The Cattleman's Unsuitable Wife (Wells Cattle Company Book 1)

by Pam Crooks

  Trey frowned. “He should have remarried and found another woman to love. Would’ve saved a heap of trouble and hurt.”

  “Was never a woman for him after her.” Nubby shook his grizzled head and sighed. “A man has needs, you know, and he just found other females to take care of them.”

  “But Zurina’s mother, Nub.” Trey would never condone the sin his father committed against her.

  Nubby grimaced, lifted his hat and scratched his head.

  “He was hurting. That’s all I can make of it. It wasn’t right, not by a long shot. We’ll never know exactly what happened between them, but I suspect he was angry, too, and well, he did what he did.”

  Zurina and Mikolas would never forgive him, either. And they wouldn’t forget.

  “Did you know about Mikolas?” Trey asked quietly.

  “No, I didn’t. Your pa didn’t, either. He would’ve told me.” Nub hesitated. “Now, Woodrow was a different story. A real pain in the ass.”

  Trey recalled receiving the ransom note and Nubby’s reaction to reading it. He glowered at the cowboy.

  “I’m not proud I had to keep him secret from you,” Nubby hastened to say. “He was your half-brother, and you were entitled, but Sutton would’ve strung me up by my nuts if I told you. He despised that boy from the minute he first laid eyes on him, and that was when the blackmail began. Hard for Sutton to accept he’d sired such a lowlife.”

  Trey recalled his father’s fierce pride and understood. “You still should have told me.”

  “It was how Sutton wanted it.” No regrets. No excuses.

  Hard for Trey not to feel he’d grown up like a bird with his head in the sand. Oblivious. And protected.

  But it was done, and Trey couldn’t change the past, which, he reminded himself, had given him two brothers. One had been taken away, but he had Mikolas, and with him came Zurina….

  Again, his gaze slid toward her. She’d already been watching him, and his pulse leaped from the knowledge. From a sudden burst of hunger.

  How could he walk away from her?

  She pulled her lashes down and angled her face away, but not before he glimpsed a shimmer of pain. The inevitability of what was to come.

  “What do you figure will happen to Mikolas, Nub?” Trey asked roughly.

  The police chief approached, holding the reins to Mikolas’s horse.

  “He was an accomplice to kidnapping, Trey,” the lawman said grimly, answering before Nubby could. “Extortion, too. He’ll have to go trial and put in jail time for it.”

  “Damned shame,” Trey said and meant it.

  “Just so you know,” Nubby added, watching him. “We paid a visit to Gabirel Vasco. He told us you were headed up here to Rogers Pass.”

  “And none too soon,” Trey said, thinking of Woodrow and how close the man had come to pulling the trigger. If the lawmen hadn’t arrived when they did, lives would’ve been taken, long before their time.

  “He loves Mikolas as his own son, but he thinks the world of you. He’s hoping you’ll do right by Mikolas.”

  Trey heard what the cowboy didn’t say. That it was Trey’s place to do so.

  Trey wondered if he could.

  Be a brother to Mikolas.

  “Time to head out,” George said crisply. “We’ll be riding in the dark as it is.”

  “You’ll need help getting Mikolas in the saddle,” Nubby said.

  “Appreciate it.”

  They approached the campfire, and Trey followed.

  “This is going to hurt that leg like the dickens, Mikolas, but we’ll be as careful as we can,” George said. “Are you ready?”

  “Yes.”

  “Goodbye, Mikolas.” Zurina flung her arms around him. “Papa and I will come to see you as soon as we can. I promise.”

  He hugged her fiercely, then kissed her forehead. “Don’t worry about me, ’Rina.”

  She bit her lip and blinked fast. “How can I not?”

  “There’s no shame in a man paying for his mistakes. It’s a good thing when he learns from them at the same time.” He touched her cheek, his dark eyes somber and full of regret.

  “Yes,” she whispered. “A good thing.”

  The police chief stepped toward Mikolas’s right. “I’ll take this side. Nubby, you take his left. We’ll lift him at the same time.”

