Secondhand Bride

by Linda Lael Miller

  6

  Sarah Fee came to take the dirty dishes away and wipe down the tablecloth, and cowboys and local businessmen began to wander into the hotel dining room, greeting Becky, tossing curious glances Chloe’s way, and sitting down at other tables to order breakfast.

  “My office would be a better place to talk,” Becky said, looking and sounding distracted. She pushed back her chair and stood.

  Chloe followed suit, still feeling unsettled. Whatever Becky was getting ready to tell her about her uncle was obviously weighing on her mind.

  The small room behind the registration desk was neat and elegantly furnished, more suited to an Eastern parlor than an establishment like the Arizona Hotel.

  “Sit down,” Becky said, indicating a delicate chair covered in dark blue velvet. As Chloe complied, Becky settled herself behind the desk, with its beautifully turned legs. “Just before he died,” the older woman went on, “John asked me to look after you.”

  Chloe felt an ache deep in the center of her chest, and a lump formed in her throat. “We were close,” she said, “though we didn’t see much of each other after I grew up.” She’d barely reached her full growth the last time her uncle visited her stepfather’s expensive house in Sacramento; he’d said goodbye that day, with a note of finality in his voice and sorrow in his eyes, and promised to write. He’d kept that promise, but the crack he’d left in Chloe’s heart by going had never really healed.

  Becky drew a deep breath, let it out slowly, and tried to smile. “He loved you very much,” she said. “Up till now, I missed him for myself. Now, I miss him for you, too.”

  Chloe was on the edge of her seat, her hands clasping the arms of the fancy chair. Her eyes had gone so wide that they burned, and she could barely breathe. “Please,” she whispered. “Tell me.”

  Becky sat up a little straighter, set her shoulders resolutely. “There’s no easy way to say something like this— John Lewis wasn’t your uncle, Chloe. He was your father.”

  “No,” Chloe said, at once stricken and wildly hopeful. “He was my father’s brother—he said—my mother told me—”

  Becky simply waited.

  Memories spun in Chloe’s head, unwinding like a watch spring taken from its casing. John Lewis is a bad influence, she heard her mother say. He puts wild ideas in your head. Then her stepfather’s voice joined in, cool and disapproving, like always. I know you’re fond of him, Chloe, but it’s better if you don’t see him again.

  “Why didn’t they tell me?” Chloe demanded, still reeling. “Why didn’t he?”

  Becky leaned to take Chloe’s hand and squeeze it once. “I can’t speak for your mother. I know John kept it to himself because he thought you’d be ashamed of him.”

  “Ashamed? He was such a good man—”

  “He was,” Becky agreed, with quiet conviction. “But he made some mistakes when he was younger.”

  “What kind of mistakes?”

  Becky hesitated, then got past whatever had held her back for those few seconds. “John was in prison,” she said. “He was involved in a robbery.”

  Chloe thought she would be violently ill from the shock of it. Her gentle, unassuming uncle—father—committing a robbery, going to jail? Impossible. She put a hand over her mouth.

  Becky rose, went to a cabinet on the other side of the room, and poured water from a carafe. She brought the glass to Chloe, who drank it in three swallows and longed for something stronger, even though she was a firm advocate of temperance.

  “I could have used a father,” she said weakly, when she’d set the empty glass aside. Her eyes burned, and her stomach roiled.

  Becky remained beside Chloe’s chair, a hand resting lightly on her shoulder. “John thought highly of your stepfather,” she said gently. “He said Mr. Wakefield took good care of you and of your mother. That was more important to him than anything else—knowing that you were all right.”

  Chloe realized her face was wet, but she made no move to wipe away the tears. “They must have sent him away,” she fretted. “I’ll never, ever forgive them.”

  “Shhh,” Becky said. “You don’t mean that. It couldn’t have been easy for your mother, seeing John. And your stepfather, well, he was probably just trying to keep his family together.”

