Secondhand Bride

by Linda Lael Miller

  She closed her eyes. “No,” she whispered.

  Jeb wouldn’t let her alone. “What’s different now? Tell me. Is it this fancy house? All this land? The money in his bank account?”

  She would have slapped him, if he hadn’t been wounded. “Damn you,” she spat. “It’s the fact that I can talk to him without having to defend myself at every turn! It’s his common sense and it’s—it’s Lizzie!”

  Jeb released her. “Christ,” he breathed, looking astounded. “We really were married.”

  “I’ve been trying to tell you that all along,” Chloe snapped. “And we are married, more’s the pity—the divorce won’t be final for a year.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Yeah,” he agreed bitterly. “More’s the pity.” He was about to leave the room, maybe the house, she could see it in the way he drew back, the way he held himself.

  “Just tell me one thing,” she said hastily. “What finally convinced you that I was telling the truth about our wedding?”

  Jeb gave a mocking, humorless grin. “If you could have gotten hitched to Holt right now, tonight, you would have done it, if only to spite me.”

  “I don’t love him,” Chloe pointed out, watching as Jeb took his hat down from the peg, put it on his head, and reclaimed his gun belt from the top of the cabinet, draping it over his good shoulder.

  “Never stopped you getting married before,” he said, and went out the back door, leaving Chloe staring after him in furious astonishment.

  Jeb was outraged as he made his way through the darkness, headed in the direction of the Circle C bunkhouse, but he was strangely jubilant, too. If the divorce was going to take a year, then Chloe couldn’t marry Holt or anybody else, not right away, anyhow, and that meant he had twelve full months to get over his fascination with her—or prove to her that he was man enough to fit the bill. In the meantime, he still had a fighting chance to win the Triple M—all he had to do was bed Chloe a few more times, get her pregnant.

  He grinned, even though he still felt like punching a hole through a wall. Right then, Chloe wouldn’t have spit on him if he was on fire, but she couldn’t resist him forever, he knew that. A kiss or two, a little moonlight…

  And she wasn’t in love with Holt. Exultation made him forget the pain in his shoulder, for a minute, anyway.

  He stopped, turned, and looked back at the house, watching as the kitchen went dark, lantern by lantern.

  Glory, hallelujah, he was married.

  He frowned, thinking of Chloe’s fiery temper and sharp tongue, her independent ways and her hard head.

  Damnation.

  He was married.

  Chloe was bone-weary when she reached her room on the second floor, but she knew she wasn’t going to sleep anytime soon. Her nerves were too frazzled, and her mind was stampeding in every direction.

  She paced a while, then, needing something to do, took paper, a pen, and a bottle of ink from the cigar box tucked into her reticule and sat down to compose the letter Holt had shamed her into writing. When her parents returned from Europe, it would be waiting.

  Dear Mother and Mr. Wakefield, it began, you will never guess where I am, or what’s happened since I saw you last. I must confess I haven’t told you the whole truth about a great many things…

  43

  Jeb was alone in the bunkhouse the next morning, wondering how the hell he was going to impress Chloe or anybody else with less than fifty dollars in the bank, when he noticed the newspaper lying on the foot of another ranch hand’s bed.

  He’d been drinking coffee and feeling sorry for himself, after the other men rode out to put in a day’s work, leaving him behind. Now, he helped himself to the paper, sat back down at the spool table by the stove, and determined to broaden his mind.

  It was fate—couldn’t have been anything else. His gaze went straight to the boxed advertisement in the upper right-hand corner of the front page. RODEO, shouted the headline, in three-quarter-inch type. And underneath that, the words that made Jeb sit up straighter in his chair.

  $1000 FOR RIDING

  THE MEANEST HORSE ON EARTH!

  RIDERS MUST BE MALE

  NO CRIPPLES

  FAMILY MEN STRONGLY ADVISED

  NOT TO ENTER—

  THIS ANIMAL IS A BRUTE!

  Jeb gave the newspaper another snap and searched the lines of print for the place and the date. Flagstaff, one week from today. The rodeo would start at 8:00 A.M. sharp; the event he was interested in, at three that afternoon.

