Читать книгу Welcome To Wyoming - Kate Bridges, Kate Bridges - Страница 8

Chapter One

Cheyenne, Wyoming Territory, August 1873

Simon Garr adjusted his hat, peered down the railroad tracks to the train chugging its way up the gulley and damn well hoped his bride-to-be wasn’t on it.

They’d never be right for each other.

He was a liar and imposter.

She wasn’t.

Other folks waiting on the platform jostled to look down the tracks. Simon bristled in his itchy wool suit. He’d feel more comfortable in denim jeans. He’d always worn charity-donated jeans while growing up barefoot on the plains, having to fend for himself since the age of eight.

No matter what he wore, it was hard to conceal his gritty determination, the need to be able to control everything around him, especially in dangerous situations like these. He enjoyed the weight and feel of his concealed weapons—the revolver in his shoulder holster, derringer pressed into his back, knife strapped to his ankle. He’d taught himself how to shoot when he was a kid. The first living thing he’d ever shot was a raging bear that’d mauled a friend. The second living thing, years later, was a man who’d murdered innocent villagers for three gold coins.

The checkered suit wasn’t his usual style, but it was the attire that jewelers wore.

And that was what he was supposed to be. A jeweler. He was working undercover, impersonating a man named Jarrod Ledbetter, leader of the Ledbetter gang.

Ledbetter and his pack were not only jewelers, but clandestine train robbers. The real Ledbetter was dead. He and two other scum from their filthy group had been fatally shot last week in an undercover stakeout by Simon and other lawmen of the district. Word of their deaths was being closely guarded by authorities. The railroad bigwigs didn’t want to release the information until they recovered the goods stolen days before the shoot-out, worth three hundred thousand dollars.

They’d hired Simon, a detective, to find it.

Simon cared less about the missing gold and jewels, and more about his two closest friends, also detectives, who were killed in the shoot-out. Simon winced at the awful memory of being unable to save his friends, of seeing the blood on their bodies. He looked at the faces of the people strolling by, sadly reminded that he’d never see Clay Holborne or Eli Remington again. He vowed to get even.

His mission now was to gain the confidence of the remaining two Ledbetter gang members, who hadn’t been at the shoot-out, and uncover the stolen property.

Two days ago, Simon had made contact. The two remaining murderers had said they would be “honored” to finally meet Ledbetter in person to get their next assignment.

But the big surprise came when Simon had discovered that Ledbetter, before his death, had mailed away for a wife!

It was during a casual poker game last night that the two men had asked Simon if he was ready for her arrival this evening.

Hell no! But he’d bluffed his way through answering. He was deep undercover with no immediate means to inform his superiors. So, there was nothing he could do but stand here and wait. He’d brought a suitcase with him to add to the illusion that he did indeed expect her and wanted to whisk her away to the nearest hotel.

But who was to say she hadn’t called off the wedding? Maybe Ledbetter was supposed to send a telegram this week to confirm and, due to his untimely death, hadn’t.

What kind of woman traveled blindly to involve herself with an unknown man?

Maybe she was adventurous. Desperate. Or fleeing from something. Who the hell knew? All he knew was her name. Natasha O’Sullivan.

Women baffled him. Yet he had no problem lying to them. He’d done it countless times in the name of justice. He’d gone by more false names than truthful. The hardest thing about lying wasn’t the actual deception—for it was always done in the name of good—but keeping the facts straight in his head about who he was this week.

Jarrod Ledbetter, he repeated in his mind.

He also couldn’t control how some women would react to his lies. Men were more predictable. In his line of duty, being in command of everyone around him always had life-and-death consequences.

Hell. Just as they had for Clay and Eli.

Guilt consumed him again.

It overpowered his senses, made his throat constrict, his mouth run dry. He hadn’t been able to save them. If he’d been faster, or stronger, or, damn, more aware of the hidden gang members on the cliffs...

The train, still half a mile off, blew its whistle. It caused a rush of excited voices on the platform. The early-evening breeze wafted through Simon’s shoulder-length hair. It spun the leaves on the aspens and whispered through the tall pines and firs. Clay and Eli would never breathe air like this again. He tried to push the tragedy out of his mind. He needed his faculties clear and sharp.

