Romance: Luther's Property (16 page)

By: Erin Walsh

A Leap of Faith in
a Billionaire Cowboy

© Erin Walsh 2016 – All rights reserved

Published by Steamy Reads4U

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any
form, including electronic or mechanical, without written permission from the
publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles
or reviews.

This is a work of fiction.
 
Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either
the product of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner.
 
Any resemblance to actual persons, living or
dead, or actual events are purely coincidental.
 
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.

This book may not be resold or given away to other
people.
 
If you would like to share this
book with another person, please purchase an additional copy.
 
If you are reading this book and did not
purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, please return it to the
seller and purchase a copy.
 
Thank you
for respecting the author’s work.

Warning

This book contains explicit content intended for readers 18+
years old.

If you are under 18 years old, or are not comfortable with
adult content, please close this book now.

“Sara-May, I did not bring you all the way out here to marry
a man with no honor!” My father paces the floor shaking his head furiously. His
face is so red that it matches the beets growing in my garden.

“Papa, please, it couldn’t have been him!” I know that my
pleading will do no good. It never does. My father is a man who very firmly
believes that a woman’s place is in the kitchen. She should have no opinion
other than that of her father, and when he is dead, her husband. Still, I can’t
help but try.

“I did not tell you about this to offer you a chance to
argue his case. I told you as a courtesy, because you are my daughter and he is
the father of my grandson. I now see that that was a mistake.” My cheeks burn
scarlet now, my frustration building and tears are brimming in my eyes, but I’m
not going to cry. Father says that women who cry to get their way are worse
than men who steal because at least men who steal have guts. He is already
accusing my child’s father of being a thief, I’m not going give him the
satisfaction of my crying as well. He’s seen me cry plenty of times before
certainly, but not this time. This time I will hold strong.

“Yes, father.” I bite my tongue, partly to forget the tears
and partly to avoid saying something I’ll regret.

“It would be my suggestion that you stay far from the
General Store tomorrow, Sara-May. It would only make things more difficult for
the both of us.” I can’t even look at him. His words aren’t a suggestion at
all, rather a requirement. A requirement that if I disobey, there will almost
certainly be consequences. And father’s consequences are never as simple as a
slap on the wrist.

Father leaves the room, satisfied that he has made his point
and for a moment I can do nothing but sit and breathe. My heart is still racing
and my whole body shaking. Tomorrow afternoon my father will arrest the father
of my child, the man I hope to be my husband someday and there is nothing that
I can do to stop it.

“Sara-May?” Betsy sticks her head through the parlor door.
“I heard your father, he was in quite a state. Is there anything I can do to
help?” For once I don’t think there is anything she can do at all. She may have
a way with my father, but this time I’m afraid there is no changing his mind.

Betsy has served as my mother, nanny and tutor for most of
my life – at least since my mother died when I was five years old. She always
has the right answers and usually she can turn my father’s head around, but I’m
fairly certain that this time her powers of persuasion will be fruitless. I
shake my head.

“No ma’am.” I can’t bring myself to look at her. I just know
that if I do the tears will begin falling and once they start I’m not sure that
they will ever stop.

Betsy pushes her way in through the slightly open door and
pushes it closed behind her. She bustles over to me noisily in her swaying
skirts.

“Now…” She says gently, sitting beside me on the sofa. “You
tell me what all we can do to make this better.” She places her hand on mine
and in that very second the first of my tears slides down my cheek. “Oh, honey.
Don’t you cry.” She wipes at my cheek with her fingers. Now I’m sobbing and she
gives up trying to wipe the tears away. “You listen here, your father loves you
very much and I’m sure he is only doing what he thinks is best for you.” She
pulls my head softly to her shoulder, her hand brushing over my long hair.
“Shhh.”

“But he’s not, Betsy. He’s not at all! He wouldn’t even
listen to me!” My voice barely came out between the hiccups and squeaks. My
nose begins to run. I’m certain that I look like a complete wreck.

“Darlin’ you have to believe that he is only trying to look
out for your best interests, and those of little Sam.” She says. I lift my head
off her shoulder and look at her, hurt. I hate her for taking my father’s side
and yet I love her so. Why does she always have to try to see the sense in
everything?

“How can putting the father of my child in prison be best
for me? How can it be best for my child?” I no longer feel sad or frustrated,
anger begins to take over. “And how does he expect me to provide for Sam? I
have no job, we depend on Jim’s wages to survive! He knows that! He is the one
who has forbidden me to work! ‘It’s not a woman’s place to work,’ he says. So I
stayed at home and we learned to make do with Jim’s wages. But if he puts Jim
in jail, surely he has to know that he is leaving us without?”

