Colorado Bride (42 page)

“Have you ever seen this lady shoot?” Lucas asked. “She can take the fire off the end of your cigar.”

Jake could see Duncan didn’t believe him. “That’s how she got me to work here.”

“I heard about that, but I didn’t know whether to believe it or not.”

“Would you believe she got me to whitewash the station for her?” Sam Butler unexpectedly came around the corner of the barn.

“Now that I
won’t
believe,” Duncan said, staring at the notorious gunman.

“I came in here several days ago, wounded and with a hungry posse on my heels,” Sam said, more to Lucas than to Duncan. “She fixed up my leg, sent the posse back to Tyler’s Mountain with its tail between its legs, and made me rest up until my leg was fit to ride. A little whitewashing seemed small payment for all that.”

“That ain’t all she done,” swore Jake, “but you wouldn’t believe it if I told you. Hell, I saw it myself, and I still don’t believe it.”

Lucas stared at Carrie in stunned surprise, shock at the risk she had taken battling with pride that she could stand up to an outlaw, as well as a bloodthirsty posse it seemed. He
had
to marry her and take her off to Denver. Either she was going to get herself killed, or she was going to turn the whole territory on its ear.

“It really wasn’t as dangerous as it sounds,” Carrie said, silently pleading with Lucas to believe her. “I’ll tell you about it later.”

“I certainly hope so,” Lucas said before he turned back to Duncan. “What do you think?”

“What do
you
think?” Duncan asked, turning the question back on Lucas.

“If you want my opinion about her work,” Lucas said after a moment’s hesitation, “I think there isn’t a better manager on the line.”

“There certainly isn’t one with a place that looks like this. The passengers have been after me to make this the overnight stop. With your cooking being what it is, I’d be hard-pressed to find a reason to put it anywhere else.”

“Does that mean I still have the job?” Carrie asked, unable to wait any longer. This was what she’d been working toward from the first day she arrived. She had even shunted Lucas and her love for him aside in her efforts to make sure that nothing would go wrong today. Now success was within her grasp, and she couldn’t wait another second to know if she had succeeded.

“For as long as you want it and can keep things going like they are,” Duncan said. “I’d be a fool to give it to anyone else.”

It took all of Carrie’s self-control not to give a shout of triumph. “Are you going to make it an overnight station?”

“I can’t answer that yet. That’s a decision for the company office, but I’m going to recommend it.”

It would have been easy for a less perceptive man then Lucas to see that Carrie hardly knew how to contain her happiness. It also wouldn’t have taken one with much insight to see that he didn’t share it. Certainly he was proud of her achievement and he was glad she had proved her ability to the extent that she had won a renewal of the contract, but the station had always stood between them, a bar to her becoming his wife, and he didn’t see that her resounding success was going to make things any easier or increase the chances of a decision in his favor.

So far he had been unable to make Carrie see that she was using the station as an excuse—maybe he had only just seen it himself—and that she didn’t need it anymore. She was still fighting doggedly against the possibility of being treated the way her family had treated her. He wasn’t sure she could see that she could give up the station, marry him and move to Denver, and still maintain her independence. To be perfectly honest, he didn’t know how he was going to explain it to her, but he couldn’t imagine anyone imposing on Carrie ever again.

And if Jake was to be believed, she could handle outlaws and posses as well. Lucas tried to remain optimistic, but he had a dark presentiment that things were not going very well for him just now. He could also see that this was not the moment to press his case. Carrie was too excited over her victory to be able to pay attention to anything else right now. She was positively dancing in place, just waiting for Duncan to leave so she could share her victory with Katie and Jake.

He felt left out, and he resented it. Recognition of her success required that it be achieved independently of him—it followed that her success should be celebrated just as independently—and it angered him that he was not a part of her achievement. He felt almost like the enemy, and it was a feeling he disliked.

She would have to choose between him and this station sooner or later, and he decided it might as well be now.

Chapter 22

Half an hour later Duncan had mounted the horse he had brought tied to the back of the stagecoach and ridden back to Fort Malone. Lucas walked up behind Carrie and put his arms around her. She turned into his embrace with a happy smile. “Do you think you could give me a few minutes now?” he asked. “I’m feeling terribly jealous.”

“I’m sorry,” Carrie said, immediately remembering that Lucas had lost his uncle and that she had not taken the time either to sympathize with him or to share in his feeling of loss. It’s just that I’ve worked so hard for this and now that I’ve finally got the contract, I can hardly believe it. It’s like losing your sense of direction all of a sudden and having nothing to struggle against.”

“Listen to me for a few minutes and see if I can’t give you something to think about.”

Carrie tried to clear her mind of her own concerns. She wanted to listen to Lucas, she really cared about his loss, but it was hard to keep her feelings of happiness from bubbling over. She had proved she could run the station, and Duncan had acknowledged it with the most concrete admission possible, an extended contract.

“Uncle Max only lived a few days after I reached Denver, but we talked more in that time then we ever had in our lives. I told him about you, told him I had asked you to marry me but that you couldn’t make up your mind to give up your freedom yet. He said he wished I had brought you to see him.”

“I would have liked that,” Carrie said. “It would have been nice to meet at least one member of your family.”

“I suppose I have some relatives back in Texas, but Uncle Max was the only one that counted. I told him quite a bit about you. He said you must be crazy not to jump on me like a hen on a June bug. I told him you weren’t at all partial to June bugs, but he seemed to think you might learn if you tried.”