The wheels of the locomotive screeched and the train roared past. It came to a rumbling halt and passengers disembarked. Simon peered up and down the platform, outwardly calm while trying to spot anyone who resembled a mail-order bride. He watched as folks were reunited, businessmen hired porters, cowboys slung their packs. No lone women so far.

Gratified that his bride wasn’t here, Simon turned to go. But then he noticed the edge of a scuffed, brown leather trunk being pushed out of a rear car. The trunk’s latch was busted. Clothing was visible through the cracked opening of the lid. A flurry of ropes held the thing together.

A female voice rang out from inside the car. “You ugly, uncooperative, good-for-nothing piece of trash...”

Then with a kick of her high-heeled black leather boot, the trunk flew out the door and landed with a thump on the wooden platform.

He raised an eyebrow in amusement. He’d hate to be the leather beneath that boot.

But when she stepped out, his whole body tensed.

God, no. That wouldn’t be her, would it?

The whistle blew again and the train rolled away.

He stood partially hidden by the posts around him and watched her.

She was the right age—twentysomething. And she was alone.

Dressed in a faded skirt and a formfitting bodice that was patched at her elbows, she brushed the shimmering brunette hair from her dark eyes and realigned her stuffy bonnet. It had fake fruit attached to the brim—cherries and grapes—and would appeal to a woman forty years her senior. Donated clothing, he thought. She glanced timidly down the tracks, head slightly bowed, and then adjusted her fussy white gloves in a prim fashion. Who was she kidding? She was no timid woman. She was a tiger in skirts.

The burly conductor in uniform called to her from the moving train. “Take care of yourself, Miss O’Sullivan!”

Simon cursed. So it was her.

“Bye, sir!”

He watched her wave. Her bright eyes flashed deep coffee-brown, and her expression rippled with warmth. Her skin was clear, her neckline plunged to a hint of cleavage and the cut to her suit bodice revealed tempting curves.

His jaw clenched.

She was innocent in all of this. That was what one of Ledbetter’s men, the more brutal one, Kale McKern, had implied in the poker game last night—that Ledbetter had fooled her. As he’d fooled lawmen for years, men much more experienced with criminals than she was.

All Simon had to do was walk up to her, tell her he’d had a change of heart and put her on the next train home.

Simple.

But it looked to him as if all her dreams were packed up in that battered old trunk. And now he was about to tell her he didn’t want her. He swore. He wasn’t here to cause trouble to any woman. He was here to find justice for his friends. No doubt Simon would cause her heartache and embarrassment by turning her away, but he couldn’t disclose he wasn’t the real Ledbetter, for there was no telling who she might talk to on the return journey home. Then his life would be in danger. Maybe even hers.

This way, they’d both be spared. Only her feelings would be hurt. Feelings healed a lot faster and better than gun wounds.

But damn...he was about to give her one big invisible bruise.

On the bright side, in a few weeks when this was over, she’d likely read in the papers that the lying and murdering Jarrod Ledbetter had died in a shoot-out, and she’d be relieved she never got involved with him. She’d be free to marry in a more normal sense.

Mail-order brides were common in parts of the West where there was a high ratio of men to women, but why would any female feel the need to marry by mail? Especially one as good-looking as Natasha O’Sullivan.

She turned around to deal with her trunk. The glossy ring of curls she’d pinned up at the back of her head bobbed. Her bosom moved up and down, accentuating her slender waist. With a swallow, he glanced away and took a step closer to the ticket counter, annoyed that the train she’d pulled in on had just left. He glanced at the chalkboard and the schedule for the next one.

Today was Wednesday, almost seven in the evening. He scanned the departure times. The next one was Friday, then Sunday. There was no train leaving for two days?

He rubbed his bristly jaw. How was he supposed to get her out of here?

Stagecoach, he thought, or wagon train.