Jim has never made a lot of money working at the general
store, but as the manager he makes enough for us to get by. We have a small
house of our own and food on the table every night – some of which I grow in
the garden - and while it’s a far cry from my father’s fortune, it’s enough for
me.

“Listen here, I’m sure that your father has a very good
reason to believe that Jim is the man he is looking for. Now if he says that
Jim robbed those banks, then we need to stand by him until it’s proved
otherwise. After all, he is your father and you are his daughter.”
 
I hate the guilt trip. When in doubt, Betsy
always goes to the guilt trip. She knows that by reminding me that I am all the
family my father has, she can force me to relent. But this time, I have my own
family to think of as well.

“And Jim is my child’s father!” I say. “How can I see him be
locked away for something that he didn’t do, Betsy? They’ll hang him for it!”
The thought of Jim being hung by the neck makes my stomach turn. From the look
on Betsy’s face, it makes hers turn as well. She lets out a quiet sigh and pats
my hand.

“Child, how can you be so sure that your father is wrong?
He’s a man of the law, he wouldn’t just make up such charges for the sake of
it! What could he possibly gain from that? It certainly wouldn’t make him a
good sheriff and you know how much your father values his position.” Betsy
shakes her head, almost as though she’s trying to shake the very idea out of
it.

“Betsy, he has never liked Jim. Not since I got pregnant
with Sam. It wasn’t the proper way to do things and you know how my father
likes the proper way. And Jim doesn’t have the money that father had hoped I
would marry in to. All of those suitors and every one my father picked had a
small fortune to his name! And now that Sam is older, me and Jim, we were
planning to get married and the very idea of it must have turned my father
to...” Before I even finish talking, Betsy is holding up her hand and shaking
her head. I stop.

“Your father wouldn’t do something like that, my love. Of
course he didn’t like how things came about between you and Jim, but he
wouldn’t destroy a marriage just for the sake of it. He wouldn’t leave little
Sam without a father just because of the timing of things. When it all comes
down to it you are his daughter and Sam, he’s his grandson. He loves you both
so very much.” She stands up and runs her palms down the front of her dress.
“Just think about what I’m saying Sara-May. He’s your father and he loves you
so much that he moved his whole life out here to make sure that you had the
best opportunity. He’s just trying to do what’s best for you and little Sam
now.” She shuffles out of the room. I sit watching the small birds from the
front window. They hop around pecking at the ground in search of juicy worms. I
detest even them for their joy. How can life be so unfair?

I scoop Sam up from the pram in the kitchen. Betsy stands at
the stove peeling potatoes and dropping them in to a pot.

“Betsy, Sam and I are headed home.” I tell her as calmly as
I can manage. Despite infuriating me with her defense of my father, I know that
she meant well. I can never stay angry at her. She nods with a smile before
shuffling over to kiss each of us on the cheek.

“Just remember what I said Sara-May. He means well. And, if
Jim is innocent, well then God will see to it that justice prevails.” She pulls
Sam’s collar up around his fat neck and goes back to peeling her potatoes.

I love Betsy more than most anyone, but one thing that I
have learned from my real world experience is that justice does not always
prevail. And God doesn’t always see to it. Sometimes innocent men are hung by
their necks for things they didn’t do, and sometimes it’s just ordinary people
who have to fight tooth and nail to free that innocent man before he swings.

“How is your father?” Jim asks me as he sits down at the
table for supper. He’s still dressed in his work clothes and without his bath
he looks more tired than ever.
 
I can
barely stand what I have to tell him. I wait to answer his question, studying
every wrinkle on his face, before I realize that I just can’t keep it inside
anymore.

“He believes that you are a bank robber and plans to arrest
you tomorrow at the General Store.” It wasn’t quite how I imagined telling him
and it definitely wasn’t what he had anticipated me saying, but it had just
fallen out of my mouth that way.

“What’s that?” He asks. From the look on his face it’s
obvious that he hasn’t quite caught on to the severity of the accusations, that
is, if he heard them at all in my speedy expulsion.

“My father. The sheriff.” He cuts me off before I can say
anymore.

“I know who your father is Sara-May. Now what is this
nonsense about me being arrested?” Why he is snapping at me, I don’t know.
Perhaps I should have kept my mouth shut after all. I’m no more than the bearer
of the bad news, not the one who’s planning to arrest him.

“He thinks you are a bank robber.” I pause as though sending
a telegram. “He’s going to arrest you.” I pause again. “At the store tomorrow.”
I watch Jim shake his head, a look of complete confusion on his face.

“Why would he think that? And why not just come for me today
if he believes it? I don’t understand…” He looks at me in total bewilderment. I
shake my head.

“I don’t know. I wasn’t even supposed to tell you, but I couldn’t
not…I couldn’t let him just surprise you tomorrow at the store.” His confusion
turns to fear.

