by Merry Farmer
Although in the light of day, with her wedding to Rex mere hours away, it didn’t seem like such a done deal. Rex could bankrupt her. He could steal the Place right out from under her. He could send her girls back into the sort of lives they had worked so earnestly to get out of. Or could he? After all, he could turn them out on the street, but he couldn’t turn their hearts away from the earnest desire to make a better life for themselves. What if—
Her trembling thought was cut short as her bedroom door banged open and Pearl rushed into her room. “Bonnie! Bonnie, you have to come quick!”
Bonnie started to lift herself groggily from her bed, peeling back her blankets, Pearl all but pounced on her, yanking her out from the covers and to her feet. Bonnie almost spilled to the floor with the force of Pearl’s tugging. “What? What is it?”
“It’s Rev. Pickering.” Pearl couldn’t keep still. Her eyes were wide with terror and her cheeks flushed.
“George?” As fast as she could, Bonnie shook the last of her lethargy away. “What’s wrong?”
Pearl wrung her hands and bit her lip. She was never this upset about anyone or anything. It was almost comical. “He went out to Paradise Ranch before dawn this morning. Mrs. Corva Haskell started to have her baby, and we all know it’s much too soon.”
Bonnie gasped as she pulled clean clothes from her wardrobe. It had been a surprise when Corva announced she was pregnant again so soon after giving birth to her and Franklin’s son, Howard Franklin Haskell, but everyone had been overjoyed. A quick count in Bonnie’s head told her there was no way a baby born so early as this one was trying to be born could survive.
“Does he need help?” she asked as Pearl helped her get dress.
“It’s not that,” Pearl went on, still in a tizzy. “While he was out there, one of the horses kicked him.”
“What?” Bonnie twisted to face Pearl, who had just finished with the buttons at the back of her dress. “Is he all right?”
“I don’t know,” Pearl squeaked. “One of Howard’s ranch hands rode in to fetch you. He said Rev. Pickering is pretty bad off, but he was asking for you.”
“For me?” Of all the people George could want by his side when he was in trouble, she would never have considered herself at the top of the list. They’d been through so much together, though, and in spite of the strain between them now, she considered him one of her closest friends. “I need to get out there.”
She darted out of the room, Pearl hot on her heels.
“Howard’s man said he could take you, if you don’t mind riding in the saddle with him.”
“Not at all,” Bonnie answered. She’d ridden in less comfortable circumstances before.
Luke Chance was waiting in the foyer at the bottom of the stairs. He was once one of the Place’s most frequent and beloved visitors—beloved mostly because he just wanted to spend time with the girls, fully clothed. He twirled his hat in his hands now, looking awkward and uncertain.
“Are you ready, Miss Bonnie?” he asked, not quite able to meet her eyes.
George’s situation must have been dire indeed if Luke couldn’t even make eye-contact with her. “I’m ready.” She grabbed her cloak from the hook by the door and rushed outside.
Luke’s horse was saddled and ready to go right out in front of the Place. He climbed on, then helped Bonnie up in front of him. She’d gone from half-asleep, lazy, and miserable to on high alert and anxious to get going so fast she hadn’t had time to think about things. Now, with the train pulling into the station at the other end of Main Street, her heart sank all over again. Rupert would be gone within a matter of minutes. She spared one glance down the street toward the station, but was unable to tell if he was on the platform.
A moment later, Luke had wheeled his horse around and began to gallop as fast as he could with her slung across his lap. Bonnie pulled her cloak tighter around her shoulders and hunkered down for the ride out to Paradise Ranch. At a sedate pace, it took just under an hour to get there. Galloping, Luke was able to make the journey in half that time. Bonnie was still sore and impatient by the time they passed under the archway with “Paradise Ranch” worked in iron and on to Howard’s section of the property.
Luke pulled his horse to a stop on the central lawn between the cluster of houses and buildings that made up the heart of Paradise Ranch. Howard’s house loomed largest—aside from the barn. A few lights were on in the windows downstairs. Across the yard nearer to the paddock, several of Howard’s ranch hands were already at work. They glanced up with idle curiosity as Luke helped Bonnie to the ground.
“He’s, uh, in there.”
Luke pointed to a small cabin somewhat separate from the other buildings. It was known as the “Hen House” and had been built by Howard as a place where newly married ranch hands could live with their mail-order brides until their permanent house was constructed. A ribbon of smoke rose from the chimney and light could be seen in the windows.
