Rancher Wants a Wife (2 page)

He reminded her of a Thoroughbred racehorse, muscled and built for speed. Her pulse tripped over itself in response to his powerful presence. Wavy hair, longer than the men wore in Chicago, touched his collar. A sheen of moisture from the heat of the sun dampened his brow. He was clean-shaven, but already a dark shadow underlined his firm jaw and cast shadows in the dimple of his chin.

“Cassandra,” he repeated in a rich baritone. “Good to see you.” And then her scarf came away from her cheek, exposing the ugly ripple of flesh four inches in diameter, and his studious eyes flickered over it.

The burning heat of embarrassment and shame, and an overriding wish to flee, overtook her.
This is what you ordered,
she thought.
How terribly disappointed you must be
.

He fumbled for barely a moment, almost imperceptibly, then glanced back up into her eyes with a smile. “You look lovely.”

She took in a deep breath, touched by his kindness.

Why did the rhythm of her breathing still break when she was around him? Why had it always been like this? She nodded and smiled in a confusion of emotions.

She hadn’t realized how parched her mouth was. “Well, I...Jack...this climate certainly agrees with you.” Clumsily, she reached out to shake his hand at the same instant he held out a bouquet of pink wild roses.

She took the flowers, mumbled a thank-you that got muffled when he leaned forward, planted a large warm hand on her wrist and pulled her forward over the roses in an awkward semihug that two distant relations might share. It was a wonderful display of strain and discomfort, the same awkwardness that had existed between them when she’d been engaged to his cousin, Troy.

Only now she was engaged to Jack, and all the witty and charming things she’d practiced to say on their first meeting flew out of her head.

“Sorry you got delayed,” he said. “The coach is never on time.”

“Thank you for waiting,” she replied, still flustered.

“May I take your bag?” He extended his hand, and before she could stop him, took her woven satchel. Due to the weight of her books and gun, it thudded against his side. “What on earth are you carrying? Cannonballs?”

She smiled at his quip. She hadn’t written to him about her desire to be a detective. She wanted to prepare herself first, to scope out the town and its facilities, and break the news to him gently, in the event he had any objections.

“How was your trip?”

“Long and dusty. But it is exciting to see this part of the country.”

He gave her another one of those sweeping glances that seemed to sum her up. “I almost didn’t recognize you.”

Because of the massive scar?

He awkwardly tried to make it right. “I mean because you used to be a touch heavier, remember?” Then he groaned. Perhaps that wasn’t quite what he’d meant to vocalize, either.

In her efforts to recall what he might look like, she’d forgotten that she herself had been on the plump side, last time they’d seen each other on the night of their ripping argument.

But if he’d had any decency at all, if he’d truly cared for her as he’d confessed that evening, why had he packed his things and left in the middle of the night?

Not a word goodbye.

He had tried to kiss her, but how on earth could he have expected her to react, when she was engaged to his cousin? What more could any decent man expect but a slap on the face?

Anger flashed through her. She was surprised by it and tried to hide it. She thought she’d feel a hundred different things when she saw him again, but never suspected she still hadn’t gotten over the callous way he’d left. Those buried feelings of betrayal surged up and stung her. She didn’t wish to be resentful. What she’d hoped to be when she arrived, had fantasized being, was a pleasant and optimistic bride.

Perhaps what she was truly indignant about were the circumstances she had found herself in, in Chicago—no way to support herself immediately after the fire, no family to help, relying on the mercy of a man to marry her.

“I guess we’ve both been through a lot of change.” She smiled faintly, trying to overcome her emotions.

The artery at the base of his dark throat pulsed. He seemed to sense her discomfort as he watched her. “And how is Troy?”

Her lashes flicked as she averted her gaze. “Fine, I suppose. In England somewhere, last I heard.”

She hadn’t spoken to that turncoat for five years, either, but how would Jack know that? All she’d told him in her letters, when he’d asked, was that their engagement had been over for quite some time. The truth was, after that huge row with Jack, she’d gone to Troy and had discovered that all the terrible things Jack had said about him—his drinking and his carousing with painted ladies—were true. Cassandra had severed her engagement that very night. Yet when she’d gone to tell Jack that he was right about his cousin, he’d been nowhere to be found.

Over the course of the next few days and weeks, she had realized that she hadn’t really loved either man.

And then out of the blue had come Jack’s response to her ad as a bride.

