In Love's Territory

by Lucy Evanson

Thank you for purchasing In Love’s Territory. I sincerely hope that you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. If you liked this book, I encourage you to leave a review explaining why. Reviews are vital for independent publishers and they help your fellow readers find their next books. Thanks!

  If you'd like to return to Love's Territory, you can read The Replacement Wife. This is the first book in the Westward Hearts series, which is a collection of short mail-order bride novels—heartwarming reads with an HEA guaranteed! Here's the description:

  They wanted her to marry the most unpleasant man she'd ever met, but Amy had other plans.

  When her guardian announces that she's going to be married to a man she can't stand, Amy Chase decides to escape that fate by becoming a mail-order bride. Paired with a rich widower, Amy arrives in a western mining town only to find that she escaped the frying pan, but landed squarely in the fire. Now, far from everything and everyone she knew, Amy must find a way out of her engagement before she ends up penniless in the street. With the help of an unlikely ally, she soon discovers that love can be found in the most unexpected places.

  Of course, you can also get back to Mineral Point by reading the next book in the Love's Territory series: Husband on Credit. Here's the description:

  Their marriage was all business. Until love got in the way.

  Cora Rice had never met a man who did right by her. They were unreliable. Irresponsible. Undependable. You could trust them about as far as you could throw 'em. So when she found out that an uncle had named her in his will, nobody was more surprised than she was. A house and a fat bank account, all hers for the taking...if only she were married.

  Nathan Larrimore liked Cora from the moment he saw her. But then, there was a lot to like: she was beautiful, strong and self-assured. She was just the kind of woman who didn't need a man--except that she did.

  They agreed to be partners: five thousand dollars for Nathan to act as her husband, and when all was said and done they'd live happily ever after. Separately.

  Turns out that some partnerships are easier to end than others.

  Sensual content.

  Now, please enjoy the following excerpt from Husband on Credit.

  Be well!

  Lucy

  Excerpt from Husband on Credit

  Nathan watched as the waitress crossed the bar, returning to his corner table with his drink. She placed the glass of whiskey in front of him and stuck out her hand.

  “That’s twenty-five cents,” she said.

  He reached into his pocket and fished around for coins, praying that he actually had the money. When he opened his hand, he found a scrap of paper, some lint, and a quarter he had forgotten about entirely. Guess this is my lucky day, he thought, handing her the coin. She took it without saying a word and spun on her heel, heading back to her perch behind the bar and stopping only to roughly shake the shoulder of an old man at the next table.

  “Hey, wake up,” she said loudly. “If you’re gonna sleep, then you gotta go. This ain’t a hotel.”

  The old-timer nodded softly, but as she walked away his head drifted down to the table again and Nathan was pretty sure he could hear snoring shortly thereafter. So this is what I’ve come to, he thought. They should name this place Rock Bottom. As it happened, the bar was called Miners’ Oasis, though there was nothing remotely green nor fertile about the place; its only attraction was that it was the cheapest of the three saloons in Mineral Point.

  When Nathan had first arrived in town only a few weeks earlier, he had spent his first day looking for work and his first night at Sally’s. Sally Paar owned the nicest tavern in town, complete with a piano player, a full kitchen and the cutest girls you ever saw, delivering smiles with every drink. He would have returned the following night too, but good sense got the better of him once he counted the rest of his money the next morning.

  His rooming house charged seven dollars a week for full board, but after seeing the damage that Sally’s had inflicted on his wallet, Nathan decided to pay only for his room and breakfast. That brought his weekly bill down to three-fifty, which would be much more manageable until he could find work. Fortunately, Mineral Point was a large, vibrant city—especially when considered next to his native Plainfield—and he’d certainly find a job in short order. And if he were hungry after only one meal a day? The better to motivate him.

  Nathan managed to spend the next several days surviving on the egg, toast and weak coffee that the rooming house provided every morning, while spending much of each evening at Bill’s Bar, which was not nearly as nice as Sally’s. There was no music, and Bill was nowhere near as pretty as the girls over at Sally’s, but for the prices, Nathan couldn’t complain.