“Thank you.” Bonnie gave Luke a quick nod and hurried toward the Hen House’s front door.
She stopped cold a few yards away when she heard banging from the other side of the door.
“What is the meaning of this?” Rupert’s muffled voice shouted. “You can’t just drag me out here, I’ll miss my train. Bonnie isn’t even here!”
“Oh, no.” Bonnie took a step backwards, all of her fear transforming into anger so fast she thought she might burst. “Oh, no, you didn’t!”
A second later, Rupert’s face appeared in the window beside the front door. “Bonnie?” Her name was barely audible through the glass.
Bonnie whipped around, turning a sharp glare on Luke Chance. How had he gotten involved in this? She wasn’t at all surprised to find George and Lucy Faraday sneaking out of their hiding place around the side of the Hen House.
“You didn’t!” Bonnie shouted at them. “I was afraid you were hurt or worse!” she shouted at George in particular.
“Now, Bonnie, we’re doing this for your own good.” George approached her with his hands raised. “We can’t let you walk away from something that you not only want, but that is good for you and right in the eyes of the Lord.”
“You keep the Lord out of this!” She marched up to him, finger pointed, eyes blazing. “This is a low-down trick, and I won’t stand for it.”
“But the two of you are in love,” Lucy argued. “And Rex is a giant horse’s behind who will go back on whatever foolish deal the two of you struck, no matter what promises he made.”
Bonnie’s retort died on her lips. Lucy had a point. But it wasn’t enough to forgive this dirty trick. “I need to get back to town.” She whipped around and marched toward Luke’s horse.
“No you don’t.” George rushed up behind her and scooped her off her feet.
Bonnie shrieked. “Put me down! Put me down right now!”
She kicked and flailed, but George was a lot stronger than he looked. He clamped his arms around her like a vise and marched her up to the door of the Hen House. Lucy and Luke had run ahead, and a few of the other ranch hands had left what they were doing to join them.
On the other side of the window, Rupert shouted, “What are you doing with her? Put her down!”
His muffled protest did nothing, though, and in the end might have hurt his one chance of foiling whatever plan Bonnie’s friends had hatched. Lucy quickly unlocked the door, but Rupert wasn’t close enough to make a break for it. He reached the door just as George did. George thrust Bonnie into Rupert’s arms. Rupert caught her as best he could, the two of them stumbling back. Before Bonnie could struggle out of his arms and get her feet on the ground, the front door slammed shut, and the lock clicked with an ominous finality.
“How dare you?” Bonnie shouted. She threw herself at the door, trying the handle, then banging on it when it didn’t budge. “Let us out of here this second.”
“You can’t hold two people prisoner against their will,” Rupert yelled as he moved to the window.
; Bonnie jumped away from the door to his side, gripping the windowsill. “We can pry it open and climb out the window.”
Rupert shook his head. “They’ve nailed all the windows shut from the outside.”
“What?” Bonnie’s voice rose an octave. She turned and banged on the window a few times, hesitating only when the image of shattered glass and her hands a bloody mess came to her mind. “Let us out!”
George, Lucy, and Luke stood in the yard outside the Hen House along with a few of the ranch hands. Lucy looked as though she was giving them orders, but they stood too far away to hear.
“I swear, I’m gonna murder someone once we get out of here,” Bonnie growled.
“I’ll be right there with you,” Rupert seconded.
They stood shoulder to shoulder, glaring at their captors.
“I think Trey might want to hear about you people kidnapping us,” Bonnie shouted through the window.
The pow-wow on the yard broke up, and George and Lucy stepped forward. “There is no good reason why the two of you shouldn’t be together,” George called out.
“It’s none of your business,” Rupert shouted back.
“It’s all of our business,” Lucy argued. “You’re our friends.”
Bonnie send a sideways look to Rupert. They were her friends. She’d gotten him into this mess.
“Forget Bonneville,” George went on. “I can speak to him.”
“He won’t listen,” Bonnie sighed, knowing there was no way anyone outside could hear her.
“Bonneville can go stick a pin in his eye!” Lucy shouted. “I have had enough of that man’s bullying and posturing. I won’t let you chain yourself to him forever, not when you belong with Rupert.”
“I won’t let him hurt your girls,” George added. “But if they’re really what’s most important here, why not set a good example and show them what a real marriage should be?”
