Shotgun Bride (3 page)

“And you’re staying in town?” Kade asked, summoning up a convivial smile. “What about that fine house Rafe built for the two of you over across the creek from us? Is it standing empty these days?”

Emmeline shook her head, and all of the sudden she looked tired. Kade felt a pang of concern; if Emmeline was in the family way, Rafe was certain to win control of the Triple M for good. Much as Kade would have liked to be an uncle, he wanted to be a father first. A father with a legacy to leave.

“Becky’s been up in Flagstaff with John Lewis for a week,” Emmeline said, “so I’ve been helping Clive and Sister Mandy look after the hotel.” Becky Fairmont, also known as Becky Harding, depending on her state of mind and the phase of the moon, was Emmeline’s mother, and John Lewis, the town marshal, was her beau. The two of them had churned Indian Rock’s version of polite society into a regular dither, carrying on the way they did; the ladies down at the spanking-new church were bound to be spending more time on gossip than prayer and hymn singing. Good thing none of them knew the family secret, that Becky had been a madam back in Kansas City, before turning to innkeeping.

Jeb let out a long sigh and sat back, folding his arms. He looked as disreputable as Kade felt, being sorely in need of scouring, and he didn’t smell much better than a sweat-lathered mule. “I’m heading for the Triple M tomorrow,” he told Emmeline. “I’d be glad to borrow a buckboard from Old Billy and drive you out there.” He was always trying to charm the women, Jeb was, and it didn’t seem to matter much if they belonged to somebody else. Kade set his jaw briefly, biting down on a string of words better left unsaid.

“Like you did the first day I came here,” Emmeline reminisced, with a little laugh that did a lot to raise Kade’s flagging spirits. She shook her head, probably reflecting on the memory of arriving in the Arizona Territory, believing herself well and truly married to a man who’d just rolled through the doors of the Bloody Basin Saloon to land at her feet. Her introduction to Rafe had been an eye-opener, even by Western standards. “I remember wishing I’d signed on to marry you instead of your brother.”

“That,” Jeb said, with one of those crooked grins of his, “was your common sense talking.”

Just then, a clamor arose in the street, horses’ hooves clattering on the hard ground, saddle leather creaking, men calling to each other in raised voices.

“There he is now,” Emmeline said, but even without her saying so, just by the way she leaped from her chair with her face all pink and shining, Kade would have known that Rafe had arrived. He felt a sore yen to have a woman light up that way for him and despaired of its ever happening.

Rafe strode right into the hotel, just as if he owned the place, bringing the frigid, snow-flecked wind and nine or ten rambunctious, spur-jangling range hands right along with him. When Rafe entered a room, it always felt as if the ceiling had dropped and the walls had sucked in like the sides of an empty bellows.

“Well,” he said, towering in the doorway and jerking off his work gloves one finger at a time, “if it isn’t my little brothers, home from the far country. Kill the fatted calf.”

M
andy Sperrin sneaked through the hotel kitchen, having avoided the dining room entirely, and took refuge in the alley beyond. Oblivious to the snow and the cold searing her flesh even through the heavy woolen habit she wore, she stood absolutely still, with her back pressed to the wall of the general store, one hand to her chest. Her heart thundered like a herd of runaway horses.

She was sure Kade McKettrick didn’t remember her from that night five years ago down in Cave Creek, which both troubled and relieved her, but he’d given her a curious glance or two just the same. Doubtless, it was only because of the nun suit, she thought, grasping at straws. Next time she needed a disguise, she’d darn well pick a garment that didn’t draw so much notice. Or itch like something off the floor of an abandoned teepee.

One moment, she was standing there, hiding out and battling the urge to scratch, and the next, she was pinned to the clapboard wall, nearly choking, with an icy rifle barrel pressed lengthwise across her throat. She scrambled onto her tiptoes and pushed with both hands to free herself, but it was no good.

Blinking with fear and breathlessness, she stared into Gig Curry’s furious eyes. Curry would have been her stepfather, if he’d ever taken the trouble to marry her mother, though he never hesitated to claim the title if he saw any benefit in it. The old emotions rose up in her, bitter and violent but at the same time sustaining. Her blood burned like kerosene in her veins.

