Flint Hills Bride

Bride

Cassandra

Austin

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

For Megan,

our family’s most recent bride

Jake felt too damn good to even

consider apologizing.

He glanced Emily’s way and discovered her scowl had deepened. “What?” she demanded. “Why are you grinning?”

“You first,” he said, making an effort to be serious. “Why are you frowning?”

“You’re impossible,” she said. “I should hate you!”

“Why?” He truly was bewildered now. “Because I left you? Or because I kissed you?”

“Yes. Yes. And for other reasons. I should hate you. But I can’t!” She slammed her gloved hand down on the saddle horn, and it made the softest of thuds.

He laughed. He knew he shouldn’t. He should take her unhappiness seriously, no matter how little sense it made. “You’re angry because you can’t hate me? Of course you can’t hate me. We’ve been friends forever. That’s what friends do. They get angry, and then they forgive each other.”

“I don’t want to forgive you,” she muttered…

Chapter One (#ulink_3ab87f9c-7571-57b9-bed6-f7d3a5e22c43)

Kansas, 1881

“Am I to understand I’m under arrest?” Emily’s gaze went from the deputy’s badge to the serious green eyes.

“Well, I’m not sure, ma’am. You say you’re Emily Prescott, but you don’t fit the description. I was expecting a tomboy in braids.”

“Very funny, Jake.”

His flash of a smile faded as she glared at him.

Noisy activity surrounded them on the train depot’s platform. Emily barely noticed. She wrapped her cloak more tightly around her and regarded Jake Rawlins with growing irritation. “My parents sent you, didn’t they? I can just hear them. ‘Take her to her brother’s ranch, and see that she stays there.’ ‘Telegraph immediately if she doesn’t get off the train.’ It amounts to house arrest, Jake!”

She brushed past him to find her trunk. He followed, of course. She hadn’t expected to get away from him, merely to be out from under his scrutiny long enough to get her temper under control. None of this was Jake’s fault.

“I’m not your guard,” he said softly. “I’m just your ride to the ranch.”

“And that explains why they sent you, Deputy?” She found her trunk. A sudden wave of exhaustion made her turn and sit on it, clasping her gloved hands on her lap.

He moved to stand in front of her. “I volunteered, Emily. I’m headed the same way you are. Remember, my parents live on your brother’s ranch.”

She sighed, regretting her short temper as she always did. “I remember, Jake. But I visit the ranch regularly, and I’ve hardly seen you the last three years.”

A somber nod acknowledged the truth of the statement. “I’m trying to correct that,” he said. “I heard you were coming early for Christmas, and it seemed like a perfect excuse to take a vacation and spend time with…my family.”

Emily noticed the hesitation. Perhaps there was a rift between him and Martha or Perry that she had not been aware of. Perhaps he would be more understanding than she had expected. She cocked her head to one side as she looked up at him. “So that’s all they told you? That I would be coming in today?”

After a long moment, he slowly shook his head.

The anger swept over her again, and she came to her feet. She didn’t know if she wanted to scream or run. Before she could do either, he placed his hands on her shoulders. She was momentarily surprised by how gentle the touch was, then wondered why. Jake had never been anything but kind to her.

“We’ve known each other since we were babies, Emily. I thought we were friends. Have things changed so much?”

His soft voice dissolved her anger, leaving only defeat in its wake. “Everything’s changed, Jake. Look around you. When my parents were separated, I came here once or twice a year to be with my father. This was a little place called Cottonwood Station. Now it’s a town called Strong.”

He was eyeing her quizzically, and she had to laugh at herself. “Which has nothing to do with anything, I suppose, except that all the way here I kept wishing I was still the little girl you remember. I wanted to get off the train and find everything as it was, for life to be simple again.”

The deep worry that was always with her rose to the surface. She turned away to keep from revealing it to Jake. She had grown accustomed to hiding it with anger until she didn’t like herself anymore. “I’m ready to go now,” she said. “And, Jake—” she turned back to face him “—it’s good to see you again.”

Jake made Emily wait inside the depot near the stove while he loaded her trunk into the boot at the back of the buggy. He had ridden out to the ranch the day before to bring the buggy into town. Emily’s brother, Christian, had suggested he use the wagon since Emily might have more than one trunk, but Jake had declined. The buggy offered more protection from the cold wind than the wagon. He would make two trips if he had to, but Emily would be as comfortable as he could make her.

He hadn’t really been too busy to come home for holidays the past three years. He had avoided the ranch when he knew Emily would be there. His hopeless attraction for her would fade, he had reasoned, if he didn’t have to look at her. The irony was it had almost worked. Then he had heard she was in trouble, and reason had gone out the window.

In three years she had only grown more beautiful. At eighteen, her face had lost a little of its plumpness making her dark brown eyes more striking. They sparkled when she teased, as they always had, and her expressive lips that smiled and pursed and pouted looked as kissable as they did in his fantasies.

He shook himself and hurried into the depot. Emily was chatting with another patron, and he let her finish as he collected the blanket he had hung over a chair near the stove. “Are you ready to go?” he asked when she turned toward him.

She moved to walk outside with him. “Do you need anything in town?” he asked, handing her up into the buggy. “Are you hungry?”

She shook her head. “Mama sent a lunch with me,” she said. “But thanks.”

It was foolish to cherish the smile she gave him, but he would readily admit to being a fool where Emily Prescott was concerned. At least her anger of a few minutes before seemed to be forgotten. He climbed up beside her and unfolded the warm blanket, tucking it across her lap.

“That was sweet of you, Jake,” she said. She sounded more amused than grateful.

“Easy enough to do,” he said, shaking the lines and starting the horse forward. Now he was feeling foolish to the point of embarrassment. She had an annoying knack for doing that.

She laughed, and he risked a glance at her. The teasing grin took him back so quickly he could have sworn he was seventeen and she twelve.

“You better be careful or you’ll spoil me,” she said.

“Oh, no, not me. Somebody—everybody—else took care of that long ago.”

She laughed, wrapping herself around his upper arm. “Didn’t you help them at all, Jake?”

The face that turned up to him was so appealing he wanted to kiss it. Or at least throw off his glove and run his fingers down her soft, pale cheeks. He gripped the reins more tightly. “I guess I did my share,” he admitted softly.

The teasing light went out of her eyes, and she turned her face away. He was being too serious, and their relationship had never had much room for that. But he couldn’t pretend he wasn’t worried about her.