Montana Cowboy Daddy

She’d read the news of the fire. Knew it to be the reason they needed a doctor and a schoolteacher, but to see the stark evidence gave it a whole different meaning. “Was anyone hurt?” She shuddered at the thought.

Kate and Sadie joined Isabelle at the edge of the veranda, crowding her closer to Dawson and his daughter.

He answered her question though he addressed the entire group. “Doc burned his hands trying to save his equipment. It will be some time before he can resume his duties, if he ever does. He said it was time to retire. He and his wife moved to California. The teacher wept profusely at the loss of her precious books and left town on the next stage, saying she would never return.”

“Hence your need for replacements.” Her scarf was tugged. She reached to contain it but stilled her hand when she saw the little girl behind Dawson fingering it.

She bent and smiled at the child. “What’s your name?”

“I’m Mattie. I’m six.”

“Pleased to meet you, Mattie.”

Mattie’s face lit with a smile.

Dawson moved away to speak to the doctor, Mattie firmly in hand.

Isabelle watched him. A big man with a strong face. Raising a child on his own. How did he manage?

Not that it concerned her.

Shifting her attention away, she met Grandfather Marshall’s eyes. He grinned at her, his gaze darting to Dawson and back.

Goodness. Did he think she had an interest in his grandson? If only he knew she had no interest in men at all. No, she’d learned her lesson. They never saw beyond her inheritance. She’d allowed herself to believe Jamieson Grieve cared for her. After all, he had no need of her money. His father owned a successful bank. But then had come talk of how he’d invest Isabelle’s inheritance in establishing more banks. Once started on the topic of Isabelle’s money, it seemed he could talk of nothing else. She’d broken off with him, wanting to be seen as more than the source of a large bank account.

It had taken one more failure in the shape of Andy Anderson for the lesson to be embedded. A humble store clerk who daily espoused the evils of money as the root of all vices, he’d said a man ought to work for what he had and take pride in doing so. Believing he loved her for herself, she’d agreed to a betrothal. That was when she felt she must tell him about her inheritance.

Turned out he’d always known—why should she have believed otherwise? The man would have to be blind and deaf not to know. After their betrothal, he had wanted her to contact her lawyer and, as her future husband, have himself named as trustee of her estate. He said he knew how to put the money to good use.

That was when she’d said goodbye, a sadder but much wiser woman. From now on, she would not trust that a man’s affections were not influenced by her inheritance. Perhaps by hiding the truth about herself, she could learn the real meaning of a person’s interest in her.

“Doctor.” Dawson’s voice brought her back to the present situation. “You have patients waiting. Three men were injured by falling machinery. Which of these are yours?” He indicated the stack of crates and trunks.

“I’ll need those and those right away,” the doctor answered, pointing to several crates.

Dawson waved at the nearby men. “Let’s get these over to the doctor’s office.” He turned to Sadie. “Miss Young, I’m afraid I don’t have time to see you settled right now. Nor do we have your quarters ready. You’ll be staying in the hotel until we do. If you don’t mind going in and introducing yourself...”

“I’ll manage just fine,” Sadie said and made her way to the hotel entrance.

“I’ll take you to your new office and your patients.” Dawson nodded to the doctor, scooped Mattie into his arms and strode across the street.

Isabelle followed Kate and Dr. Baker. She didn’t mean to miss this opportunity to prove she was an ordinary, everyday, useful sort of woman. Would she ever truly know acceptance as such rather than as a rich woman? Yes, she’d been blessed with it and unfettered love when her parents lived. Her mother, especially, lavished it on her. Isabelle didn’t doubt Cousin Augusta’s affection was genuine. But apart from Kate, every other friendship had been tainted by the color of her money.

They crossed the rutted street and Isabelle had to concentrate on where she put her feet. It helped her avoid thinking of the fact that she meant to step into a doctor’s office...something she’d managed to avoid since her parents’ deaths. They entered a narrow room with benches on either side. A couple of dusty men sat clutching their hats and sprang to their feet as Dawson entered.

