Montana Mail-Order Wife

by Charlotte Douglas

  A delightful blush brought the pinkness back to her cheeks, and a dancing smile brightened her eyes. “You’re the first man who’s ever proposed to me.” Her smile dimmed. “That I can remember, anyway.”

  His face flamed with discomfort. Because she couldn’t recall the circumstances of their engagement, she’d jumped to all the wrong conclusions.

  Not that he blamed her.

  Ever since she’d first met him, she couldn’t help noticing the unintended signals of his unexpected and definitely unwelcome attraction to her that he’d been relaying like a microwave tower. He had to set her straight before she embarrassed herself, or him, further.

  He dragged a straight chair beside the bed, straddled it backward, and folded his arms on the backrest. Explaining in a letter would have been a lot easier, without his tongue wrapping itself around his teeth. And without the distraction of too-green eyes, kissable lips and a pert nose turned up at just the right angle.

  “My, uh, proposal,” he said, “isn’t what you think.”

  She had punched the automatic control and raised the head of the bed so her face was even with his. At his disclaimer, she grew so still that, if her eyes hadn’t blinked, he would have sworn she’d gone comatose again.

  “If your proposal isn’t what I think, maybe you’d better tell me what it is.” Her clear, steady voice projected an inner strength he hadn’t noticed before.

  “We weren’t, uh, aren’t…in love,” he blurted with more emphasis than he’d intended.

  She blinked again, but didn’t move. He wished he could guess what she was thinking behind those wide eyes the color of summer leaves.

  He tried to explain. “I didn’t want you to expect—”

  He hit a dead end. How could he renounce caring for her when his rebellious heart contradicted him with every beat? But such attraction was ridiculous. A grown man didn’t fall head over heels for a stranger, no matter how perfect. Rachel O’Riley had cast a spell that had to be broken. Otherwise, his well-laid plans were ruined.

  “What I mean,” he chose his words carefully, “is that sometimes people do fall in love just by exchanging letters, but…”

  Her feathery eyebrows peaked, laughter sparked in her eyes and she blinked again. She seemed to be enjoying his discomfort.

  Her amusement goaded him to be more blunt than he’d planned. “Anyway, I don’t love you.”

  There, he’d said it.

  When he looked at her, he wished he’d cut out his tongue before uttering the words. Her lower lip trembled, tears filled her eyes and her shoulders shook. For a horrible instant, he feared she would break into sobs.

  Then, as if she could contain herself no longer, she burst out laughing.

  He shoved his chair away from the bed and stood, scratching his head at her reaction. Maybe the knock on her head had caused more problems than amnesia.

  “That,” she gasped, “is the most unromantic proposal I hope I’ll ever receive. If it was that awful the first time, I must have been crazy to accept. It’s probably best I can’t remember.”

  She wiped her eyes with a corner of the sheet and stared at him, her lips twitching as if she wanted to laugh again.

  He stuffed his hands in the back pockets of his jeans and gazed out the window to avoid her ironic smile. He should be happy she wasn’t taking his proposal too seriously, but her amusement annoyed him. “Maybe talking about this should wait until your memory returns.”

  “No, please.”

  He whirled back toward her at the panic in her voice. “But without all the details, it sounds so…”

  “Cold?”

  He nodded. He hadn’t had a problem with their agreement before, but now, seeing her so fragile that a puff of wind could blow her away, staring at him from the hospital bed with those big eyes…

  “Maybe you’d better tell me all the details,” she suggested in a calmer voice.

  “The nurse wants you to rest.”

  He needed time to think, to figure out the best way to explain. Time to cool his simmering desire, brought about, he assured himself, only by the intimacy of the hospital room and her scanty attire. He barely knew the woman. How could he be attracted to her?

  “I’ll rest better once you’ve told me everything.” Her guileless expression pleaded with him. “If I know the facts, my imagination won’t exaggerate things.”

  He couldn’t understand his reluctance. She’d known all the particulars before her accident and had agreed to the arrangement. Why should stating them a second time make any difference?

