by Merry Farmer
“Give me a reason to stay,” he whispered, his heart feeling as though it would beat right out of his chest.
“It’s too late,” she whispered back.
“It’s never too late.” He reached for her hand.
“I think you’re right,” Price declared in a loud voice, standing. “We should go home.” He stepped around the table, hooked his hand under Bebe’s arm, and yanked her to her feet. “We don’t want you being sick in public less than two weeks before our wedding.” He glared at Hubert.
Hubert straightened, knife and spoon in hand. Price was as transparent as glass, and worse than a tomcat spraying his territory.
“Is there a problem here?” Miles Kopanari asked, rushing into the scene.
“My fiancée is sick,” Price said, tugging Bebe toward the door. “We’re not paying for that.” He nodded to the table where they’d been sitting, two steak dinners and an open bottle of wine barely touched.
“Well, I….” Miles fumbled.
Price took the opportunity to march Bebe out of the room. Bebe went with him more or less willingly, but as they reached the door, she glanced over her shoulder at Hubert. That one look was all it took. Bebe was miserable, and regardless of what her lips said, her eyes were pleading with him to rescue her.
“I’ll pay for their meal,” he told Miles, watching Bebe until she and Price disappeared around the corner.
“Are…are you sure?” Miles asked.
“Yep.” Hubert nodded, clenching his jaw.
“Great. Seconds,” Vernon said, getting up and edging his way down the table to grab Bebe’s abandoned plate and the bottle of wine.
“Vernon!” Ivy scolded, looking as miserable as Bebe had looked. “Show some sensitivity.”
“I am showing sensitivity,” Vernon argued. “Through humor.”
“It’s not that funny.” Heather frowned at him.
“Can I have the other steak?” Thomas asked.
“Help yourself,” Vernon told him.
Athos frowned and shook his head at Vernon and Thomas, then fixed a concerned look on Hubert. “Are you going to be all right, son?”
Hubert blew out a breath and rubbed a hand over his jaw to ease the tension. “Yeah, Pops, I will. I just….” He failed to find words to describe his frustration over everything. It was all a misunderstanding, but because that misunderstanding had gone on for too many years, there didn’t seem to be any easy way to resolve it. “I’ll ride out to the Bonneville ranch tomorrow to try talking things through,” he said to no one in particular.
His statement was met by wide, wary eyes and head shaking.
“What?” he asked.
“Vivian doesn’t take kindly to intruders,” Athos explained.
“She pointed a shotgun at Mr. York, the new principal at the school, when he came out to ask for donations last summer,” Millie told him.
“Vivian?” Hubert blinked. “Vivian Bonneville?”
“She’s changed a lot since her father died,” Elspeth said, eyes lowered.
“She hasn’t changed that much,” Vernon countered her. “She was a harridan before, and now that she runs the ranch, she’s just gotten meaner.” He took a bite of Bebe’s steak, and, with his mouth full, said, “You can do better than a Bonneville.”
“Don’t say that!”
“Bebe is different.”
“That’s not fair.”
Ivy, Heather, and Neva erupted in protest at the same time.
Vernon looked surprised at their indignation. “It’s like I was telling Hubert the other day,” he said, then swallowed his bite. “Haskell is full of great women. I don’t know why he has to go getting all worked up about one of the broken ones.” He tilted his head to the side. “Although she looked mighty fetching in that dress. Nice—” He held both hands to his chest. “—color.”
“Really, Vernon,” Heather snorted, completely disgusted.
Hubert loved his brother and knew he was just being contrary to tweak their sisters, but he was about ready to throw his plate at Vernon. If Bebe was broken, it was his fault. “I love her,” he said, not caring if his family knew. “I’ve always loved her.”
“Bravo,” Ivy said, rewarding him with a smile.
“Bebe needs someone who loves her to swoop in and save her from all that mess,” Millie added.
“That’s the kind of Christmas miracle I’d like to see,” Neva added. She and Millie exchanged identical nods as only twins could.
