Mail Order Mistake (6 page)

He studied her for a moment.  “How does it make things confusing?” 

She shrugged.  “It just is.  I don’t really know how to explain it.”
  How could she tell him she was afraid of being poor without angering him?

“You’re not seriously considering marrying my brother, are you?”

She shook her head.  “There’s no way I could marry Patrick.  It would break my sister’s
heart.  I do think we all need a week to get to know one another better before we
actually marry, though.”

He nodded skeptically.  “You know you’d break my heart too
,
if you married my brother
?
  I couldn’t watch the two of you together for the rest of
my life
while I lived in a half marriage with your sister.”

“A half marriage?”

He shrugged.  “That’s all it could be compared to a marriage with you.   I look at
you and I see my future.  I see children and a life full of love.  With her?  I’d
feel totally alone, because she and I would never have the bond I felt for you as
soon as I saw you on the train platform.”

She smiled and leaned forward to rest her head against his shoulder.  “It’s not going
to come to that.”  What she didn’t say is she wasn’t sure if she could marry him at
the end of the week. 

He held her close and closed his eyes, knowing he’d found the only woman he could
ever love with his whole heart.

Whether she’d come out there to marry his brother or the governor of the state of
Colorado, he was going to marry her and spend the rest of his life with her.  She
was the most perfect woman he’d ever met, and nothing could ever change that.

*****

Before bed that night, Malinda dropped
to her knees to pray.  “Please
Lord, help me to do what’s right.  I made a commitment to one man, but fell head
over heels in love with another.  My sister is in love with the man I made a commitment
to.  I know
Y
our Word says to trust
Y
ou and not worry about money, but look where we ended up in Beckham
.
  How can I just trust that will never happen again?  Please help me sort out my tangled
thoughts.  I have to figure out what to do so I won’t keep the lives of three other
people in limbo.  It’s just not fair for me to do that, and I won’t.  I pray for
Y
our wisdom in the name of
Y
our precious son.  Amen.”

She climbed between the sheets and settled her head on the pillow, hoping she’d be
able to sleep at least a little.  Every time she closed her eyes
,
she saw Wesley at the altar with Ellen.  He couldn’t marry Ellen, and she couldn’t
marry Patrick.  But could she get over her fears for long enough to marry Wesley? 
She really wasn’t sure if she could.

*****

“What did we agree to?” Wesley asked Patrick as they left the house.

Patrick sighed heavily.  “I don’t know.  I couldn’t think straight, because I was
given a chance to get to know Ellen better and possibly convince her to marry me.”

Wesley nodded.  “I understand.  Ellen is pretty.  Not as pretty as Malinda, of course,
but she’s pretty.”
  He knew saying that would annoy his brother, and he’d never been one to back away
from needling Patrick.

Patrick laughed.  “Ellen is a million times prettier than Malinda could ever dream
of being
,
and you know it as well as I do.  Why would you say such a thing?”

Wesley shrugged.  “So you’re going to sleep on the lumpy mattress in my spare room
for an entire week?  Think you can handle that
,
rich boy?”
  Wesley elbowed Patrick in the arm as he asked.

“No, I really don’t think I can.  I don’t suppose you’d let me buy you a decent mattress
for your guest room so I have something good to sleep on?”

“I don’t suppose I would.”  He grinned at his older brother.  “It’ll be good for you
to sleep on
my lumpy mattress for a while
.  It’ll remind you of how the other half lives.  You’ll grow to like it.”

“I won’t like it, but I can tolerate it.”
  Patrick shook his head in disgust.

“For a man who used to sleep on the floor of his gold mine because he was afraid someone
would go in there during the night, you sure are finicky.”
  Wesley knew his brother wasn’t as picky as he was making him out to be, but it was
fun to tease him about his money.

Patrick laughed.  “Now that I’m rich, I have a right to be finicky.”

“I guess
you do.   Of course, this week
you get to lie awake on my lumpy mattress dreaming about your girl sleeping on your
bed.”  He watched Patrick out of the corner of his eye.  “I wonder if sh
e’ll sleep
nude.  In your bed.  With your pillow.
  Thinking of you.
”

Patrick groaned.  “Stop it!  You know I’ll lie awake and think of nothing else now.”

Wesley led the way into his small house and walked to his bedroom, unbuttoning his
shirt as he went.  “My work here is done then.”
  He smiled happily as he opened his bedroom door.

“I hate you sometimes.”

“It’s the way of brothers.”  Wesley closed his door with a snap, leaving the spare
room with its lumpy mattress for his brother.

Chapter Four

Malinda didn’t get to sleep until the wee hours of the morning, and was surprised
to see the s
u
n was still so low in the sky when she dragged herself out of bed.  She dressed quickly,
knowing Ellen would have been up long before her because she was always at her best
early in the mornings.
  She’d tried to be a morning person, but she didn’t have an easy time falling asleep,
so she never seemed to get out of bed until someone came and rousted her.

She descended the stairs and poked around until she found her sister sitting in the
kitchen casually talking to the cook she introduced as Alice. 
S
he shook her head.  Only Ellen would get up at the crack of dawn to watch someone
else fix her breakfast. 
She was surprised Ellen hadn’t forced the cook to sit down so she could fix breakfast
for her.  As soon as the thought entered her head, she was ashamed.  Mornings put
her in a bad mood, but that didn’t give her an excuse to have mean thoughts about
someone who had only ever been good to her.