He turned around, steeled himself, adjusted his hat and strode toward her. There was no chance Ledbetter would’ve sent a photograph of himself—or even a description—for fear that his criminal face would be plastered across the country. So there was no way she’d know Simon was a liar.

A crazy thought hit him.

Nah. Couldn’t be.

Or could it? Could she have been more involved with Ledbetter than even McKern had suspected? Could she have been in cahoots with Ledbetter? Did she know anything at all about the stolen gold and jewels? She was a tiger in skirts. She had a temper she was trying to conceal. What else was in her character?

His cowboy boots thudded on the platform. She looked up in his direction, seemed to sense who he was and smiled. Loose strands of brown hair twirled across her face and over her freckles. Lips the color of sweet raspberries parted.

Hell, he nearly melted.

She might be a criminal, he repeated in his mind. Before he could respond to her, other footsteps shuffled to his right and she turned to look that way.

Simon frowned and turned his head to see who it was.

His muscles tightened in warning as he spotted the two men from Ledbetter’s gang—Kale McKern and Woody Fowler. Simon had told them to stay put, that he would pick up his bride alone and see to them in a couple of days. What were they doing here?

Then he recalled all the lewd remarks they’d made during the poker game—about what the mail-order bride might look like and how fast Simon could get her to bed.

They’d likely had a few drinks and came to see for themselves.

These weren’t stupid men; Ledbetter himself had gone to Harvard. In a time when few people were educated, Ledbetter’s wealthy grandparents had sent him to the best college in the country. He’d learned everything from books; Simon had learned everything he knew from the streets. Ledbetter had demanded that the men who worked for him be college educated, too, not only because he preferred the company of intelligent men, but as a cover. What sheriff would suspect a group of well-educated men to be cutthroats and train robbers? McKern and Fowler had gone to school in Upstate New York, violent thieves and scoundrels from an early age.

Simon kept walking toward the woman, firm and steady. He was reassured by the weight of his concealed guns and knife. But McKern and Fowler also carried hidden weapons. Simon tried to think fast. He couldn’t turn Natasha O’Sullivan away in the presence of Ledbetter’s men, for that would raise suspicion that Simon wasn’t who he said he was. Then both he and she might get a bullet to the skull.

So now he had to pretend to be the ever-lovin’ groom.

Damn. This mission just got a lot more complicated.

* * *

Three men were walking toward her, and suddenly Natasha O’Sullivan was no longer sure if one of them was her groom.

She had thought it was the tall, muscled one with shoulder-length dark blond hair, but it might be the thinner gentleman in the bowler hat or the heavyset one with the dark mustache. Her nerves took hold. It was one thing to write confidently to a complete stranger but quite another to be here in person. Surrounded by unfamiliar things and faces, she was scared and intimidated and lonely.

Evening light shimmered through the canopy of leaves above them and danced across the wooden platform. The breeze brought a heavenly relief to the back of her sticky neck and the perspiration that clung between her breasts. She’d worked up a sweat due to the blasted trunk that had nearly made her miss her stop.

The three men reached her at the same time.

The tall, handsome one in the checkered suit held out his hand and smiled. “You must be my lovely Natasha.”

Goodness. Relief washed through her, loosening her rigid shoulders, unlocking her knees and lifting the corners of her mouth in a very grateful smile. He was here. He’d come for her just as he’d written he would.

She slipped her gloved hand into his large palm. My, what a firm grip. She turned her face to look into the warmth of his green eyes. Her stomach clenched with the intensity of his gaze, the strength of his profile and the thought that he was hers.

For one thousand miles, she had hoped and prayed that she would feel some connection to him when they met. She’d felt that connection seconds ago, when they’d first locked eyes across the platform. She was blessed. Not only was he an educated man from Harvard, but about as sturdy and healthy as she could imagine.

“I’m Jarrod Ledbetter,” he said with a deep rumble. “I could hardly wait to meet you, darlin’.”

Her heart skittered at the endearment. “My pleasure, Mr. Ledbetter.”

“Jarrod, please.”

She inhaled a breath of fresh Wyoming air, laden with the scent of fir trees and pines. “Jarrod.”

