Welcome To Wyoming

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?

Chapter Two

Simon pleasured in the way the candlelight from the restaurant tabletop shifted across Natasha’s face. The glow brought out her lively eyes, outlined the fine arch of her brown eyebrows and warmed the contour of her lips. It was late evening. Darkness engulfed the window next to them, dampening the view of the river below, but he was enjoying the view in front of him.

He’d hooked his hat on the wall behind him, but she was still wearing her bonnet with the fake grapes and cherries. They bobbed on her head as she ate her meal.

Remain in control, and never leave anything to chance. That was the simple rule he’d lived by ever since he’d turned eight. Those words had put food in his belly, kept him safe, protected his heart.

And it was why this situation made him bristle.

Don’t hurt her, he thought. If she’s innocent and not a criminal, she doesn’t deserve to be hurt. In order to find out, he had to ask more questions.

He planted one large elbow on the white tabletop and leaned in toward her bosomed silhouette. What exactly could he say that hadn’t been said by Ledbetter in his called letters? How could Simon now pretend to know what had been written between them, so that he wouldn’t alert her that he was an imposter?

He’d start with something tame. “Where are you from originally?”

She inhaled, and when she did, her chest moved up and down, accentuating the slimness of her waist. He noted how nicely she moved and the sensitive sweep of her dark lashes over her face as she answered.

“Chicago. And you?”

She brought the glass of ice-chip water to her lips and sipped, making him wish she’d do all sorts of devilish things to him with those lips. He swallowed hard, cursed himself silently for noticing her womanly charms and glanced away to the other customers in the crowded room to distract himself.

Waiters in black suits hustled to deliver wine and liquor, soups and main courses of roast venison and wild duck.

“I’m from the Midwest. Raised on a farm. Before I moved to Boston, of course.” He and Ledbetter had both been raised in the Midwest. Simon in southern Dakota Territory, Ledbetter in Nebraska very briefly till his parents had died and he was whisked away to Boston by his wealthy grandparents. The grandfather, apparently, had made his fortune from pirating ships in the Caribbean. The nasty streak was either in the bloodline or was taught to his grandson. Simon’s parents weren’t around long, either, but he’d had no one to whisk him away to safety.

“Natasha. That’s an awfully pretty name. Where’d that come from?”

She flushed at his attentiveness. “My father was Irish, but my mother was Russian. She named me.”

“Ah,” he said with humor. “Irish and Russian. That makes you a person with quite a hot temper.”

Her brown eyes lit with amusement.

“And,” he continued, pleasuring in her reaction, “your Russian blood would explain the high cheekbones. Very lovely.”

“How about you? What’s your family heritage?”