would be a lot more comfortable for you than that bench.”

  “Honey, this is your room right now. Make yourself at home.”

  “Is that your grandson in that picture too?” Emily asked.

  Clarice nodded. “When he graduated from high school. He leaves me little notes when he has to be gone. It’s to convince me that he’s coming back. I have a fear that he’ll change his mind about ranchin’. Now please tell me about Marvin.”

  Emily kicked off her boots and crawled up in the middle of the bed. She crossed her legs Indian-style, kept her gaze on Clarice and off the picture on the chest, and said, “He fought cancer for five years and last week the battle ended. It won. I thought he’d kick it for sure right up until that last week. He was diagnosed the week I graduated from college five years ago. I had planned on coming back to the ranch anyway, so it didn’t change my life drastically. I took care of him. He was always too stubborn to hire a foreman, so I took care of that too. As the ranch dwindled to pay for his bills, there was less ranchin’ and more caretakin’.”

  “How many children did he have?” Clarice asked.

  Emily held up one finger. “Just one son, my father. But Nana’s family lived on the next farm over. She came from a family that had five girls, so I had lots of family around me and lots of cousins to play with when I was growing up. My father died nine years ago in a horse accident. I was a senior in high school and the shock was horrible. Even worse than when Mama died, but I was just barely four that year and too little to really understand what an aneurism was. He was fine that morning at breakfast, and that evening he was gone. I thought it was the worst thing I’d ever endure, but watching Gramps go by degrees was even tougher. How many children did you have, Miz Clarice?”

  “Just one son, Bart. He and his wife, Nancy, only had one child—Greg. He’s thirty now. And you?”

  “Twenty-eight,” Emily answered.

  “Did Marvin ever mention me?” Clarice asked softly.

  “He talked about you that last week and to you the last hours of his life. I really thought that you were probably dead and had come to help him cross over into eternity. He made me promise that I’d find out if you were alive and see to it that you got those letters and understood that he hadn’t been a jackass. It all started when the mailman drove out to the ranch with that letter they found at the post office,” Emily said.

  “Thank you for keeping that promise. You’ll never know what this means to me. Did Marvin, was he, did he suffer?” Clarice dabbed at her eye.

  Emily shook her head. “He was sick for a very long time, but for a while he was still able to be up and around. It wasn’t until that last round of chemo that he wasn’t able to at least sit on the porch swing with me every evening. At the end I prayed that God would take him on to a place where he wouldn’t hurt anymore. That sounds ugly, doesn’t it?”

  Clarice shook her head. “No, it’s the way life is. Why didn’t he come to Ravenna all those years ago? He knew where I was.”

  Emily shrugged. “I asked him that, but he just smiled and said that God must’ve had other plans for both of you or that letter wouldn’t have gotten lost.”

  Clarice nodded. “Can’t undo history. I was happy with Lester Adams. We had a good life, raised a good son, and he married well. Now I have Greg to help me run the ranch. I’m glad you brought the letters home to me, Emily, and I’m glad you agreed to stay for supper.”

  “Thank you,” Emily said.

  “Want to come wit
h me to the kitchen and help Dotty get things on the table?” Clarice asked.

  “I’d love to.” Emily bounded off the bed, stomped her feet back into her boots, and followed Clarice on down the stairs.

  ***

  Greg checked out every square inch of the big black bruiser of an Angus bull. He was one of the finest specimens he’d ever laid eyes on, and Lightning Ridge would be lucky to have him.

  He took his phone out of his shirt pocket to call his grandmother to tell her that he’d discovered the perfect new bloodline for the ranch, and found that Clarice had sent a picture. She hadn’t learned the art of texting with the new phone he’d gotten her, but apparently she had figured out how to take and send pictures.

  He adjusted his glasses and stepped away from the bull pen to the shady side of the sale barn so he could see the picture. So that was Emily that Nana had called three times about in the past two hours. She’d been adamant that he stop what he was doing and look at the picture the last time she called.

