There were, Annabelle told herself, five of them. Surely together, they were safe enough walking home from school. At least that’s what Joseph always argued. Evelyn, Helen, Daniel, Bess and Nugget could take care of themselves. A handful, but most of the time, Mary and Rose were such a big help that Annabelle hardly noticed.
However, on days like today, when Annabelle scurried down the street toward the school, she wondered how she thought she could manage all these children, help with her father’s ministry and care for a baby besides. But if something happened to the children—
Annabelle’s heart constricted, and she turned the corner. Nugget came running toward her, screeching, “Mama!”
She embraced the little girl, and continued in the direction from which Nugget had come.
Daniel was engaged in a fistfight with another boy, and the girls were egging him on as other children circled the fighting boys, cheering.
“Daniel Edward Stone!” Annabelle pushed through the crowd. “I insist you stop this minute!”
“Not until he apologizes for what he said about my sister!”
Before he could get another punch in, her father and Joseph arrived and pulled the two boys apart.
Nugget huddled at Annabelle’s side. “Mama, please don’t be mad at Daniel.”
The little girl had taken to calling her Mama shortly before her wedding to Joseph. Even though certain people, like the unfortunate boy whom her father was sternly lecturing, didn’t seem to want to forget where Nugget came from, most of the time, no one remembered Nugget wasn’t her daughter. And, as Annabelle tightened her arm around the little girl, she wasn’t sure she could remember a time when Nugget wasn’t hers.
“You know fighting is wrong,” Joseph told Daniel sternly.
“So’s what he said about my sister.”
Though Annabelle knew she needed to remain quiet and let Joseph do the parenting, part of her wanted to cheer for the fact that the boy who once refused to even look at Nugget, let alone call her sister, was now fighting for the little girl’s honor.
“The other boy started it,” chorused Evelyn, Helen and Bess.
Annabelle looked down at Nugget. “That so?”
Nugget shrugged. Apparently, she wasn’t going to risk her newfound solidarity with her siblings.
Joseph escorted Daniel to where they were waiting, and Annabelle noticed her father walking the other boy down the street. Probably to talk to his parents.
The other three girls trudged behind, their heads low, as though they thought the other boy had Daniel’s beating coming. Annabelle sighed. Raising Joseph’s siblings was not for the faint of heart. But watching them heal from the pain of their rough past and come to love one another was worth it.
Joseph came along Annabelle’s other side and slipped his hand in hers. “Never a dull moment, is it?”
“Of course not.” Until she’d found herself with a houseful again, she hadn’t realized just how much she’d missed having the warm bodies, the laughter and even the fights to add color to her life. Some days, she still missed her siblings, especially Susannah, and most days, she desperately missed her mother. For only a mother could advise her on how to handle this rambunctious crew.
A carriage was parked in front of their house.
“Caitlin!” Nugget pulled away from Annabelle’s hand and dashed in the direction of the carriage, her siblings following suit.
Annabelle looked over at Joseph. “I didn’t know Gertie was coming down today. I thought they were waiting until Saturday.”
“I thought you’d like having her sooner.” A knowing look filled his face. “You’ve been overly tired lately, and she told me to send for her if you needed help.”
No, Annabelle didn’t have a mother to advise her on such things. But she had Gertie, who loved her like one. Even though Gertie would never replace her mother, and there were times when having Gertie around increased the ache of her mother’s absence, mostly, Annabelle didn’t know what she’d do without the other woman.
“Daniel, what have you done to your eye?” Gertie’s exclamation told Annabelle that Gertie probably had plenty of experience dealing with her own sons’ fights. Later, the other woman could help her figure out how to handle this latest development.
Annabelle turned to Joseph and kissed him softly. “Thank you. You always seem to know just what I need.”
He kissed her back, then grinned. “Or maybe I want to get a little time alone with you myself. Won’t be much longer until we’ve also got a baby to manage, so I figured I’d best take advantage while I still can.”
This time, Annabelle didn’t stop herself from throwing her arms around him. Well, as best as she could fit, anyway. She was, after all, expecting a baby. And even though some ladies in town said it simply wasn’t done when one was in such a delicate condition, she kissed her husband until they were both breathless. Let everyone say what they will. Annabelle Lassiter Stone had opened her heart to love, and now that she’d found it, she wasn’t about to let anyone tell her not to show it.
* * *
Family on the Range
Jessica Nelson
Jessica Nelson believes romance happens every day and thinks the greatest, most intense romance comes from a God who woos people to Himself with passionate tenderness. When Jessica is not chasing her three beautiful, wild little boys around the living room, she can be found staring into space as she plots her next story, daydreams about raspberry mochas or plans chocolate for dinner.