The entire time Malinda was eating her breakfast, Ellen tried to push her into making
a fast decision.  Malinda tried to explain why she wanted to wait, but Ellen obviously
didn’t understand, and she couldn’t find the right words to get through to her.  How
could her sister
honestly think she only cared about money when she made this decision?

After breakfast, she spent most of the day in her room, reading through one of the
books she’d brought with her. 
She didn’t want to spend the entire day listening to Ellen’s lectures about how she
needed to make a fast decision and how she was being unfair to the rest of them. 
They’d all agreed on a week, and she felt she had the right to use that week for the
decision.

She dressed carefully for their first evening of really getting to know the men. 
Ellen told her Patrick was going to take them all to a restaurant, and neither of
the sisters had ever eaten in one, so Malinda was ecstatic.  She walked down the stairs
when she heard the door open and watched Wesley’s face light up as he saw her.  How
could she have lived her entire life without knowing that sweet man was out there
waiting for her?

Wesley took her shawl from her hands and wrapped it around her shoulders for her. 
It was July, but he’d told her the mountains were cool at night, and as they went
outside, she could see he was right.
 

She and Wesley walked together a few steps behind Ellen and Patrick.  She couldn’t
hear what the other couple was saying and that suited her just fine. 
Ellen was probably complaining about her and how she wouldn’t make up her mind. 
“How was your day?” she asked Wesley.

He shrugged.  “It was pretty quiet around here
.  I had something funny happen
though, if you want to hear about it.”
  He glanced at her as he asked the question, obviously not wanting to bore her with
the tedium of his job if she wasn’t interested.

She squeezed his arm a little tighter as they walked.  “Of course I do.  I want to
hear about anything you want to tell me about.”
  Even if what he said wasn’t interesting, she just loved listening to his deep voice. 

He smiled down at her, obviously pleased with her answer.  “I was sitting in my office
and a woman came in with her five year old son.  He’d stolen a gumdrop from the mercantile
when the owner wasn’t paying attention.”  He grinned at the memory, his eyes now far
away.  “Well, the mother obviously wanted me to do something about it.  So I picked
him up and sat him on my desk.  ‘Son?’ I asked him.

“He looked down at his feet, refusing to meet my eyes, but when he realized I wasn’t
going to say anything else, he looked up at me.  ‘What?’

“So I asked him ‘Do you know what you did was wrong?’

“He just shrugged, so I said, ‘Did you know it was wrong before you did it?’

“Tommy, that’s his name, said, ‘Sure I knew.  I’m not an idjit.’”

Malinda laughed softly enjoying the story.  She’d never thought of a sheriff as someone
who would be good at telling stories, but she could see what Wesley talked about as
he spoke. 

“Well, then I asked, ‘You know what the penalty is for stealing, right?’

“That got him scared.  He drew this really deep breath, like he was preparing for
something terrible, and said, ‘Hangin
’
?’

“I had to hide a laugh at that.  That little boy sat on my desk, thinking he was going
to be hanged for stealing a gumdrop.  ‘Nope,’ I said.  ‘That’s just for horses.  For
a gumdrop, you have to spend five minutes in the city jail.’”

“You didn’t!”
  Malinda was horrified at the thought of a little boy sitting in jail, even if just
for five minutes.

“I did.  The mother’s face lit up, like I’d come up with just the perfect answer. 
I took him down from my desk and walked him over to the jail.  I let him see the big
ring I keep the key on, and I made it really dramatic as I unlocked it.  I asked,
‘Do you want to hug your mother before you serve your time?’ and he ran to her crying
and hugged her really tightly. 

“I almost relented, until she looked at me with a slight nod, and I knew she wanted
me to go through with it.  ‘Come on now, Son,’ I told him.  ‘You’ll have plenty of
time for crying while you’re sitting in jail.’
”

Malinda covered her giggle with her
hand.  “So you put him in jail?  Please tell me there were no other prisoners in there?”

Wesley nodded.  “
Of course not.  I would have come up with another solution if there had been.”  He
tilted his hat forward on his head.  “
I put him in there and locked the door, and then his mother and I stepped outside. 
She thanked me for what I was doing, and said after he’d ‘served his time’ she’d take
him back to the mercantile to apologize and make him pay for the gumdrop.  Of course,
she’s going to make him work it off when he gets home.  Something about giving the
dog a bath.”

Malinda grinned.  “Better than getting into a gun fight with a criminal right?”
  She looked up at him, concerned for the first time about the violence of his job.

“Oh, definitely.  We don’t really do gun fights around here, though.  I sometimes
have to throw someone in jail for a day or two for trying to jump a claim or public
drunkenness.  Other than that, it’s pretty quiet.  My job is more about keeping anyone
from robbing the bank than anything else.”

“That’s a relief.”  She hated the idea of anything happening to him while he was at
work.  “I’m really happy to hear your job isn’t as dangerous as it sounds.”
  She already had such strong feelings for him.   Would she be able to handle the
death of someone else she loved?

He smiled down at her happily.  “Does that mean you’re worried about me?”

She shrugged.  “I wouldn’t say that.  I just don’t want to have to go to a funeral. 
They’re depressing.”
  She watched him out of the corner of her eye to see if he realized she was just
teasing.

He laughed.  “Well, that puts me in my place doesn’t it?”

They’d reached the restaurant and once they were seated she reached for her menu. 
As she read it, she realized s
he’d never heard of anything on there.  How was she supposed to decide what to eat? 
She didn’t want to look like a complete idiot, so she just closed her eyes and pointed. 
When the waiter asked her what she wanted, she p
ointed to the thing on the menu, something she really couldn’t pronounce.