  According to Nana, Emily was an inch or two shorter than she was and had come to the house in jeans, boots, and a lightweight denim jacket. She didn’t have tattoos, and the only thing Nana could see that was pierced was her ears. He’d told his grandmother that there might be a whole raft of surprises under those jeans and jacket, but she was so excited about some old boyfriend she’d had back when she was a teenager that she didn’t hear a word Greg had to say. He held the phone up to get better light and had to admit that Emily was striking with all that dark hair and those crystal, clear blue eyes.

  “So is your body covered with tats? Do you have a belly ring and a tongue stud?” he asked. “Are you a ranchin’ woman, or do you just like jeans and boots? Nana is quite taken with you, but I’ll never meet you in real person, so it doesn’t really matter, does it?”

  His phone rang, surprising him so much that he almost dropped it. “Yes, Nana. I just saw the picture. You did a good job. What’s her name again—Emma? And Dotty called to tell me about the mouse. That would have been a sight to see, the way that Dotty hates those things,” he teased.

  “It’s Emily,” Clarice said. “I told you already that her name is Emily. What do you think of her? Did you find all my notes? I only found two that you left me.”

  “She is a very pretty lady. And yes, I found your notes and I left more than two, so you’d best start lookin’ around. It’s past time to clean off the fridge if you can’t even find a new note on it.” He chuckled.

  “I have offered her that job we’ve been talkin’ about,” Clarice said bluntly.

  “Nana! I called an ad in the newspaper to be published next week that we would take resumes for that job. And I had in mind that we’d hire a man for the job, not a woman that we don’t even know. Hell, we could have hired Prissy,” Greg said.

  “Emily has got a degree in agriculture business and has been working on her grandfather’s ranch for five years. I don’t think any man could beat her credentials. And it’s just for a month. She’s got a hundred acres out in west Texas that she wants to get back to by the first of March. That way I get to see if I really want someone in the house to help me or not, and I get to know her better. So call the newspaper and take the ad out, and believe me, Prissy has a job and she won’t ever live on a ranch,” Clarice told him.

  “Did Emily take the job?” Greg asked.

  “She’s stayin’ at a hotel in Sherman until tomorrow. She’s going to think about it. Marvin died after a long battle with cancer and she took care of him. He made her promise to do two things: bring my letters home to me and take a month off. Her cousin is running things while she’s gone, but she will be going back. I swear she talks about that ranch like it’s a real person,” Clarice said.

  “I still think a man would be better,” Greg said. “But if it’s just for a month, then whatever you think is fine, Nana. And Nana, you talk about Lightning Ridge the same way.”

  Clarice laughed out loud. “I’m the over-romantic one, and you are like your grandpa, ever the businessman. That’s what makes us such good ranchin’ partners, Greg.”

  “You are right about that. It takes both of us to run Lightning Ridge, doesn’t it?” Greg said.

  He adored his grandmother even if she was more sentimental about everything since his grandfather passed five years before. A month with someone to help her in the office with the new computerized bookkeeping and to drive her and her friends around would show her just how valuable an assistant could be. And then they’d hire a man to do the job. It was a win-win situation.

  But right now, he had a bull to buy. He said a few more words to his grandmother and hung up. On his way back into the sale barn he brought up Emily’s picture one more time. There was something about her eyes that was downright mesmerizing.

  But still, a ranch was a business, and running one was hard work. Maybe Emily would work out just fine for a month, but Greg had a feeling that the whole reason his grandmother wanted her around was to drag up the past. She and Dotty seemed obsessed with it lately, constantly arguing about what had happened when they were younger or when someone had died or given birth. Maybe it was the fact that they were both eighty years old, or maybe all elderly folks relived their glory days as they got older. He got a kick out of their close friendship and a bigger one out of all four of the old gals—Clarice, Dotty, Rose, and Madge—that made up their circle.

  He’d only been gone three days, but his heart was back at Lightning Ridge. He wanted his own bed and Dotty’s chocolate cake. He didn’t give a rat’s ass if his grandmother hired a dozen women. If that made her happy, then he’d write the paychecks out of his personal account, but when the permanent hire was put on the ranch payroll, he wanted someone who could protect those four elderly women. He’d rest easy if he hired someone who could pick one of them up and carry them to the hospital if they fell and broke a hip while walking into the ice cream store.