  But compelled by some inner force that convinced Trey it was up to him to finally begin to atone for his father’s sin, that there was no one else, he nudged Nubby aside.

  “I’ll do it,” he said.

  The cowboy stepped back quickly. Mikolas’s startled gaze rammed into Trey’s, and pride flashed across his face. Maybe a flare of resentment, too. But as if Mikolas realized their uselessness, he roped his resistance back and nodded in concession.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  Trey gave him a curt nod, bent and laid Mikolas’s arm over his shoulder. He wasn’t prepared for the effect Mikolas’s quick inhalation of breath had on him. Or that his fingers dug into Trey during the ordeal. By the time they maneuvered him into the saddle with a leg flaming with fire, Trey was feeling a pretty good dose of sympathy for what the man had endured.

  His brother, he corrected. What his brother had endured.

  Trey gave George instructions to pay Doc Shehan a call as soon as they got into Great Falls. The lawman agreed.

  It was much easier to get Reggie onto his horse, of course. The police chief made sure his bound wrists were tied good and tight to the saddle horn to prevent escape.

  “We spotted the rustled cattle a little ways down the pass,” Nubby said, pulling on his gloves. “I’ll run ’em back to the ranch.”

  Trey knew he should offer to help. This time, he didn’t.

  “Thanks,” he said instead.

  “I’ll see you, then. Tomorrow, likely.”

  “Tomorrow.”

  The old cowboy strode off to join the others, already mounted and waiting.

  Only Zurina remained.

  Trey turned to her. Dusk had begun to settle over the mountain. A muted spray of orange and pink curved the horizon. The pines lost their vibrant shade of green to deeper hues of shadow.

  She looked incredibly beautiful standing there, in the fading light. But then, she looked beautiful in firelight, too. Or brilliant sunlight.

  In any light, or none at all. She would always be beautiful to him.

  “Trey, I—”

  He hated this unease between them. This damned fragility. As if the air would break if either of them spoke the wrong word.

  “What, Zurina?” He kept his voice low. Gentle.

  She clasped her hands, then unclasped them. He couldn’t recall seeing her nervous before.

  “Thank you for being kind to him,” she said.

  He lifted a shoulder in a careless shrug. “He’s my brother.” His mouth curved. “Right?”

  She drew in a breath, let it out again. “Yes.”

  “We have plenty of catching up to do,” he said. “I think I’m looking forward to it.”

  Hope flared in her expression. “Are you?”

  “He’s all the family I have left, Zurina.” He wanted her to understand he intended to keep his promise, that he meant every word.

  Her mouth softened. “He’s a sheepherder, you know.”

  “Yeah, well.” Trey heaved an exaggerated sigh. “He’ll come around eventually.”

  She laughed, and Trey tucked the sound away, deep into his heart.

  Her amusement faded. “I almost forgot to give you this.”

  She reached under her sweater and pulled out a flower. The thing was so damned bent and broken with its petals half gone, he almost didn’t recognize it.

  The rose he’d picked from her mother’s bush.

  “It fell from your shirt pocket last night.” She smoothed the stem carefully, as if she could make it straight and strong again. “You wanted it for Allethaire.”

  “No.” He shook his head. “It was never for her.”<
br />
  She appeared taken aback. “Oh?”

  “For you, Zurina,” he said huskily. “I wanted the rose to remind me of you.”

  She pressed a hand to her breast, and her eyes welled. “Me?”

  “Yes. You.” He ached to take her into his arms and kiss some sense into her. She meant the world to him. How could she be this surprised to know she did?

  “Allethaire is leaving.” Zurina darted an uncertain glance to the riders heading down the pass, leaving the two of them behind. Her expression revealed he needed to hurry to catch up.

  “I know,” he said patiently. “I already told her goodbye.”

  “But—”

  “She’s going back to Minnesota. And I’m not. Never was, besides.”

  “But—”

  “Forget Allethaire,” Trey said. Firmly.

  “Oh, Trey.”

  The turning of her head kept him from seeing her expression, but he sensed the emotion she held in tight inside her.

  The hope.

  The fear.

