Last Chance Bride

“I’d ventured halfway down the street this morning before I realized my foolishness. I invited you out here, and yet I am terrified of you. You’re young and pretty. From your letters, I expected someone different. Older.”

“I’m not all that pretty,” Libby spoke up, touched at once by his words. “I just want a home. A real one.”

Jacob Stone remained silent, staring out the window still and motionless, outlined by the distant blue-white peaks of the Bitterroot mountains. What was he thinking?

“I can’t give you what you want.” He didn’t turn to look at her. He stood broad-shouldered, his muscled legs parted, his booted feet planted on the bare plank boards. “We’ve spent over six months corresponding. That amount of time should tell you right there how unsure I am of making a marriage again.”

Grief haunted his words, and the echoes of that grief hung in the air like the thick Montana dust. She hated seeing him hurt. Libby wanted to reach out and comfort him, but how could she? It was not her right.

He turned, approaching, his jaw set, his gaze intense, a decision clear in his eyes. “Tell me something. Will he follow you here?”

“No.”

“Then it is none of my concern.” Jacob pinned her with his hard, assessing gaze. “You say you are not certain.”

Libby blanched. “No. It is too early yet to know for sure either way.”

“When will you know?”

It was such a private question, and while Libby wanted to say so, she also knew he was affected by the answer. “Soon enough, maybe this week.”

“Fine.” He frowned. Libby watched his gaze stray to her bags that were still on the bed where he’d left them. “You’ll stay here until you know the answer to my question. We will make the appropriate arrangements then.”

He hadn’t sent her away outright. Libby’s breath caught. “If I’m not...will you still wish to marry me?”

“I don’t know.” Jacob Stone pinned her with the full weight of his cool gaze. “I counted on this match working. Emma needs a mother. We’ve spent time exchanging letters, and you’ve traveled all this way. I don’t want to go through that again.”

In those eyes Libby didn’t see hatred or condemnation, and it surprised her. Standing before him, aware of his height and his breadth and his strength, she saw not his handsomeness but the sadness in his eyes. And an understanding that touched her inside, in her heart where nothing had touched her for years.

“Then there’s hope?” she asked.

“I have no promises to give you.” Jacob shook his head. “You put me in an awkward situation. I don’t know how Emma will take this if you have to leave.”

He didn’t want her now. Libby closed her eyes, tears hot beneath her lids. It was over.

She heard the sounds of the door opening, of Jacob Stone’s boots striding out into the hall, of the door closing and latching. But when she opened her eyes, Libby still hoped to see him standing there at the window, a man with honesty and compassion ringing in his voice.

Who was she fooling, Libby asked herself. Anyone could see she’d ruined her chances of marrying Jacob Stone. She brought up her unvirtuous situation. She caused him to be angry and forced him to walk out on her.

Anyone could see he wasn’t coming back.

Jacob pounded down the stairs and through the lobby, out into the glaring summer heat, inwardly cussing himself for what he’d done. But any way he looked at it—whether Elizabeth Hodges was pregnant or not—she was not the woman he wanted to raise his daughter.

He marched down the long boardwalk, dodging Mrs. Holt carrying packages out of the mercantile, hardly aware of the traffic on the street and the ever present buzz of the sawmill at the end of town.

He didn’t know her well enough to expect her to show up pregnant. No, possibly pregnant. She didn’t even know for sure.

Then why the hell did she have to tell him?

Because she was an honest woman.

“Pa!” Emma hopped out onto the boardwalk in a swirl of red calico. “Where’s Miss Hodges?”

Jacob’s heart wrenched at the sight of hope so bright in his daughter’s blue eyes. “She’s in her hotel room.”

Better Emma know nothing of the type of woman who stepped off that stage.

“Doing what?”

“Unpacking. Resting from her long trip.”

Emma sighed, sounding disappointed. “She’s still comin’ to supper, right?”

Jacob felt the weight of the little girl’s hope settle on his shoulders. His heart wrenched. “I’m not sure, Emma.”

“But you promised.” Her quietly spoken words struck him like an ax.

“Yes, I guess I did.” He had so little to give her. How could he go back on his promise?

Emma’s sweet smile stretched across her small face. “Pa, I want just one more thing.”

“One more thing?” He rolled his eyes, teasing. “I’m afraid to ask. What is it?”

She giggled. “I just want some new hair ribbons for tonight.”

“Whew. I think we can do that. Have Jane help you.”

“Oh, Pa. Thank you. I have to look my best for Miss Hodges.” Her entire heart shone in those words. She spun away, dashing back into the store, braids flying.

He couldn’t disappoint Emma. Yet he couldn’t allow her to be hurt, either.

Jacob stepped out into the street and gazed back at the hotel. How could Elizabeth go and ruin everything?

Libby sank onto the soft mattress. She did the right thing, she knew it. Whatever lay ahead, she had faced her greatest fear. Now she could face herself. A lightness settled across her shoulders, and she felt calm for the first time in weeks. She’d done the right thing.

When Jacob had written, asking her to marry him, she sat and cried over what she’d done. She feared she could never face him, nor tell him the truth about what happened. But as the long hours passed and the night deepened, Libby began to hope. Maybe it could still be. Maybe Jacob need never know. Perhaps she wasn’t pregnant.

Libby had clung to that belief during the trying journey west, but as the nausea hit, she feared it was more than travel sickness. And she told herself it would be all right.

Except now he didn’t want a wife in the real sense.

Libby closed her eyes. She never meant to deceive him. She just wanted to love this man, the Jacob she’d created in her mind. She so wanted him to love her. Even now, she could not let go of hope.

She could not bear to think she had lost him.

Late that afternoon, washed and changed and nervous, Jacob took a step closer to the door and hesitated, standing like a fool in the middle of the narrow hotel corridor. Emma was home with Jane. A meal would be waiting.

What would he say? He didn’t want to talk about it. He didn’t want to face the pretty and fragile woman he’d come to know through her letters. The woman he’d made up in his mind, so gentle and quietly humorous, would not have slept with another man.