He’d get nothing from her.
On the opposite side of the grove, the rancher, Hayes, led a frail elderly woman to a chair in the shade. An elderly man limped along beside them. Wyatt might be able to get more out of Hayes. He started forward and instantly felt resistance.
“Papa.” Something, or rather, someone, tugged on his trouser leg.
Wyatt looked down to see Sasha, her face tilted back so she could see all the way to the top of his head.
“I’m not your papa.”
Just like the first time, she looked at him without blinking or speaking. This time, her lips puckered into a frown. Tears wouldn’t be far behind.
“Now, don’t go crying,” he urged. “We’ll find your mama.”
Charlotte wouldn’t be Sasha’s mother much longer, he couldn’t help thinking, thanks to a ridiculous set of rules that couldn’t bend when it was obvious they needed to. That’s what had frustrated him about the army. Orders were given, and he had to obey, regardless of whose lives were affected.
Sasha’s eyes welled with tears.
He crouched down to her level. “Don’t cry.” He looked frantically for Charlotte. What was with that woman, always losing track of her daughter?
“Lynette!” a woman called. “Lynette, show your face.”
A hand, followed by a dark-haired little head, poked from under the edge of the tablecloth. The pigtailed girl grinned at Wyatt. “Don’t tell her I’m here.”
Wyatt lifted an eyebrow. “Hiding?”
The girl, perhaps a little older than Sasha, shrugged. “I’m s’posed to watch Sasha. We’re playin’ wagon train.”
“Wagon train?”
She nodded solemnly. “We’re hiding from Indians.”
Wyatt lifted an eyebrow. “You’re obviously hiding, but maybe Sasha’s a little young to understand your game.” He wasn’t sure she should be wandering around by herself. Charlotte would be frantic.
The girl shrugged again and lifted the bottom of the tablecloth. “She can join me.”
Sasha scooted under with a giggle.
As an afterthought, Lynette added, “You can too.”
Wyatt stifled a laugh and said with exaggerated seriousness, “I think I’d better leave the wagon train in your capable hands.”
After another grin, Lynette dropped the tablecloth, and the two girls giggled, probably at him.
Wyatt straightened and shook out his stiff knee. Once out from behind the cover of the table, he saw people were taking their places. The sheriff and his bride walked arm-in-arm toward the table farthest from him, but the prettiest woman of all headed straight for him, purpose in her steps. Charlotte Miller definitely had something to tell him. Remembering the last tongue-lashing he’d taken when she’d been in a temper, he gulped and wished he’d taken up Lynette’s offer.
* * *
Swallowing her nerves, Charlotte strode toward Wyatt. At first his back was turned, and then he ducked down behind the table.
She hesitated. Did he know what she was going to ask? Of course he did. Everyone in town knew she had to find a husband. He knew, and he was hiding from her.
Humiliation heated her cheeks.
Then he stood and looked right at her. The brim of his hat shadowed his face, so she couldn’t see his expression, but at least he didn’t run.
She still had a chance.
She covered the distance between them in seconds. Her heart pounded so wildly that it threatened to break her ribs. Her entire future depended on this. Sasha’s happiness depended on this.
She pressed a hand to her chest to still that out-of-control heart, and summoned her courage. “Mr. Reed.”
“Mrs. Miller.”
That was an awkward start.
She glanced around. The tables were starting to fill. People looked at her with curiosity. She didn’t have much time before their conversation would be overheard.
“I didn’t see you at the ceremony.”
His lean, tanned face tightened. “I wasn’t there.”
“I’m sure you would have been welcomed.”
One brow lifted. “There’s no need to be polite, Mrs. Miller. I know how the town feels about me.”
“Maybe they don’t know you. If they’d seen what I had, they’d feel differently.”
“And what exactly did you see?”
“That you care about the orphans. It was in your eyes and the set of your mouth when Pauline—the mayor—explained how much the town wants them.”
His intense gaze didn’t waver. “Anything you saw was an act.”