  He sat down in the bleachers with his bidding card and took his phone out of his pocket. “Nana, how old was you when you wrote all those letters to that soldier?” he asked when she answered his call.

  “I was a senior in high school and I read the letter that got stuck in the mailbox. In it he says that he’s got something important to ask me when I get out there to his ranch. We’d talked about me riding the bus out there when he got out of the service and I got out of school that summer. I really thought I was in love with him and he was about to ask me to marry him,” she said.

  “And you never met him?” Greg asked.

  “I have a picture of him in my box of letters up in the attic,” she said. “But I never did actually meet him or even hear his voice. We didn’t make phone calls in those days like we do now.”

  “You kept letters from another man after you married Grandpa?” he gasped.

  Clarice laughed. “Yes, I did. That part of my life had been over for two years, but I couldn’t throw those letters away. I took them to the burning barrel just before I married your grandpa, but something wouldn’t let me throw them in the fire. So I tied them up with some bailing twine and put them in the attic. I’d forgotten about them until today. Emily has her grandfather’s eyes.”

  “How do you know that, Nana? Is the picture you have in color?”

  “No, but I can tell they are blue and he told me they were,” Clarice said.

  “This is just for a month, right?” Greg asked.

  “Yes, it is. Did you buy that bull?”

  “It’s the next one up on the block. How high should I go?” he answered.

  “The sky is the limit. I trust your judgment,” she said.

  That was Nana’s way of saying that he should trust her as well. If she and Dotty wanted to go on a monthlong cruise around the world, he would have booked it without so much as blinking. So if she wanted to hire Emily to drive her around and help out on the ranch for a month, then he wouldn�
��t fight her.

  “Okay, then. And Nana, make Emily an offer she can’t refuse. It would be nice for you to have someone to take you and the ladies to all your beauty shop appointments and auxiliary meetings. Time to start bidding. I’ll see you late tomorrow night.”

  “I love you, Greg. Drive careful now, and when you get home, don’t turn that bull loose in the pasture until I get a good look at him,” Clarice said.

  Chapter 2

  Emily sat cross-legged in the middle of a king-sized bed in her hotel room and opened up her laptop. She typed Lightning Ridge Ranch into the search engine and immediately a link came up for the ranch website. There was a picture of Greg with a foot propped on a rail fence, one of Clarice sitting on the porch swing, but she wore a pretty flowing skirt and sweater instead of jeans and boots, and one of a whole pasture of Black Angus cattle. It had a page that told all about the cattle sale in the fall; how many cow and calf combinations, bulls and steers they’d sold. Yes, sir, it was a big operation; ten times the size of her ranch when it was at its prime. It would swallow up the little hundred acres that she had these days.

  She flipped back to Greg’s picture. She stared at him so long without blinking that the image became fuzzy. What was it about him that made her heart flutter around in her chest? Was it the eyes?

  She pushed the laptop to one side, picked up the remote, and hit the power button. The CMT channel popped up with a video of “I Feel a Sin Comin’ On” by the Pistol Annies. The volume was so loud that at first she didn’t hear her phone ring. It was the flickering light on the nightstand that caught her attention. She rolled to one side and grabbed it, answering without even checking the caller ID.

  “Do I hear Miranda Lambert?” Taylor asked.

  “Yes, you do.” Emily pressed the mute button on the remote.

  “Did you find the lady that the letters belonged to? I bet you are in Louisiana tonight, aren’t you?” Taylor asked.

  Emily sighed. “I did find Clarice and she’s offered me a job for a month. Her grandson has been after her to hire an assistant. Someone to help with the computerized ranch stuff, payroll, taxes, and then help drive her and her friends around when they need to go places. I think she just wants to hear more about Gramps, but I’m thinking about stayin’ on. You’ll never believe what happened right smack off the bat when I rang the doorbell.”