“But I didn’t do anything Sara-May. Can’t you talk to him?”
His big brown eyes are just about as wide as I’ve ever seen them. He’s begging
me, begging me to help him and I’m absolutely powerless.

“I tried, Jim. I tried to tell him that you’d never do such
a thing but he only became angry that I dared to have an opinion at all.” He’s
staring at his plate now and I can see the cogs turning. “We could run away?” I
say. “Go to California? I have a cousin there, she would probably be willing to
help us set up there. We could just start over. We could be pioneers…”

“No.” Jim pushes his chair back and stands up with both
hands on the edge of the table. I can see the fear turn to resolve as he
squares his shoulders. “No, I’m not going to run away from my home, from your
family, for something I didn’t do. I’m an innocent man Sara-May and innocent
men don’t run.”

“But what if they don’t believe that you’re innocent?” I
ask, immediately regretting it as soon as the words come out of my mouth.

“They have to. They have to because I am.” Leaving his
untouched plate on the table, Jim walks through to the front room. I remain at
the table, picking at the string beans on my plate. I have no appetite at all,
but for the time I spent picking these beans in the garden they need to be
eaten.

I never would have imagined two years ago that I would be
where I am now. Living in a small house, in a small town, unmarried with a
child and picking food to eat from my own garden. Back in Virginia we had more
than plenty to our name. We had servants who tended to the vegetable gardens,
who picked the food and cooked the food. I never had to lift a finger at all.
Not that I mind it now, but it would sometimes be nice to have a hand around
the house, especially now that Sam is here. Truth be told, if I still lived
under my father’s roof, I still would have the allowance of the privileged.
But, Jim changed that. I traded in my lifestyle of the privileged only daughter
of a lawyer to be with the man I loved. A man my father apparently hates.

Back when we lived out east, the newest trend in Virginia
had become for the men to seek out and marry rich slender women who powdered
their faces from expensive compacts. While I could certainly powder my face and
was wealthy by my father’s means, there was no possibility of me ever being
slender. Betsy used to say that she knew that I would always be quite shapely
even as a child from the way that my chin folded over and my thighs always
rubbed together as I walked. For a while I tried to prove her wrong, but the
dieting soon became the death of me. I would hide food throughout the house and
eventually my father tired of sending servants out to buy rat traps. All the
while I was simply starving and miserable. I soon decided that it just wasn’t
the lifestyle for me. Even if it meant never marrying, I simply loved food too
much to starve myself half to death for the appearance of things.

When it became clear to my father that his eighteen year old
daughter would never marry lest he do something about it, he decided we should
move to Montana. A slightly less progressive state that still seemed to value
the fuller figured woman. In no time at all we went from being the center of
social occasions, to being a wealthy family in a small town with no social
circle at all. Father went from lawyer to sheriff and I went from spoiled,
bored daughter to bored daughter. Still, father’s plan to marry me off seemed
to be a success because I had men lining up at the door to seek my hand in
marriage from the moment that we arrived. I am certain that more than half of
them were interested only in my father’s money and the other half, my father
was only interested in for their money. But there was something about Jim that
caught my eye. He wasn’t like any of the others. He worked hard and he was
proud of his job even though it wasn’t much. Most of all though, he didn’t
cower to my father, rather, he held his own opinions and presented them with
the precision of the most educated man despite never having had a formal
education. Needless to say, my father wasn’t impressed. He would much have
preferred for us to stay back in Virginia and I remain single as opposed to
fall in love with a man like Jim.

Father had in mind for me someone much more amenable to
being molded in to a Sutherfield gentleman. Jim, on the other hand, had no
intentions of changing his last name upon our marriage to suit my father –
after all, what man takes his wife’s last name? So, while my father entertained
other potential suitors I took to meeting Jim whenever the opportunity arose. I
just couldn’t stay away from him, nor him me. We would sneak around like
lovesick teenagers, sneaking a few minutes here or a few minutes there. After
just one month of our sneaking around however, nature took its course and I
fell pregnant with Jim’s child. I knew that my father would never approve. I
took to wearing larger clothes for a while in order to hide my burgeoning
belly. Telling my father that it was the new fashion trend back in Virginia,
that all the girls were doing it now. By the time he found out that I had been
lying and that underneath my baggy smocks hid an extra twenty pounds of belly,
it was almost time for the child to be born. There was nothing that he could do
but provide me with a midwife and order me to leave our family home after the
birth. I had disgraced him both as a father and as the sheriff of our town.

I don’t know that my father ever forgave Jim for giving me a
child out of wedlock. Even after things began to smooth over. Despite our plans
to marry now, I don’t believe that father will ever overcome the shame of
having a bastard grandson.