“He’s here? The new doc?” one asked.

Dr. Baker stepped forward. “I’m the doctor. Where are the injured men?”

Two heads tipped in the direction of another door. Dr. Baker and Kate crossed toward it.

Isabelle followed. The wood of the place being new, there were no sickroom odors. Nothing to remind her of when her parents were ill.

She crossed the threshold into the other room, and after a fleeting glance at a mangled hand on one man and the blood-soaked rag around the head of a second, she averted her eyes from the third man stretched out on the examining table. Every muscle in her body tensed, just as they had back then. Perhaps if she concentrated on the supplies, she could manage to forget the sights and smells and fears she recalled from watching her parents die.

She went to Kate’s side as her friend pried open one crate and quickly arranged an array of bottles and instruments on the shelves as Dr. Baker bent over the man on the examining table.

Isabelle didn’t hear what the doctor said to Kate or if Kate knew what he needed without words. Kate uncorked a bottle and poured some liquid on a cloth and handed it to her father.

The odor assailed Isabelle with revolting familiarity. The smell of sickness and death.

The room tilted. Her stomach churned. Clasping a hand to her mouth, she fled back to the waiting room and sank to the nearest empty spot on a bench. She sucked in a deep breath to calm her stomach and slowly righted her head to meet the challenging look of Dawson Marshall. He’d removed his hat to reveal thick blond hair. A fine-looking man but one who—if she was to guess from the way his pale eyebrows knotted together—wondered at her sudden exit from the examining room.

Unable to explain herself, she lowered her gaze to Mattie, who offered her wide-eyed wonder and then a shy smile.

Isabelle armed herself with that sliver of a welcome.

There must be something useful she could do in this town that didn’t require her presence in the doctor’s office. Something to prove to herself and everyone else that she was more than a rich heiress.

A moan came from the doctor’s office and she bolted out the door.

* * *

Dawson stared after the woman. Had she taken such a dislike to him she couldn’t bear to be in the same room? He leaned his head back against the wall, ignoring the two miners who watched him, their eyes wide with curiosity. She had no right to scold him about Mattie’s safety. He’d seen the wagon bearing down and would have died before he let his daughter be hurt. He’d gently admonished her to look both ways before she dashed across the street...exactly what a good parent should do.

Isabelle’s criticism of him reminded him sharply of Violet. She, too, had picked holes in everything he did. His now-deceased wife, a city woman who thought to find adventure and satisfaction on the Marshall Five Ranch, had instead found boredom and disappointment. A fact she never ceased to bemoan, saying she should have remained in the city. He totally agreed.

Isabelle’s clothes and manners screamed the fact she, too, was a city woman. Her words had accused him of being a blundering father. Violet had called him a bumbling cowboy. He guessed one was pretty much the same as the other.

“Papa, she sure is pretty but why is she afraid?”

He ground down on his molars. The last thing this town or Dawson Marshall or his daughter needed was another woman like Violet—a fancy city woman who couldn’t or wouldn’t accept the demands of life in the West. He should never have married Violet. But he’d been a dewy-eyed nineteen-year-old. When she learned life on a ranch was hard work, she’d sought excitement elsewhere and ended up dying in a reckless horse race against some cowboys from Wolf Hollow, the nearby mining town, leaving him with a three-year-old daughter to raise.

Now a wiser twenty-six-year-old, he knew enough not to be blinded by a woman’s beauty. Nor her gentle manner. Not even her concern for his daughter’s safety.

Such a woman was not equipped to live out here.

“Come on, Papa.” Mattie tugged on his arm.

“Where are we going?”

“After her.”

“I expect she is about her own business.” He could only hope and pray that business, whatever it was, would not attract any more of Mattie’s interest.

Mattie got up and tugged at Dawson.

He didn’t budge as Mattie did her best to pull him to his feet. She tugged. She jerked. She turned her back to him and leaned into his outstretched arm like a stubborn mule, grunting under the strain.