“Yes, well, I’ll have to work on that bit. Can we talk?”
“Sure. Step inside.” He gestured toward his office. “I’m the only one on duty this morning.”
She started forward. The trouble was, she forgot to gather her skirts before stepping onto the trio of stairs that led to the covered porch. Her foot tangled in the fabric of her petticoat, and she stumbled.
She thrust her hands out to break her fall, but once again, strong arms gripped her from behind before she hit the wooden steps.
“I’m sorry.” She scrambled away from Daniel before his scent did strange things to her mind again. “I’m just used to visiting your office in a split skirt is all.”
He scratched the side of his head. “Don’t rightly know how that leads to you tripping.”
She let out a huff and turned away, this time remembering to heft her skirts before tromping up the steps.
The office’s thick adobe walls had already trapped a pocket of cooler air inside the room, providing relief from what promised to be a hot day.
“What brings you into town?” Daniel closed the door behind him and hung his hat on a peg. “Did you find some tracks that might belong to rustlers?”
Had he forgotten the conversation he’d had yesterday with her and Anna Mae?
She sighed. If he hadn’t forgotten it entirely, he was probably trying to. Most men didn’t like being forced to flirt with a woman they didn’t find attractive or dance with one who tromped on their toes.
Charlotte slipped a hand into the pocket of her riding habit and pulled out the letter she’d stashed inside. “Andrew wrote me.”
Daniel stilled for a moment, then brushed past her and strode toward the coffee kettle in the corner, never mind the letter extended in her hand.
“I know I danced with you yesterday.” He kept his back to her as he spoke. “I know Anna Mae has this grand plan for me to help you with… with… whatever it is you think you need help with. But I really shouldn’t be in the middle of what happens between you and your suitor.”
He wasn’t going to help her? Not even a little?
“Please.” The word emerged as a desperate whisper. “I don’t have anyone else to go to. I would have asked Sam, but now that he’s married, it’s hardly proper. You’re unattached.”
“Charlotte…” He turned, two coffee mugs in his hand, his mouth opened as though he was about to say more.
“I only need you to help for six weeks or so, just until Andrew returns. If I can’t convince him I’m worth marrying then, I promise I’ll leave you alone and never force you to have anything to do with me again.”
“That’s not what I meant.” His voice rumbled low in his chest, and he moved to his desk, where he set the coffee mugs down before returning to the table against the back wall. “What did this Mortimer fellow say in his letter?”
She slumped into the plain wooden chair beside Daniel’s desk. “That he’s looking forward to seeing me in six weeks.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“He wouldn’t be looking forward to anything pertaining to me if he knew I can’t ride sidesaddle or walk up steps in a skirt.”
“You’re being too hard on yourself.” Daniel plopped a plate with a sticky bun that oozed a sugary glaze in front of her, then settled himself across the desk with his own sticky bun.
“Am I? Truly? Because I feel like I should be far harder. After what happened with Robbie, I…” She raised her cup and swallowed a mouthful of coffee before she said too much.
“The stolen cattle aren’t your fault. Robbie Ashton would have rustled cattle from your family whether he’d won your affections or not.”
“But not so many.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do!” She took another swallow of coffee. “I would have noticed something amiss. I ride that ranch every day, spend more time in a saddle than even our cowhands. I was the most likely person to notice cattle moved to strange places or missing entirely.”
Daniel gave her hand a gentle squeeze, then released it and reached for his sticky bun. “I still think you’re being too hard on yourself.”
“I’m not. But part of the reason I came by today was to tell you that…” She drew in a breath and pressed her eyes shut. This was harder than she thought, but if Daniel was going to help her win over Andrew, then she needed to clear up some of the awkwardness between them. “I came to tell you that I’ve learned my lesson, and I won’t do it again.”
“Won’t do what again?”
“Be so loose with my affections.” She stared down at her lap, where both of her hands twisted themselves into the sturdy fabric of her riding habit. “I was hoping Robbie and I… well, you know what I was hoping. But I only ended up hurting my family.”
“Charlotte…”
Something about how he said her name caused her to look up and meet his gaze. Gone was the detached, unreadable look he usually gave her. Something much softer lingered in his eyes, something that caused the breath to clog in her chest.
“What if some other man genuinely enjoys being with you, maybe even cares for you?” The gentleness in his voice matched the tenderness in his eyes.
She pulled her gaze away from his, then straightened her shoulders and forced the air out of her chest. “I won’t let there be a man after Andrew. My pa might be stern, but he’s always cared about what’s best for me, for Wes and Mariah too. Both of my siblings married people Pa approved of, and both are happy with their marriages.”
Or rather, they’d both been happy until Abigail had died birthing Wes’s stillborn daughter. “From what I know of Andrew Mortimer, I can come to care about him. I truly—”
“Come to care for him? Are you listening to yourself? You sound nothing like a woman in love, or even a woman who’s half smitten. The only reason you’re entertaining the idea of marrying this man is because of your sense of shame over what happened with Robbie.” Something hot flashed in Daniel’s eyes. “When you and Anna Mae asked for my help, I thought it was because you actually wanted to marry him.”
