Be My Texas Valentine (20 page)

“We’ll hold a box supper and Valentine’s dance.” Hunter almost chuckled out loud at the whole idea but contained himself.

“What in damnation are you trying to pull, Campbell!” Gideon Duncan exploded. “We had an understanding, and now you want us to just lie down in the middle of Main and let the women build their damn library right over us?”

“A girlie thing won’t bring us in no money. We need something fittin’ for a rough, tough bunch of cowpokes. We gotta have the hired men from the surroundin’ ranches to make it work,” proclaimed the three-sprigs-of-hair man. “None of ’um will come to a dern dance in the middle of the month. Not even the men ridin’ for your brand, Campbell.”

“I can handle my hands. You all just worry about your own,” Hunter said.

In a flash both the whiskey stocker and the spittoon cleaner left their tasks unfinished and charged out the back door like they were being chased by an irritated rooster. That only confirmed Hunter’s suspicion they were probably two of the ladies on the side of building a library. If they were who he thought they might be, Pearl and Ruby Wilson, they were hoofin’ their way back to the other women to give them a heads-up on what the men planned.

But that still left the flamboyant one standing outside.

Speaking loud enough that the intruder wouldn’t have any problem hearing, Hunter chuckled to himself and then said, “We don’t want any of this information to get out to anyone because I’m afraid the women will try to outdo us, even undermine our endeavors. That’s why we’ve gotta keep everything under our hats even from our womenfolk until they accept our challenge and announce their own fundraiser.”

Suddenly, Hunter grabbed both of the batwing doors and pulled them toward him, coming face-to-face with Miss Laurel Womack, complete with her expensive hat and boots. She had a scowl of surprise on her face that would make a totem pole drop over dead.

Hunter’s heart pounded against his ribs. He was certain everyone heard it as loudly as he did. Quickly recovering, he reminded himself that she meant nothing to him.

“Do we have an understanding, Miss Womack?” Hunter said with a deceptive calm.

Miss Laurel Dean Womack only shot him another look that left no doubt which end of a bull she thought he was acting like. She turned and strolled off.

Over her shoulder, she said in the finest boarding school English that Hunter had ever heard, “Go to hell, Mr. Campbell. I’m not one of the
little women
in town whom you can call darlin’ and think you can bowl over with your charm and a flashy smile.”

With his thumb, Hunter tipped up the brim of his black Stetson a bit to get a better look at the backside of the spitfire sashaying down the boardwalk.

Leaning against the building, he pulled out his gold-encrusted cigar case and removed a cheroot. Rolling it between his finger and thumb under his nose, he took in the sweet smell of the tobacco as well as Laurel’s perfectly proportioned hips swaying to and fro in riding britches that hugged every curve known to man. Her hair, the color of wheat, swung in the wild West Texas wind. He stood in place, taking in the pleasing view until he lost sight of the intriguing woman near the mercantile.

Hunter broke into a leisurely smile and mentally added one more thing to his list of goals to accomplish before he turned thirty ... Miss Laurel Dean Womack.

Chapter 3

As soon as Laurel Dean was far enough away where Hunter probably couldn’t see her, she shifted into a not-so-ladylike stomp down the street. With every step, she got madder. She was about as angry as she’d ever been in her life and it wasn’t at the charismatic rancher either ... it was at herself for getting caught up in her own trap of being too curious for her own good.

She knew nothing about a fundraiser, and certainly had no reason to support the paving of Main Street. But if she had to select one project to support, which she had no intention of doing, without fail, it’d be the library.

In the distance she saw the livery. Once she got there, she’d check on her bay, and let them know she wouldn’t be taking him out again this evening. She’d then head for her aunt and uncle’s house. A perfectly nice day of riding had been ruined when she decided to stop by the Sundance to see Hunter’s mother. She hadn’t expected Hunter to be there, much less her uncle and almost every rancher and merchant in the area.

What in heaven’s name had she been thinking sneaking around and eavesdropping like a teenage girl trying to see if another girl was swooning over her beau?

Laurel could still see Hunter’s face, as if he were standing right in front of her. She hadn’t seen him since she had left town nearly eight years prior. She had been told he was a different man than the youth she’d admired from a distance. She had just wanted to see it for herself.

