COWBOY ROMANCE: Justin (Western Contemporary Alpha Male Bride Romance) (The Steele Brothers Book 1) (191 page)

Chapter 3

“This is my office, as editor of the paper,” Mike enthused as he escorted Stina into the wall-less room. “Across the hall is the telegraph office. Moya will be leaving before too long to go learn how to work a telegraph machine.”

Taking her hand, he led her into the large, open room.

“See those boards laid out in a rectangle? Those show where the printing press will be. Someday I’m hoping to make enough money to buy a second one. That way Bridget can be setting two pages at a time. I’m really excited about how quickly it’s coming along.”

“I can tell,” Stina replied. “It’s not happening as fast as when the put up the washhouse, but the men knew how much quicker I could work if I had it. I even have a room in the back where I can hang clothes when it’s raining. They thought of everything—four washtubs, two for washing and two for rinsing; two stoves so I can always have water heated, and four irons so at least one is always ready. The only thing they didn’t think of were the washboards. They even had lots of lye soap and starch.”

“It sounds like you love what you do.”

“I wouldn’t say love, but I do like it a lot more than I thought I would when I came up with the idea.”

“I haven’t worked in the newspaper business before, but I’ve always written,” Mike said. “I loved reporting what’s going on around me, even as a child. This is what I’ve always wanted, and I’ve finally gotten it thanks to Frank Harris.”

“Frank Harris?” Stina repeated.

After what he’d tried to do to her, having the washhouse built and paying for everything, she was nervous for Mike. Frank Harris had wanted her to hand over a little over half her earnings for him to do all of that. When she’d balked at the notion, when she’d told him that she would rather go house to house than be beholden to someone, he’d backed out on the deal. The men in town, though, hadn’t hesitated to give her the building and its contents. They’d pooled their money and done the work in a week, and she kept all of the earnings.

She was curious as to how much Frank Harris was involved in the newspaper, but she couldn’t ask Mike about it. She didn’t know him well enough.

“Stina?” he asked. “Are you all right?”

“
Ja
,” she replied. “I was just thinking. Do you know how long it’s going to take to build your newspaper?”

“No. They’re only working on it when they can. I’m hoping for another couple of weeks to a month, but that’s because I’ll be doing some of the work myself. Now that the skeleton of the building is up, I can put up walls.”

“Skeleton?” Stina asked. “I don’t understand.”

Mike seemed taken aback. “You don’t know what a skeleton is? I’m sorry. You have so little of an accent that I barely notice it. A skeleton is the bones of the body. A skeleton of a building is the wood like you see here.”

“Oh, I see.”

“Tell you what,” he said. “Let’s go have something to eat. I’m getting hungry. After that, I’ll walk you home.”

When she agreed, he took her hand and laid it on his forearm to escort her from the building. In that way, they walked to the hotel, where he opened the door for her and led her to the restaurant.

“Good evening, Mr. O’Riley,” the owner, Olaf Johnson, greeted as they entered the dining room. He nodded toward Stina. “Miss Bengtson.”

“Evening, Mr. Johnson,” Stina said. “How are you tonight?”

“I’m well. Do you have time this week to wash bedding for the hotel? Our wash lady has been sick, and we’re behind.”

“Of course. Just bring them in tomorrow morning, and I’ll get right on it.”

“Thank you,” Mr. Johnson said. “Are you here for dinner with Mr. O’Riley?”

“She kindly agreed to dine with me,” Mike said. “Could we have a secluded table for two where we can talk without disturbance?”

With a wink, Mr. Johnson smiled at Stina. “Absolutely. This young lady works too hard. She needs a little time for courtship.”

Courtship?
Stina thought in surprise. One meal didn’t exactly mean a courtship. It meant they were eating together.

Once seated at a table, Stina collapsed against the chair back. She was exhausted. It had been a long week, and she’d even had to work that day. Now that it was time to relax, she felt the tiredness spread throughout her body, almost as though the floodgate had been opened. Her arms and legs felt like they had ten-pound weights on the ends of them, and she wondered if she would even be able to lift the small menu Mr. Johnson placed before her.