She gasped. Why would he say such a thing? The one quality she’d sensed in him from the start was unwavering honesty. Cold and withdrawn, yes, but honest. “I don’t believe you. You’re saying that to frighten me. Well, I won’t be frightened. I know you’re a good man. I see how you are with Sasha.”
At her daughter’s name, she thought she heard a giggle from under the table. She reached for the table linen, but Wyatt snagged her hand and placed it on his arm.
“Maybe you’re right. Let’s take a stroll and discuss it.”
He didn’t even ask if she wanted to walk, but after he tugged her forward, she realized that a little privacy would be best. Mr. and Mrs. Gavin were headed for that very table.
Wyatt led her toward the general store, which was closed in honor of the wedding. That’s where this whole ordeal had begun, where Sasha had vanished. When Charlotte ran outside to look for her daughter, she’d first seen Wyatt. Tall and strong, he’d looked every bit the hero. He still could be, if he would marry her. How to ask?
While she fumbled for words, Wyatt started the conversation. “Are you friends with the sheriff and his bride?”
Small talk. Perhaps a good way to begin. After all, she barely knew the man. “Holly is a dear friend, yes, but this is such a small town that one can’t afford to make many enemies.”
“Except Miss Ward.”
Charlotte stifled a gasp. She’d tried her best to forgive Beatrice, but the woman’s hateful attitude toward the orphans prevented reconciliation. If not for Beatrice, no one would have suggested taking Sasha away. “How did you know?”
“She’s opposed to the orphans staying here, isn’t she?”
Charlotte tried to keep the rancor from her voice. “I don’t know why. Granted, she’s an unhappy spinster, but there are worse things than being alone.” The repetition of Amelia Hicks’s words came with surprising ease.
Wyatt halted and faced her. “Did your husband beat you?”
“No, never.” Charlotte couldn’t get the words out fast enough. “Charles was a good man, decent and kind.”
He looked like he didn’t believe her. “But?”
She drew in a deep breath. No one knew the truth. They all thought she’d had the perfect marriage. Now Charles was dead. No one should speak ill of the dead, but if she expected Wyatt to marry her, she ought to be honest with him.
She lowered her gaze. “There are other ways to hurt a person’s soul.”
His hands gripped her shoulders. “No one should marry without love and respect.”
Which is precisely what she intended to do.
“H-he never promised me love,” she admitted. This was going very much awry, but she must tell the truth. “He told me from the start that he’d buried his heart with his first wife. The fault was mine for thinking he might change his mind. And for thinking that I would change, too—because I wasn’t in love with him, either.”
She heard his quick intake of air, but he didn’t say anything.
“My parents had died,” she continued, “one after the other. They’d spent everything planting the first year’s seed.” Her lip quivered at the memory. “The rains didn’t come. The seedlings died before they had a chance to live. My mother got sick, and then my father. They died two months apart.”
“I’m sorry.”
She shook her head. “I had to get on. That’s the way it is here on the prairie. Back East I could h
ave waited out the mourning period, but here I had to find a way to live.” She clutched her hands to her stomach at the memory of the gnawing hunger. “Charles offered to marry me. He never said he would love me.” It felt good to say the words, to release them into the heavens.
“Then he died.”
She nodded, keeping her eyes averted.
“And you’re alone again.”
“Except for Sasha.” Her eyes burned as she lifted them to search his face. Would he accept her proposal? Or would he laugh in her face? “I can’t lose her, too.” The whisper bounced off him with more fierceness than she’d thought possible. “I won’t lose my daughter. I’ll do anything to keep her.”
He flinched and looked away. “I’m sorry. I tried my best.”
“I know.” She boldly grasped his arm, forcing his gaze back to her. “Thank you.” The time had come. “Will you help me again?”
Confusion clouded his expression. “How?”
She opened her bag and pulled out the wallet. “Charles left me some money. Whatever Mr. Baxter paid you, I’ll pay double.”
He pulled back. “It’s not that simple.”
“Of course it is.”
“No, it’s not. The Orphan Salvation Society has an agreement with Greenville. If the judge rules that the children must go to Greenville, then I have no choice but to take them.”
