by Merry Farmer
“You’re welcome, Miss Horner.”
Bonnie and Rojita nodded, then went their separate ways. Bonnie shook her head as she marched down the path on the road to The Gingerbread Man. How quaint that everyone she’d met so far assumed that she was Miss Horner. Then again, almost everyone in Haskell considered her to be Miss Horner too. It had been so much easier to assume her maiden name once her life took the turns it had. It prevented questions. And with everything she was trying to do, avoiding questions was a necessity.
She found The Gingerbread Man exactly where Rojita had told her it would be. There it was, yet another beautiful building in the inexplicably lovely town. She stopped, pressing a hand to her gut. This was it. She hadn’t laid eyes on Rupert in four years. And that had been just a brief encounter after another four years of not seeing him. So many years, so much water under the bridge, and yet it felt as though the water levels were on the rise. She took a deep breath and plunged in, forcing herself forward. It was time she came face-to-face with her husband at last.
Chapter 2
“Boys, I’d like to propose a toast.” Max DeVille rose from his seat across the table from Rupert at The Gingerbread Man, holding up an ornate tankard of ale. He’d insisted on the very best to celebrate their friend’s upcoming wedding. “To Dmitri!”
“To Dmitri,” Rupert echoed, along with his business partner and friend, Skipper King, and their buddy, Gordon Mackinnon.
“He’s marrying the prettiest girl in town,” Max went on.
“One o’ the prettiest,” Gordon added under his breath, turning bright scarlet.
As Max took a swig of his ale, Rupert raised an eyebrow at Gordon. “What’s this, Gordy? You got your eyes on a girl?”
“Let’s see if we can guess who it is,” Dmitri laughed, foam from his ale forming a mustache on his upper lip.
“I bet it’s Zosia Spratt,” Max teased as he took his seat.
“What, the Spratt girl with the big…” Skipper coughed, then finished, “…heart?”
Rupert laughed along with the others, shaking his head. Zosia Spratt had a voluptuous shape, but it was nothing to the perfect curves and tight lines of the woman who had haunted his dreams since the day she’d walked out on him.
His merry mood plummeted at the thought. Where had that come from? He sighed and swigged his ale as the others went on, praising all of Zosia’s virtues. Probably from the same place all of his thoughts about women came from. In almost ten years, no woman Rupert had come across could so much as hold a candle to Bonnie Horner, his long-lost wife.
“It’s not Zosia.” Gordon set them straight when the teasing reached a pitch.
“Oh, so it’s someone, then?” Dmitri poked him in the arm.
“I didn’t say that.”
“I bet it’s Petronella Mason,” Skipper said, tapping the side of his nose. “That’s the fine specimen of womankind that Rupert here is always mooning over.”
Dmitri, Max, and Gordon made loud, teasing sounds as the game swung around to Rupert. Rupert frowned. “I don’t moon,” he insisted.
“Psht!” Skipper snorted. “I’ve caught you adrift on the job more times than one, and I know you well enough to know it’s a woman on your mind.”
A jolt of self-consciousness hit Rupert. Skipper truly was his closest friend. If anyone could see where his thoughts were headed, it was him. “Maybe I was contemplating your shoddy workmanship,” he grumbled. It was a safe jab. Skip would know he was just ribbing him.
Sure enough, Skip laughed. “You know, I’ve always wondered why you haven’t dropped anchor with one of Everland’s beauties.”
“Good point,” Max said, gesturing with his tankard. “I never have seen you take a fancy to anyone in town.”
Rupert felt his cheeks heat and took a drink to hide it. “Maybe none of the ladies here are quite my type.”
The other four uttered wordless sounds of protest and disbelief.
“I’m convinced ye have a lass tucked up yer sleeve somewhere,” Gordon said.
“I…” Rupert sighed rather than finishing his sentence. As far as he could see, he had two choices. He could let his friends go on teasing him while he denied what would probably get more and more obvious as his face grew redder, or he could spin them a tale that would keep them quiet. “All right, all right.” He put down his tankard and help up his hands. “I’ll tell you the truth.”