  He checked the date on the masthead, then squinted at the tattered, marked-up calendar on the wall.

  He smiled, smoothed out the paper on the tabletop, and read the screaming lines again, savoring every word.

  One thousand dollars. He whistled through his teeth. With a fortune like that, he could make a real start for himself, buy some cattle of his own, or even build a house.

  The savage ache in his right arm reminded him that, while he definitely qualified as male, he was lacking in the “fit” department. Still, he had a full seven days to prepare. Surely he’d be better by then.

  He studied the advertisement a third time, slowly, and frowned.

  If his pa got wind of this, he’d find a way to stop him for sure, and if Rafe or Kade knew, they might decide to enter, just to show him up. He couldn’t be sure they hadn’t seen the notice themselves, of course, but worrying over that wouldn’t do any good.

  A prize like that was bound to draw a lot of entrants.

  Well, he wouldn’t worry about that, either. He hadn’t been thrown from a horse since he was seventeen, and that had been a fluke. He’d keep mum about the rodeo— at least until after he’d collected the prize money.

  Whistling again, he put the newspaper back where he’d found it.

  Sue Ellen Caruthers packed a single bag, resigned to leaving the rest of her things behind, and hid it behind the woodpile out back of the cabin. If Jack got the slightest inkling that she didn’t mean to stay, he’d kill her for sure.

  It did no good to wish she’d never come to this godforsaken place, or been stupid enough to hook up with Mr. Barrett in the first place. She would just have to make the best of any opportunity that came to hand.

  She didn’t have a horse, and she wasn’t very good at directions, since she’d lived all her life in a city, an ordinary woman, raising eight younger brothers and sisters after her mother died, and her father crawled into a whiskey bottle.

  She thought she knew which way to walk, but she wasn’t absolutely sure. Nor did she have a definite destination in mind; she just wanted to get away.

  She was sitting at the table, which was really only a big crate, when she heard him ride in. She braced herself, summoned up a smile.

  Barrett shoved open the door, stepped over the high threshold, and hung up his hat. He took off his gun belt next and set it on the table. He’d been hiding a package under his coat, and he tossed that down, too, causing Sue Ellen to start a little.

  “What’s this?” she asked, keeping her voice light.

  “Open it and see.” He rubbed his injured left leg, grimaced.

  Sue Ellen fumbled with the string, mystified, and folded back the brown paper. Inside was a pretty doll, with dark ringlets and open-and-shut eyes. She frowned.

  “For the little girl,” he said, limping slightly as he made his way to the potbellied stove for coffee. “I rode all the way to Flagstaff to get it.”

  “Why?”

  “We want to make friends with Lizzie Cavanagh, don’t we?”

  A chill moved up Sue Ellen’s spine, bone by bone. “What are you talking about?”

  He made a slurping sound as he took his coffee. “I believe you know the answer to that question,” he said.

  Sue Ellen turned, looked up at him. “What is Lizzie to you?”

  He smiled behind the mug. “A means to an end,” he said.

  Sue Ellen forgot herself, just for a moment, but long enough to get into trouble. “I will not help you h
urt a child,” she told him flatly. Maybe she’d resented taking care of a brood of noisy waifs, but she was not heartless. She’d even shed a few tears when her father remarried, and the new wife sent her packing.

  Jack looked injured, though it was a parody, and they both knew it. “I’m not going to hurt the kid,” he said. “Not unless I have to. I just want to use her for bait. Draw out the McKettricks.”

  “You’re crazy,” Sue Ellen said, her voice rising a little. “You might just as well tease a wildcat with a stick!”

  He merely smiled, though the look in his eyes gave her a chill.

  “I won’t help you,” she said. “I mean it, Jack.”

  He set the cup aside, easily, and, in the next instant, grabbed her by the hair, wrenching her head back. His spittle misted her face as he spoke, at the same time tightening his grip until she thought her scalp would tear loose from her skull. “Yes,” he rasped, “you will.”

  Tears of fury, frustration, and pain burned her eyes. “What do you want me to do?”