Slowly, degree by degree, Curry relaxed the pressure of the rifle, allowing Mandy to drop to her heels and draw a desperately needed breath. Curry was a thin man, not particularly tall, but full of rangy strength, and he’d been born pissed.

“Well, now,” Gig crooned, his face so close to Mandy’s that she felt a splash of spittle as he spoke, “so here’s where she’s been hiding, our own little Sister Mandy.” He paused to shake his head. “Now, that’s funny, you posing as a nun. That’s downright
hilarious.”

Mandy closed her eyes for a moment in a desperate bid for courage, then fixed Curry with a glare. He thrived on other folks’ fright, and he could smell it, like the wild animal he was. She’d learned a long time ago not to show fear, whether he was around or not.

“What do you want?” she asked, chin raised and jutting a little. She thought of Cree, her half brother, and hoped he was far away, and safe.

Curry raised his free hand as if to backhand her, then apparently thought better of the idea and let it fall to his side. “I want to know where that little war-whoop brother of yours is right now. He’s been bad-mouthing me, and messing in my business.”

Mandy might have called out for help just then, if there had been more people on the street, but the nip in the air and the rising fear of trouble between the various ranches had driven most of them inside. “I haven’t seen him,” she said, and made sure she was snippy about it, though it might just earn her a beating. Or worse. “But if I had, I wouldn’t tell you.”

Gig looked as if he might be about to choke her again. “You double-crossing little—”

She tried to stare him down.

“Now you listen to me, Amanda Rose. If that savage gets the chance, he’ll ambush me, and that means my life is on the line. There’s one person in all the world he gives a good goddamn about, and that’s you. So it does seem to me that you might need a little persuasion to get that memory of yours fired up.”

As if she’d betray her brother for any reason. He was the only person in the world she’d ever completely trusted and, besides her mama, the only one she’d loved. “Cree’s no savage,” she said. “He makes ten of you.”

Gig lifted his hand again, and this time, she knew he wouldn’t hold back; he meant to hit her hard enough to loosen her teeth. The way he’d done with her mother so many times, and with Cree, too, before he’d got his fill of it, when he was just sixteen, and ridden out for good.

Door hinges creaked nearby, and Mandy’s heart squeezed itself into her throat. In a glance, she saw Kade McKettrick standing on the back stoop, about to light a cheroot. He’d shed his trail-worn coat and left his hat inside, but a .45 rode low on his right hip, loose and ready in its holster. Mandy’s attention went right to that gun and got stuck there for a long moment.

Kade put out the match he’d just struck, slipped the unlit cheroot into his shirt pocket. “There some difficulty here?” he asked easily, but some quality underlying his words reverberated through Mandy like the hiss of a rattler, invisible in the tall grass, primed to sink fangs into flesh.

Seeing Kade, Gig muttered a curse, and Mandy figured he must have been skulking around long enough to learn who was who around Indian Rock, starting with the McKettricks. His eyes blazed with a brief, ancient malevolence; he hated most folks, just on general principle, but especially the ones he perceived as privileged.

The display was quelled in an instant. Curry was part reptile himself; he could slither right out of his skin when it didn’t serve his purposes and take on a whole new aspect, just that easy.

“No difficulty at all,” he said, taking a step back. His smile was ingenuous, mild, and wholly false. Mandy reckoned the devil probably smiled like that while he was watching souls roast in the fires of hell.

She shuddered at the image. If stealing was indeed a mortal sin, she’d surely end up in Hades herself, turning on a spit.

Mandy forced herself to breathe slowly, by dint of will, and to calm down. Straightening her habit and adjusting her wimple, she struggled against an undignified inclination to dash over to the stoop and hide out behind McKettrick. Her fierce pride prevailed, though, even over the instinct to protect herself, and she stayed where she was.

“It’s cold out here,” her rescuer said moderately, addressing his words to Mandy, though his gaze remained fixed on Gig and slightly narrowed. “Maybe you’d like to come inside—Sister.”

