by Lily Reynard
She hadn't exactly lied to her new employers about her credentials as a nanny, but desperate to leave her unbearable circumstances back home, she had perhaps omitted a few important details in her application.
Please don’t fire me before I've had a chance to prove myself to you, she pleaded silently.
Chapter 2
Emma glanced between the three of them with a tiny frown. "I'm sure Abby is in need of some refreshment after her long journey. Why don't you gentlemen take her to lunch at the hotel before continuing on to your ranch?"
Grateful for the intervention, Abby sent silent thanks in her new friend's direction.
"That's a fine idea, ma'am." Dan nodded slowly, his gaze never leaving Abby.
Her cheeks burned under the heat of his regard. Why did he have to be so distressingly handsome?
"We'd sure appreciate the opportunity to converse with you a bit," Jim said to Abby, his expression still reserved.
"And it's a fair drive out to our ranch," added Daniel. "We could all use a spot of chow before that."
"Then it's settled." Emma stretched her hands out to Abby. Abby grasped them like a drowning sailor reaching for a floating timber.
"I would love to have you over for luncheon or afternoon tea the next time you're in town, Abby. Please promise you'll call on me." Emma squeezed Abby's hands.
"I promise…and thank you," Abby said fervently.
"Ma'am." Jim tipped his hat to Emma. He spun on his heel and strode away.
"Ma'am, please give our regards to the reverend," Dan said to Emma, also tipping his hat to her before turning to Abby. "Please allow me."
Abby couldn't help but notice his wide shoulders under his clean shirt and leather vest as he reached for her suitcases and lifted them without appreciable effort.
Daniel Brody made her feel every bit as light-headed as his brother Jim, and he seemed much friendlier, too.
Abby glanced around at the town as they left the humble station and walked down the wide, deeply rutted dirt road, but most of her attention—and worry—was focused on Jim's tall, broad-shouldered figure striding a few paces ahead of them, never looking back.
Twin Forks appeared to consist of single-story buildings, most of them one-room shacks constructed from roughly hewn boards and roofed with wooden shingles, that lined both sides of the road at unevenly spaced intervals. Some of the buildings were painted, but the majority were not.
Ranks of canvas banners stretched between pairs of poles, advertising businesses of various kinds: a bakery, blacksmith, assay office, washing and ironing, an attorney-at-law, and dry goods. Several of the signs simply bore women's names: "Sweet Annie," "Jenny," and "Texas Mattie."
Despite its rough appearance, the town appeared to be a very lively place. The street was crowded with miners and wagons piled high with furniture and other items that had come on the train.
"I'm glad to see that you've made Mrs. Kottinger's acquaintance," Dan said as Abby did her best to keep up with his long-legged strides. "She's been a mite lonely for female friends since arriving here last summer." He shook his head. "You'll have noticed that there are very few women in these parts?"
Abby nodded.
"I'll warn you now," Dan continued. "Most of 'em aren't what you might call ladies. Don't get me wrong. Most of the girls here are the good-hearted sorts, and Lord knows we need all the female companionship we can get in these parts, but, er, I don't think they're the type of women that you'll be wanting to associate with."
Abby blinked, suddenly realizing what the signs they were passing meant. Her face grew hot as she turned to look at the cabin with a banner advertising "Lady Alice." A kerosene lantern with red glass panels hung beside the crude front door.
Dan cleared his throat, clearly uncomfortable with the turn that the conversation had taken. "Anyhow, I hope that you and Mrs. Kottinger will become friends."
Does that mean that I have a chance at keeping my position, after all?
"She was very kind and welcoming," Abby said, turning her attention away from the fascinating spectacle of fallen women openly advertising their services along the town's main street. "I also hope that we'll become friends."
Dan rewarded her with a slow smile that made her heart skip a beat.
"Glad to hear it," he replied. "She's got a good heart, and the reverend too. The two of them just about worked themselves to death trying to care for all of the sick miners a couple of months ago." Dan's expression turned sad. "Jim wrote you about what happened to Clara and Eddie?"
Abby nodded. "My deepest condolences on the loss of your sister and brother-in-law, Mr. Brody."
"Call me Dan," he reminded her. "We don't stand much on formality in these parts."
"Dan," she repeated, trying to accustom herself to the notion of calling a stranger by his first name.
She should permit him to use her name in return, but the words stuck in her throat.
Back home in Philadelphia, she and Arthur had been "Miss Rose" and "Mr. Van Dyke" to each other until the day he had asked her for her hand in marriage.
Besides, I still don't know if the Brody brothers intend to hire me, after all, she told herself. No use pretending that we are the best of friends if they intend to send me back home on the next train.
The prospect made her stomach churn as she and Dan passed a big wooden building, painted white, with a pair of tall brick chimneys and a large arched stained-glass window facing the street. Even without a steeple, it looked like a house of worship.