Not wanting to admit it, she quickly noticed he was certainly more muscular than she remembered. Strong and powerful, he stood tall and straight like a towering spruce. One thing that would never change was his dark blue eyes, which would make any woman want to invite him into her private chambers.

She had managed to embarrass herself beyond belief; not to mention she could barely hear what was said. She’d let her curiosity override her sensibility. Why hadn’t she just walked away when she discovered he was in the Sundance? She should have never tried to catch a peep of him to see if the rumors about him were true. Now she was caught up in a mess of her own making.

As she approached the area between Campbell’s Millinery Shop and the stage line, two people stepped from the shadows. Each grabbed an arm and pulled her into the alley.

“Shush, don’t make a fuss.”

Laurel recognized the voice belonging to Ruby Wilson, but she wouldn’t have recognized her if she hadn’t spoken, because she was dressed like a delivery boy. Ruby released Laurel’s arm.

“What in Hades is going on, Ruby?”

The person holding her other arm let go. Laurel jerked her head in that direction and came face-to-face with the second Wilson sister, Pearl, who looked like an urchin directly off the street.

“What are you two up to?” Laurel straightened her leather vest and rubbed one arm, then the other. “Unless things have changed since I left town, Halloween’s over and it’s nearly Valentine’s Day, so what are you dressed up for? And you didn’t have to scare the dawdling out of me either. We’ve been friends for as long as I can remember.”

Ruby spoke first. “We need to talk to you before you go home and blab everything you heard at the Sundance to your aunt and uncle.”

“First off, I don’t blab! Both of you should know that. I might be a little more frank than most, but I certainly do not tell tales out of school, plus I couldn’t hear much of anything to go
blab
about anyway.” Frustrated, she stirred up a tiny cloud of dust with the toe of her boot.

“Okay, so you don’t blab, but since you haven’t been back in town but a few days, there are a lot of things you don’t know.” Pearl took a step forward and looked up and down the street. “We gotta talk, Laurel.”

“It’s obvious there’s a lot of things around here that I didn’t know about.” One thing that crossed her mind was the realization that her uncle and Hunter were in cahoots over the need for a railroad. “So let’s talk, but not in an alley. I have to go over to the livery first.” Her wish to take her bay out again for a leisurely outing had turned to a need for a long, hard ride with nobody but her horse and the sunset to keep her company. “Then we can meet anywhere you want. By the costumes you two are wearing, I’m sure you want to go to your house to change.”

“Well, that getup you’re wearing doesn’t look that much better,” said Ruby.

Pearl looked up and down the street again. “Wearing all that citified garb.”

“It’s the latest fashion from back East,” Laurel said much more proudly than she felt.

Both Wilson girls cackled. “And we’re wearing the latest fashions from back here,” Ruby said.

All three joined in on a good-natured laugh. The Wilson sisters had no idea just how badly Laurel needed to share a little bit of merriment with friends.

“We aren’t going to our house; we’re going out to the Triple C to talk to Mrs. Campbell.”

“Melba Ruth Campbell?”

Both sisters nodded.

Ruby plastered a mischievous smile on her face. “You didn’t think I was meanin’ that Hunter had gotten hitched, did you?”

“Well, as I already said, I have been gone a long time, so anything could have happened. But I had planned on seeing Mrs. Campbell today anyway.” What she wanted to say was simply that there was no way in hell she wanted to take a chance on having another confrontation with the devilishly handsome rogue rancher today ... or any other day, for that matter.

“He won’t be there. Didn’t you see Greta Garrett panting after him? She, along with about every woman under the age of forty who can still breathe, has been swooning over him for as long as we can remember. He’ll be over at his saloon most of the night, probably with her hangin’ on to him like he might slip into one of the spittoons or something worse.” The sisters looked at each other and burst into laughter.

“You remember her, don’t you?” Pearl asked.

“Yes. I just found out, if you can imagine it, she’s my cousin’s best friend.” Cold chills ran through Laurel at the thought because she hadn’t figured out yet whether she had been told of the friendship as a warning or if it was her cousin being such a braggadocio. “I walked up about the time she waltzed out of the Sundance. I’m sure she didn’t see me because her nose was turned up like she smelled animal excrement in the air.”

