Instant Husband

Fifteen minutes later Ann emerged from the bathroom with a whole new appreciation for the wonders of modern plumbing. The only positive thing she could find to say about the facilities was that everything worked. At least, they worked as long as one wasn’t too fussy about things like hot water, adequate pressure and much heat.

She followed the smell of coffee down a dark, narrow hallway filled with an underlying odor of mildew. Emerging into the bright, sunshiny kitchen, she instinctively headed toward the coffeepot.

She filled one of the thick mugs sitting on the counter, added sugar with a liberal hand and took a long, reviving swallow.

“The coffee is very good,” she complimented Nick’s back, which was the only part of him that was visible. He was standing over an old stove stirring something in a frying pan.

“Thank you,” he tossed over his shoulder, then lapsed into silence.

Ann took another drink of coffee and looked around the kitchen, barely suppressing a shudder at what she saw. The ceiling was painted a brilliant Chinese red, while the walls were a malevolent shade of acid yellow. The ancient metal cupboard leaning drunkenly against the wall was dented, scratched and rusted around the bottom. The chipped white enamel sink was discolored by dark brown stains, and the cloth skirt someone had hung beneath it to hide the pipes had long since faded to a nondescript gray. The linoleum had not only lost its pattern but it was completely worn away in front of the sink and back door.

In fact, the only thing in the whole room she approved of was the round oak table underneath the window. It was gorgeous. Worthy of a serious collector. She sat down at it and ran her hand over its worn surface. Maybe she could try her hand at refinishing it.

“What’s the matter?” Nick set a heaping plate in front of her and sat down across from her with his own.

“Nothing. I was just—” She broke off as she noticed what was on her plate.

“Did I give you too much?” Nick asked.

“It isn’t how much you gave me, it’s what you gave me.”

“Just what I’m eating.”

“Every morning?”

Nick frowned uncomprehendingly at her “Breakfast is not a one-time affair. Most people indulge every morning.”

“Well, if you continue to indulge like this, you aren’t going to have all that many more breakfasts. You’ll drop dead of a heart attack. Look at this.” She gestured toward the thick white plate.

Nick looked. “Scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon and toast fried in the pan drippings. Lots of protein.”

“Lots of cholesterol,” Ann said firmly. She might not know much about how to make a success of marriage, but she did know about nutrition—a subject about which Nick seemed woefully and dangerously ignorant. “You’ve probably got a whole week’s allowance of fat here. It—”

She turned as the back door suddenly opened and a whipcord thin man of indeterminate age stalked in. He was wearing worn jeans, a faded denim jacket and boots heavily encrusted with a suspicious brown substance.

“One of them fancy purebreds of yours done dropped her calf early. They’s out in the far west pasture and the little critter don’t look none too good neither.”

“Dammit!” Nick got to his feet. “Ann, this is Snake, my right-hand man.”

“I’m glad to meet you,” Ann politely held out her hand. To her surprise, Snake merely stared at her as if she’d just made an indecent gesture.

Finally he shifted a large wad of what Ann feared was tobacco from one side of his mouth to the other and said, “Ya might as well know, I don’t hold with wimmin. They’s trouble. Every man jack of ’em.”

Ann swallowed a grin at his choice of metaphors. “I take it you’re a misogynist?” she said for lack of anything else to say.

“Ain’t neither!” he snapped. “Baptized a Methodist fifty-seven years ago and ain’t never seen no reason ta change.”

Snake turned to Nick. “Ya comin’? This ain’t no time ta be daudlin’.”

“I’m coming.” Nick grabbed a piece of toast and followed Snake out. He paused at the door and turned back to Ann. “I’ll be back as soon as I can, and we’ll go get married.”

“This is my world and welcome to it,” Ann muttered, watching through the window as Nick crossed the bare ground between the house and the barn.

Pushing the offending plate of food away from her, she reached for her coffee. At least her life here wasn’t going to be dull. She grinned as she remembered Snake’s outraged face when she’d called him a misogynist.

In fact, there was a great deal of scope for her here, she thought, bolstering her sagging resolve. The whole house was in desperate need of renovation and so was Nick’s diet. Those were things she could do. Maybe if she focused on what she could do, Nick wouldn’t notice what she couldn’t do.