Mandy straightened her spine and let her shoulders down from her ears. She’d ponder over the cynicism she’d heard in the word
sister
later; right now, she just wanted to put as much space between her and Gig Curry as possible. “Yes,” she said agreeably. “I think I would.”

She felt Gig reach for her arm as she passed and just as quickly suppress the motion. She kept right on walking; ten more steps, seven, five…
keep going…
one foot in front of the other.

“You know of any ranchers lookin’ to hire a good hand?” Gig called to McKettrick from behind her. “I’ll be sticking around here for a while, I reckon.”

A chill struck the length of Mandy’s back like a wall of cold water.

“Nope,” McKettrick replied. His gaze didn’t shift from Gig, nor did he raise his hands from the railing on the stoop, but Mandy sensed a bone-deep vigilance in him as she drew nearer. He might not have been looking directly at her, but he was taking in every nuance of the situation, subtle or otherwise. He would be a hard man to deceive, should that become necessary. But, then, she’d known that since the episode in Cave Creek.

“I heard there was a fellow name of Cavanagh lookin’ to take on some help,” Gig said, friendly as could be, all smiles. Mandy thought she heard the sound of sinners sizzling on a griddle.

“That would be between you and him,” McKettrick said flatly.

Mandy had gained the steps by then, and Kade stepped aside slightly to let her go by. When she considered lingering to see what would happen next, however, he passed her a look that made her think better of the idea.

“I’ll be seeing you soon, Sister Mandy,” Gig called in jovial warning, as she stepped over the threshold into the radiant warmth and temporary safety of the hotel kitchen.

Mandy’s stomach pitched at the threat, but Emmeline was there, solid and sweet and practical as an angel, just taking a fresh pot of coffee off the stove, and it wouldn’t do to let the boss lady see how shaken she was. Kade McKettrick might have saved her bustle this time, but Gig would get to her sooner or later, or die trying.

Emmeline paused, taking her in with a concerned expression. “Are you all right?” she asked. Kade lingered outside on the porch, the door still open, and the faint scent of tobacco smoke curled into the room, oddly comforting.

Mandy forced a smile. “I’m just a little cold,” she said to explain the visible shiver that went through her. She was generally brave when face-to-face with trouble, but afterward, when she let down her guard a little, well, that was when she was hard put not to fall apart. “Here—let me take that coffee.”

Emmeline hesitated, then set the heavy kettle back on the stove and handed the pot holder to Mandy. “Thank you,” she said, her gaze straying to the open back door, full of questions.

Mandy willed some starch into her knees, picked up the coffeepot, and headed for the dining room, which had filled, in the last few minutes, with cowboys and other customers. She poured coffee for Rafe McKettrick, Emmeline’s husband, and for Jeb, his brother, along with the other men, all the while waiting for Kade to come back in, then moved on to the large corner table next to the window. A small group of young women had settled there, all of them impatient mail-order brides, gathered for one of their regular war councils.

Mandy wasn’t without sympathy for the aspiring wives; all of them staying at Mrs. Sussex’s boarding house to conserve funds, they’d come to Indian Rock from every direction but up, set on getting hitched to a McKettrick, and they’d all been sent for one way or the other. The problem was, only two marriageable brothers were left, not counting Holt Cavanagh, of course, and there were six brides.

So far, anyway. It seemed like every stage brought in another one.

Mandy smiled, momentarily amused, but the smile faded when she looked up and saw Gig Curry standing on the other side of the window opening onto the street, staring at her through the steam-fogged glass. The look in his eyes was colder than the heart of a high-country winter, and he needed no words to convey his message: if she didn’t help him find Cree, he’d kill her for sure.

“W
hat do you know about this Sister Mandy woman?” Kade asked Emmeline, after putting out his cheroot and stepping back into the kitchen, where his sister-in-law was busy cutting slices of peach pie and setting them neatly on plates. He felt a wispy recollection tugging at the edge of his mind again, but he couldn’t quite catch hold of it. There was an element of fascination, too, which troubled him.