  After a couple of weeks of this, however, he began to realize that he was on a truly untenable path. Every day was turning out to be the same: he’d go from business to business, door to door, asking about available work, and it was beginning to appear that there was none to be found. He certainly didn’t want to return to Plainfield, hat in hand, when he’d bragged about going off to make his fortune to everybody he could find. After speaking to the innkeeper, he’d decided to forgo breakfast, which brought his weekly bill down to a dollar seventy-five. If he only ate when he was absolutely famished, and he found a job quickly, he’d be fine.

  It hadn’t quite turned out that way, however, which is why he was now sitting at the corner table in this dim and dirty tavern on a Saturday night, instead of enjoying the music and fine food over at Sally’s. Today had been the last straw. He had gone to the Point Plaza hotel in the afternoon, explained to the woman at the desk that he was looking for work, and she had asked him to have a seat in the lobby to wait for the hotel manager.

  He had tried to mask his excitement as he sat there, his stomach gurgling and his feet tapping; after weeks of asking around, this was the first time that he’d made any progress. In a few minutes, the door to the office opened and a middle-aged, potbellied man with a fine set of whiskers came out. The receptionist said a word to him and nodded in Nathan’s direction; as the man approached, Nathan stood up to shake hands.

  “I understand you’re looking for a job,” the man said. “I’m Albert Gates, the hotel manager.”

  “Good to meet you, sir. I’m Nathan Larrimore.”

  “Let me show you around so you get a feel for the place,” Gates said, leading Nathan through the lobby and up the wide staircase. They went from floor to floor as Gates explained the history of the hotel, taking care to point out the fine details that—he said—set the Point Plaza apart from its competitors, from the hand-cut crystal wall sconces to the thickly woven carpets that covered the floors. Nathan could hear the pride in his voice as he narrated the tour, and by the time they arrived back in the lobby, Nathan was sure that he had found just the place he’d been looking for.

  “So, it looks like you’re in pretty good shape,” Gates said. “A bit thin, but you’re healthy? How’s your back? No problems?”

  “My back?” Nathan asked. “Uh, no, it’s fine.”

  “And your legs? You have strong legs?”

  “Well, strong enough to get me around, I guess,” he said. “Why do you ask?”

  Gates pointed to the stairs. “Well, our bellhops go up those stairs a hundred times a day,” he said. “If your legs aren’t strong now, they will be pretty soon, I assure you,” he added with a grin.

  “Bellhop?” It felt like Nathan’s empty stomach had just dropped into his shoes. “That’s what you’re hiring for?”

  “Sure am,” Gates said. “You got lucky—we haven’t had an opening for months, but one of our guys just moved away.”

  “Mr. Gates, I appreciate you taking the time to show me around and everything,” Nathan said. “But to be perfectly honest, I was hoping that there might be something else available. You know, something maybe more…professional? Like assistant manager, perhaps?”

  Gates couldn’t conceal the faintest hint of a grin as he looked N
athan up and down, from his dusty shoes and slightly frayed pant cuffs to the too-loose shirt collar around his neck.

  “Have you ever had a job, son?”

  “Of course, sir,” Nathan said. “Back home in Plainfield I worked on the farm.”

  “Did you finish school?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How long have you been here in Mineral Point?”

  “Going on three weeks now.” His stomach growled as if to emphasize the point, but Gates pretended not to hear.

  “Nathan, I’m sorry, but this is the only position we have available right now,” Gates said, extending his hand. “I tell you what—why don’t you take some time to think about it, and if you change your mind, you come back and see me.”

  “Thanks for your time, Mr. Gates,” he said, shaking hands. Nathan left the building and the heavy front doors swung shut in a rush, as if the hotel itself had wanted him gone. For the rest of the afternoon, he’d wandered the streets, passing by the same shops and businesses that had turned him down previously, and eventually found himself back at Bill’s Bar. He had been defeated.

  Nathan stared down at his drink. There was a trace of lipstick on the rim of the glass; he wiped it off with his thumb and tried to ignore the other dirty smudges. This wasn’t the kind of place where they took constructive criticism well.