Two (#ulink_5fe02494-7331-57c8-8f41-de44d84b8d66)

Ann jumped as the pencil she held clenched in her fingers suddenly snapped with a loud crack that echoed through the silent kitchen. Blankly, she stared down at the pieces for a startled moment and then impatiently shoved them aside.

Relax, she ordered her tense muscles, but her muscles didn’t respond. She felt as if she’d been wound too tightly. As if she might shatter into pieces like the pencil at any second. Her disconnected thoughts seemed to scurry around her mind like mice on a treadmill, going nowhere and solving nothing.

What was she doing here? She looked around the dilapidated kitchen with a sense of unreality. This wasn’t her environment. She’d spent her whole life in New York City. She didn’t know anything about the West or ranching. Or men like Nick St. Hilarion. She must have been crazy to have thought that she could make this work. Mail-order brides were a thing of the past. They had no place in modern society.

Ann shot to her feet, propelled by her fears, which had been steadily growing ever since Nick had left. She had to get out of here before it was too late. Before she made a terrible mistake. She had to—

“Nick said ta tell ya he’s almost done within the stock.”

“Done with the stock?” Ann parroted, taken off guard by Snake’s sudden appearance at the back door.

“That’s what I said. Nick said ta be ready ta go get hitched,” Snake said belligerently.

“But…” Ann began, only to find herself talking to empty air.

“And that’s another thing,” she muttered as honest indignation began to nudge aside her corroding fears. “That refugee from a bad spaghetti Western treats me like I had a highly contagious disease.” She grimaced as she heard the peevish note in her voice. What did it matter if she couldn’t get along with Snake? What mattered was whether or not she could get along with Snake’s boss.

Ann walked over to the window and stared outside into the blinding sunlight as she tried to think. Her reasons for accepting Nick hadn’t changed. She would be getting a career that appealed to her and one that she had a definite talent for—homemaking—and, hopefully, she would find companionship with Nick. A sense of belonging.

Taking a deep, steadying breath, she willed her racing heart to slow down. If her reasons for marrying Nick hadn’t changed, then why was she indulging in hysterical doubts? She tried to follow her chaotic emotions through to their inception. It wasn’t the state of his house, appalling as it was. Nor was it his surly hired hand. The cause of her uncertainty was Nick himself. She squarely faced this fact. He was not at all what she had expected.

Instead of a quiet, retiring specimen of manhood, she had found someone who looked like the embodiment of an adolescent romantic fantasy. What was worse, it was a romantic fantasy that touched something deep inside her. Something she hadn’t even been aware had existed. And that was on their first meeting. What would she feel like after a few weeks?

She didn’t know. Possibly her initial attraction would fade beneath the demands of daily living. Or it might mellow out into something more comfortable.

And Nick had no idea how he’d impacted on her emotions, she mused, soothing her frayed nerves. Nor was she some overeager adolescent who couldn’t control her own reactions. If she didn’t act on her impulses, they’d remain just thoughts, known only to her.

Ann pressed her lips together in unconscious determination. There were no guarantees, but she had a decent shot at making this marriage work. Mainly because Nick was as committed to its success as she was. She took a deep, calming breath. She’d marry Nick and she’d build a solid relationship that would be a comfort to both of them, she vowed as she headed upstairs to change into the cream wool suit she’d bought because it had looked vaguely bridal without being fussy.

To her surprise and slight hurt, when she came back downstairs she found that Nick hadn’t bothered to change. Telling herself that their marriage wouldn’t be any more valid if he were wearing a suit, Ann climbed into the cab of the truck.

Her sense of purpose held through the trip to town despite Nick’s monosyllabic answers to her few tentative stabs at conversation. Knowing that he was probably worried about the cow who had had the calf early, she refused to allow her sense of unease to grow. If Nick had changed his mind about marrying her, all he had to do was say so-much as Snake was doing in the jump seat of the truck, Ann thought wryly as she listened to his mutters about one more good man biting the dust.

“If you feel that way, why are you coming to the wedding?” Ann finally asked.

“I’s hopin’ he’ll change his mind,” Snake shot back.

“I’m not going to change my mind, Snake.” Nick’s voice sounded loud and overly emphatic in the close confines of the truck. Who was he trying so hard to convince? Ann wondered. Her? Snake? Or maybe himself?