Rancher Wants a Wife

Something flickered past her shoulder. When he looked to the two-story frame building across the street, he saw the white curtains shift in his attorney’s office. Cassandra followed his gaze and peered at the office, too, then to the courthouse and the land registry building, as if orienting herself to the town.

Jack tried to ignore Hugh’s warning all over again. He knew what he was doing. There were good solid reasons for doing this.

Lots of men got married. He was of the age. A wife would enhance his life, not detract from it.

“Is tomorrow too soon? Would you like more time to get to know...to get to know the place?” Standing on the street, Jack peered at her bunched-up skirts, over the lacy blouse peeking through her bodice, to the side of her left pretty pink cheek. A few strands of blond hair had trapped some beads of perspiration. The hot sun had already gotten to her face. Luckily, she was shaded now by the roof of the buggy. She was still wearing her hat with the billowing scarf ends covering her injury, and his heart buckled with tenderness and regret that she felt the need to hide behind it.

She inhaled, the tug of her breath making the feminine curves of her throat stand out. Her blue eyes shone. “Tomorrow’s fine.”

“Good. Reverend Darcy said he’d be available at six.”

“Six o’clock, then.” She rested her roses in her lap, as cool and unattached as if they were strangers.

He supposed so much time had passed, they were strangers.

“Just a simple ceremony, Cassandra. Then back to the ranch for a few days of...of rest before I get back to work.”

“Yes, that’s fine.”

They had agreed in their letters that simple arrangements were best. She preferred a small ceremony. There would be no reception, since she didn’t know anyone here and the arrangements would’ve been too difficult for her to schedule from Chicago. He had offered to do it but she had declined, and to tell the truth, he was relieved. The only thing she had asked for was a church wedding, and he was pleased to oblige.

The mare harnessed to his buggy craned her neck at him as if to say, “Hurry up. What’s taking you so long?”

Cassandra, perched on the edge of her seat, seemed disarmed by the animal’s antics and smiled.

He gave the mare a pat as he walked around to his side of the buggy. “Easy, there, River, we’re going.”

In Chicago, Cassandra had been full of life and energy, bouncing everywhere with her younger sister, Mary, in tow. Her eyes had sparkled with vitality, and she’d had a constant smile on her face. Cassandra was much quieter here. Less carefree. He couldn’t blame her, considering the sorrow she’d been through. Her clothes were much more drab, too, but they covered a curvy new figure that intrigued him.

Dark blond silky hair, pretty blue eyes. But she still had that thing about her, that way she had of putting up her guard. If she hadn’t recently accepted his marriage proposal, he’d swear by looking at her that she wanted nothing to do with him.

Would he ever be enough for her? Would this life in California come anywhere close to what she’d dreamed her life would be like in Chicago?

The last time they’d spoken in person, he’d tried to kiss her, and she’d been point-blank honest that she wanted nothing to do with him.

How could he ever erase those stinging words from his memory?

It hadn’t been the first time he’d tried to tell her that he had cared for her, but she’d always pushed him away. Black sheep of the family was what he’d been then, and no one would’ve been more against him as a possible suitor than her father.

And now, sadly, it was just the two of them trying to work things out on their own.

And still he couldn’t trust her.

Oh, he felt plenty for her, physically, but what surprised him most in seeing her was the guarded feeling that sprang up, the knowledge that he might be just as hurt by her now as he’d always been.

He stole another glance at her as he reached his side of the buggy. The contradiction in her demeanor—the almost-smile and the heated flush, contrasting with the reserve in her stiff posture, made him ache to touch her. In fact, he wouldn’t mind driving the buggy to the church right now, then taking her straight to the Valley Hotel, where they could share that room he intended on renting for her alone tonight. Where he’d strip her naked, starting with that silly hat, and that prim bodice, with its dozen little buttons, which was trying its best to hide the lovely profile of her breasts.

To hell with the polished politeness of Chicago society. He could teach her a thing or two about how men were supposed to behave around their women. But would he ever be enough for her?

“Howdy, Dr. McColton,” said one of the Birkstrom brothers as he walked by on the boardwalk. “Wanted to thank you for tending to that calf last week. She’s up and about like nothing happened.”

