Golden State Brides

by Keli Gwyn

  “Miss, or should I say Mrs. Daviot? That was a very brave thing you did. I’m sure we can come to a reasonable agreement about your employment.” Mr. Harvey smoothed his moustache. Natalie nodded and gave a tremulous smile.

  Doc took her elbow. “How about we go get some punch and cake and find a place to sit down?”

  He escorted Natalie away, leaving Caleb, Meghan, and Mr. Harvey.

  “Sir, thank you for all you did for me today. Thank you for bidding on the quilt. I hope you won’t be too harsh with Mrs. Gregory. She’s under so much pressure. Her son has been wounded and she’s waiting to hear how he’s faring.” Meghan bit her lip.

  “She’s been a longtime faithful employee. I’m sure we can resolve things.” He smiled. “Though I am not happy to hear that one of my best waitresses is planning on abandoning us at the end of her contract. How much time do you have left?”

  “About six weeks. I should be home with my family before Thanksgiving.”

  His moustache twitched. “If I read the signs right, Mr. McBride might have something to say about that.” Sketching a small wave, he sauntered toward the stairs and the murmur of conversation drifting up from the reception below.

  Meghan found herself alone with Caleb at last. Shyness swept over her, surprising her. He released her hand.

  Clink, step, clink, step, he walked over to the balcony rail and turned, leaning back against it. She moved to stand before him. His finger under her chin raised her face.

  “Well, Meghan Thorson, it seems we have a few things to talk about.”

  She nodded.

  “First, I want to apologize. I had no call to lay into you like I did when you were out at my place. I had no business kissing you against your will—”

  “It wasn’t against my will.” The words tumbled out of her mouth before she could stop them.

  He grinned and reached for her, cupping her shoulders and drawing her to him. “Is that so? Then maybe you won’t mind this one too much. I’ve been wanting to kiss you all night.” His lips came down on hers, familiar and yet so fresh and new and strange. Everything she remembered about their first kiss came rushing back before being drowned by feelings she’d never felt before. Stars burst behind her eyelids as she melted into him. His arms came around her, giving her an anchor in the storm of emotions and happiness and exhilaration. For the first time, she felt as if this was the real, unguarded, Caleb, free from his fears and his past, free to love and be loved. She murmured his name against his lips.

  “Caleb.”

  A growl came from his throat, and he deepened the kiss as if he wanted to devour her. His fingers tunneled in her hair, dislodging her hat, and she clung to him as the world spun around her.

  She loved him. With all her heart. She wanted her love to help heal him completely, to help him forget the pain of the past and reach toward a brighter future, together.

  He lifted his lips from hers and peppered her face with kisses. “I know we have so much to talk about, but I could stand here with you in my arms forever.”

  Turning her face, she rested her cheek against his chest. His chin came down on top of her head, his arms still around her. She sighed. There was nowhere on earth she’d rather be. His heart thudded under her ear, in time with her own.

  “I love you, Meghan. I’ve tried to fight it. I’ve tried to hold you at arms’ length, but I just can’t anymore. I think I fell in love the first time I looked into your eyes. You knocked the wind out of me, literally.”

  She hugged him tighter and looked up into his face. “I love you, too, Caleb McBride. And I’m so sorry for everything. I wish I had been true to my first instinct about you instead of letting Mrs. Gregory and her friends sway me. I let what they said override how you acted. You were courteous, brave, selfsacrificing, understanding, caring—”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa, I’m no saint. God had to have a pretty stern talk with me about my pride and about the anger and bitterness I was carrying around about this town. We haven’t really started to work on how I feel about my family yet.” He grimaced. “Nor the jealousy I felt toward someone named Lars that you claimed to love.” Giving her a little shake, he kissed the tip of her nose. “That was naughty of you.”

  “I do love Lars.” She put on her most innocent expression. “But not the same way I love you.”

  “My leg doesn’t matter?”

  “Not to my love for you. Not one single bit. I love you.”

  “You’re sure, because it isn’t going away.”

  “I certainly hope it isn’t.” She noted the tired lines around his eyes. “Let’s sit down. You’re still recovering from the flu.”

  Once seated side-by-side on the folding chairs, Caleb took her hands. “Thank you for taking such good care of Joshua and me when we were sick. I was scared that I would die before I got to tell you how I felt about you. Then, when I knew you had seen my leg and you didn’t come to see me at Doc’s place, I thought maybe you were so repulsed you couldn’t bear it.” He swallowed hard, his vulnerability blazing in his eyes. “That happened to me before, a woman I thought I loved and was going to marry found out about my leg and she couldn’t handle it. She broke things off. That’s when I left Kentucky and headed out here. The desert seemed to mirror how I felt inside. I didn’t intend to keep my leg a secret here, but somehow, when someone asked me why I hadn’t enlisted, I just couldn’t make myself say the words.” He shook his head. “I could’ve kept you from a lot of trouble if I’d just have been honest up front.”

  She stroked his cheek, reveling in the freedom to touch him and not be rejected. “No recriminations. The past is the past and we can’t change it. Our job is to do the right thing here and now.”

  “I guess the right thing then is to ask you if you will marry me. I’d get down on one knee, but…” He waved toward his brace. “I might not be able to get up again.”