“You mean bull crap.” Ruby laughed at Laurel’s boardinghouse verbiage.

“Exactly. She has not changed an iota, just gotten bigger, hum—you know, her ta-tas ...” She trailed off, knowing they knew exactly what part of Greta she was referring to. “I presume she is as much of a femme fatale as we all expected she’d turn out to be.”

“Well, if that means a woman of ill repute—”

“Plain ol’ whore to me.” Ruby corrected her sister. “Our buggy is over at the livery. So let’s get a wiggle on. We don’t have long before sunset to get out to the Triple C and get back to town.” Ruby took off her hat and unpinned her hair, letting it fall over her shoulders before resetting her dirty, battered hat in place. “That feels better.”

“Ruby,” said Pearl, “Laurel can tie her horse on the back of our buggy and ride with us, can’t she?”

In short order the bay trotted behind the Wilson sisters’ buggy, and the three women were on their way to the Campbell place, no more than a good forty-minute ride from town.

Laurel listened to the sisters’ attempts to fill her in on everything that had happened in Farley Springs over the last six years when in truth, more than anything else, she wanted to know about Hunter Campbell and his enormous success. Finishing school had exposed her to the finer parts of being a lady, but hadn’t corralled her curiosity.

That same inquisitiveness got the best of Laurel. “The first thing I noticed when I walked down Main Street is that every other building has the name
Campbell
on it. When I left, Hunter and his parents were barely making payroll running cattle on their ranch and helping out at the Sundance.”

Ruby held a firm grip on the ribbons. “Hunter nearly killed himself working days at the ranch growing the herd and then at the Sundance at night helping out his ma—”

“And she worked for your uncle, too.” Pearl squirmed in her seat. “But you knew that, of course.”

“No, I didn’t.” Laurel wondered how many more things she didn’t know. “What did she do?”

Ruby answered, “She kept house for your aunt for a while, and once your uncle found out she knew numbers, he hired her at the bank. She wasn’t there long, as I recall. Something happened, I think, because she left suddenly—”

“It was right after Mr. Campbell died,” Pearl interjected.

“I didn’t realize he had passed.” Strange, disquieting thoughts began racing through Laurel’s mind.

“Back to your question about Hunter’s success ...” Ruby seemed to be deliberately changing the subject. “You know Hunter could make a coyote roll over and let him scratch his tummy with nothing but a smile and a wink. I guess that charm is what made him into the businessman he is today. A very successful one, too. One thing for sure, he doesn’t mix gambling and ranching. When he plays poker, he takes no prisoners. If anyone bellies up to his table, they’d better be a good player because he’ll take ’um for every penny they have plus some. And when he’s out on the ranch, it’s all about winning, too, but in a different sort of way. You should know that since he kicked your uncle’s butt from here to the Rio Grande and back when he ran for mayor—”

“Of course she knows it.” Ruby frowned at her sibling.

“I didn’t, but that explains a few things,” said Laurel.

“Didn’t your aunt and uncle keep in touch with you while you were up in New York at that highfalutin’ college? Heard you got some kind of degree as good as any man.” Ruby sounded impressed.

“No on the first matter. And yes on the second.” Laurel took a deep breath and tried to chase away the not-too-fond memories of her life in New York.

After finishing school, with grand flare her aunt and uncle had escorted her to the dean of the elite, private Elmira College. Before leaving town, they had introduced her to the higher echelon of influential people to make certain she would receive invitations to the finest social events where the privileged attended. She’d never heard from either of them directly since they’d walked out of her life.

She shuddered, remembering how month after month she’d receive an envelope at her boardinghouse from her Uncle Gideon. Inside was always a draft for the same measly amount that constituted her monthly allowance from her parents’ estate. After a couple of months, she became accustomed to expecting not a single word of affection written on the parchment inside.

All of her educational expenses were paid directly to the college by the trustee of her parents’ estate—her Uncle Gideon Duncan. She had never gotten over the feeling that she’d been sent away for an education and her only family had forgotten she existed.