“Glad to hear it,” said Jack.

“Say, Dr. McColton,” shouted another rancher from across the street. “Could you drop by to inspect that new stallion I got yesterday? He’s jittery. I think the train ride shook him up. And he scratched himself on some barb wire this morning.”

With hesitation, Jack glanced in Cassandra’s direction, feeling guilty about the time he’d be taking away from her. But he couldn’t let an animal suffer. “I’ll squeeze in a visit later tonight.”

“Much obliged.” The rancher looked curiously at Cassandra, then nodded goodbye.

More folks nodded in greeting, but Jack turned his attention back to his bride. Bride. He swallowed hard at the reality. He’d never given marriage much thought. Since Chicago, he’d enjoyed his time with various women and saw no reason to change. Occasionally, he’d thought of marriage in the far future, something that he might do, perhaps should do if he wanted to pass down his land to an heir. Then, when he’d seen Cassandra’s ad, the feelings had come rushing at him like a thundering buffalo.

He climbed aboard the buggy, settled beside Cassandra and flicked the reins. The vehicle rolled smoothly down the main street, its bolts and springs newly greased for the occasion. He became extremely aware of the woman beside him, the proximity of her elbow next to his, the lilt of her chest, the shifting of her thighs beneath her skirts.

“This is incredible.” She craned her neck to take in the view.

Gently sloped hills rolled toward them, terraced with rows of grapevines. Orchards sat on other slopes, filled with peach and plum trees. Raspberry bushes sprang from another acreage. A stream gushed through the valley and on behind the cluster of stores and shops in Sundial, otherwise the place would be as dry as dust. In the distance, saws from the lumber mill echoed in the hills.

“Where’s your ranch?”

He pointed to a sprawling house halfway up the slopes, built of stone and fresh-sawed lumber from the mills. “The white one in the middle of the trees.”

“All that?”

He nodded with pride.

“You’ve worked hard, Jack.”

“And from the sound of it, so have you. You must’ve come to know some of the women at the boarding house quite well.” She’d done odd jobs to help support herself, she’d written in her letters.

She turned away and peered up at two soaring hawks. “Lovely people, all of them, trying to overcome such tragedy.”

He wanted to offer his condolences again on the loss of her sister and father, out in the open this time and not simply through written correspondence. How did one convey the depth of compassion after such a catastrophe? The Great Fire had occurred nearly two years ago, in October of ’71, but the loss was still raw. He shook his head at the thought that one-third of the city’s population had lost their homes. And many had buried loved ones.

“I was so sorry to hear the news about your father and sister. If I had known...I would have been there to pay my respects, and to help if I could.” As for comforting Cassandra, he had mistakenly assumed Troy would be there to do that. How wrong Jack had been. The cousin—the one whose parents had taken Jack in as a boy when his own had passed away from consumption—had offered no support to her at all, because he wasn’t even in Chicago at the time of the fire.

She swallowed and clasped a pink rose on her lap. “Thank you. You mentioned you were in the new lands of Alaska and didn’t hear about the fire till six months later. How did the news finally reach you?”

“I was on a ship traveling down the coast, heading to California. There was an old newspaper stuck inside one of the animal cages. When I opened it, there was a photograph of your street. Burned to ashes.”

He swallowed hard at the memory of pulling out those pages, and the horror of not only seeing it, but being trapped on a ship and unable to do anything, not knowing what had become of Cassandra and her family. “It took another two weeks for the ship to land, and for me to get more information on the fire.”

“That explains why I didn’t hear from you.”

“I tried sending a telegram to locate you. No luck. I wrote to the police. No reply. I wrote letters, two of them, addressed to your father. They came back to me with...with ‘Deceased’ written on them.”

She murmured, “How awful to hear it that way.”

“I tried sending one to Troy, but it was returned, too, with ‘Address Unknown.’ I could only hope you and he had married and you had moved away to another city before the fire started. Perhaps to New York to join his parents.” Only his parents weren’t in New York, according to the private detective Jack had hired, but had gone to Europe somewhere. As had Troy, it turned out.