  Because she’s not just words on a page anymore. She’s a real person, flesh and blood with feelings, who makes me feel alive again for the first time in years.

  “Okay,” he said with a sigh of resignation, “I’ll try to explain.”

  He opened his mouth, but again words failed him. He’d never felt this stupid before. If she’d been a lame horse or an ailing cow, a broken chainsaw or a clogged pump, he’d know exactly what to do, but she was a woman, a beautiful and charming female, and he had almost no experience to fall back on. What little know-how he’d once possessed was rusty from lack of practice.

  “Maybe,” she suggested gently, “you should start at the beginning.”

  In the beginning there was Maggie, he thought.

  “I was married before,” Wade said.

  Chapter Three

  Rachel tamped down her rising panic. What had she gotten herself into, agreeing to marry a man she didn’t know, a man whose first marriage had obviously ended in divorce?

  Out of nowhere, a visceral reluctance to commit herself to any man bore down, engulfed her, then vanished as quickly as mist on the river evaporated in the sunlight. The irrational sensation made her fear the wreck had affected more than her memory.

  Maybe she was losing her mind.

  Or maybe Wade Garrett’s faltering revelation had induced her fleeting dread of intimacy.

  He was taking his sweet time explaining their so-called engagement, but she wouldn’t pressure him. She wasn’t going anywhere, not anytime soon. And if his details were as disastrous as his proposal, maybe she had better absorb them slowly.

  Clearing her face of any reaction, she waited.

  “My wife, Maggie, died in childbirth six years ago.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said with sincerity, feeling stupid for jumping to conclusions about divorce.

  His face had hardened when he spoke his wife’s name. Rachel swallowed hard. She remembered nothing about herself or her past, but at that instant, more than anything in the world, she hoped Wade Garrett would never look like that at the mention of her name.

  His antagonism toward his wife, inscribed all over his handsome face, went a long way toward communicating why he had proposed to a woman he didn’t love. Maybe he’d married Maggie, expecting happily ever after, and when it hadn’t worked out that way, decided marriage wasn’t for him.

  But why had the-Rachel-she-couldn’t-remember agreed to a loveless marriage? She wouldn’t know the answer until her memories returned.

  Unless Wade could tell her.

  “My son, Jordan, is eight now.” Affection mixed with frustration glimmered in his deep brown eyes.

  An intriguing image of Wade as husband and father flitted through her mind. “It must have been tough, raising a child alone all those years.”

  He settled back on his chair. “Ursula did most of the raising.”

  “Ursula?”

  “Ursula’s my housekeeper,” he said, “and she’s done a good job with Jordan. But now her arthritis is so bad, she can’t keep up with the little rascal.”

  Comprehension flooded through her, leaving disappointment in its wake. “So that’s why you need a wife. To take care of Jordan.”

  He nodded and relaxed. “I knew you’d understand. You did before when we discussed this in our letters.”

  Letters. He’d already told her they’d never met. “Why did you choose me to write to?”

&
nbsp; He leaned forward and rested his strong chin with its charming cleft on his forearms, crossed on the back of the chair. His tanned face beamed with enthusiasm. “Your letter was hands down the best answer to my ad.”

  “I answered an ad?” She failed to keep the horror from her voice. What kind of woman was she to have answered a personal ad from a stranger?

  Desperate?

  Lonely?

  Crazy?

  All of the above?

  “I saved your letters,” he said. “If you want, I’ll bring them next time I visit.”

  She struggled to dredge up lost memories, but the vast hole where her recollections should have been yielded nothing. “What did I say in my letters?”

  “You described how much you’d enjoyed growing up on a farm.”

  “I lived on a farm?” The concept seemed so alien, she shuddered. Whatever trauma she had suffered had erased her memories so completely that she couldn’t imagine farm life, much less remember it.

  “Until four years ago.”

  Without evidence to contradict him, she’d have to take his word. “Anything else?”