Emmeline looked back at him over one shoulder. A tendril of hair curled against her temple, and it was all he could do not to reach out and smooth it for her. Not to send her home to the ranch, or at least into the hotel’s private parlor, to put her feet up and catch her breath for a while. He did none of those things because Emmeline was his brother’s wife, not his own.
Keep that in mind, cowboy,
he thought.

“Not a great deal,” she admitted. “She came in on the stage one day, and Becky gave her a job. We figure she’s running from something, but she hasn’t confided in us and we haven’t pressed her much, what with all that’s been happening.”

“I thought being a nun
was
a job,” Kade remarked, curiously irritated, pushing the door closed against the cold and folding his arms. He was in no hurry to go back to the dining room and deal with both his brothers at once—they were plague enough one at a time.

Emmeline shrugged. “Not being Catholic,” she said, still busy, “I wouldn’t know.”

Kade was not religious himself, at least not in the conventional sense, but Concepcion, his father’s longtime housekeeper, was devout. She knew all the saints on a first-name basis, said her rosary beads regularly, and paid visits to Father Herrera, at the Spanish mission on the other side of Indian Rock, to make confession. He meant to put the matter to her once he got back to the Triple M, though he’d have to wade through a flood of inquiry from her first. Concepcion would want to know everything that had transpired since he went looking for Jeb, and she wouldn’t give an inch of ground until he’d described every tedious detail. “You shouldn’t go trusting everybody who comes along and asks you for work, Emmeline,” he said. He thought of the man he’d seen outside with Sister Mandy. “There are plenty of no-good drifters around.”

She brushed at the escaped tendril, then took two pie plates into each hand and headed for the inner door, opening it deftly with her hip before pausing briefly to look back at him. Her mouth had a mischievous tilt to it.

“I assume you’re still set on getting married,” she said, as if in passing.

He’d forgotten that fact, blessedly, for all too brief a time, and the reminder brought a scowl to his face. “Yes,” he said. His fondness for his sister-in-law was one matter, and his need for the Triple M was another. He intended to get a wife and make her pregnant as soon as possible; there was still a good chance that he could win out over Rafe and Jeb. “The sooner I do that, the better.”

Emmeline smiled, and her eyes danced. “Well, then, here’s your opportunity,” she said airily. “There are six women out there in the dining room right now, all of them convinced they were meant to marry a McKettrick. Specifically, you.”

Inwardly Kade groaned.
“What?”

Emmeline chuckled at his expression. “It seems you put the word out that you wanted a wife. Well, they’re here. Take your pick.” With that, she whisked through the doorway and disappeared, leaving Kade reeling in her wake. It wouldn’t do any good to call her back and point out that Rafe had sent for at least one of those women when he thought things were going to hell between him and Emmeline. Fact was, he
had
written a letter to the matrimonial people himself, and paid a fee, and he suspected that Jeb had, too, though the sneak probably wouldn’t admit it. Jeb didn’t appear to be worried about landing a wife, come to think of it, and he’d probably enjoy watching Kade roast like a pig at a picnic.

Kade’s deepest instinct was to turn on one heel and bolt out the back.

“Hell,” he muttered. He’d been on the road for weeks, looking for Jeb and then making the long journey home, so the old man wouldn’t burst a blood vessel fretting about the little jackass, and he looked and felt about as appealing as an old bear just rousing himself from a long hibernation. He’d have given almost anything right then for some time to marshal his thoughts into some kind of order, but it didn’t look as though he was going to have the luxury.

When he finally worked up the nerve to walk back into the dining hall, the place was bristling with cowboy talk, the clinking sound of spoons in coffee mugs, and tittering women.

A moment went by before anyone took notice of his arrival, but a telling silence fell when they did, and he could have sworn every eye in the room was on him. He saw amusement in Rafe’s gaze, along with a certain wry speculation, and Jeb was out-and-out grinning, his chair tipped back and his arms folded. Sister Mandy wouldn’t look at him at all, but her cheeks glowed as if she’d been standing too close to the stove.