  He leaned back and looked around at his fellow customers. Surely the only thing that bound them to him was their common interest in a cheap place to drink. There was the table of miners on the other side of the room, all of them uniformly covered in mud and grime and getting louder with every passing minute. There was the repulsive middle-aged woman, her skin yellow and her hair stringy, passing from man to man like a crow picking over corpses; once in a while she would convince somebody to step outside with her and they would only return in five or ten minutes. Nathan had a pretty good idea of what they were doing, but he didn’t care to imagine it. Then there were the patrons like Nathan: sitting alone, not attracting attention, not concerned with anything but the drinks in front of them, each man presumably wrestling with his own problems.

  He took a sip of whiskey and gritted his teeth at the scorching trail it left down his throat. He sniffed the glass. It smelled like whiskey, but in less than a month in the big city, Nathan had become suspicious and cynical. It wouldn’t have been too much to believe that they had poured him a shot of grain alcohol with some kind of coloring added. He let out a long sigh and took another drink. I guess it doesn’t matter anymore, he thought. Tomorrow I have to head for home.

  It was a trip he was not looking forward to. In retrospect, it might not have been his best idea ever to explain exactly how he felt to all of the people who had annoyed him in Plainfield. His parents. His neighbors. The mayor. Nope, it was not going to be a happy homecoming. Nathan rested his forearms on the table and let his head drop down.

  “No sleeping!” the waitress shouted from behind the bar.

  He sat back up again. Still, he had no other options. The job at the hotel had been the only possibility he’d heard of since he’d arrived, and if he was going to do physical labor, then he might as well go back home and work on the farm, where he wouldn’t have to pay rent every week.

  A loud burst of laughter from the miners’ table drew his attention, and he watched as the men called the waitress over to order another round of drinks. Whatever savings the miners found by drinking here must have been offset by the volume of liquor they consumed, but it didn’t appear to bother them in the slightest. Nathan had even briefly considered working in the mines, but that combined hard labor with the added attraction of a possible death far underground. No, thank you, he thought as he shivered and took another drink.

  While he watched the waitress shuttle back and forth between the bar and the miners, he reviewed his plan for the next day. He would get up as usual at the ungodly hour of eight o’clock in the morning—his landlady had an almost maniacal insistence that her lodgers get up at that time, and she roamed the halls with an old cowbell to enforce it. He would try to clean up as best he could with the single small basin of hot water he was allowed, and then he’d attend to his shoes and clothes to make himself as presentable as possible. Then he would walk the twenty minutes to the church he’d discovered earlier in the day. If the poster he’d seen was correct, he’d probably only have to sit through an hour or so of sermonizing before the potluck lunch began; hopefully nobody would notice that he hadn’t brought anything himself, and he could finally eat a full meal before heading for home.

  From Mineral Point to Plainfield on foot. He shuddered at the thought of the long walk; it would take him several days to get up there, and the weather wasn’t getting any warmer. He could almost feel the cold wind, and he shivered again before realizing that somebody had just entered the bar, letting in a wave of cold air.

  Nathan turned to see who had come in. Standing just inside the door, surveying the crowd, was a blond woman he had never seen before. She looked like she had had a rough day. He could see mud on her boots and the hem of her dress, as if she’d been stomping around the same streets he had. Her hair, which appeared to have once been styled, lay collapsed and limp; as he watched, she brushed a strand out of her face and tucked it behind her ear. She’s pretty, Nathan thought. Looks kind of tough, but pretty.

  She searched the room with narrowed eyes and a pinched look, like she wasn’t expecting to find what she was looking for. Her eyes passed over Nathan as if he were a table or chair before her shoulders slumped and she went up to the bar.

  Nathan watched as the bartender, a tall man whose shoulders were as broad as a barn door, went over to the woman and began to pour a whiskey, though she hadn’t said a word to him. She dug in her small black purse and eventually pulled out a coin, which she slid across the bar to him, then took her drink in hand and turned to look at the patrons again.