  He’d taken her breath away. “This will do me just fine. And if you’re asking, I’m accepting. Yes, Caleb McBride, I will marry you. But I warn you. I don’t do anything by halves. I’m going to love you with everything I have.”

  He leaned in and kissed her again, this time with a hunger and power she hadn’t anticipated but reveled in. Ending the kiss, he put his forehead against hers. “I’m counting on it.”

  When he’d caught his breath, he asked, “What about your job? Harvey Girls aren’t supposed to be engaged.”

  “I think it will be okay. I know a guy.” She gave him a saucy grin. “Though I suppose we should be circumspect for the next few weeks. I don’t want to flout Mrs. Gregory’s authority completely. If they let me stay on, I’ll be respectful, though it won’t be easy.”

  He laughed. “Now why doesn’t that surprise me?” He kissed her again. “I don’t think I will ever get tired of that. Who would’ve thought the beautiful redhead with the amazing green eyes—the girl I rescued from falling under a train—would be the one to take on this town on my behalf? Not only that, but she stormed the walls and barriers I had put up around my heart. She snuck in when I wasn’t looking and healed parts of me I didn’t even realize were broken. How could I not love her?”

  “And the man labeled a coward took on that same town on my behalf.” She rested her head on his shoulder. “And he sacrificed his privacy, exposed his most vulnerable secret in order to stand up for me. How could I not love him?”

  His chest heaved in a sigh. “I suppose we should head downstairs to the reception. We have to face the town sometime.”

  “A shame. I’d love to stay right here in your arms forever, just you and me.”

  “We’ll do it together.” He rose and offered his hand. “You and me.”

  Epilogue

  Two days before Meghan’s contract ended, she stood in the dining room, tears streaming down her face, reading the headline of the Desert Star. Caleb stood beside her as people cried and hugged and yelled.

  The Armistice had been signed. The war was over. Lars would come home. Derek would ret
urn to Natalie and his family to await the birth of their baby. All of America’s doughboys would come home.

  Harvey Girl rules notwithstanding, Meghan dropped the paper and flung herself into Caleb’s arms. “It’s over. It’s over. It’s over,” she chanted happily into his ear, squeezing his neck.

  He held her tight as chaos reigned around them. Mrs. Gregory sat at a table and openly sobbed. Word had come the day after the auction that her son would recover from his wounds, but he had lost his right arm below the elbow. Broken, the head waitress had apologized to Meghan and Caleb, developing a whole new respect for what Caleb endured every day.

  Joshua burst into the dining room. “Did you hear? Did you hear?”

  “Yes. Isn’t it wonderful?” Meghan reached out and drew Joshua into their hug.

  “It won’t change any of our plans, will it?” he asked when he’d extricated himself. “We’re still going to Minnesota, right?”

  “Right. On the Saturday afternoon train. You, Caleb, Doc Bates, and me. You’re going to love Minnesota. I wish we were going in the springtime, but you’ll get to see snow.”

  “I can’t wait. I still can’t believe he got me into college. Who would’ve guessed that Doc Bates had gone to medical school with Charlie Mayo?”

  “Doc’s going to miss you when he comes back here. He says you’re underfoot all the time asking questions and trying to learn everything before you even start school.”

  Joshua grinned, so confident and excited, no longer the hunch-shouldered, resentful, haunted boy he’d been when Meghan first met him. His parents had given their consent to his leaving with them, and his father had even managed a rough hug of good-bye.

  “Well, since you delivered the last batch of horses to the train, there hasn’t been anything to do at the ranch.” Joshua shrugged. “I’m going to go find Doc. He’s probably heard the news by now.”

  That evening, Meghan and Caleb walked beside the fountain in the open-air lobby, holding hands. “It’s going to be a long road ahead, isn’t it? The world is going to have to find its way back to peace.”

  Caleb nodded. “But we’ll do it. Time will heal the wounds, dull the hurt.” They walked slowly to the musical accompaniment of the splashing water and the clink of Caleb’s leg brace. He didn’t wear it all the time, but by day’s end, he usually had it on. She never mentioned it unless he did, still finding her way with how much he wanted to share about his leg and how he was feeling about it. Time would help with that, too.

  “I’m just glad it’s all over. Healing can’t start until the fighting ends.”

  “That was certainly true for us, wasn’t it? You’re a little firebrand when you get riled up.” He brushed his fingers along her temple, his eyes soft.

  “Papa would say it was my Celtic heritage that makes me volatile, and Mama says it’s my Viking blood.”

  He wrapped his arms around her and rested his chin on her hair. “Whatever it is, I’m glad it’s mine.”

  “Me too, Caleb. Me too.”

  Even though Erica Vetsch has set aside her career teaching history to high school students in order to homeschool her own children, her love of history hasn’t faded. Erica’s favorite books are historical novels and history books, and one of her greatest thrills is stumbling across some obscure historical factoid that makes her imagination leap. She’s continually amazed at how God has allowed her to use her passion for history, romance, and daydreaming to craft historical romances that entertain readers and glorify Him. Whenever she’s not following flights of fancy in her fictional world, Erica is the company bookkeeper for her family’s lumber business, a mother of two terrific teens, wife to a man who is her total opposite and yet her soul mate, and an avid museum patron.