The gaggle of women at the corner table did enough looking for everybody, taking in his unkempt hair, his beard, his grubby clothes and battered, dirt-caked boots. He made himself look right back as a point of pride, but he couldn’t have described a single one of the brides as an individual to save his life—they looked like a flock of fitful birds to him, colorful and beruffled and fixing to go on the peck directly.

One of the ladies rose from her chair, and then all the others got up, too, as if they were all rigged together somehow, like a team of mules hitched to the same harness.

Kade swallowed hard.

The boldest of the brides approached, a brittle smile fixed to her mouth, and Kade called upon all the restraint he possessed not to take a step backward. Try though he might, he couldn’t work up any facial expression at all.

“Mr. McKettrick,” the woman said, putting out a gloved hand, and the slight shrillness in her voice scraped at the underside of his spine, which brought on a shudder. He prayed Rafe and Jeb hadn’t noticed the response, because they’d rib him until the day he died if they had. “My name is Sue Ellen Carruthers, and I am here to marry you.”

Kade’s tongue felt like a scared critter, trying to burrow into his throat. “H-howdy,” he choked out.

Miss Carruthers, he decided, was a forthright type, and probably fertile, which meant she’d do for his purposes, but she was three days of hard riding from pretty. Since he reckoned he’d be spending upward of forty years looking at the woman he took as his wife, from across the table and his side of the bed, he was reluctant to propose.

Another woman elbowed Sue Ellen to the side and beamed at him. He caught a flash of bright yellow hair and cornflower blue eyes, but not much else. “Marvella Denhome,” she told him, “and I was here before Sue Ellen by a good week.”

Contentious, he thought. What was it the good book said about living with a contentious woman? Better to die in the desert?

“Abigail Bergen,” said a third woman. She was nice to look at, and soft-spoken, too, but the mean glint in her eye gave Kade pause. She wanted either a husband or blood vengeance, and it seemed to him that one would do her as well as the other.

The next three candidates were a shifting blur of textures and colors, and by the time they got through prattling out their introductions, all Kade could think about was heading for the Bloody Basin Saloon and swilling down as much whiskey as the bartender could pour. He figured he would have swooned dead away, right there in front of his brothers and half the hands from the Triple M, if Becky Fairmont hadn’t glided into the dining room just when she did, cutting a path between those women like the Lord parting the waters of the Red Sea so the Israelites might pass.

Emmeline’s mother and the primary owner of the Arizona Hotel, Becky was a force to be reckoned with by anybody’s account, and though the brides didn’t look any too happy about it, they subsided all right, grumbling among themselves.

“Kade McKettrick,” Becky said with brisk finality, putting her arm through his and steering him toward the lobby door, “just the man I wanted to see.”

The brides erupted into chattering complaint behind him, and the cowboys were having a good laugh at his expense, but Kade would have followed the devil himself out of that room, if it meant escaping.

He didn’t let out his breath until he and Becky were closeted away together in her office, behind the registration desk. Clad in smart traveling clothes and wearing a feathered bonnet, the former madam went straight to the liquor table and poured them each a double shot of whiskey.

Kade threw his back in one burning, restorative gulp, then collapsed into the chair Becky pushed into place behind him. He thought of the brides and considered shoving something heavy in front of the door.

“I’ve got a proposition for you,” Becky announced, sipping her own whiskey and taking a seat at her desk. She was dark-haired, and still beautiful, but fragile, too. Like Kade’s pa, Angus, she had a temperamental ticker, though it didn’t seem to slow her down much.

“What?” he managed to ask, after a hopeless glance at the whiskey decanter on the other side of the room. Those people at the Happy Home Matrimonial Service, back in Kansas City, were a mite too zealous about filling orders, as far as he was concerned. He might have asked for two wives, or even three, since he tended to be absentminded, but
six?

“John Lewis and I want to get married and go on a proper honeymoon,” she informed him, hands folded, all business. “Trouble is, this town is about to go off like a Chinese rocket over the trouble between the Triple M and the Circle C, among other things, and John says he can’t leave it unattended. How’d you like to pin on his badge for a while and call yourself Marshal McKettrick?”