  He loosed his hold on her hair, and she blinked hard against the lingering pain. “Like I said, you’ll make friends with Lizzie. Give her the doll.”

  “I can’t just go walking up to that house and ask to see the child,” Sue Ellen pointed out, but carefully. “Holt sent me away, remember? Besides, Lizzie and I had words—”

  “Well, you won’t go there when Holt’s around, now, will you? And kids have short memories. The doll will win her over.”

  She shivered. Waited for things to get worse. And they did.

  Jack sat down on a nail keg, serving as a chair. “I’ve been watching the place, much as I could. There’s a lot of coming and going. One of these days, little Miss Cavanagh is going to wander too far from the house, and when she does, we’ll be ready.”

  “That’s—” she’d meant to say “stupid,” but that seemed a poor choice, given the violence of Jack’s mood. “That’s going to be difficult. There are a lot of men working on that ranch, and they’ll notice us.”

  “We’ll just have to stay out of their way, won’t we?”

  “How?” Sue Ellen pleaded. “They’d recognize either one of us on sight.”

  “I’m still working that out,” Jack admitted.

  Sue Ellen did not cherish a single hope that he wouldn’t succeed. He’d bought the doll, after all, and ridden for hours to do it. It was a symbol of the horrible objective already brewing in his mind.

  “I’ve kept your supper warm,” she said weakly, rising to her feet. Her stomach churned, and she felt shaky.

  “Good,” Jack said, still absorbed in his thoughts.

  She made her way to the stove, lifted the lid off a pot of pinto beans, and ladled a helping onto a tin plate. She put it before him, and let her gaze stray to the .44 he’d set down earlier.

  It was a mistake, for he saw her looking and guessed her thoughts.

  “I’m warning you, Sue Ellen,” he said. “Don’t do anything foolish. I’d just as soon kill you as look at you.”

  She had no doubt that he meant it, but she straightened her spine. It was that or scream and tear her hair, and that would be almost as dangerous as grabbing for the gun. “Let me go,” she begged. “Let me go, and I’ll never say anything to anybody. I’ll never come within miles of the Arizona Territory, I promise.”

  He reached up, caught her chin in his hand, gripping hard enough to leave bruises. “You promise,” he scoffed. “You aren’t going anywhere, Sue Ellen, except to your grave if you take it into your head to cross me. You’d just better resign yourself to your situation, once and for all.”

  She waited, bearing the pain as best she could.

  He released his hold on her and looked down at the plate of beans with a sneer of distaste. “Is this all we’ve got?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “If you wanted something different, you should have bought food instead of that doll.”

  He chuckled. “Maybe I’ll take another ride up to Flagstaff in the morning,” he said, picking up the spoon she brought him. “Get us some decent vittles and some different clothes, too.” He was thinking aloud now, not even speaking to her, really, but to himself. “You’d look a sight different, dressed like a sodbuster’s wife, and I could get me some denim pants and one of those big-brimmed hats. The kind that hide a man’s face.”

  Sue Ellen said nothing. If Jack was heading back to Flagstaff, she’d have her chance. She could clear out, now that she’d finally summoned up the courage. Nothing in the trees and mountains scared her as much as Jack Barrett did.

  “You want to go along?” he asked, sounding amiable.

  She hadn’t anticipated such a thing, for all her mental groping, and she had to step out of the fog, think fast. She’d come through Flagstaff on her way to Indian Rock, back when she was a mail-order bride and thought she was going to marry a McKettrick and live the high life. Flagstaff wasn’t a city, by any stretch, but it was a good-sized town, with plenty of people—some of whom would surely help her.

  “I’d like that,” she said, very carefully.

  He laughed. “Too bad,” he said. “You’re staying right here.”

  She didn’t look at the gun, didn’t dare, but if she could have, she’d have grabbed it and shot Jack Barrett through the heart without batting an eyelash. She’d thought she hated the McKettricks—they’d been the ones to send for her in the first place, through the matrimonial service, and it was their fault she’d gotten stranded. Oh, they offered to pay her fare back home—but she wasn’t welcome there, either.

  Yet she hadn’t known what hatred was until this moment.

  “Whatever you say,” she replied, keeping her voice even.