  Yes, she was definitely a good-looking girl. Nathan would have guessed that she was about twenty-five or so; she was just at that age that finds a balance between the beauty of youth and that of maturity. Still, there was something in her eyes that made her seem older than she looked. Perhaps it was a hint of sadness, or a weariness that hung about her. It was hard to say.

  He looked down at his drink. There was about one swallow left, and he would need it if he was going to go talk to her. This was no wilting flower by the roadside, waiting for anybody to pick her; from the looks of it, she was probably the one who did the picking most of the time. Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained. He downed the last of his drink and stood up.

  Just at that moment, the door to the bar opened again and a small, wiry man blew in along with the cold air. He also paused to look around, and when he caught sight of the girl at the bar, a lopsided grin revealed his crooked yellow teeth.

  “Well, if it ain’t Cora Rice,” he said, heading more or less straight for the bar. He stepped uneasily at times, as if this weren’t the first tavern he’d been to this evening. Nathan sat down.

  “Evening, John,” the girl said as he arrived at her side and gripped the edge of the bar to keep himself upright. “Looks like you’ve been out and about a little bit tonight.”

  “Honey, I’ve been out, about, all over town tonight,” John said. He pounded his fist on the bar. “Get over here, Henry!”

  The bartender slowly looked over at them, as an ox might regard a fly that was buzzing around his ear. “Let’s see the money first,” he said.

  John shot his hands into his pants pockets and dug around, coming up with nothing. The bartender snorted and turned back to his conversation with the waitress.

  “Let me get one for you,” Cora said. She withdrew another coin from her purse and laid it on the bar. “Henry, can you get him a whiskey—”

  “Brandy!”

  “Oh, okay, a brandy then,” she said. “It’s on me.”

  The bartender looked at her closely for a moment, then shrugged and reached for a dusty bottle on the back bar.
He uncorked the bottle and poured a healthy shot, then took the coin and tossed it into the cash box behind him.

  “Now maybe you can do me a favor,” she said, once the bartender had gone back to the other end of the bar.

  “Just a second.” He picked up the glass and held it unsteadily as he looked at it; even from his seat Nathan could see the liquor sloshing against the sides of the glass, threatening to leap out at any second. John set the glass down on the bar again and leaned over to inhale. As the brandy fumes filled his lungs, he smiled broadly. Then, in a flash, he picked up the glass and drained it dry in a single gulp.

  “Now what were you saying?” He turned and leaned back against the bar, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. “Something about a favor?”

  She took a deep breath. “Yeah, a favor. But I want you to promise to hear me out, okay? Just let me say everything, and then you decide. Deal?”

  “Sure thing, honey.”

  Cora leaned close and began to speak quietly in his ear. The man’s face was like a tableau of emotions as she whispered. He at first had the pleased expression that you would see on any man’s face if a beautiful young woman had just bought him a drink and then sidled up to nestle against him. Then lines appeared on his forehead as his eyes widened, and the smile melted away as his jaw dropped lower. He nodded a couple of times as she continued speaking, then a look of pure confusion spread over his face and he pulled away to look at her.

  “What?”

  She leaned in again and whispered.

  “Married?!” he nearly shouted, throwing back his head as he burst out laughing. Nathan could see the rotten teeth in the back of his mouth.

  Cora’s cheeks were burning brightly. “Would you keep it down?” she hissed, slapping him on the arm.

  “Honey, I am not the marrying kind,” John said. “But how about we pretend we’re married?” He grabbed her arm and pulled her back over to him; now it was his turn to whisper in her ear.

  If Nathan had any doubt about what sort of things he was saying, it became clear in a second. Cora’s eyes blazed as she ripped her arm out of his grasp, and she slapped John hard across the face. The crack of her hand across his cheek shot through the room, drawing even the miners’ attention.

  “How dare you talk to me like that?”

  John, now even more unsteady on his feet, raised one hand to his face and looked around, finding all eyes upon him. He turned back to Cora, straightened up and cleared his throat.

  “Why would a whore be surprised when somebody speaks to her like a whore?” he said. Then his hands shot up to Cora’s shoulders and he pushed her hard, sending her onto her backside on the grimy, sticky floor.