  “Yes, I do mean it!” Chloe argued, a flush stinging its way up her neck to blaze in her cheeks. “I was so lonely. Mother and Mr. Wakefield were always traveling, or giving grand parties, or going to them. But John was there, whenever he was with me—he made me laugh, and when he looked at me, I felt as if he was really seeing me. When I said something, he paid attention, instead of just waiting for me to be quiet—”

  Becky had gotten snagged upstream in the conversation. “You call your stepfather ‘Mr. Wakefield’?” she asked, pulling her chair around from behind the desk so she could sit beside Chloe. She pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve and handed it over.

  Chloe dried her face. “Yes,” she said. “So does Mother.”

  “Amazing,” said Becky, shaking her head.

  Chloe shot to her feet, too agitated to sit, and began to pace. “Someone should have told me!” she raged. “Dear God, how I hate being lied to!”

  “People lie for all sorts of reasons, Chloe. In this case, it was to protect you.”

  “I didn’t want to be protected—I wanted a father!”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Chloe stopped. “For telling me the truth?”

  “No,” Becky answered, with a sigh. “I’m convinced it was the right thing to do. John would have done it himself if he’d lived. What I meant was, I’m sorry for all you went through, Chloe. I truly am.”

  “I lost my father without even knowing I had one,” Chloe mourned.

  Becky rose, put her arms around her, and Chloe let herself be held while she sobbed, just as she’d done the day before, with Jeb.

  She’d best be careful, she thought, or this tendency toward weakness might get to be a habit.

  “There’s another thing John would do, if he were here,” Becky said gently. “He’d ask about you and Jeb. What went wrong between you, Chloe?”

  Chloe sniffled. “I was married before,” she admitted. “To a man named Jack Barrett. It—it was a terrible mistake—I ran away from home to marry him, and my mother and Mr. Wakefield were furious with me. I sent them a wire, told them Jack had lied to me, that he was a gunslinger, an outlaw. They’d left on one of their trips by then, and their lawyer wired back that I’d made my bed and ought to sleep in it.”

  Becky made a clucking sound, motherly disapproval of a cruel fate, or, at least, that was the way Chloe chose to interpret it. She held Chloe at arm’s length, searched her face. “Where does Jeb figure into all this?”

  Chloe sighed, shook her head. “One day, I was minding my own business, coming out of a store, and I ran into him, dropped all my packages. He was so—I don’t know—the way he smiled—”

  Becky nodded encouragingly.

  “I think I fell in love with him, right there on the sidewalk. We started seeing each other, and everything happened so fast—” She paused, blushed. She lamented Jeb’s reckless nature, but she was impetuous herself. Hadn’t she flouted propriety by leaving home to travel to one of the wildest towns in the West, and marry a highly unsuitable man? Hadn’t she undone two years of hard work and common sense only to make the same grave error all over again, and all because Jeb McKettrick set her heart to racing whenever he looked at her?

  She didn’t want a man like Jeb. She wanted someone like Rafe or Kade. Someone settled and responsible.

  Didn’t she?

  “Obviously, something went very wrong,” Becky prompted.

  Chloe bit her lower lip. “I should have told Jeb about Jack, and I didn’t. I was—I was afraid he wouldn’t want me. When he found out, there was no reasoning with him.” She felt heat surge into her face. “I lied by omission, but Jeb lied outright. He said—he said he loved me. If he had, he would have been willing to
listen. Instead, he spent our wedding night swilling whiskey, playing poker, and consorting with low women!”

  Becky touched Chloe’s hair, and it was a comforting gesture, the kind her mother had never made. “His pride was hurt,” she said. “Men are silly that way. Give him some time, Chloe.”

  But Chloe was already shaking her head. “I’ve made a fool of myself twice already,” she said, with vehemence. “I won’t do it again!”

  “Only twice?” Becky asked, smiling. “That’s a pretty good record.”

  Chloe pulled away, pacing. “From now on,” she vowed, to herself as well as Becky, “I mean to make my own way in the world. If I ever marry again, it won’t be for love.”

  Becky raised an eyebrow, considering Chloe’s words. Then she sighed, went to the door, and laid a graceful hand on the knob. “Let’s hope you come to your senses before you get the opportunity,” she said, and left Chloe alone to stew in furious regret.