“Lucas, what kind of nonsense did you tell that poor man?” Carrie demanded, her attention finally caught. “You had no right to worry him with the things we say to each other.”

“He wasn’t worried. He just wanted to tell me he made a big mistake one time, and he didn’t want me to make the same one.”

Carrie could tell from the look in Lucas’s eye that what he was going to say was very important to him, that it would be very important to both of them, and suddenly she was nervous.

“He asked me to do just two things for him, and both of them surprised me. There is a woman back in Nebraska he almost married, and I guess he wished many times afterward that he had. Anyway, she’s not doing too well now, and he wants me to look after her.”

“What will you do?”

“I’ll have to go see her.”

“That’s a long way,” Carrie said, thinking that it would mean he would be gone almost as long as when his uncle died. She had missed him terribly. She didn’t want him to be away from her that long again. “What was the other thing your uncle did that surprised you?”

“He told me to get married, have a family, and put down roots.” Lucas felt Carrie stiffen in his arms, but he didn’t stop. “He told me that nothing else a man did in his life mattered a whole hell of a lot, nothing else lasted unless it was in the minds and hearts of a man’s own flesh and blood, his sons and daughters. It was just the opposite of what he had done with his own life, and he didn’t want me to make the same mistake.”

Carrie hardly knew what to think. She was standing in the ring of Lucas’s arms, vibrantly aware of his body, of the delicious excitement of merely being near him, but she had just won the right to operate what could become the most important stage station in Colorado, and she couldn’t bring herself to give it up. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to get married—she did and Lucas’s holding her in his arms made it hard for her to think of anything else—but she felt her contract could be the beginning of a new and exciting kind of life, and she was being asked to give it up without having had a chance to experience its benefits.

“You know what I asked you to think about while I was gone?”

“What?” Carrie said, trying to get her thoughts back on their conversation. “I can’t remember. So much has happened.”

“You know you remember” Lucas said, making her look him straight in the eye. I asked you to marry me, and you were heartless enough to say you had to think about it.” He had decided he wasn’t going to let her off anymore. She had to give him an answer now.

“Well, I did have to think about it. It wasn’t a decision to be made lightly. There are so many things that we don’t agree on.”

“I know. You keep saying that, but you still haven’t answered my question. Will you marry me?” He knew she loved him, she had admitted it. If he could just get her to agree to marry him, they would be able to work everything else out.

“I
want
to marry you, but I’m not sure I should.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Lucas demanded.

“I love you,” Carrie said, wondering how to explain her indecision, “much more than I ever thought possible. I’ve been terribly busy since you left and I’ve had lots of things to worry me, but never for one minute did I forget you, how wonderful it felt to be in your arms, or how much I wanted to be there again. There were some nights I ached for you so I couldn’t sleep, and I would get up and pace the room. I even came over to the station one night and scrubbed the stove again just to have something to do. It nearly drove me crazy?”

“Then why are you still unsure?”

“You know there are still so many things we can’t agree on.”

“We can work them out.”

“I don’t know. You’ve been different since you got back from Denver. I could tell it almost the minute you got off your horse. I think your uncle’s words had a much greater effect on you than you know.”

“But I told you weeks ago that I wanted a family and a home.”

“You had some doubt in your mind then, I don’t know how much, but there was still a question, some room to negotiate. I don’t think you have any uncertainty now, and I don’t think there’s any room for compromise. I think you know in your own mind you will never be happy without the kind of home you had when you were a boy.”

“Carrie, there are bound to be many things we don’t see eye to eye on. We don’t have to work them all out right now.” He could feel her slipping away, and he didn’t know what to do to bring her back. She was hiding behind walls of her own making, and he had to find some way to convince her to tear them down.

“Where are we going to live?”

“In Denver.”

“But I’ve just been given a new contract to run this station. I can’t leave.”

“You can give it to someone else.”

“But I’ve worked hard for this contract. I don’t want to give it to anyone else. Why can’t we live here?”

“Because the company office is in Denver, and I can’t do my job from here.” This wasn’t the way Lucas wanted to tell her about his job.

Carrie stared at him in stunned surprise. “Do you mean to tell me that you’re more than just an investigator sent out here to spy on some outlaws?”

“You might say I was second in command to my uncle,” Lucas said, realizing he had made a mistake in keeping this information from Carrie for so long. “In fact, you might even say that he owned the company”

Carrie went rigid in his arms. He tried to tighten his hold on her, but she impatiently pushed his arms away.

“You
own
the Overland Stage Company? You don’t merely work for it or have some stock in it?”

“I own it, all of it. Uncle Max founded the company, and I’m his only heir.”

“Does Duncan Bickett know who you are?”

“Yes.” Lucas could see what was coming next and he didn’t like it, but there was nothing he could do about it. She was going to be mad as hell, and he didn’t blame her. He should have told her before he left, but it was too late to know that now.

“So when he was asking you what you thought about this station, he was really asking you whether he should give me the station or not?”

“No, he was not,” Lucas said as emphatically as he could. “Duncan might want my opinion because I was around here more than he was and knew more about how well you operated the station, but hiring the managers is his job and he knows I don’t interfere. Neither did my uncle.”

“But he would be reluctant to go against your wishes if he knew what they were.” There was no way out of this one, and Lucas knew it.

“Look, Carrie, I know what you’re thinking and you’re wrong. Duncan doesn’t have to try to make me happy. He knows he’s too valuable to the company for me to ignore him, and he knows we think too much of his opinion to go against it without some damned good reason.”