Books by Jessica Nelson
Love Inspired Historical
Love on the Range
Family on the Range
The Matchmaker’s Match
A Hasty Betrothal
The Unconventional Governess
Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com for more titles.
He shall call upon me, and I will answer him:
I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him,
and honour him.
—Psalms 91:15
Dedicated to my sister Josephine, who has
Mary’s heart. And to my niece Jayla, who is Josie.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter One
June 1920
Oregon
“Bag the body and don’t forget to ink his prints.” Special Agent Lou Riley moved away from the man who had met his demise in the bowels of an illegal liquor operation. He slipped Wrigley’s peppermint gum into his mouth and gnawed on it as he thought through his circumstances.
This dead witness meant more time on assignment trying to track down the one who’d hired the foreign bootlegger to do his dirty work.
Prohibition in Oregon wasn’t a thing to be trifled with. After a decade of chasing murderers, traitors and thieves in his job as special agent for the Bureau of Investigation, Lou guessed helping the local police track speakeasies and distilleries served him well enough.
Bet
ter than the more dangerous spying he’d done until this past year.
He rubbed the back of his neck, feeling the stress of a hard day’s work combined with personal pressures. Day before last he’d left his secluded ranch to tackle this assignment. His housekeeper, Mary, had everything under control at home, but he couldn’t shake his unease. Over a year ago his niece and his best friend, Trevor, had married, and ever since he’d been thinking about the past. About people long gone. And lately, when he saw Mary, a strange tension filled him, which was odd because they’d always had an easygoing rapport in the twelve years she’d been his employee.
Not that his job ever kept him home with her for long.
Grimacing at the kink in his left shoulder, he wheeled around and left the dim building. An overcast afternoon greeted him, heavy with mist and promising rain. He nodded to one of his field agents as he picked his way to the bureau’s automobile.
Summers in Oregon weren’t exactly sunny. Not warm, either. He missed the aridness of his home in east Oregon, the openness of the desert range. Small cities like this one tended to weigh him down with memories. Buildings pressed in on him....
He shrugged the morbidity away.
Every time he went home, saw Mary, he left feeling this way. Maybe it was her trusting smile or the way her eyes lit with welcome when he walked in the door. Like someone else’s long ago. Mary’s look stirred up memories, blew the dust of time off them—he stopped himself, stuttering to a halt near a gutter. He couldn’t go there. Not ever again.
“Hey, mister!”
Lou turned slowly at the intrusion, his hand moving to the weapon at his hip beneath his coat. “You talking to me?”
“That’s right.” A shadow slid out from an alley to Lou’s left, heavy Irish accent lilting the man’s syllables. “You the agent in charge down the road?”
“What’s it to you?”
“I got information on who was supplying the gig down there.” The man moved closer, and Lou caught a whiff of sour fish as well as a glimpse of green eyes and blond mustache.
“Let’s take this downtown. Put it on paper.” That pesky muscle cramped in Lou’s back again and he fought not to wince. He was thirty-six years old, but he felt sixty today.
“I’ll just slip you the information here, quiet-like.”
Lou’s brows lowered. He looked down the street. His agents were busy coordinating the bust, but something felt off. Every instinct warned him to draw his weapon.
He never discounted his instincts.
Drawing his revolver, he beckoned the man. “Come into the light.”
“And get pinned for bootleggin’? Not on your life, mister.”
“Then stay right there. I’ll get a pen and—”
“This won’t take long.” The man pulled back suddenly.
Lou’s skin prickled.
Shadows closed over where the man had been as he slipped from view. Alert, Lou spun away from the blond and faced the road. A sharp ping split the night before his chest caught fire in a familiar, unwelcome sensation.
Pivoting, he backed into the shadows. Shouts from down the road reached his hearing, but whoever had shot him took off. The sound of the shooter’s footsteps was distinctive, a smart uneven clip of metal against cobblestone. Almost like spurs.... The sound faded, merging with other, faster steps.
His shoulder burned. He groaned as the strength left his legs.
This was real bad. Worse than a shot in the leg or shoulder. Body numbing, he crumpled to the ground. He couldn’t keep his eyes open. The sounds around him muffled and the last image he saw was Mary’s dark eyes, the curve of her lips when she opened the door to welcome him home.
Would he see her again?
* * *
Loneliness never killed a person.
Or so Mary O’Roarke tried to tell herself as she mentally prepared for a visit with her mother. Surely once she stated her wishes, her mother would then see reason and quit insisting on living by herself.
Oregon’s summer sun rolled above Mary, hot though not quite to its zenith. She slowed her mare outside the Paiute encampment where her mother lived. Alone. With no one to rely on. It was not the way an elderly woman should live, and she’d told her mother so many times.