“You suddenly look as if you should be home in bed,” Mike observed aloud. “When we were at the newspaper office, you seemed relaxed, but now you look exhausted.”

“I
am
exhausted,” she admitted. “I’m almost afraid you’ll have to carry me home instead of walk me home.”

“Do you always work so hard?”

“Usually, but I don’t normally work on Sundays. I take that day off every week. Unfortunately, I had some extra work this week.”

“You should hire somebody to work for you. That way you would have help, as well as somebody to talk to while you’re working.”

“I don’t know who it would be. I haven’t had time to meet anybody in town. I’ve been working since I moved here.”

“Don’t worry,” Mike said. “Once the paper is up and running, I’ll print an article about you and your business, and I’ll let everybody know how busy you are. Then I’ll mention that you could use an employee. Somebody will probably offer to work for you.”

“That would be nice, but I won’t count on it. We’ll see what happens if you do print an article.”

At that point, a young lady who Mike addressed as Sarah came to the table and took their order. From there, their conversation drifted to the local weather and other trivial things.

Once Stina glanced out the window and saw Lars standing there looking into the restaurant. His expression was one of irritation, but Stina was too tired to care. If he didn’t like her seeing another man, he needed to ask to be her suitor. That’s all it would take for her to stay away from Mike, as Lars wanted her to do.

After their meal, Mike walked her home, but Stina kept an eye out for Lars. She didn’t like that he had spied on her at the restaurant, and she was afraid that he would follow her everywhere now. That bothered her a lot because she didn’t know what Lars might do after his run-in with Moya.

Chapter 4

Two days later, Lars appeared at the washhouse. Stina was still busy with bedding from the hotel, by now ironing it to make it presentable for guests.

She put an iron on the cast iron cover of the stove and picked up a hot one as she greeted Lars.

“What can I do for you, Lars?” she asked.

“You can stay away from Mike O’Riley. He’s the owner of the newspaper. He’s probably only sniffing around you to see if he can get information on what happened to Moya.”

His telling her what to do annoyed her, and she pushed the iron across the sheet with enough force to move the material and put another wrinkle in it. “Darn it!”

After dipping her fingers into a nearby bowl of water, she splashed some water on the wrinkle and worked the iron over it more slowly.

“What do you want from me, Lars?” she asked, irritated by his presence. “I saw him at Elise’s wedding, and he asked me to join him for dinner. I was being nice to a new person in town. It was as simple as that.”

“If you’re so enamored with him …”

“What’s enamored?”

“You like him.”

“Not like you mean,” she declared. “Yes, I like him. I think he’s a nice man, but that’s it.”

“Only because you want me,” Lars shot back. “You have since Elise introduced us. I could always tell by the way you looked at me. You still have that look in your eyes.”

More furious with herself for not hiding her interest better than she was with him for knowing, she slammed the flat iron onto the cast iron stove. The loud clang reverberated through the building.

“If you only came here to tell me what to do, you can leave right now.”

“Not until I’ve had my say.”

“You’ve said enough!” she shouted. “Now get out.”

“I won’t leave until …”

She grabbed a hot iron and shook at him. “You’ll leave now—before I
trow
dis
across the room at you.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“I
vould
,” she declared as she pulled her arm back. “And you know I’m a good pitcher.”

“All right,” he said, backing up to the door. “But this conversation isn’t over.”

“
Ja
, it is. Go!”

Lars sprinted from the building, leaving the door open behind him.

“
Jag ska berätta vad jag vet, din jävel
,” she said in her native language as she returned to her ironing.

“What does that mean?” Mike asked.

I should tell what I know, you bastard
, Stina thought. But aloud she said, “It was nothing. I was just ranting.”

“Well, remind me never to make you mad at me,” he said with a grin, “because I wouldn’t be able to understand what you tell me. For all I know, you could be cussing me out.”

Returning to her work, Stina asked, “How long have you been there?”

“Not long enough to know what you were arguing about, but long enough to know that your accent gets stronger the angrier you get.”

“That’s because I don’t pay attention to how I pronounce things when I’m angry.”

“Mind if I sit and wait for you to finish the bedding? I told Johnson that I would bring it back for him while I was out.”