  “Your experience with country life is important, considering the way I live.”

  What kind of life had she agreed to? “You’re a farmer?”

  He frowned at the label. “No.”

  “Then why is my farm experience important?”

  “I’m a rancher. I raise cattle and timber.”

  Nothing he said rang any bells, and her head swam with efforts to remember. A single mystery looming in her mind distressed her most. “Did I explain in my letters why I was willing to marry a perfect stranger and care for his child without—”

  She floundered, searching for the right word.

  Wade was no help. He just sat there, staring at her with amusement sparkling in his eyes. Again he reminded her of the Marlboro Man. A tall, rugged, sexy outdoorsman about as anxious to commit to love as a tumbleweed.

  “Without…” She groped for a suitable phrase, bewailing silently that she’d lost not only her memories but her vocabulary, too.

  “Without sex?” he suggested.

  “That’s not what I meant.” Embarrassment scorched her face, and with relief, she latched on to the words she’d been searching for. “Without all the advantages of marriage. That’s what I was trying to say.”

  He lifted his right brow and considered her with a grin. “You don’t think sex is an advantage of marriage?”

  “No.” Memories, hovering at the edge of her consciousness, contradicted her.

  “No?” Wade’s raised brows registered his surprise.

  The memory faded. “I mean yes, but I was talking about love, affection, mutual respect….” She widened her eyes as a possibility hit her. “Sex wasn’t part of our agreement, was it?”

  He straightened in his chair, and his teasing expression sobered. “Our agreement is purely business. You take care of Jordan and help run the house and ranch. In return, you have your own room, all expenses paid, and you receive a percentage of the yearly profits. When Jordan reaches adulthood, you can have a divorce, no questions asked.”

  She collapsed against her pillows, shocked to learn she’d agreed to such a sad, barren life. As for Wade, his cold, unsentimental terms clashed with his warm personality, and she wondered what had driven him to demand such an impersonal arrangement.

  “Why go through the motions of getting married?” she said. “Why not just hire another housekeeper?”

  He tunneled his fingers through his thick hair, a gesture she’d come to associate with him, and clasped his hands behind his head. The movement stretched his denim shirt across well-developed chest muscles. Wade Garrett was a good-looking, agreeable man who probably had hordes of local single women beating down his door. Why hadn’t he married one of them?

  “Longhorn Lake is a small community,” he said. “A young housekeeper couldn’t live at the ranch without causing a scandal.”

  “Then hire an older woman.”

  He dropped his hands to his knees and shook his head. “Jordan needs a mother, a real mother—”

  “A real mother is the woman his father loves, not a business partner.”

  Wade avoided her gaze. “I don’t intend to fall in love. And I can’t marry anyone from the community.”

  “Why not?”

  “Maggie’s memory,” he said cryptically.

  She rubbed her throbbing temples with her fingertips to try to ease her pain and confusion. “I don’t understand.”

  He scooted from his chair to the bed, pulled her back against his chest and began massaging her forehead. “I’d rather not talk about Maggie,” he said in a flat tone.

  She would have pushed him further, but the lazy circles of his fingers against her temples, the comforting pressure of his chest against her back and the warmth of his breath against her neck distracted her and caused the discontent constantly hovering inside to dwindle for the first time since she’d regained consciousness.

  She had never felt so safe in a man’s arms.

  Wade’s fingers stalled in their circling, and he dropped his hands to her shoulders. “Jordan needs a woman who’ll be a permanent fixture in his life, someone he can be proud of. Someone he can introduce at school and church as his mom, so he’ll be like the other kids and maybe stop—” He halted abruptly, as if he’d said too much.

  So Jordan had some kind of problem, and Wade wanted a ready-made mother to deal with him. “How can you be sure Jordan will like me?”

  His fingers, toying with a curl of her hair, brushed the sensitive skin of her ear, transmitting dangerous flutters down her spine.

  “You love children,” he explained, as if that fact transcended all difficulties. “You said so in your letters.”