Charlotte shook her head. He didn’t understand. “I’m not talking about all the children. I’m talking about Sasha.”
Instead of walking away or shouting at her, he spoke firmly. “There’s nothing I can do to help you keep Sasha.”
“Yes, there is.”
He stared at her. “No, there’s not.”
“You can marry me.” The words exploded down the street like gunfire.
He didn’t blink. Not one muscle flinched except that tick below his eye. Dear Lord, he must think her mad.
“For money,” she added, lifting up the wallet. “I’ll pay you double, triple. I’ll give you all I have.” Tears threatened, but she refused to let them surface. “I don’t want anything from you. You don’t even have to live here. I just need to be married long enough to legally adopt Sasha. Once the adoption goes through, you can move on.” She shoved the wallet at him.
He held up his hands and backed away.
“Please help me.” The words came out strangled, and for a moment she feared he didn’t understand. She held out the wallet again. “Please.”
Instead of taking the money, he turned his back and strode away.
Chapter Seven
The woman was a lunatic.
Wyatt stormed down the middle of the street, not caring where he was going or who saw him as long as he got far away from Mrs. Charlotte Miller.
Marry her? Was she out of her mind?
Wyatt Reed was not the marrying type. He kept his emotions under lock and key. He preferred to be alone. He refused all friendships and attachments, at least until he reached San Francisco. There he could begin anew. There he’d make friends. But marry? Marriage would never work for a man like him.
Not that he didn’t find Charlotte a sight to behold. She was that and more, but he couldn’t settle here. Too many people knew him. Too many people already hated him. Surely she knew that, yet she’d still asked him to marry her.
She must be out of her mind.
Worse, she expected him to take her money. All of it. Wyatt Reed didn’t hire out for this kind of job. He sure didn’t take a widow’s entire savings.
If not you, then someone else.
His steps slowed at the thought. The wrong man would take advantage of her. The wrong man would sense her desperation and steal both her savings and her heart. He shivered. The wrong man would leave her worse off than she was now. Didn’t she realize the risk she was taking? She hardly knew him. She certainly didn’t know what he’d done in the war. She couldn’t know he would refuse to take all her money. She couldn’t know if he would go back on his word and leave town before finishing the job. Yet she’d come to him rather than one of the local men.
What would drive a woman to do such a thing?
Sheriff Wright’s words came to mind. The man had been trying to tell him that Charlotte needed help, but Wyatt hadn’t listened.
But why him? Why not ask one of the men around here? She must know them better.
Unless she wanted a man who would leave.
He halted.
Of course. She didn’t want a man who’d stick around. She wanted the child, not the husband. That left only him and that banker from Newfield, Curtis Brooks. From the gossip he’d heard around town, Wyatt knew that Brooks was the one who’d suggested Charlotte marry. Was he hoping to snare the lovely widow?
Wyatt’s gut twisted at the thought of Charlotte with the impeccably dressed man, despite knowing that he would treat her far better than Wyatt ever could.
Wyatt shook his head. No, Brooks wasn’t besotted with Charlotte. His gaze had barely left another widow—Mayor Evans. He wouldn’t marry Charlotte. If he’d been willing, he would have offered already.
That left Wyatt. As a drifter and a loner, he fit her plan perfectly. She could count on him to disappear once Sasha was legally hers. He needed money, as his thin wallet testified. If the judge ruled against him, Baxter wouldn’t pay, and he’d lose his chance for San Francisco.
But the price was steep. Wyatt hadn’t planned to tie himself to any woman, especially not a kind and gentle one like Charlotte. Her soft voice and refined beauty reminded him far too much of the women he’d betrayed.
Wyatt’s vision blurred. He couldn’t marry. Ever.
The midday heat rose off the street in waves, but Wyatt felt the clammy grip of memories that refused to die. He wiped his forehead and replaced his hat.
He couldn’t do it. No matter how great Charlotte’s need. She’d have to look elsewhere. He squared his shoulders. She deserved a direct response, not a coward turning his back on her.