Stina told him to make himself comfortable, and he explained that he had been kicked out of the newspaper office because the workers came and decided he was doing the walls all wrong. Since he had nothing to do, he had decided to run this errand for the hotel and restaurant owner.

With Mike there chatting about how he wasn’t at all sure that the owner was actually that, Stina’s work went faster. She listened to him tell her how he wondered if the owner of the town actually owned the hotel and restaurant. Occasionally, Stina contributed to the conversation, but mostly Mike just had a conversation with himself.

From everything she’d seen, he and Bridget were both talkers, and she absently wondered how they ever carried on a conversation with each other. Were his parents both talkers, too?

With the bedding finished, she handed the bundle of linens to Mike and thanked him for being there. Now she didn’t have to feel guilty if she didn’t deliver them when Mr. Johnson didn’t pick them up.

The next day, Mike returned and waited in line while Stina tagged pillow cases of laundry so she would know which bag belonged to whom. When he got to her small counter, he set his own pillow case on it.

“Good morning, Miss Benson,” he said with a smile. “Do you have time for a new customer?”

“It’s Bengtson,” she corrected.

With a mischievous grin, he winked at her. “I know it’s Bengtson. I was just giving you a hard time. Seriously, though, do you have time to do my laundry?”

“Of course. Do you need it soon?”

“No. I’m going to buy some of those dungarees the lumberjacks wear and probably a couple of those plaid shirts. They look comfortable. I’ll have clothes for a few days.”

“Then come back Saturday, and they should be ready.”

“In time for the barn dance?” he asked with a note of hope in his voice.

“Plenty of time.”

“Are you going to the dance?”

Stina stared up at him. Was he asking her to join him? Or was he just making conversation. Unsure how to answer, she gave her standard reply when a man asked her to a dance. “I don’t know. I usually go to bed early, but sometimes I go to the dances. It all depends on how tired I am.”

His tone turned downhearted. “Oh. Well, I hope to see you there. I’d better go buy some clothes. Don’t work too hard.”

And with those words, he left the building.

Not knowing what to say, she thanked him for his business and stared at his back as she walked out the door. If he had asked her to the dance, she probably would have said yes, but he hadn’t. He’d simply indicated that he would see her. Did he just want to be friends, or did he want something more? She couldn’t tell.

Chapter 5

To Stina’s delight, Lars asked her to go with him to the barn dance. At first she agreed, but Friday she began feeling ill. By Saturday morning, she had a fever; and when Lars called for her, she had confined herself to bed. She had no desire to leave the house, let alone go dancing. She suggested that Lars take Karin in her stead, but he declined, saying that Karin was too young for him.

Elise had moved into Moya’s home, so Stina stayed in her room to keep Karin from getting whatever ailment she had. She certainly didn’t want to pass it onto little Emily through her sister. So, alone in her room and shivering, Stina huddled under her blankets.

Lars was angry when she told him that she wasn’t going to the dance, but she couldn’t have cared less. Let him be angry. If he couldn’t understand when a woman was sick, she didn’t want him, nor did she need him around her. Let him go find another woman to dance with, maybe even a prostitute to bed. Right now, she was too sick to care about anything.

The next thing Stina knew, Karin woke her gently.

“Stina? You have a visitor.”

“Tell Lars I don’t
want
to go to the dance,” Stina mumbled, still mostly asleep.

“The dance is over,” Karin said. “And it isn’t Lars. It’s Mike.”

“I don’t want him to see me like this.”

“He knows you’re sick. He just wants to check on you and see if there’s anything he can do for you.”

“Would you tell him that’s very kind, but I’ll be fine?”

“I was worried about you, Stina,” he said from the doorway. “I could tell that you were sick when I picked up my clothes today. I wasn’t even surprised when you didn’t come to the barn dance. In fact, that’s why I didn’t even bother to ask if you would be there.”

Gazing over at him, she motioned for Karin to leave and told Mike, “That’s very kind of you, but I wouldn’t come any farther into the room if I were you. You don’t want my illness. Trust me.”

“I won’t. I just wanted to check and see how you were doing. Do you think you’ll feel better by Monday?”