He frowned, as if trying to read her expression, and any residue of sentiment she might still have for Troy. She pressed her lips together and tried to express nothing.

My, how good she’d become at that game.

The moment stretched and stretched. Then two young ladies walked by, whispering something about him with admiration in their tone. Jack didn’t pay them attention; his dark eyebrows flickered at Cassandra. He rubbed the tense muscles in his jaw and tilted his mouth in an expression of friendliness.

“Welcome to my valley.”

There went her nerves again. She couldn’t get enough of looking at the new Jack. Goodness. Wasn’t he handsome? Perhaps he knew it. Perhaps this new confidence she sensed in him came from being aware of how he was perceived by the women around him. And those women...they had such fine features and beautiful skin.

It hurt to remember that she’d once looked like that. That she’d once turned heads and garnered male attention.

She composed herself and tried to remain positive. Jack hadn’t asked anyone else to marry him; he had asked her. So Cassandra focused on what the future with him might bring, and gave him a cheerful nod. “Nice to be here, finally.”

“Yes, finally,” he said, as if he were thinking about something more.

She swooped down to inhale the perfume of the roses, hoping the color heating up her cheeks didn’t show.

Finally, after all these years, Jack McColton would be taking her virginity.

Chapter Two

“M
y horse and buggy’s up this way,” Jack said to Cassandra as he found her larger piece of luggage and led her away from the crowd.

He tried to restrain the sorrow he felt when he gazed at her and the injury to her face. God. It had nearly felled him when he’d first seen her.

He took a deep breath, but his muscles were still tense.

The pocked flesh covered her entire right cheek. It wasn’t that her beauty was affected, for he saw the lovely woman she was and always would be. It was that he felt such guilt in seeing the scar. If he had been there in Chicago, he damn well could’ve prevented her injury. He likely would’ve been living nearby, could’ve helped her and her family escape the fire, could’ve removed Cassandra from the burning timbers of her home.

But he hadn’t been there for her, and not only had she lost her family, she had to live with the scar and the turning heads wherever she walked. Even now, men and women caught sight of her and followed her with inquisitive eyes. He tried to ignore them, and the ones shouting their hellos at him to give Cassandra time to adjust. He was ashamed at how much they were staring, and just wanted to get her the hell out of there.

He placed her suitcase and satchel in his shiny buggy and held out his hand to help her onto the seat.

She slid her palm into his. Was he imagining it, or was her touch slightly shaky? She hopped up onto the polished leather and quickly released her grip, before he could tell for sure.

“I thought we’d get married tomorrow evening,” he said, trying to break the strain between them.

“Tomorrow? My, oh my.” Her soft expression flashed with surprise.

Something flickered past her shoulder. When he looked to the two-story frame building across the street, he saw the white curtains shift in his attorney’s office. Cassandra followed his gaze and peered at the office, too, then to the courthouse and the land registry building, as if orienting herself to the town.

Jack tried to ignore Hugh’s warning all over again. He knew what he was doing. There were good solid reasons for doing this.

Lots of men got married. He was of the age. A wife would enhance his life, not detract from it.

“Is tomorrow too soon? Would you like more time to get to know...to get to know the place?” Standing on the street, Jack peered at her bunched-up skirts, over the lacy blouse peeking through her bodice, to the side of her left pretty pink cheek. A few strands of blond hair had trapped some beads of perspiration. The hot sun had already gotten to her face. Luckily, she was shaded now by the roof of the buggy. She was still wearing her hat with the billowing scarf ends covering her injury, and his heart buckled with tenderness and regret that she felt the need to hide behind it.

She inhaled, the tug of her breath making the feminine curves of her throat stand out. Her blue eyes shone. “Tomorrow’s fine.”

“Good. Reverend Darcy said he’d be available at six.”

“Six o’clock, then.” She rested her roses in her lap, as cool and unattached as if they were strangers.

He supposed so much time had passed, they
were
strangers.

“Just a simple ceremony, Cassandra. Then back to the ranch for a few days of...of rest before I get back to work.”

“Yes, that’s fine.”

They had agreed in their letters that simple arrangements were best. She preferred a small ceremony. There would be no reception, since she didn’t know anyone here and the arrangements would’ve been too difficult for her to schedule from Chicago. He had offered to do it but she had declined, and to tell the truth, he was relieved. The only thing she had asked for was a church wedding, and he was pleased to oblige.