  What had she gotten herself into? She had problems enough already. No memory. No family. No money. And no idea how long she’d be confined to this hospital bed.

  Just thinking about her troubles exhausted her. She sagged against Wade’s chest and closed her eyes.

  “I’m a stupid fool,” Wade said with a growl.

  She opened her eyes and forced a weak smile, but her weariness prevented further movement. “From the arrangement you’ve described, I tend to agree with you.”

  “I meant—” he stood up, laid her back on her pillow and leaned with one hand on each side of her, his face hovering inches from hers “—I’m a stupid fool to keep you talking when you should be sleeping.”

  She inhaled the pleasing scent of leather, soap and sunshine, and gazed into genial brown eyes flecked with gold. The closeness of his deeply tanned face with its sweep of dark lashes and appealing smile made her skin hot.

  “I wanted answers to my questions,” she said.

  “No more questions now. You need to rest. Sweet dreams, Rachel. I’ll stop in tomorrow. Maybe all those memories will have flooded back by then.”

  He patted her cheek with a warm, callused hand, then settled his battered Stetson low on his forehead. At the door, he turned and touched his fingers to the brim of his hat, looking for all the world like a Western movie hero. When he disappeared into the hall, her hospital room seemed empty and cold.

  She drifted into a twilight slumber between consciousness and sleep, only to wake with a jolt.

  Wade hadn’t answered her most important question: why she had agreed to a marriage without love.

  TEN DAYS LATER, although Wade had visited her every day, she hadn’t found the courage to ask the question again. She had hoped for a rapid return of her memories, and with them, her rationale for accepting Wade’s unusual marriage proposal, but her past remained a frustrating blank. With her future and all its uncertainties a gaping void, she clung now to the one solid and steadfast element of her present.

  Wade Garrett.

  The day of her release had arrived, and she thanked the nurses and Dr. Sinclair for their care. Happy to have exchanged the shapeless hospital gown for jeans, a T-shirt and sneakers the nu
rse said were hers, she waited for Wade in her hospital room.

  A half hour later, Rachel left the hospital and walked at Wade’s side across the asphalt parking lot beneath the sweeping dome of Montana’s big sky.

  As they headed west in his pickup along Highway 2, she gazed at his tanned profile, partially obscured by the brim of his Stetson and his mirrored sunglasses. She wondered if he’d sent a picture with his letters, and if the-Rachel-she-couldn’t-remember had fallen hopelessly in love with his sturdy good looks, in spite of his insistence on a strictly business liaison.

  No wonder she’d said yes in her letters. Handsome, considerate, good-humored and stable, Wade embodied all the traits of the perfect husband.

  Except he didn’t love her. He’d made that crystal clear.

  Unable to remember why she’d agreed to marry him in the first place, she struggled now with whether to go through with his bizarre marriage proposal.

  She hoped she wouldn’t regret accepting his invitation to stay at his ranch, but, broke and remembering no one, she had nowhere else to go. According to Wade, the authorities reported she had closed her bank account and canceled her credit cards before leaving Atlanta. If she’d had any money, it had disappeared. Her wallet was empty of everything but her ID card and a paper with Wade’s name and address, the information that had caused the local sheriff to summon Wade to her bedside.

  “Thanks for offering me a place to stay.”

  “No problem.” His agreeable smile hit her with the scorching intensity of the noonday sun. “It was the least I could do, since you gave up your apartment and job in Atlanta to marry me.”

  Just the thought of marriage to the mesmerizing rancher created an erratic quiver in her stomach. “You promised—”

  “I know,” he said with another heart-stopping smile, “no mention of marriage until you’re ready to discuss it.”

  She reclined against the seat and barely registered the unfamiliar landscape flashing by. Her traitorous mind refused to yield its captive memories, swelling instead with seductive images of life as Mrs. Wade Garrett. She had extracted Wade’s promise of silence on the subject of matrimony, not because the prospect was distasteful but because of its disturbing attractiveness.