"Our new church," Dan confirmed with a nod of his head. "Reverend Kottinger is a Methodist, but he lets Father Pierre—he's the Catholic priest who rides a circuit around the territory—use the church for mass whenever he's in town. We have a fair number of Catholics in town, mostly Irish and Mexican."
They continued on until they reached the far end of the street from the station. There, a two-story red brick building painted with a large "Hotel Bede" on its side dwarfed the assemblage of box-like shops crowded up against it.
Jim stood waiting on the hotel's wide, roofed porch, his arms crossed as Abby and Dan approached and climbed the three steps up to join him.
Despite his grim expression, he gallantly opened the hotel's front door for Abby.
A thrill shot through her as Dan's big, sinewy hand closed around her elbow. The heat of his touch soaked through the fabric of her sensible traveling gown, scorching her as he guided her inside the modest lobby.
She tried to suppress the dangerous feelings warming her belly as she walked between the tall brothers, past a plain wooden registration desk and a wide crescent staircase curving up to the second story.
"It's probably not as grand as the restaurants that you're accustomed to," Jim said, as they made their way to another doorway at the rear of the lobby. "But the food is good."
Abby dared to hope that his conversational sally meant that all hope wasn't lost for her employment offer.
Indeed, the scents drifting past made her stomach growl hungrily.
She hoped neither of her employers noticed, but Dan chuckled softly. He squeezed her elbow.
"Don't you worry, Miss Rose," he assured her. "We don’t make a practice of starving our employees."
"I'm reassured to hear that," she rejoined dryly and smiled up at him.
To her surprise, his face flushed slightly under his tan.
They guided her into a large, high-ceilinged dining room filled with tables, each covered with a clean white tablecloth. A multitude of shining brass lamps hung from the high ceiling, and the walls were covered in a pale green wallpaper decorated with a pattern of pink rosebuds.
It was loud and very crowded, with four to six men seated at each table. The din of conversations punctuated by the scrape and clatter of silverware against china swept over Abby like a palpable wave.
To her intense discomfort, the dining room fell silent as she soon as she entered with her escorts. She felt the weight of dozens of curious stares and fought t
he urge to shrink back through the doorway.
Instead, she raised her chin and scanned the room, taking stock of her surroundings.
She noticed only three or four women seated among the sea of bearded male faces gaping at her. One of the women was clad only in a loose dressing gown that gaped to display her corset, short, lace-trimmed drawers, and a scandalous amount of bare leg.
Abby tried not to stare. She had heard of fallen women, "soiled doves" who sold their favors, but never in her rigidly respectable middle-class upbringing had she ever dreamed of actually encountering one.
The woman waved at them cheerfully, the loose sleeve of her dressing gown sliding to reveal her rounded arms to the bicep.
"Howdy there, Jim, Dan," she called in a voice accented with an unfamiliar twang. "Is that there your fancy nanny from back east?"
Jim's sigh was audible in the hushed dining room as everyone waited expectantly for his answer. "This is Miss Abigail Rose, from Philadelphia," he replied.
Abby noticed how he avoided answering the actual question, and her heart sank again. She had dared to hope after her conversation with Dan on the walk over to the hotel.
"She's a lady, and I hope all of you will treat her like one," Dan added, still holding Abby's arm.
"Well, howdy there, Miss Rose, and welcome to Twin Forks," the woman said, turning her smile on Abby. "My name's Matilda, but everyone in these parts calls me Texas Mattie."
Her mother probably would have fainted dead away at the prospect of conversing publicly with a fallen woman, but it was difficult not to respond to Mattie's exuberant friendliness with a smile of her own.
"Pleased to meet you," Abby said. "And thank you for the welcome."
This is a new world, with different ways of doing things. I only hope I'll have the chance to find my place here.
A short, round man clad in a long canvas apron, with thinning light brown hair and a drooping mustache, bustled up to them.
"Jim, Dan, top o' the morning to ya," he said in an Irish accent. He nodded politely at Abby. "Miss. Welcome to my establishment. I'm Eamon O'Sullivan, the proprietor." He returned his attention to the twins. "Will the three o' you be havin' the full meal today? There's a fine roast beef with boiled potatoes and fresh vegetables, and my wife's rice pudding for dessert."
"I believe we will," Dan said, with an amused sideways glance at Abby.
"It'll be three dollars each, and I'll add it to your tab, boys,"
Abby gasped at the outrageous price—back home, a complete four-course dinner at a good restaurant cost no more than fifty cents. But her companions didn't even blink.
"That'll be fine, Eamon," Jim said.
Mr. O'Sullivan led them to one of the few empty tables, located near the back of the dining room, poured them each a cup of coffee, then hurried away.
Jim pulled out a chair for Abby, and both brothers waited for her to seat herself before they took places opposite her.
Seeing them side by side, Abby was once again struck by the sheer animal magnetism radiating from them.