The mare harnessed to his buggy craned her neck at him as if to say, “Hurry up. What’s taking you so long?”

Cassandra, perched on the edge of her seat, seemed disarmed by the animal’s antics and smiled.

He gave the mare a pat as he walked around to his side of the buggy. “Easy, there, River, we’re going.”

In Chicago, Cassandra had been full of life and energy, bouncing everywhere with her younger sister, Mary, in tow. Her eyes had sparkled with vitality, and she’d had a constant smile on her face. Cassandra was much quieter here. Less carefree. He couldn’t blame her, considering the sorrow she’d been through. Her clothes were much more drab, too, but they covered a curvy new figure that intrigued him.

Dark blond silky hair, pretty blue eyes. But she still had that thing about her, that way she had of putting up her guard. If she hadn’t recently accepted his marriage proposal, he’d swear by looking at her that she wanted nothing to do with him.

Would he ever be enough for her? Would this life in California come anywhere close to what she’d dreamed her life would be like in Chicago?

The last time they’d spoken in person, he’d tried to kiss her, and she’d been point-blank honest that she wanted nothing to do with him.

How could he ever erase those stinging words from his memory?

It hadn’t been the first time he’d tried to tell her that he had cared for her, but she’d always pushed him away. Black sheep of the family was what he’d been then, and no one would’ve been more against him as a possible suitor than her father.

And now, sadly, it was just the two of them trying to work things out on their own.

And still he couldn’t trust her.

Oh, he felt plenty for her, physically, but what surprised him most in seeing her was the guarded feeling that sprang up, the knowledge that he might be just as hurt by her now as he’d always been.

He stole another glance at her as he reached his side of the buggy. The contradiction in her demeanor—the almost-smile and the heated flush, contrasting with the reserve in her stiff posture, made him ache to touch her. In fact, he wouldn’t mind driving the buggy to the church right now, then taking her straight to the Valley Hotel, where they could
share
that room he intended on renting for her alone tonight. Where he’d strip her naked, starting with that silly hat, and that prim bodice, with its dozen little buttons, which was trying its best to hide the lovely profile of her breasts.

To hell with the polished politeness of Chicago society. He could teach her a thing or two about how men were supposed to behave around their women. But would he ever be enough for her?

“Howdy, Dr. McColton,” said one of the Birkstrom brothers as he walked by on the boardwalk. “Wanted to thank you for tending to that calf last week. She’s up and about like nothing happened.”

“Glad to hear it,” said Jack.

“Say, Dr. McColton,” shouted another rancher from across the street. “Could you drop by to inspect that new stallion I got yesterday? He’s jittery. I think the train ride shook him up. And he scratched himself on some barb wire this morning.”

With hesitation, Jack glanced in Cassandra’s direction, feeling guilty about the time he’d be taking away from her. But he couldn’t let an animal suffer. “I’ll squeeze in a visit later tonight.”

“Much obliged.” The rancher looked curiously at Cassandra, then nodded goodbye.

More folks nodded in greeting, but Jack turned his attention back to his bride.
Bride
. He swallowed hard at the reality. He’d never given marriage much thought. Since Chicago, he’d enjoyed his time with various women and saw no reason to change. Occasionally, he’d thought of marriage in the far future, something that he might do, perhaps
should
do if he wanted to pass down his land to an heir. Then, when he’d seen Cassandra’s ad, the feelings had come rushing at him like a thundering buffalo.

He climbed aboard the buggy, settled beside Cassandra and flicked the reins. The vehicle rolled smoothly down the main street, its bolts and springs newly greased for the occasion. He became extremely aware of the woman beside him, the proximity of her elbow next to his, the lilt of her chest, the shifting of her thighs beneath her skirts.

“This is incredible.” She craned her neck to take in the view.

Gently sloped hills rolled toward them, terraced with rows of grapevines. Orchards sat on other slopes, filled with peach and plum trees. Raspberry bushes sprang from another acreage. A stream gushed through the valley and on behind the cluster of stores and shops in Sundial, otherwise the place would be as dry as dust. In the distance, saws from the lumber mill echoed in the hills.

“Where’s your ranch?”

He pointed to a sprawling house halfway up the slopes, built of stone and fresh-sawed lumber from the mills. “The white one in the middle of the trees.”

“All that?”

He nodded with pride.

“You’ve worked hard, Jack.”

“And from the sound of it, so have you. You must’ve come to know some of the women at the boarding house quite well.” She’d done odd jobs to help support herself, she’d written in her letters.