“I have no idea.”

“Then you stay home either way. I can do laundry until you’re on your feet. I’ll take the key with me, and you won’t have to worry about a thing.”

Too weak to argue, she said, “Karin will give you the key. Thank you, Mike. I really appreciate this.”

“It’s not a problem. I don’t have a job quite yet, anyway. You just rest and get healthy again.”

Mike left the doorway, leaving Stina with her thoughts of how kind he was, how much of a gentleman. He hadn’t complained when she said she didn’t want him in the room, and he hadn’t tried to talk her into something she didn’t want to do. Lars had done both of those things. But had Lars come after the dance to see how she was feeling? No. He cared about what he wanted more than anything else. At this moment, she didn’t like him very much, let alone love him. At this moment, though, she was too sick to make any decisions. In fact, she had just let Mike make them for her.

After three days she felt well enough to get out of bed for an hour or so at a time. When she hadn’t felt dizzy for a full day, she ventured out of the house to sit on the porch. Even when she was in bed, she could hear Mike’s voice as he checked to see how she was doing after Karin got home from work, but he never bothered her.

One evening she heard two men arguing and got out of bed to see what was happening. The closer she got to the closed front door, the more nervous she became. Lars was arguing with Mike. That couldn’t be good, but she couldn’t intervene, either, for fear of causing harm to Mike. No, she needed to let this be, to let them see their argument to its end. Unless Lars started a fight, she would stay out of it.

“You need to stay away from my woman,” Lars demanded.

“
Your
woman? Stina isn’t
your
anything. She’s a strong, independent woman who is perfectly capable of taking care of herself. Surely, she’s proven that to you.”

“I’ve known her a lot longer than you have, and I’m not going to let you walk into town and take her away from me.”

“I didn’t know that she was committed to you.” Mike’s voice was strong and resolved, not angry like Lars’ voice. “In fact, I didn’t know that she was committed to anybody.”

“Then you don’t know anything,” Lars declared irately. “You’ve known her for weeks, but I’ve known her for years. She’s lusted after me all that time, too, even though …”

“Even though what?” Mike asked when Lars’ voice trailed off.

“Never mind. Just get out of here. Karin’s not going to let either of us see her, anyway.”

“And if I don’t want to leave? What if I want to hear Karin tell me that I can’t see Stina?”

“I’ll tear you limb from limb,” Lars warned.

“I don’t think you could,” Mike replied calmly. “But I’ll leave for now because I don’t want to upset Stina. And I promise I’ll return whenever I want.”

A bit concerned about Lars’ threat of hurting Mike, Stina crept back to bed. Even though it felt nice to have two men want her again, she didn’t want to see either man get hurt. Back in Bishop Hill, two men had courted her, but she’d wanted neither man. Here in Forestville, she wouldn’t mind having either man. It would be nice to have Lars because he was the man she’d dreamed of for so many years, but Mike was a true gentleman who treated her like a lady, not a possession.

Settling back into bed, she considered her options. Would Lars have ever offered to take over her work for her? Probably not, but he did have a job of his own. Mike, on the other hand, didn’t have anything else to do. He had time to help her out while his office was being built.

Back in Bishop Hill, she’d seen and heard a lot about Lars’ conquests. Many of the girls had crushes on him, but she herself loved him. She had no doubt about that. Unfortunately, because he was courting her best friend Elise, she couldn’t pursue Lars. Now that Elise was married, though, she could. And she would as soon as she recovered from this illness.

Mike was almost the opposite of Lars. He was mild-mannered, where Lars was hot-tempered. She found this funny because she’d always heard that redheads had bad tempers. He was kind and caring, and her heart melted every time she looked into those gorgeous green eyes.

But Lars was jealous. There was no doubt about it. He didn’t argue with a lot of people, but he got angry when he thought someone else wanted a woman he wanted. She’d witnessed that both in Bishop Hill and here in Forestville. With the information she had, she could marry Lars, too. That was uncertain with Mike. He was a man who would take his time getting to know her, which she liked.

Somehow, some day, she would need to decide which man she wanted to spend her life with. For now, though, she would enjoy them both.