“I do want to marry him.”
“No, you feel obligated to marry him. There’s a difference.” He clamped his lips together, his jaw as hard as the boulder down by the river that the town children fished off. “Don’t throw away the rest of your life because you made one mistake.”
Charlotte folded her arms across her chest. Why was Daniel so mad? It wasn’t his life he was “throwing away.”
“Don’t look at me like I’m saying something wrong by thinking of what’s good for you,” he continued. “No bride should arrive at her wedding ceremony hoping she’ll one day ‘come to care for’ the groom, and the groom for her. You should marry someone because you want to spend the rest of your life with him.”
“That’s a fine theory, Daniel Harding. If only I knew who I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. Or if my family were poor and I could trust my judgment in men. Three thousand stolen cattle are enough. How many more cattle might the A Bar W lose if I go searching for love again? Five thousand? Six?” She looked down at her hands. “I’m a wretch.”
“You’re not a wretch for wanting a say in who you marry.” That gentleness was back in his voice again, and somehow that was harder to argue with than his harsh words and booming commands. “Most people go about marriage that way from the beginning.”
“Not my family.”
He leaned forward over the desk, and the entire space around her seemed to shrink. “Half of your problem would be solved if you just told your family what happened with Robbie and took some of this burden off your shoulders. You can’t tell me Wes wants you to marry someone who will expect you to turn into an entirely different person.”
Tell Wes. The thought burned her insides. She gripped her hands together on her lap and squeezed so tightly pain radiated up her arms. She had so little to commend herself in the wealthy ranching world that her father and brother navigated. The one thing she’d
always been able to say is that she was helpful around the ranch, first with the horses, and then with the cattle. Pa and Wes had never minded, had delayed sending her to finishing school and never cared she hadn’t learned the finer arts of being a woman because she’d been so very helpful with the ranch itself.
If she was going to admit a rustler had stolen three thousand head of cattle because of her, then she might as well admit her entire life was a failure. “I can’t.”
“‘There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are…’”
She looked up at him. “Are what? I remember the first part of the verse. What’s the rest of it?”
“No, that’s the wrong verse. I don’t see how it can apply here. ‘And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free,’ John 8:32. That verse is a little more relevant. You’re only hurting yourself by not telling them. Can’t you see, you’re creating your own little jail cell full of deceptions and half-truths?”
She raised her arms and looked around her chair. “I’m not sitting in a jail cell, in case you haven’t noticed. But I can assure you if my father finds out about Robbie, free is the very last thing I’ll be. He’d probably trundle me off to El Paso, drag me to wherever the Mortimers are having their business meetings with the railroad, and marry me to Andrew on the spot.”
And she couldn’t blame him.
“Then tell Wes.”
So they were back to that, were they? She licked her lips. “Wes would think the worst of me.”
“He wouldn’t.”
“He would, anyone would.”
“That’s not true.”
“No?” She looked up to find a small muscle pulsing at the side of Daniel’s jaw. “Then tell me, what do you think when you look at me? You’re the only one in town who knows the truth of what happened with Robbie. Do you see me as a trollop, as a loose woman?”
An ache built in her chest, but she forced the rest of her question out anyway. “Or maybe just a fool for believing a man could love me for something other than my father’s money?”
Daniel shifted in his chair. Had it suddenly grown hotter inside his office? Sweat beaded along his hairline, yet he couldn’t force himself to look away from the pair of vulnerable eyes staring back at him.
How should he answer Charlotte’s question?
He shifted again, but the movement did little to make him more comfortable. “I think you need a man who loves you for who you are, not what you can give him.”
Charlotte twisted her lips together. “I didn’t ask who you think I should marry. I asked what you think of me as a woman.”
He grabbed the sticky bun in front of him and shoved a chunk in his mouth. If he was chewing, he didn’t have to talk, at least not for a few seconds.
A drop of sweat beaded on his forehead and rolled down the side of his face. It wasn’t that he didn’t know what he thought of her as a woman. His problem was exactly the opposite. He thought she was beautiful. That she was a hard worker. That she deserved someone who loved her for who she was, just like he’d already said.
Would this Mortimer fellow do that? She seemed to think he might, and he couldn’t say that about any of the other men her father had tried picking.
Charlotte wasn’t flashy or talkative or the prettiest woman in town. But she was pretty in her own way, especially when her eyes lit with pleasure or surprise. And she turned downright beautiful astride a horse, handling it with an effortless precision few people had perfected. She was dependable and loyal, stalwart, the type of woman a man could count on not to let him down.
Daniel grabbed the edge of the bandana tied around his neck and swiped the sweat from his face.
How much of that could he tell her without giving himself away?
Or maybe he should do just that and tell her how he felt here and now. He could say he’d been slowly falling in love with her for the past three years, and if she was willing, he’d ride off with her today and wed her without her family’s approval.
He tapped his fingers on the worn top of his desk. Could he really bring himself to go behind her family’s back and marry her?