They were without doubt two of the handsomest men she'd ever seen. Her gaze was drawn to their high cheekbones, strong jaws and sensual-looking mouths, not to mention their thick dark heads of hair and striking brown eyes.
They were both darkly tanned from a life spent outdoors, and their physiques looked hard and muscular under their frontier clothing of long-sleeved shirts, leather vests, and trousers worn over heeled leather boots that revealed colorful stitching.
She tried to guess how old they were. They looked as if they could be anywhere between twenty and thirty years old.
Under normal circumstances, she never had a problem keeping her composure around attractive men. But there was just something about these two…
And she had pinned all of her hopes on living at their ranch, a place where she guessed that she would be the only woman for miles around.
Should I even try to convince them to let me keep the position? Working for them would be pure torture, especially since she had sworn off the male sex forever in the wake of Arthur's betrayal and repudiation.
"So, you're nineteen. Are you really a spinster, or did you lie to us about that, too?" Jim narrowed his eyes and examined her thoroughly.
Abby's face heated under his scrutiny, but she fought to keep her nerves from showing. She nodded and blurted, "I'm unmarried. But I, ah, have a lot of experience with babies."
"Uh-huh." Jim sounded skeptical. "And you've worked as a nanny for how long, exactly?"
She gulped, and found herself unable to lie. "Well, um, several years. Since I turned fifteen."
"Someone hired you to be their nanny at the age of fifteen?" Dan drawled. "That was sure trusting of them."
"Oh, I didn't do it professionally," Abby explained, more flustered by the moment. "I mean, my parents didn't want me actually working for money like a servant, you see. Father's a doctor, and it wouldn't look good if people thought that he couldn't support our family."
The brothers traded another look, and she instantly regretted her choice of words. She could only imagine how her account had sounded to them.
Abby forged ahead, desperate to make her case while she had the opportunity. "But I love children, and I used to take care of my parents' friends' babies all the time. And my mother has been in poor health since my sister was born, so I helped raise my younger brother and sister, and taught them their letters even before they started school."
"So, what you're telling us is that you are not, in fact, a professional nanny." Jim leaned back in his chair. His mouth drew into a tight line. "Just a babysitter."
"I know what I'm doing and how take care of babies and young children," Abby pleaded.
She dared to glance at Dan and found him wearing an expression identical to that of his brother. She continued, trying to keep the desperation out of her voice, "I'd treat Baby Christopher as if he were my very own! I even bought primers and other schoolbooks, for when he's older."
"Schoolbooks, huh?" asked Dan. "Well, that I guess explains why your suitcases weigh a ton. And here I thought you'd decided to bring along some bricks from home."
Abby was unnerved enough at this point that she wasn't sure if he was making a joke.
Jim traded another long look with his brother.
"Would you excuse us?" Jim rose to his feet, his chair scraping loudly against the floorboards.
"Please wait here. This won't take but a few minutes," Dan added as he got to his feet.
The two of them left the dining room, leaving Abby to stare after them in consternation. She felt the weight of all the curious stares once more turned in her direction.
I shouldn't have fibbed about my age, but I was afraid they wouldn't consider my application. And if they don't honor their offer of employment now, how on earth am I going to get home again?
Even with all the skimping and saving she had done, she didn't have enough money left for a train ticket home if the Brodys decided not to reimburse her as promised.
And even if they did give her the money, she couldn't bear the thought of slinking back home like a kicked puppy, her tail between her legs.
She could already hear her mother telling her in her soft, weary voice, I told you nothing good would come of this foolish venture, Abby! And now you've frittered away your savings with nothing to show for it.
Worse yet, she might never see either of the handsome Brody brothers again. She tried to shake off the strong feelings of attraction that had seized her upon their first meeting.
Our acquaintance is less than an hour old, she reminded herself. And didn't I swear that I was done with men? Nothing good can ever come of nursing a foolish infatuation, and especially not with a pair of wealthy ranchers who will each want a wife of unsullied virtue to give them a large family.
◆◆◆
"Well, I'll be damned if she isn't the sweetest young thing I've ever set eyes on," Jim remarked as he and Dan left the noisy dining room and wa
lked out to the hotel's porch, where they had a better chance of holding a private conversation. "You could have knocked me over with a feather when I saw her at the station, talking with Mrs. Kottinger."
From the letters they'd exchanged, he'd expected Miss Abigail Rose to be a plain, sour-faced spinster.
Instead, she looked like a young goddess in her fashionable brown traveling dress with a form-fitting bodice that showcased a truly magnificent bosom, and a draped overskirt with an honest-to-God bustle that accentuating her generous curves at waist and hip.
Jim hadn't been expecting the impact of her innocent-looking cornflower-blue eyes, or the mass of golden hair braided and coiled into a smooth bun with a halo of shining curls framing her pretty, heart-shaped face.