“Well, girls, I’ll do my best to make that Christmas miracle happen for you,” Hubert said, determination coiling tightly in his gut.
“Good luck with that,” Vernon added as an aside, sending Hubert a look that told him how impossible the task was.
Impossible or not, Hubert had to take it on. He wasn’t willing to let everything he and Bebe had had go without a fight.
Chapter 5
“…and then, to top the whole thing off, Price made me cook him supper when we got home.”
Bebe finished telling her tale of the horrible evening at The Cattleman Hotel to Julia with a heavy sigh. The two of them walked slowly up South Main Street, from the house Sam had had built for Julia a few years before toward the shops of North Main Street on the other side of the tracks. Everything was decorated to be festive and cheery, but it did nothing to lift Bebe’s gloom. Three days had passed since the miserable night, but to Bebe, it felt as though she’d just been through the ordeal.
Julia sniffed and tucked her hands under her arms for warmth. “Price Penworthy is an ass,” she said, as boldly as if they were in Sam’s saloon instead of walking up a respectable street in broad daylight. “I don’t know why you’re marrying him.”
“Yes, you do,” Bebe countered her, arching an eyebrow.
Julia grimaced. “All right, I do. But I still wish you wouldn’t. Especially now that….” She let her sentence fade, her distaste for Price morphing into sympathy for Hubert. Bebe was certain that’s what it was. Not only was Julia her closest friend, she’d been there through everything that had happened seven years ago.
Bebe shook her head in a vain attempt to clear it. “I keep going around in circles in my head,” she said. “If the ranch wasn’t in such jeopardy, I’d drop Price like a hot brick.”
“And go back to Hubert?” Julia asked, lowering her voice as they crossed over the railroad tracks that cut the town in two.
Hubert’s father was talking to Travis Montrose at the far end of the platform. He glanced up and nodded at the women as they passed, his expression full of the sort of pity Bebe hadn’t been able to escape since Hubert came home. She met Athos’s eyes, but neither smiled nor nodded in return.
“The only thing that could convince me to go back to Hubert Strong would be if he had an adequate explanation for his despicable behavior.” As soon as Bebe snapped the words out, she felt guilty and miserable—first, because she knew she was being too hard on Hubert, and second, because it was a bald-faced lie. It would take a lot less for her to run into Hubert’s arms.
“He was in Japan, wasn’t he?” Julia asked.
Bebe pressed her lips together, but didn’t answer. She hadn’t decided how she felt about Hubert’s international jaunt yet. On the one hand, it was easy for her to accept that a foreign mail service would have bungled transportation of the letters they’d both written. Although that didn’t explain why Hubert hadn’t bothered to tell her he was going abroad in the first place. On the other, she couldn’t shake Melinda’s insinuation that Hubert had been with geishas and other exotic women who were far more interesting and sophisticated than she was.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said as they crossed Station Street and stepped up on the boardwalk that ran in front of the shops. “Hubert might not stay in Haskell anyhow.”
Julia’s shoulders dropped. “So you said, but I have a hard time believing he’d run off again.”
Bebe humphed. What was left of her heart felt heavy in her chest. Give me a reason to stay.
Hubert’s words had echoed in her head for three long, painful days. The intensity of feeling in his eyes as he’d said them haunted her, and so did her answer. It was too late for them. Far too late. Even if she wanted to, she couldn’t give Hubert the reason he needed. She was as trapped in her situation as a rabbit in a snare.
“Well, cheer up,” Julia said with a sudden burst of optimism. She hooked her arm through Bebe’s. “You’re back to wearing pretty colors instead of black, Christmas is in just over a week—” Bebe noted that she didn’t say the wedding was in just over a week. “—and we’ve got your hen party at the saloon. You have to be looking forward to that.”
Bebe wanted to laugh out loud at Julia’s plans for a wild night of poker and sarsaparilla with their friends, but mentioning the saloon only brought the night that Hubert left right to the front of her memories. She stopped short a few yards down from the door to Kline’s Mercantile and heaved a sigh.