  He took a step toward her.

  “I love you, Zurina.”

  The words came far easier than he expected and of their own accord. He hadn’t realized the depth of his feelings for her until now, when it was time to leave her.

  Unless she didn’t want him to go.

  A rawness scraped at his insides, a sudden desperation to crush the questions screaming inside them. Face them head-on and silence them forever.

  To make her his for the rest of their lives.

  But what if she didn’t want him?

  Her dark eyes appeared round and luminous in the firelight. She didn’t move. She barely breathed.

  Seemed his confession had robbed her of words, so he kept talking.

  “I’m a cattleman, I know. You’ve made your feelings plain about how you feel about us, but if I work hard at it, maybe I can convince you—”

  “You don’t have to convince me of anything, Trey. Not anymore.”

  Thrown off track, he hooked his thumb in his waistband. “I don’t?”

  “I love you, too, you know. Even when I hated you, I loved you.”

  She moved closer, so close he could feel her warmth and smell the mountain in her hair. Crave the softness of her lips, too.

  His blood stirred, hot and deep.

  “I’m only a sheepherder’s daughter,” she said hesitantly, as if giving him a chance to change his mind.

  “And you’d make a fine wife for a cattleman,” he growled. “The perfect mother for his children. I’d be proud to have you at my side, Zurina. Proud.”

  Finally, his arms opened, and he took her hard against him. She filled the well of his longings with her kisses and her love, thrilling him with the knowledge he’d have a lifetime of nights to hold her like this.

  Eventually, she drew back and contemplated the rose she still held in her fingers, as if she’d forgotten it was there. Trey took the flower and tossed it into the fire.

  “You can take a cutting from your mother’s bush and plant it alongside my house,” he said. “Wherever you want. As many as you want.”

  “Oh, a house,” she breathed in delight.

  He grinned and chucked her under the chin. “Did you think I lived in a cave?”

  “I’ve always wanted a real house, Trey.”

  “You’ll have mine now, my sweet. We’re going to make it ours forever.”

  She snuggled against him with a sigh of happiness. He’d give her whatever she wanted to keep her happy. Gabirel, too, and yes, Mikolas….

  A pretty heavy wave of his own happiness rolled through him, leaving him giddy as a loon, and he took her mouth again. Through the fervor of their kisses, she nurtured his dreams and promised a future filled with dark-eyed children, herds of cattle and flocks of sheep.

  All of it, sharing his life and his beloved Montana range.

  Epilogue

  A Year Later

  “Don’t turn around until I tell you, Zurina.”

  Hearing Trey’s voice and without thinking, she began to do just that, but his quick “Whoa, not yet, sweet, not yet,” kept her rooted and facing the window with the new lace curtain she’d just hung.

  “What? Another surprise?” she asked with a smile of growing delight.

  Oh, but there had been so many surprises of late. With the little one coming in only a few weeks’ time, it seemed all of Montana Territory was as excited as she and Trey were. Well-wishes and kindnesses abounded, and more gifts than any baby could ever need had streamed onto the ranch from people Zurina barely knew or had never met.

  “What makes you think I have a surprise for you?” he asked, sounding wide-eyed-and-innocent.

  A mysterious thud belied his words, however, and her heart swelled. He was teasing, of course. Why else would he not want her to see what he was bringing into their baby’s nursery?

  “I think it because you’ve turned me into a very pampered wife,” she said.

  “You’re mine, and you deserve pampering.”

  Something scraped across the wooden floor. Her curiosity raged. Only sheer willpower kept her from spinning around to see what he was up to.

  “I can’t have the mother of my child lacking, can I?” he added with a low grunt of exertion.

  “You’ve brought the rocking chair, haven’t you?”

  Her hands clasped in excitement. She’d been waiting for weeks for the precious chair to arrive in Helena, then be hauled by wagon to Great Falls and finally to the WCC.

  “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  “The bassinette then?”

  The two pieces were all that were left of the nursery suite she’d ordered from Denver. The mahogany bureau had been first to arrive, and its drawers already held stacks of neatly folded blankets, bonnets and sleeping gowns. Now that the paper-hangers had left, leaving the room enchanting with its new pastel floral walls, she’d been quick to add the finishing touch—the airy curtains she’d made herself.