The man was intimidating.

If she had to say, she’d say he was affected by her, too. She could see it in the heated manner of his gaze, the upturn of his silky lips, and how he slowly dropped his hand and rubbed the back of his neck. And yet he took a step away from her, his stance detached.

Jarrod cleared his throat and then introduced the other two men.

“These are my associates. Kale McKern and Woody Fowler.”

They were all roughly thirty years of age, give or take a couple. Neatly shaven, well dressed, inquisitive.

The thin man in the bowler hat stepped forward to shake her hand.

“Mr. Fowler, how do you do?” she asked.

“Welcome to Wyoming Territory, ma’am.”

Then to the other she added, “Mr. McKern.”

“You arrived on a right beautiful day.” His mustache wiggled as he chewed on a piece of grass. She thought she detected the scent of alcohol. Maybe they’d had dinner while they were waiting for her.

“You all work together in the jewelry business?” she asked politely.

The two men shoved their hands into their pockets and deferred to Jarrod. He was obviously the leader of the group. He likely employed them, judging by the respectful way they looked at him.

“Yes, we do,” Jarrod said boldly, half a head taller than his associates and much more muscled. Goodness, by his letters, she’d never realized he’d be so handsome. “Pay no attention to them,” Jarrod continued. “They just came to say hello. Now they’ll be on their way.” He seemed to give them some sort of signal. “As soon as they pick up your trunk and deliver it to the hotel across the street. Right, fellas?”

“Yes, sir.” Mr. Fowler heaved on one end of the trunk, and his friend the other.

Jarrod was trying to get rid of them, she thought, likely so that he and she could be alone. It made her flush to think she would be alone with her future husband soon. There was only so much they could get across in letters. His had been rather formal and very proper. She was not expecting this bigger-than-life red-blooded male with rather long hair standing in front of her. She wondered what he had in mind for this evening, and when they would be talking to the minister. She had been expecting one final letter from him this week before she left Chicago to clarify those details, but it hadn’t come. He likely hadn’t had the time to write it.

As the men hoisted the trunk, she gripped her satchel. It contained her coin purse, travel documents and derringer.

Jarrod held out his elbow and she took it with an appreciative smile.

He was unexpectedly charming.

They strolled ahead of the other two, making their way down the platform toward the stone-built depot.

Jarrod patted her fingers that encircled his arm. Even though she was still wearing gloves, it was such a tender gesture and made her insides flutter.

Lord, she was going to be sharing her bed with this man. Sharing her body with his. Back home in Chicago at Mrs. Pepik’s Boardinghouse for Desolate Women, she’d met a lot of women from ragged backgrounds, some worse off than her, hearing all sorts of tales about men from different segments of society, rich and poor. All sorts of talk about the pleasures and dangers of intimacy. She hoped that Jarrod was what he appeared to be in his letters: well educated, finely bred, a gentleman in every regard.

She did admit, he looked wilder and more untamed than she’d imagined. Much more physically in shape than someone who spent a lot of time reading books and studying jewelry. And what was it about him that made him seem so distant from her?

“How was your trip?” he asked. “Not too tiresome, I hope.”

“It was a little rough, I’m afraid. We had problems with the locomotive.”

He raised his eyebrows. “You don’t say.”

“Luckily, I took an earlier train from Chicago—one day earlier because train schedules can be so disruptive—so I had time to spare when we broke down yesterday morning outside Omaha. We had to wait an entire day for new parts. The railroad put us up for the night. I nearly didn’t get here.”

He raised an eyebrow. “How unfortunate.”

“Yes, it could have been. My friends in Chicago sometimes tell me I get too worried over fine details, that I’m always expecting trouble, but thank goodness I had the foresight to leave earlier this time. Otherwise you’d still be standing here, thinking I stood you up!”

Jarrod nodded. “Good thing you’re resourceful.”

“I try to be,” she said. “Thank you kindly for noticing.” Her skirts picked up as her enthusiasm bounded.

“Always expecting trouble, you say?” He peered at her oddly.