  7

  Jeb worked shirtless in the afternoon sun, sweating and cursing occasionally, under his breath, while he dug post holes for the new fence line between Holt’s place— the Circle C—and the Triple M. Rafe had made a big production of dragging him out of the Arizona Hotel, claiming he needed help with the cattle, but then he’d changed his mind. Next thing he knew, Jeb was breaking hard ground with a dull shovel. Being low man on the McKettrick totem pole, and having no desire to hit the trail again, he’d had no choice but to give in.

  He was so caught up in his roiling thoughts that he didn’t hear the horse approaching, didn’t know he wasn’t alone, with the buckboard and team, until a long, familiar shadow fell over him.

  He stopped digging, let the shovel fall to the dirt, and dragged one arm across his forehead.

  “Looks like you drew the shit detail, boy,” Angus observed, swinging himself down from the saddle and hooking his thumbs under his gun belt. “Most likely, you deserve it though.”

  Jeb struggled to hold on to his temper. It wasn’t smart to sass the old man; he might have given Rafe the foreman’s job, with Kade second-in-command, but in reality Angus still ran the Triple M, and he used an iron hand to do it. “Thanks,” Jeb said tersely. “That makes me feel a lot better.”

  Angus laughed, took his canteen from the saddle, and held it out. “Sorry it isn’t whiskey,” he said. “I reckon you could use some right about now.”

  Jeb took the canteen, though grudgingly, screwed off the lid, and drank deeply of the cold well water, tasting faintly of canvas and metal. He poured the rest over his back, chest, and shoulders, and handed the empty vessel back to Angus with a shoving motion. “You’re right about that. Do you have some business with me, Pa, or did you just come out here to make everything worse?”

  Angus looked a little less amused. “I’ve got business, all right,” he drawled. “I want to know why Chloe is staying in town if she’s really your wife.”

  “She isn’t my wife,” Jeb said, and spat. He realized he was standing just as Angus was, with his thumbs under his gun belt, and shifted his position.

  The old man resettled his hat, plainly peevish. “Seems to me you ought to get your story straight, boy, and stick by it,” he said. “For weeks, you’ve been claiming you were married. Then along comes one of the Furies, mad enough to snatch you baldheaded, and telling me she’s your bride. What in the Sam Hill is going on here?”

  Jeb thrust splayed fingers through his dusty, sweatmatted hair. “I wish I knew,” he said, abjectly miserable.

  “Might help if the two of us jaw about it a little,” Angus offered, gruffly magnanimous. “Maybe we can work it through together.”

  “I married her all right,” Jeb admitted. “Damn fool that I was.”

  “Well, then, that settles one question.”

  Jeb shook his head. “Not really,” he said. “Right after the ceremony was over, Chloe and I, well, we were going to start our honeymoon.” He stopped, cleared his throat, looked everywhere but at his father’s face. “I saw her to the room, carried her over the threshold, and all that.” He paused again, gave a bitter laugh. “I decided we ought to have some of that fancy French wine to celebrate with, so I went out to scout some up. I was on my way back when a fella came up to me outside the hotel and said he had something I ought to see. I was in a hurry, but I stopped. He showed me something, all right. It was a picture, framed and fancy—Chloe, all dressed up as a bride, standing right beside the man I was talking to in the street. He said she was his wife, and damned if he didn’t have the proof.”

  Angus waited.

  Jeb muttered a string of curses.

  “Let’s hear the rest,” Angus prompted. His tone was even; Jeb couldn’t tell whether he thought the story was funny or downright sad. Hell, he wasn’t sure of the distinction himself.

  “I felt like I’d been kicked in the belly by a mule,” Jeb said, still avoiding the old man’s gaze, but he could feel it on him, just the same, steady and level. “I made for the nearest saloon, bought my way into a poker game, and drank up half the whiskey in the place.”

  “Some men would have gone right to Chloe and asked her straight out what was going on,” Angus reasoned.

  “I couldn’t face her,” Jeb confessed. “Anyway, she came and found me in a back room at the Broken Stirrup, and we had it out, in front of God and everybody. I spent the night in some cheap boardinghouse and steered clear of her until Kade showed up a week later and talked me into coming back here.”

  Now it was Angus who spat. “I don’t reckon I need to tell you what I think of the way you treated her,” he said.