“I would do anything to go back in time to that night,” she said, knowing Julia would understand exactly what she meant. “Why didn’t I demand to go with Hubert then?”
“Because he told you not to?” Julia suggested quietly.
Bebe stomped her foot, shades of the impetuous young woman she’d been coming back to her. “He was wrong. He didn’t need to make his fortune for us to be together. Things wouldn’t have been as hard as he tried to tell me they were.”
“Well, they might have,” Julia said, becoming the voice of sense that Bebe didn’t want to hear.
“I could have gotten a job of some sort,” Bebe brushed on. “It might not have been very dignified or refined, but it would have brought in money. I would even have been willing to live with Hubert without being married to him, if we just could have been together.”
Julia fixed her with a hard stare. “You know good and well there would have been babies, who take time and expense to care for, if you’d done that.”
Her friend was right, but Bebe growled in frustration anyhow. “He didn’t have to leave.”
Julia let go of Bebe’s arms and turned to face her squarely. “You’re forgetting something else about that night,” she said, all seriousness. When Bebe raised an eyebrow in question, Julia went on with, “Your father was there with his men, and all of them were armed. Do you really think he would have let you run away with Hubert once he’d caught you?”
Bebe thought her heart couldn’t sink lower, but Julia proved her wrong. The memory of her father’s threat of violence against Hubert made her feel sick to her stomach. Worse still, it poked a giant hole of doubt in her belief that everything could have turned out differently.
“It’s not fair,” she said at last, marching past Julia and shoving open the door to the mercantile.
Julia laughed, and as soon as they were both inside the store with the door closed, she threw her arms around Bebe in a supportive hug. “I love your fight and your sense of justice,” she said.
Bebe ached with affection for her friend and frustration over her life at the same time, but she hugged Julia back. “And I love your boundless optimism.”
“Good.” Julia nodded, holding Bebe at arm’s length. “Then here’s some more optimism. Think of all the wonderful and valuable experiences Hubert has had over these last seven years.”
Bebe arched a brow and crossed her arms, not sure geishas were valuable experiences.
“He’s had a chance to work for a big city newspaper,” Julia went on, her eyes bright with hope. “If what I’ve been hearing is true, he did well there and rose up through the ranks.”
What she’d been hearing? Were people talking about Hubert? Bebe’s heart fluttered at the possibility.
“He had a chance to travel abroad and expand his horizons,” Julia continued.
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Bebe frowned. “Some of those experiences could have been interesting indeed. Far more than I’d be able to offer him,” she ended in a low and dreary murmur.
Julia clicked her tongue and shook her head, nudging Bebe down the aisle that held sewing supplies. “Hubert isn’t, and never was, the kind of man to waste his money on experiences,” she said, knowing exactly what Bebe had been talking about. “And believe me, helping out at the saloon, I’ve seen exactly what kind of man does that. Hubert is not one of them.”
A glimmer of hope took hold in Bebe’s gut. It was true. Even when they were in school, Hubert hadn’t ogled Bonnie’s girls the way so many of the other boys had. When she’d asked him once why he didn’t talk about which girl he wanted to be with the way some of his friends had, he’d told her that the only girl he wanted to be with was her.
Still, she couldn’t shake the doubt Melinda’s assumptions had left her with. Then again, why was she giving so much credence to Melinda’s word when it came to men? Her sour older sister hated men and always had. Melinda hated everything and wasn’t shy about letting everyone know it. And Vivian only encouraged her.
Bebe let out a sigh and fingered a bolt of lace without really looking at it. There was a fair chance that her negative outlook on everything these days was as much because she was surrounded by miserable prunes who never had anything good to say about anything. That sort of misery rubbed off if you were around it for too long. It was hard to tell where her sisters’ views of the world ended and her own feelings about things began.
“Maybe I should break off my engagement to Price, let the ranch go into foreclosure, and move far, far away,” she said.