“Whoa-ho!” Skipper brightened. “We’re finally going to hear us a tale!”
“I was wondering when he would get around to spilling it,” Dmitri added.
“There’s nothing to spill,” Rupert lied. Lied like a dog in the afternoon sun. “I knew a woman once. Prettiest thing you’ve ever seen. Hair as dark as midnight, eyes as blue as sapphires, skin as smooth as porcelain. But she got away.” He shrugged and hid his face behind another drag from his tankard.
His friends sputtered. “You can’t just leave us hanging like that,” Max argued.
“Yeah. That’s the beginning of a story, not the end o’ one,” Gordon agreed.
Rupert only shrugged. “That’s all there is to it. I gave my heart away, and it’s never coming back.” He spoke as if reciting some tragic but not entirely serious poem, doing his best to pretend none of it was important, that he didn’t wake up each morning wondering where Bonnie was or go to bed each night wishing she was in his arms. Because as far as he was concerned, it was damned embarrassing. She was gone. She’d made it pretty clear the last time he tried to seek her out that the past should stay right where it was, in the past. He’d blown his chance with her. He’d gotten what he deserved, and she was never—
The Gingerbread Man’s front door swung open, letting in the late afternoon sunlight and illuminating the figure of a woman. She took two steps into the bar and shut the door behind her, searching the room. Rupert’s jaw dropped, and if he’d been holding his tankard, he would have dropped that too. It was as if he’d managed to conjure her from his imagination simply by speaking about her aloud.
There she was, as beautiful as the last time he’d seen her, black hair caught up in a fashionable style with a few long pieces hanging over her shoulder, cheeks rosy and pink, and just a touch of color on her lips. She wore a fine, blue traveling dress that fit her curves to perfection. No man looking at her could mistake her for a shy, fainting maiden, but neither would they jump on her as a loose woman either. She was a force all of her own. She was Bonnie.
She was his wife. Every suppressed longing and possessive urge he had flared to the surface.
And then she spotted him. Her eyes zeroed in on his like an arrow being fired straight across the room and into his soul. Ten years vanished in an instant. For that first, beautiful second, she was the fiery young woman who had hopped off the train in Colorado and announced that she was his mail-order bride, and he’d better get ready for a lifetime of loving. She’d bowled him over then, and the sight of her now left him feeling just as knocked flat.
It was a few seconds later that he realized his friends had caught on to the earthquake that had just devastated the landscape of his heart.
“You two know each other?” Skipper asked.
“They must,” Max answered for him when Rupert just sat there, staring at Bonnie like a fish that had flopped its way up to land.
“We should invite her over.” Gordon began to rise from his chair, waving to Bonnie.
“Yes, we should.” Dmitri waved an arm too.
“No, just let her be,” Rupert said, or thought he said.
Either way, Bonnie broke into a smile—an overly warm, business-like smile—and began to sashay her way through the tables toward them.
Max whistled. “Now there’s a woman who knows which way is up.”
“I didn’t think they made them like that out here,” Gordon added. “I’ve seen women in Paris and Rome who walked like that, but never in—”
He was forced to snap his mouth shut as Bonnie came within earshot of the table. Rupert�
��s friends straightened, clearing their throats, and suddenly putting on their best manners—while managing to ogle, just the way Bonnie likely wanted them to.
“Well, hello,” Bonnie said as she reached them. She sent her faintly suggestive smile around the table to all of Rupert’s friends. They were good men, all of them, but it was hard not to fall under the spell of a woman who knew men very well. At last, her gaze rested on Rupert, and her expression grew guarded. “Hello, Rupert.”
“You know her?” Dmitri almost whispered.
“Of course he does.” Gordon stuck an elbow in Dmitri’s ribs. “Black hair, blue eyes… She’s the one that got away.”
Gordon wasn’t quiet enough. Bonnie heard him. And Rupert knew that she heard him, because a flash of pain tightened her features before she smoothed them over into regal calm. Anyone who didn’t know her would think she really was calm, but Rupert knew her. It may have been years since he’d last seen her—even longer since they’d last lived together—but he knew her emotions like he knew his own. She was as upset as he was.