“It’s in my nature. I don’t trust easily. My friends in Chicago say it’s because I grew up with my grandfather, who was overprotective and worried about every little thing. You know how older folks are.”

He blinked. “Right. And yet here you are.”

“Oh, I know it must seem to you that it’s a contradiction. That I don’t trust easily and yet I traveled a thousand miles to marry a stranger. But as I said in our many letters, I had to get to know you first. That’s why I needed to ask you all those questions.”

“I guess I passed your test.”

“You most certainly did.” She rubbed away a fallen hair from her cheek. “And my friends, of course, helped me pick out the most eligible bachelor from all the responses I got from the ad.”

“And you trust your friends.”

She smiled. “Yes. We help each other. So far, six of us have placed ads as mail-order brides.” It was their way of escaping the tragedy of the Great Chicago Fire two years ago that had charred the city, leaving behind death and destruction and forcing them to make new lives for themselves all across the country. In her heart, it was also to get away from the loss of her grandfather, and the burden of feeling like a wild bird in a cage. She’d always wanted to travel and feel the ripple of adventure in her pulse.

He pulled in a breath that made her wonder what he was thinking.

She added in a whisper, “This is the most daring, craziest thing I’ve ever done, though. Coming to meet you. My grandfather would roll over in his grave.”

“Then I’ll have to take good care of you for the sake of your granddad.” He patted her hand again in a most detached, grandfatherly way, much to her puzzlement. “You likely missed dinner. Are you hungry, darlin’? I thought I might book you a room across the street. The Mountain Hotel has a beautiful view and a fine restaurant.”

She thought she heard a snicker behind her. With a frown, she spun to look, but the men behind her were straight-faced, shuffling the heavy trunk between them.

She tensed over the fact that he wished to book a room. One for her and one for himself? Surely not one for them together, for there didn’t appear to be enough time to wed first. As eager as she was to get to know him intimately, she wasn’t the type of woman to do it before marriage. She’d met lots of women like that at the boardinghouse, though, many who became dear friends. Ladies of a “certain kind” who taught her things about what pleased men in the bedroom—tips she would surely try out on Jarrod. Perhaps he would stay at his home tonight, although she didn’t know the particulars of where he stayed when he traveled. He’d written that he owned a few homes, modest homes little more than cabins that he wished to make bigger and brighter with her as his new bride.

“You didn’t have dinner yet?” she asked him.

“I was waiting for you.”

“How considerate.”

They stopped by the outer stone wall of the depot as he picked up a fine suitcase befitting of a jeweler. She gathered his things were inside. Perhaps they would marry quickly and honeymoon somewhere?

They walked through the crowded station and came out on the other side at street level. The boardwalk was teeming with folks in all directions. Wagons loaded with ranching supplies rolled along the dirt street. Storefronts were strung with banners that read Shovels for Sale, Sandwiches Till Midnight, Gold Nuggets Weighed and Exchanged, Copper and Silver Bought and Sold.

Some of them had help-wanted signs tacked to their doors and windows. Natasha glanced across the street to the left, to the river valley lined with plush green trees. In the center of the greenery sat one outstanding hotel. It was built of stone and timber, and sprawled across an acreage. A wood-burnished sign hung over the entrance. The Mountain Hotel.

Gracious. It was massive and more luxurious than any building she’d ever spent time in.

The two men lugging the beat-up trunk weaved around two cowboys and planted the case behind her.

“Why don’t you fellas go on ahead to the front desk?” The brim of Jarrod’s black hat shielded the setting sun behind the mountains. “I’ll be in touch in the next few days.”

“Take your time getting back,” Mr. Fowler said. The other man nodded and they soon disappeared through the horses and pedestrians, carrying her trunk to the hotel.

She brightened, pleased that he would be spending a few days with her. She clutched her satchel to her waist. “Jarrod, have you had an opportunity to think more about what we discussed in our letters?”

“How’s that again?” He turned toward her with a twinge of concern. Did the question bother him?

“The letters,” she repeated softly. “What I asked you in my last one?”