  He scooped up some beans. “Get ready for bed, Sue Ellen,” he said, chewing, “and don’t wear your nightgown. I’ve been feeling lonesome all day.”

  Sue Ellen’s stomach rolled. God in heaven, if only she could go back to the day she’d had that silly run-in with Holt, over his daughter. Just that far. She’d be sweet as pie, to him and to the child, and he’d never send her away.

  Slowly, she began to unbutton her dress.

  She was in bed by the time he finished his food, waiting.

  He put out the lamp, and she heard him moving about, probably hiding the gun. Heard him stripping down for the night, for her, and closed her eyes.

  He took her roughly, and it hurt fit to tear her to pieces, and he shouted out a name when he spilled himself inside her, but it wasn’t hers.

  He called her “Chloe.”

  44

  Holt’s desk was strewn with open books, and Chloe and Lizzie sat side by side, with their backs to Jeb, poring over them. He watched them, his good shoulder braced against the framework of the door, imagining that Chloe was truly his wife, and Lizzie their child, and that this spacious ranch house was the one he had already begun to build, on the secret landscape of his mind.

  The pain in his wounded arm jolted him out of the dream. It came and went, that ache, bone deep, following a schedule of its own, and ambushed him in unwary moments.

  He thrust himself away from the doorframe, turned, and walked away.

  The house was empty, except for him and, of course, Chloe and Lizzie, who might as well have been in the next town as the next room, they were so absorbed in words written by dead people. Chloe was still put out with him from the night before, anyway, and probably wouldn’t have spared him a kind word even if he’d spoken first, and politely.

  Holt had left for the range before dawn, and most of the ranch hands were gone, too. A couple of the older ones puttered around, doing the kind of busywork that was left to their sort on any large spread.

  Restless, Jeb took his gun belt down from the top of a high cupboard, where he’d set it when he came in the house, to keep it out of Lizzie’s reach, and strapped it on. This was no mean undertaking, with one useless hand, and there was sweat on his upper lip and the back of his neck by the time he’d finished it.

 
; He went back outside, and the cool air hit him, braced him up a little.

  He waved to the broken-down cowboys, one sitting on a bale of hay, mending a harness, the other picking a horse’s hooves. They nodded, cordially enough, but remained intent on their work.

  He found a case half-full of empty bottles in the well-house, and managed to hoist the crate off the packed-dirt floor and balance it against his left hip. The task was frustrating, and it brought out more sweat, not to mention a few good twinges to his wounded arm, but he set his teeth and managed it.

  Well away from the house and corrals, he set the bottles up, one by one, balancing them along the length of a fallen tree. He walked back about thirty paces, turned, and drew the .45 across his belly.

  It was an awkward motion, and slow. Even worse, when he fired, he missed.

  He cursed, unlaced the holster from his thigh, and twisted the belt so the gun rested against his other hip. Tying it in place again was one mother of a job, but he was double-damned if he’d give up.

  The pistol grip was backward; he’d need a southpaw’s rigging to do the thing right, but for the time being, he’d have to make do. He drew again, flipping the .45 end over end, meaning to catch it in midair, like he used to do with his right hand, when he was showing off a little. The thing slipped through his fingers, landed on the ground, and discharged, belching fire and damn near blowing off his foot.

  He bent, cussing under his breath, which was rapid and shallow, and replaced the spent cartridge with a new one from the supply on his belt. Tried again, with a similar result, though this time, at least, he didn’t drop the gun. The shot went wide of the bottles, though, and took a nick out of a mesquite tree well to the left of his target.

  He was fixing to draw again when Chloe spoke from behind him.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded, in a hands-on-the-hips kind of voice.

  He holstered the .45, turned his head to look back at her. She was holding her skirts, probably to keep from snagging them on the thistle-strewn ground, and Lizzie stood at her side, big-eyed and sober. It troubled him that he hadn’t heard them coming.

  “Practicing,” he said.

  Chloe trundled toward him. Spoke in a terse undertone, no doubt hoping that Lizzie wouldn’t hear. Fat chance of that; the kid was listening with every pore in her body.