“Bonnie.” He nodded. “Why are you here?”
Shards of iron filled her gaze. “Now what kind of way is that to greet an old friend?”
He was sunk. There were no two ways about it. Rupert cleared his throat and darted looks around the table to his friends. All four of them were paying rapt attention to every little thing going on between him and Bonnie. There was no way he was going to be able to bluff his way out of this.
But that didn’t mean he had to tell the whole truth.
He cleared his throat. “Boys, this is Bonnie…” He paused. Last he’d heard, she’d stopped using his name. And truth be told, he wasn’t in a hurry to identify her as his wife just then.
“Bonnie Horner.” She saved him the trouble of coming up with a plausible story by introducing herself. Max sat closest to her, so she held her hand out to him to shake. “From Haskell.”
“I’m Max DeVille. Haskell…” Max shook her hand heartily. “My father does business with one of the ranchers near there. Do you know a Rex Bonneville?”
Bonnie’s expression pinched. She looked as though she might be sick. In an instant, the moment passed. Rupert widened his eyes. What was that all about?
“Yes, I know him.” Bonnie’s smile widened. “But I’d rather get to know you.” She shifted to the side, sliding her arm around Dmitri’s back and fixing him with a particularly professional grin.
Rupert’s stomach turned. His friends laughed.
“This here is Dmitri Volkov,” Max explained, unable to hide his chuckles. “We’re here celebrating his upcoming nuptials.”
“Oh?” Bonnie stood a little straighter, turned down her charms to a respectable level. “Why, let me offer you my congratulations, then.” She bent forward to plant a deceptively chaste kiss on Dmitri’s cheek.
The others laughed. Gordon elbowed Dmitri again. “Don’t let Zelle find out about that.”
Bonnie’s grin grew, and she stepped around Dmitri to Gordon, reaching out to stroke his long ponytail. “And who might you be, handsome?”
“Uh…” Gordon blushed.
Rupert clenched his fist so hard around the handle of his tankard that he was surprised it didn’t shatter. What did Bonnie think she was doing, coming in here out of the blue, four years since he’d laid eyes on her, to flirt with his friends? He stood so fast that his chair nearly tipped over.
“That’s Gordon MacKinnon,” he snapped. “And that’s Odysseus “Skipper” King, my business partner.” Then, with barely a pause for breath, he charged on with, “Can I speak to you for a moment? In private?”
“I—”
He didn’t let her answer. Instead, he grabbed her arm and quick-stepped her across the room to a shady corner near the bar. Heart pounding—and breaking—face hot with embarrassment—and passion—he said through clenched jaw, “What are you doing here, Bonnie?”
She took her time answering. Took her time because she needed to work through a full range of shocked, irritated, disdainful, coy, and finally flirtatious facial expressions first. She reached out to trace the buttons on Rupert’s shirt, lowering her eyes to watch what her fingers were doing. “Is that any way to greet your sweetheart?”
He moved to swat her hand away, but ended up holding it pressed against his chest instead. “We moved way past sweethearts years ago.”
“I suppose we did.” She raised her eyes slowly to meet his. Her lips twitched into a cunning grin. Her eyes told a different story. In their blue depths he could see just as much heartache as he felt. There was more hurt between them than there were miles between Everland and Haskell, and he didn’t have a clue what to do about it.
Rupert took a deep breath, desperate to master his emotions. “Please tell me that you came to Everland to put things right between us, Bonnie.”
“I—” Her lashes fluttered as she lowered her gaze.
“Because I never stopped loving you, you know.” He cursed himself as soon as the words were out. What kind of fool blurted out the unthinkable two seconds after the woman who’d torn out his heart came stomping back into his life with iron heels?
Bonnie looked up at him, desperation and sadness enveloping her like a fog. She pulled her hand away from his heart. “You heard me tell your friend Max I know who Rex Bonneville is?”
“Yes.” Already, Rupert didn’t like where this was going.