  Nathan was on his feet in a flash. He could see from Cora’s face that she was stunned, though John simply leaned back and rested his elbow on the bar as if nothing had happened. Nathan moved to help her up, taking her arm just as she was struggling to her feet on her own.

  “Are you okay, Cora?”

  She looked at him and searched his face. “Do I know you?”

  “No, I just heard him call you Cora,” Nathan said. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.” She looked down and saw that he still had her by the elbow. “Would you let go of me? I don’t need your help.”

  “I just wanted to make sure you were all right.”

  “I said I’m fine.” She whipped her arm away and turned back to the bar just in time to see the bartender grab John by the collar.

  “I don’t want to see you in here again,” he growled as they walked; he was holding John like a kitten by the scruff of its neck, and he barely paused at the door before pushing him roughly out into the street. “You come back here and you’re going to have trouble with me. You got that?” He let the door close, drowning out the truly imaginative stream of curses that John had aimed his way, and came over to Cora.

  “How come I always have trouble when you come in here?”

  “What, you’re blaming me for what he did? Didn’t you hear what he called me? Didn’t you see him push me?”

  “I saw everything,” he said. “And if I remember right, you’re the one who bought him a drink in the first place. Maybe you should reconsider the company you keep.”

  “Save it, Henry,” she said. She turned and noticed Nathan still standing there. “And what are you looking at?”

  Nathan decided that it would be better just to keep his mouth shut, though he could have answered truthfully, a beautiful woman. She was so close that he could now see her eyes were a deep blue; put together with her light blonde hair, it was like she was made of sunlight and clear sky. He shrugged and returned to his seat in the corner.

  Cora went to the bar and grabbed her purse, then stomped out of the bar without looking back. In a minute the normal ambience of the bar had restored itself, with the low buzz of conversation only interrupted by rowdy laughter from the miners and the occasional snore from the old man across from Nathan.

  He drummed his fingers on the tabletop. It was too bad he had met her only tonight, when he was practically on his way out of town. Unfortunately, he didn’t have much say in the matter. Both his wallet and his stomach were empty, and that was a combination that man couldn’t survive for long.

  “You gonna order something?”

  He looked up to see the waitress standing in front of his table.

  “You either gotta order something or you gotta go,” she said.

  “Let me think for a minute,” Nathan said. She turned to make her rounds among the other tables, and he again searched his pockets for money, gathering every coin he could find.

  “Well, what’s it gonna be?”

  He looked down at the coins in his hand. Forty-three cents. For a quarter he could either buy the cheapest meal they offered—a bowl of potatoes in broth, with a scrap of meat attached to a chunky bone—or he could get another glass of whiskey. If he ate now, he probably wouldn’t feel the pangs of hunger again for another six hours. If he got a glass of whiskey, he’d sleep it off and wouldn’t notice his growling stomach for at least eight.

  “Give me another drink,” he said, sliding the coins across the sticky wooden tabletop. The waitress smirked and scooped up the money, returning in a minute with another whiskey.

  Nathan drank slowly, in no hurry to head back to his cold, tiny room at the boarding house. It was only a matter of hours now before he was forced to finally give up and go back home, and he was in no hurry to do that either. Might as well stay a bit and enjoy the show. Of course, the star of the show had just departed, so that took the shine off of things somewhat.

  What could she have said to the guy that set him off like that? He had said that he wasn’t the marrying kind—had she asked if he was married? Why was she even interested in a little rat like that anyway? Surely she could attract the attention of better men. Like me, for example.

  He straightened up in his seat and moved over slightly so that he could see himself in the mirror that ran the length of the back bar. Not bad, he thought, running a hand over his forehead to brush his dark hair back in place. My teachers always said I was a young man with excellent prospects. At least I’m still a young man. And I’ve got a strong back and legs. Just ask Mr. Gates down at the hotel.

  He laughed at himself and took a drink. It’s probably just as well, he thought. A woman like that doesn’t need me. She made that perfectly clear. A tough girl like that probably didn’t need anyone.

  # # #