  Jeb picked up the shovel, jammed it into the hole, and flung out a spray of dirt. “No,” he agreed, “you don’t. But you probably will, anyhow. And what about the way she treated me?”

  Angus didn’t move, and he let the question pass unanswered. Out of the corner of his eye, Jeb could see that the old coot had his arms folded again, and the brim of his weather-beaten hat shadowed his face. “Chloe seemed pretty sure she was your wife,” he said, “not that other fella’s.”

  “She’s a good liar and an even better actress.” Jeb hit a rock with the end of the shovel, and the impact reverberated up both his arms to ache in his shoulders.

  “One way or the other,” Angus persisted quietly, “this isn’t something you can run away from. You need to settle it, boy. For your own sake, and for hers.”

  Jeb gripped the shovel handle in both his blistered hands and sent it flying back over his head. It landed beyond the barbed-wire fence, on Circle C property, with a resounding clank. “I’m not running away!” he yelled.

  “That isn’t the way I heard it,” Angus said.

  Rafe and Kade. Damn them. They’d probably had a good time telling the old man how Chloe Wakefield chased their little brother all the way from town and finally cornered him behind the bunkhouse.

  “Go and talk to her,” Angus said.

  “It’s no damn use!” Jeb raged. “Chloe and I don’t talk, we yell at each other!”

  Angus smiled as he turned away. “That’s encouraging,” he said. “And fetch back that shovel before you head for town. Contrary to common opinion around this place, I’m not made of money.”

  8

  Get back to the ranch. Go to town. Jeb wished Rafe and Angus would get together and agree on what the hell he was supposed to do. If this was a taste of what it was going to be like when either Rafe or Kade took full control of the ranch, he might as well shoot himself.

  Angrily, he collected his tools, including the shovel, and threw them into the bed of the buckboard. After shrugging back into his shirt, he climbed up, took the reins, released the brake lever, and drove the horses hard for home. Mandy was in the barn when he got there, brushing down a fine pinto gelding—she’d made Kade give her fifty head of good horseflesh and most of the money in his bank account after they were married, because of some agreement between them—and for the first time in recent memory, Jeb got some sympathy.

  Mandy
smiled. “Aren’t you in a state?” she asked lightly, coming out of the stall to talk. She was wearing pants, boots, and a chambray shirt from the trunks of outgrown clothes Concepcion kept in the springhouse.

  “I’ve been in better moods,” Jeb admitted.

  She laughed. “It’s Chloe, I suppose.”

  “Chloe, and Rafe, and my bullheaded old polecat of a father—”

  “Poor Jeb,” Mandy said, but her eyes were dancing. She looked him over thoughtfully. “If you’re going to pay a call on Chloe, you’d better clean up first. You’re a sight.” She waved him in the direction of the house. “Go on,” she shooed. “I’ll unhitch the wagon and put the team away.”

  “There’ll be no end to the grief if Kade finds out I let you do a man’s work,” Jeb said. He wanted a bath and a shave, though, now that she’d brought the possibilities to mind. He felt like he was wearing half the territory on his hide.

  “I’ll handle Kade,” Mandy said, with well-founded confidence. Every cowhand on the ranch jumped when Kade whistled, but with Mandy, he was a different man.

  Jeb hesitated another moment, then shrugged, left the team to Mandy, and made for the house. After a session with the razor, one of Concepcion’s savory meals, and a good soaping and sluicing in the creek, he felt better, and he was almost in a good mood when he reached the outskirts of Indian Rock, about sunset.

  He stopped at the Bloody Basin for a shot of whiskey before squaring his shoulders and setting his course for the Arizona Hotel, where he figured he’d find Chloe. If she was pregnant, he’d decided on the way to town, he might be willing to live as a bigamist, at least for a while. He grinned, thinking of the looks on Rafe’s and Kade’s faces when he told them they’d be working for him in a few months’ time. He’d see that they got their fill of digging post holes, rounding up strays, and stringing barbwire.

  Oh, yes, revenge would be sweet.

  He found his ladylove in the lobby, sipping tea from a china cup and reading a book. There were little spectacles perched on the end of her nose and, as he drew closer, he saw that her eyes were red-rimmed.