If she said yes, then they’d—
“Never mind. Don’t bother to answer.” Charlotte folded her hands atop the desk, her back and shoulders painfully straight. “Your silence tells me everything I need to know.”
“What?”
Her nostrils flared, but rather than answer, she pressed her lips together into a firm line.
He scratched the side of his head. He’d clearly upset her, but how?
Oh, right. She’d asked what he thought of her as a woman.
Beautiful, loyal, independent. He swallowed before the words bubbled out of his mouth. “I don’t see you as a trollop, though I don’t know how far things went between you and Robbie, and I don’t—”
“We kissed. Perhaps for longer than we should have, perhaps more times than we should have, but it never went further than that.”
He squeezed his eyes shut. Why was she telling him this? He didn’t need to imagine her canoodling with another man under the stars, whispering plans for a future and trading kisses.
“But I would have run away with him. That’s the worst part of it all.” Charlotte jabbed at her sticky bun with her fork. “I would have run away with a man who was only using me. Robbie was the one who stopped it. That’s why I want to marry Andrew. He’s better than the others my father had presented, and if I don’t marry someone soon, another man will come right along and try using me, and I’ll be too dumb to realize it.”
Daniel’s chair had gone back to being painfully hard again, his office unbearably hot. How had he and Charlotte started talking about this? Why was he the one sitting across from her right now? Shouldn’t she be having this conversation with Anna Mae?
But Anna Mae didn’t know about Charlotte and Robbie, nor did Wes or anyone else. The only reason he knew was because he’d happened upon the two of them kissing behind this very office one Sunday afternoon. “First off, you’re not dumb. Your pa being so picky about the kind of man you marry puts you in a difficult situation. I don’t think you dealt with things well this spring, but I don’t look at you and see a trollop. That’s the God-honest truth.”
She glanced his direction. “I fear you’re being too kind to me, but thank you anyway.”
He could swear he wasn’t being too kind, that anyone should be able to see the good qualities in her, but she’d probably just argue again.
She pushed back her chair. “I need to go. Anna Mae and I are supposed to visit the weaving shop today.”
He shoved the last bite of sticky bun in his mouth, then stood. “Be careful.”
She’d probably arranged for either a ranch hand or Wes to escort them over the border. He’d half a mind to go with her anyway, considering the rustlers about, but in all the years her family had owned the weaving shop, nothing bad had ever happened on the trip. And his time would be better spent searching for cattle tracks.
“I almost forgot.” Charlotte swiped up the letter that had been sitting on the edge of his desk. “What do you think I should write Andrew?”
He gave his head a small shake. “I’ve decided not to help you with him.”
She stilled, her face turning unnaturally pale given the summer heat. “But you said would.”
“I never agreed to anything. I had reservations about getting between you and your suitor in the first place, and that was before I realized you don’t even know if you want to marry him.”
“I do want to marry him!”
“Not for the right reasons.”
Her hands fisted in the sides of her skirt, gathering the fabric so tightly her hemline rose at her ankles. “Is the notion of spending time with me really that terrible?”
One simple question. But with it, every last bit of fight drained out of him like water through a handful of desert sand. “It’s not that.”
“What then?”
How could
he refuse her when she looked at him with such wide, trusting eyes? “I thought I was helping you before as a friend. But no true friend is going to help you marry a man you’ll never be happy with.”
She came around the side of the desk and clutched his arm. “But I will be happy with him. I’ll learn how to make both myself and Andrew happy, I promise. That’s what this whole flirtation business is supposed to be about.”
He shook his head. “Charlotte…” Her name tasted both bitter and sweet on his tongue, a tangle of feelings he could never keep straight when she stood in the same room as him.
“It’s just for a few weeks. Besides, I might actually find I like going about town in a skirt and riding sidesaddle.”
She wouldn’t. He knew it as certainly as he knew the rustlers in Mexico would strike again.
But how to convince her?
And if he said no, would she look for another man to help? A vision rose in his mind of her approaching some unkempt drifter who’d wandered into town.
Daniel held in a groan. Charlotte might claim to have learned her lesson with Robbie, but she was still too trusting.
On the other hand, they’d just had the longest conversation the two of them had ever shared before in their lives. If he agreed to her plan, they’d have more conversations like this, and maybe he could get her to see how foolish her desire to marry Andrew was.
That, and he could convince her to tell her family about how Robbie Ashton had used her to rustle cattle. Surely once Wes and Mr. Westin knew, they’d assure her that she didn’t have to marry the wrong man because of one mistake.
“All right. I’ll help. But just for a few weeks. I’m still not going to tell you what to write to Mortimer though. That’s a step too far.”
She sent him a soft smile, the worry in her eyes vanishing while something awful close to hope took its place. “Thank you.”
He drew in a breath, letting his lungs fill with air. How many more times would she look at him like that before Mortimer returned? “Stop by tomorrow morning, about the same time. Abe doesn’t come in until eleven, so we’ll have the place to ourselves unless trouble comes up.”
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