“Never,” Julia gasped. “At least, not that last part. What would I do if my best friend moved away?”
At last, Bebe smiled, though it was weak and bittersweet. “You’re the only thing that’s kept me sane these last few years.”
Julia laughed. “Strange, that, considering Sam is always telling me I’m not all right in the head.” She giggled at the joke Bebe knew she shared with her husband. Julia and Sam were still madly in love seven years after marrying, and completely adorable when they were together.
Which was something Bebe would never have.
“Why are we here again?” she asked, forcing herself to stand straight and think about something else for a change.
“To buy supplies for your hen party,” Julia said with a smile. “Sam says he has all the food we’ll need, but look for decorations.” She leaned in closer. “Anything that looks like sausages should do the trick.”
Bebe chuckled and rolled her eyes at her friend. Julia was incorrigible, and not a day went by when Bebe wasn’t grateful for it.
Julia was so delightfully silly as they pored over the shelves in the mercantile, looking for items that could be made to look naughty, that it cleared Bebe’s head of thoughts of Hubert and her impossible situation. She was actually smiling and giggling along when they turned down another aisle and she found herself face to face with Hubert. Her laughter and her heart caught in her throat, and she froze to her spot.
Evidently, Hubert hadn’t seen her shopping and hadn’t recognized the laughter as hers. He blinked in surprise and turned pink at the sight of her. His hand paused halfway through reaching for a tin of shaving soap. For a moment, the two of them just stood there, staring at each other.
“I think I see something over here we should get,” Julia said in a fast, high voice, then disappeared around the corner.
Bebe’s mind flailed for some way, any way, to handle the situation she’d tumbled into. Hubert was there, right there in front of her, without warning. He looked a bit tired and hadn’t shaved—which could be explained by the fact that he was buying shaving soap. But she was close enough to smell the scent of linen and spice that surrounded him.
“You look beautiful today,” he said into the bristling silence between them.
“I…I do?” She hadn’t put a lick of effort into dressing or grooming for the last few days, other than setting aside her black dresses for more colorful ones. There didn’t seem to be much point to it.
“You always look like an angel,” he said,
his voice softening.
Bebe’s heart melted…and her mouth opened and shut like a fish out of water. She hadn’t had a chance to prepare for this, no time at all to build walls around her heart and steel herself for battle. “I…oh. Thank you?”
The tension between them seemed to ramp up. Hubert glanced around the mercantile over top of the shelves. The store was moderately crowded, seeing how close to Christmas it was. In the street, a group of carolers was singing cheerful tunes.
“We need to talk,” he said, taking her hand and pulling her down the aisle to one of the back corners of the room.
Bebe was too stunned to protest or dig in her heels. She did her best to gather her resolve to put her foot down, no matter what Hubert said, but the first thing out of his mouth when they were tucked away in a corner was, “I did write to you from Japan.”
She let out a breath, no idea how to reply. Her heart thundered wildly against her ribs, beating with hope. “I didn’t get anything,” she said, trying, and failing, to sound firm.
Hubert’s shoulders dropped, and he ran a hand through his hair. “I know. At least, that’s what I figured out. I don’t know what happened, but all those letters—and I swear, I wrote every week, just like I had been doing. At least, until I realized you weren’t writing back.” He rubbed his hand over his face and shifted his stance as though he’d gotten lost in his explanation.
“You disappeared,” Bebe said, oddly numb when she thought she should be furious. “Just when things were getting bad.”
“I know, and I’m sorry.” Hubert reached for her hands. Fool that she was, she let him take them. “Tell me what I can do to make it up to you.”
Bebe’s mind remained blank. She should be stomping and furious. She should have told him off and railed at him for being a faithless boor. The problem was, he wasn’t. Worse still, she was beginning to see that he never had been, no matter what she had tried to convince herself.
“Did…did you like Japan?” she asked, small and quiet, not really wanting to hear the answer in case Melinda was right.