Only now did she have the means with which to help her, and no one could stop her, not even her stubborn employer who owned the ranch where she worked and, until recently, lived. She’d bought an old friend’s house next to the ranch, the first home she’d ever owned in all her thirty years, and maybe that might convince her mother to come back with her.
Feeling hopeful, Mary turned the horse in the direction of her mother’s dwelling.
The encampment consisted of tents and campfires. The odor of rabbit flesh hung in the air. The government did not appear to care that native Paiutes preferred homes made from various woods and sagebrush, and instead provided them with only the means to make tepees. Mary nodded to those she passed. Some wore the rabbit robes for which her mother’s people were known. Others, mostly men, dressed in the white man’s garb. Trousers, hats.
She came to her mother’s tepee and dismounted. No hitching post for her mare, so she tied the reins to a straggly shrub nearby. Children whispered and giggled, circling but not coming close. A stray dog loped over and the children chased it, their ill-fitting clothes doing nothing to hinder their laughter.
A wistful smile pulled at Mary’s lips. She’d longed to have children many years ago. Before the trauma of her past had wrenched her from any chance of a normal life. Perhaps she’d grown too old now, too set in her ways.... She certainly knew nothing about the ways of motherhood. Sighing, she bent near the entrance of her mother’s tent.
“It’s Mary. I’ve come to visit.”
A rustle ensued. Then the grunt that was Rose’s answer. Mary twisted the flap to the side and entered the tent. The interior never failed to elicit a strange sense of distance. This was her mother’s life now, a return to her roots, but it had never been Mary’s life. The setting filled her with disquiet and a peculiar sense of displacement.
As a child she’d lived in the white man’s world. Her father was Irish and while he worked the docks, her mother had used her beauty to bring in money at various brothels. It had been an odd childhood, full of travel and sporadic learning. When she was twelve, her father had abandoned them, followed shortly by her mother.
Tasting bitterness, Mary swallowed and prayed for peace.
“You brought me something?” Her mother sat to the side, high cheekbones cloaked with lined, leathery skin. The map of her broken life.
“Yes, willow and sagebrush bark.” She placed the offerings next to the stack of intricate baskets Rose weaved to sell.
They lapsed into awkward conversation. Mostly talk of weather.
“I have my own home,” she told her mother at last, warming to her subject. This was why she’d come. To coax Rose into living with her. At her mother’s look of surprise, Mary continued, “I’ve bought Trevor’s house. Now that he’s married, he plans to find a place in town for when he and Gracie don’t stay at the ranch. I would like you to come live with me.”
An old argument, but she tried again, hoping this to be the day her mother might surrender.
“Interesting,” Rose murmured, stroking the thick rabbit robe on her lap. “Now you will be alone with your employer?”
“Lou?”
“You have great besa soobedda for him.”
“A what?” Though Mary spoke some Paiute, she wasn’t fluent and disliked when her mother used language she hadn’t taught her only daughter.
A crooked smile lifted the corner of Rose’s lips. “Besa soobedda is love, the sweet emotional bond between a man and his wife.”
Mary stiffened as a peculiar heat seeped through her. She’d lived at the ranch for twelve years and never had she entertained
such a thought about her employer. Granted, he was charming and funny. He had hired her as his housekeeper when she was eighteen, offering his home as a refuge after she’d been rescued from the notorious slave trader Mendez. Lou’s kindness would never be forgotten. But love?
“We have no such love,” she denied. “I feel a sister’s affection for him.” Even as she spoke, she wondered if that was true. When she’d told him goodbye yesterday, there had been the oddest regret creeping through her. Unnerved, she continued, “I should leave if you do not wish to come with me at this time.”
“Wait!” Her mother struggled to a standing position, and Mary tried not to cringe at how age and worries had stolen her mother’s strength. Perhaps loneliness would not kill her mother but rather another more obvious ailment. She swallowed hard at the thought.
Rose shuffled toward a trunk at the other side of the tepee. Bending, she opened it. “I have something for you.”
“I want you to come home with me. I need nothing else.”
“This is important.”
A small blond head popped up out of the trunk. “Hiya!”
Mary started. “What is that?”
“I’m a little girl.” The child clambered out of the trunk and gave Mary a decidedly mischievous smirk. “Are you going to be my mother?”
Startled, Mary groped for words. Finally, she said, “I’m not a mother to anyone.”
“Oh, but I need one. Just for a bit, you see, until I go home to my real mama.” The girl shot a cheeky, gap-toothed grin up at Rose, who reached down to stroke the girl’s head.
The movement snapped Mary from her shocked paralysis. “You have someone’s child? Do you know the penalty for such a thing?”
Rose met her accusation with a steady look. “She is in danger. You have a home apart from Lou now. You can hide her.”
“No.” She shook her head, feeling her braid swing against her back. “No, I can’t do it.”
Rocky Mountain Dreams & Family on the Range Page 24