Bonnie pushed her shoulders back, trying to put on an air of nonchalance and failing. “Well, I know who he is because I’m engaged to marry him.”
Black storm clouds gathered in Rupert’s soul, and the heat of anger made him writhe in his skin. “What?” he asked through clenched jaw.
“You heard me. Rex Bonneville wants me to marry him.” Her face flamed just as red as he felt. She wouldn’t meet his eyes.
Something was wrong. Underneath the numbing anger her pronouncement raised in him was a good measure of panic…and more protectiveness than he wanted to think about. He shifted his weight to one leg and crossed his arms, mostly to hold himself together. “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you right. What was that?”
At last she seemed to manage herself. She huffed out a breath and threw out her arms. “I’m marrying Rex Bonneville.” She paused, the lines of her face tightening as if she was debating saying more. At last, she burst out with, “He’s been very generous with his wallet, and my Place needs his money, and…” She didn’t finish.
It was all Rupert could do not to fly into a rage. “Your Place.” He crossed his arms more tightly. They were the only thing stopping him from shaking with rage. “You’re attempting to commit bigamy so that you can get some rich man to fund your little whorehouse?” He was fully aware that he was growling like a wolf, and only half regretted it.
To his surprise, instead of wilting with guilt—like he was certain she should—Bonnie went on the defensive. “You have no idea what the mission of my Place is.”
“It doesn’t take much imagination to figure that out.” He sent a sideways look to one of The Gingerbread Man’s overly friendly barmaids.
“Saying things like that just proves you have no imagination at all,” Bonnie snapped. “The Place isn’t what you think it is.”
“Oh? What is it? An oriental dance salon?” Through his sarcasm, a thread of deep pain began to wrap itself around his chest. It killed him that Bonnie had gotten wrapped up in that kind of business. It flayed him alive that she’d had to stoop so low, sell herself and others to survive. Because he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was his fault.
Instead of answering his vicious jab, she clicked her tongue and lifted the reticule she carried. She sifted through it, pulling out a worn and faded piece of paper. “Here.” She thrust the paper at him.
Rupert snatched it away from her, unfolding it to read the printed words. All he saw was “Decree of Divorce” before his vision blurred with despair.
“I just need you to sign it,” Bonnie sighed. In an ins
tant, she’d gone from firebrand to sounding as though she was exhausted from carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders.
Rupert stared at the paper, pretending to read the words. He couldn’t have made heads or tails of it if he’d tried. He couldn’t focus over the shattered feeling in his chest. Only an idiot would be devastated to have a wife he hadn’t seen for more than a few hours in the last nine years spring something like this, but Bonnie was not the kind of woman a man shook off, like dust from his boots. She was the ray of sunshine he’d felt on his skin for one brief moment, then dreamed of through all of the rainy days that followed. She was the elixir of life that he’d tasted so long ago and had craved ever since.
She was his one chance of happiness, and he’d let her slip through his fingers because of his own stupidity.
“This looks old,” he mumbled when the regrets of his past became too much for him to bear.
Bonnie shifted her weight. She’d been chewing her lip while he was lost in his own thoughts, but now she stopped. “I…I went through the courts to get it four years ago when you…”
He glanced up at her. When she didn’t go on, he finished with, “When I finally found out where you’d gone and came after you.” He’d thought she’d been in Denver all those years. It’d come as a shock to find out she was only a couple towns over, in Haskell, less than a day’s train journey. He’d hopped on the first train through town and…
…and had his heart broken all over again.
She straightened, some of the fire back in her eyes. “You made it quite clear to me that you didn’t want a whore for a wife.”
“And you made it clear to me that you chose the whore part over the wife part.”
She snapped her face away from him, mouth pressed tightly shut, tapping her hand against the side of her skirt as though willing herself not to lash out. After several long seconds, she took a deep breath and faced him again. “As I tried to tell you then and am trying to tell you now, there is more to my Place than meets the eye. I take those girls in from far worse situations. I keep them safe, healthy. I give them an education, a chance for a better life.”