  All that remained was the missing furniture to make the nursery complete.

  Zurina was afraid to hope.

  Trey blew out a breath. “All right. You can turn around now, Zurina.”

  He didn’t have to tell her twice, and oh, there—at last!—was her beautiful rocking chair, looking rich and frightfully expensive in polished mahogany, a striking match to the bureau with its ornately carved back and graceful arms. Emotion welled, filling her chest with a sweet ache of longing for her baby to be born so that she could hold him for hours on end in this chair, just rocking and rocking….

  A cradle stood next to it, and her joy faded into confusion.

  “This isn’t what we bought, Trey. It’s a wooden cradle,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “But we bought a white iron bassinette.”

  “I was hoping you’d prefer this instead.”

  He didn’t meet her glance, and she puzzled over his discomfiture. Was he feeling guilty for changing the style of bed they’d first chosen for their baby? It wasn’t like him not to consult her first, and on this, a matter that meant so much to her. She couldn’t recall seeing the cradle before in any catalog she’d scoured, either, which was just as perplexing, and why had he been so secretive all this time?

  “Where did it come from?” She moved closer. Her glance fastened over the spindles, dark and gleaming in the window light. The unmistakable scent of varnish wafted through the nursery.

  “It was mine.”

  Taken aback, she studied the baby bed in new fascination. She tried to imagine her tall, handsome, broad-shouldered husband small enough to once fit on the miniature mattress.

  There came that emotion again, tumbling through her chest.

  Reaching out, she gave the bed a gentle, testing nudge. It quietly swayed, back and forth, back and forth. Entranced, she fell in love.

  “It’s been in the attic for years,” Trey said. “I moved it to the barn a while back and stripped it down to bare wood.” He shifted, one foot
to the other. “Your rocker came, same time as the bureau did, but I kept it from you so I could match up the stain. I thought you’d like it better that way.” He hesitated, as if he hoped he’d done the right thing. “Matched up with the rest of the suite, I mean.”

  “Oh, Trey,” she breathed, deeply moved, and recalled all those evenings he was gone of late. Now the plethora of excuses he’d given her made sense. “Your little bed is absolutely perfect for our baby.” The cradle stopped rocking. She turned toward him. “But why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

  “Because my father built it, Zurina. And I know how you feel about him.”

  She went still. She didn’t think about Sutton Wells so much anymore. Woodrow Baldwin’s confession to his murder quieted the rumors and ended speculation throughout the territory. Learning the truth had ended an ugly chapter in all their lives.

  More important, with her marriage to Trey came acceptance. The past couldn’t be changed, and Trey couldn’t be blamed for any of it. She wasn’t going to let what his father had done to Mama cast a shadow on her happiness. Her future.

  But knowing Sutton had built this sweet little cradle for his baby all those years ago formed a different image of the man in Zurina’s mind. A loving father, anticipating the birth of his child. Working long hours fashioning the wood with his hands, his heart and soul. In that bed rested his dreams for a family. His legacy.

  Now, his grandchild would carry them on.

  “He enjoyed carpentry,” Trey said, his voice somber. “He loved building things.”

  Zurina cocked her head, much preferring to remember Sutton in this new way. “Like the Wells Cattle Company.”

  “He made mistakes along the way.” Trey frowned.

  She knew he thought of her mother. Mikolas, too. “Yes.”

  “Guess they all happened for a reason.”

  The troubled shadows in his copper-flecked eyes struck a sympathetic chord in Zurina. Was it the cradle which brought out his melancholy mood? Did the impending birth of their child remind him of all his father would miss?

  “The mistakes brought us together as man and wife. Without them, we wouldn’t have each other,” she said quietly.

  She moved toward him, and his arms opened easily to take her against him. She rested her cheek against his shoulder and curled her arms around his strong back. Her lashes drifted closed, and she soaked in the warmth of his body. His male scent, too, so familiar. So pleasing.