“I’m...I’m still giving it some thought.”

“I see.” She puckered her lips.

Had they hit a little snag in their communication? She wished to make it clear how involved she wished to be in this marriage. And now, upon meeting him, she wondered again why he had replied to her advertisement for a bride. He seemed so attractive and intelligent and successful, her doubts rose again. She had asked him precisely this in one of her letters, and he had responded that he’d been engaged once but it hadn’t lasted due to her unfaithfulness, and that due to the nature of his business, he traveled so much that he didn’t have the opportunity to meet many women. Combined with the fact that the ratio of women to men was somewhere in the neighborhood of one to twenty.

Jarrod seemed distracted. His gaze moved over her bonnet to the other side of the street. She turned to see what held his dire attention.

A team of horses were rearing up at a water trough. An elderly man was holding tight to their lines, but he turned pale as one horse neighed, fell down hard on his front hooves and bucked.

Her body stiffened in fear for the man.

Jarrod muttered, “Excuse me,” and dashed to help.

Jarrod took control. He grasped the reins from the elderly man, calmly speaking to the horses as he pulled tight against the power of the beasts. He finally got close enough to pat the shoulder of one. The jittery white one settled first, then the chestnut mare. They were magnificent animals, muscles gleaming in the faded golden light, accentuating the muscled lines of Jarrod’s legs, the strength of his shoulders and width of his chest.

His tanned hands were utterly commanding, yet soothing at the same time. She wondered where he’d mastered his skill with animals.

When it was apparent that the mares were settling, other folks rushed in to help. Jarrod never released his hold. He kept control of the situation, even turning to the frightened elderly man to calm him, too. They talked, laughed some and kept talking low and serenely.

The picture was comforting to her, that she had chosen to marry a man with integrity and capability.

Yet oddly, the scene also caused a rush of homesickness.

She would likely never again see the dozen women she’d made friends with in the past two years at Mrs. Pepik’s Boardinghouse for Desolate Women.

They’d all suffered through the Great Fire. One-third of the city had lost their homes. One hundred thousand people homeless. Dozens had died. Natasha had been living with her grandfather at the time. They’d lost their house in the fire, and his jewelry shop with it. She had mistakenly assumed that because they weren’t physically hurt by the flames, they’d be fine.

However, three days later, her grandfather had suffered an apoplexy from the stress—a sudden paralysis of half his body, as well as slurred speech. The next day, she lost him.

It still misted her eyes.

Women with no other means to support themselves had turned to Mrs. Pepik. The kind widow hadn’t allowed anyone to feel sorry for herself. Her late husband, a policeman, had taught Mrs. Pepik how to shoot a gun, and she made sure every woman there knew how to handle one in self-defense. Then at the beginning of this year, the women had decided to place ads in the Western papers as mail-order brides. Suddenly their futures turned brighter, and no one could stop talking about where they wanted to live, which state, which man.

Natasha yearned for love, for intimacy, for family. She yearned to be free from what had always been expected of her in Chicago.

She’d had several men to choose from in the letters. In the end, she’d decided on Jarrod Ledbetter because he had replied to her ad that he was an educated man and a jeweler. She wished with all her heart to join her new husband in his ventures. Here in the West, she hoped to run her own jewelry shop—or a partnership with Jarrod—not only to prove herself, but in silent honor of Granddad. He had, after all, trained her in everything she knew, and she had become just as skilled in jewelry repair and knowledge as he had.

In the distance with the sun nearly set, Jarrod turned over the reins to the now-calm owner and made his way back to her.

“Where were we?” Jarrod asked when he reached her. Heavens, he was so rough and energized from his adventure with the horses. “Let’s move on to that hotel. We’ll enjoy a nice meal and get to know each other.”

Her throat welled with a lump when she thought of the tender friends she was leaving behind in Chicago. She tried to overcome it by reminding herself that she would write letters home to them and that she was with a good man, in a good place.

She’d never been in love before. Could she drop the shield of protectiveness that her grandfather had instilled as second nature to her heart, and fall in love with Jarrod Ledbetter?