So he turned around, expecting to see Charlotte waiting for him, but she’d returned to the wedding celebration and was helping Sasha onto a chair. The sight sent a terrible feeling flooding into his heart. Affection.
He scowled. Wyatt Reed couldn’t afford to care.
* * *
Charlotte struggled to contain her tears as she cut Sasha’s chicken into tiny pieces. The look Wyatt had given her... She bit her lip. He thought her out of her mind. Any man would. She knew that, so why did it hurt so badly?
“Zee hor-sey,” Sasha said between bites.
“Not today.” Charlotte struggled to sound cheerful. “We’re celebrating Miss Sanders’s wedding to Sheriff Wright. When you go to school next year, you’ll call her Mrs. Wright.” She swiped away a tear, for Sasha would never have Holly for a teacher.
“Hor-sey,” Sasha demanded.
Charlotte sighed. She’d kept Charles’s pair at the livery, but they weren’t getting a good workout since he’d died. She simply had no cause to hitch up the team to the wagon. Mel Hutchinson wanted to buy them. Maybe she should sell, but not just yet, not while Sasha was still here. She loved to pet the docile animals’ noses.
“We’ll go to the stables after we eat,” she promised. It would take her mind off the bitter disappointment of Wyatt’s rejection.
With a quivering lower lip, she surveyed the crowd. Nearly everyone was here. Colton Hayes assisted his parents. He was a good man, but she couldn’t ask this of him, not when he had so many worries already. The other bachelors didn’t even merit consideration. That left the elderly Elmer Droll. He’d marry her just to have someone cook and clean for him, but his pockmarked face and rotting teeth sickened her. If he would accept Sasha, however, she’d try to stomach her revulsion.
She couldn’t be a true wife to him, however. He’d have to agree to a chaste marriage before they wed. Would he? It wasn’t a question she’d even thought to ask of Wyatt. The prospect of his touch frightened her in a far different way. She could still feel where he’d gr
ipped her shoulders, and she had to admit she’d hoped he would pull her closer, perhaps even claim a kiss.
Foolish woman! She sank to the chair beside Sasha, overwrought and overcome. Dear Lord, what am I going to do?
“May I join you?” The rumbling baritone sizzled down Charlotte’s spine.
She stopped breathing, hardly daring to believe he’d changed his mind. Hadn’t he walked away from her? Hadn’t he looked at her with disgust? Yet hope made her raise her eyes until they met his steely gaze.
He didn’t look pleased.
“Wyatt.” Her voice came out all shaky. She swallowed and tried again. “Mr. Reed.”
He looked to his left and right, but the table was empty except for them. Everyone else had finished or drawn closer to the newlyweds. No one wanted to be near her.
“We need to talk.” He pulled out the chair beside her, a child-size one from the schoolhouse, and folded his long, lean frame onto it. His knees stuck up like grasshopper legs.
Despite his comical appearance, a lump bigger than a boiled potato stuck in her throat. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have...” But she couldn’t finish. Saying the words once had been difficult enough. She couldn’t do it again.
“And I shouldn’t have walked off.”
She stared at the table linen, at her empty plate, at anything but Wyatt Reed. “I understand.” Even a fully cinched corset didn’t squeeze her chest this painfully. Why did he have to rehash this?
“What have we here?” he said in a much softer tone, the voice he used with—
Charlotte whipped open her eyes to see Sasha squirming onto his lap, her hand outstretched.
“Sasha,” she cried out, horrified, “Mr. Reed doesn’t want your half-chewed chicken.”
He chuckled, his attention wholly on Sasha. “Looks pretty good to a man who hasn’t had a bite to eat.” He took off his hat. “Why, thank you kindly, Miss Sasha.” Then, to Charlotte’s surprise, he took a piece of chicken from Sasha’s hand and popped it into his mouth. “Mm-mm. That’s some mighty fine eating.”
Sasha squealed with delight, and the queasiness in Charlotte’s stomach eased a little. She mouthed a thank-you at Wyatt, whose stormy eyes had softened to the color of spring rain. One arm circled little Sasha protectively. What a wonderful father he would make. She blinked back a tear.
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