She turned away and peered up at two soaring hawks. “Lovely people, all of them, trying to overcome such tragedy.”

He wanted to offer his condolences again on the loss of her sister and father, out in the open this time and not simply through written correspondence. How did one convey the depth of compassion after such a catastrophe? The Great Fire had occurred nearly two years ago, in October of ’71, but the loss was still raw. He shook his head at the thought that one-third of the city’s population had lost their homes. And many had buried loved ones.

“I was so sorry to hear the news about your father and sister. If I had known...I would have been there to pay my respects, and to help if I could.” As for comforting Cassandra, he had mistakenly assumed Troy would be there to do that. How wrong Jack had been. The cousin—the one whose parents had taken Jack in as a boy when his own had passed away from consumption—had offered no support to her at all, because he wasn’t even
in
Chicago at the time of the fire.

She swallowed and clasped a pink rose on her lap. “Thank you. You mentioned you were in the new lands of Alaska and didn’t hear about the fire till six months later. How did the news finally reach you?”

“I was on a ship traveling down the coast, heading to California. There was an old newspaper stuck inside one of the animal cages. When I opened it, there was a photograph of your street. Burned to ashes.”

He swallowed hard at the memory of pulling out those pages, and the horror of not only seeing it, but being trapped on a ship and unable to do anything, not knowing what had become of Cassandra and her family. “It took another two weeks for the ship to land, and for me to get more information on the fire.”

“That explains why I didn’t hear from you.”

“I tried sending a telegram to locate you. No luck. I wrote to the police. No reply. I wrote letters, two of them, addressed to your father. They came back to me with...with ‘Deceased’ written on them.”

She murmured, “How awful to hear it that way.”

“I tried sending one to Troy, but it was returned, too, with ‘Address Unknown.’ I could only hope you and he had married and you had moved away to another city before the fire started. Perhaps to New York to join his parents.” Only his parents weren’t in New York, according to the private detective Jack had hired, but had gone to Europe somewhere. As had Troy, it turned out.

“There was such chaos after the fire. The police were overwhelmed. All the mail got redirected. There was so much of it, the post offices didn’t know what to do with it all, or how to locate anyone. One hundred thousand people with no address.”

Jack shook his head in wonder that she’d survived all she had.

“I miss them.” Her eyes glimmered with tears, her nostrils flared, her chin trembled. The depth of her loss left him speechless.

Then she took a deep breath and her sorrow shifted. “They would like it here. Mary loved sunshine, and my father would pick your brain on how many other lawyers are in town and whether he could make a fine living here himself.”

“Gordon always did like a good argument.”

She could have taken the statement badly, considering how often Jack had debated with the old gent, disagreeing on everything from city planning to job opportunities. Instead, she smiled softly and nodded.

“What newspaper did you see my advertisement in?”

“San Francisco Chronicle.”

He’d been shocked as hell when he’d seen her ad as a mail-order bride. First, that she’d survived the fire alone, and was still in Chicago. Second, that she and Troy were not married.

Jack nodded in greeting to two older folks walking toward the mercantile that sat beside the post office.

Horses clomped along the rutted grooves of the wide road. Riders on horseback, and other wagons sped along the busy shops.

Cassandra craned her neck to look at the sheriff’s office and jailhouse when they passed it, and another law office.

“So after the fire, Cassandra...who took care of you?”

She pivoted sharply to look at him, her manner cautious. “I took care of myself. I got a room at the boardinghouse, and made my own way.”

There was a lot she wasn’t telling him about that boardinghouse. Jack had received a report three months ago from the private detective he’d hired for a few days, as soon as he’d discovered where she was. This time in dealing with Cassandra Hamilton, he would go into the relationship with eyes wide open. But there was no reason to upset her with his knowledge. She was obviously trying to forget that she had wound up at a home for desolate women.

Desolate women
. What a blow to her pride that must’ve been. She’d come from a wealthy family, having a new dress for every occasion, servants who said yes to everything she’d asked. The property had been lost in the fire, the land itself used to pay off debts her father had. Damn. If Jack had known, he would have done something to help her.

The one thing the detective couldn’t clarify for Jack was when, exactly, she and Troy had ended their relationship. No one the detective had interviewed had firsthand knowledge of any fiancé, only rumors that she’d been engaged years earlier. So the thing Jack was most curious about was the thing still left up in the air.