Bonnie’s chest constricted at the thought. Another good point. Her girls all loved Rupert. She’d heard more than a few sighing over the fact that he was just the kind of man they hoped to meet someday. Surely that had to carry some weight?
“And besides all that,” Lucy continued, “Papa has offered Rupert a spectacular deal for building houses in Haskell. That should be plenty of money for the two of you to get married and live happily ever after.”
Rupert hmphed. It almost sounded like a laugh. Bonnie arched a brow and glanced sideways at him.
“I knew that deal was too good to be straightforward,” he said, rubbing his face.
“You’re just figuring that out now?” Bonnie’s lips twitched, tempted to grin.
“No,” he admitted, letting his arms drop. “It was pretty obvious, actually. Although for what Howard wants me to do, it’s not completely unheard of.” He shrugged.
“So you’re going to take the deal?” She angled her shoulders more to face him than the window.
“I have to ask Skipper,” Rupert admitted. “Although I can’t see him saying no.”
“See!” Lucy hollered on the other side of the window. “Like that! Talk to each other. Tell each other how much you love each other and can’t live apart.”
Bonnie smirked and crossed her arms. “She has no idea what we’re talking about in here, does she?”
“Not a clue.” Rupert crossed his arms as well, leaning against the window frame. “You’ve got yourself a bunch of half-crazy friends, you know.”
Bonnie laughed. “These are the tame ones.”
“Heaven help us all.”
“We’re going to leave you two in there until you talk things through and come up with a better solution than marrying Bonneville,” George called. “We’re sure you’ll be able to figure out how to break free once you’ve thought of a plan to be together.”
“What, like this one?” Rupert teased.
“What kind of idiot locks two people in a house together to force them to change their minds about their lives?” Bonnie shook her head.
“So…so we’ll just leave you to it now,” Lucy finished. She and George exchanged uncertain looks, shrugged, continued to look uncomfortable, then finally waved and walked away.
Bonnie watched them until they rounded the corner of the house and disappeared. Then she sighed and pushed away from the window. “Well, this isn’t how I imagined today going.”
Rupert huffed a laugh. “Me neither. I’ve missed another train back to Everland.”
“Are you really in such an all-fired hurry to get back?” She faced him with more curiosity than hurt, although the hurt was definitely there.
Rupert rubbed the back of his neck, walking deeper into the room. “Can you blame me?” He ambled over to the small dining table, tapping the surface, not meeting her eyes. “It’s hard enough knowing you’re going to marry someone else, but sticking around to watch?” He shook his head.
“You know my reasons.” She crossed the room slowly to stand by him.
“I do.” He nodded, then looked up at her. “I know your priorities too.”
“But you wish that you were one of them.”
He looked away, face pinched with the unique pride of a man who couldn’t quite admit his feelings were hurt. “What would you expect?”
“Nothing less.” She rested her hand over top of his on the table. “But Rupert, you’ve always been my priority.”
His eyes widened in surprise. “Really? You could have fooled me.” Hints of the old anger between the two of them surfaced.
Bonnie let out a breath and traced a circle on the back of his hand. “What would have happened to us all those years ago if I hadn’t left?”
“We would have loved each other and made a life together, had kids and settled down,” he answered, a little too fast.
She arched a brow. “Really? That’s what would have happened?”
He let out a breath, his shoulders dropping with it. “We would have fought and starved and ended up in a worse situation than we did.”
“You’re getting closer.” She turned and leaned her backside against the edge of the table, crossing her arms. “Do you remember how you put more and more of the burden of feeding and clothing us on my shoulders while you chased those dreams of your claim?”
He shuffled in his spot for a moment, rubbing the back of his neck again. “Turns out I really didn’t have a leg to stand on with the McGovern boys. I’d dug my way onto their claim, and that’s where the bulk of the silver was.”
Bonnie nodded. “You would have died trying to prove that was your silver if I hadn’t left.”
He frowned. “How do you figure?”
“Because my leaving meant you had to spend more energy putting food in your mouth than fighting. If you hadn’t had to think of something else to survive, you would have fought to the death.”
Rupert’s brow went up. “Is that why you left me?”
Unexpected tears stung her eyes. She nodded. “I couldn’t let you die, Rupert. I loved you too much. But I was hurting you by staying. I was taking care of you too much, to the point where you wouldn’t take care of yourself.”
“Bonnie.” He reached out and pulled her into his arms, hugging her tight. “I never thought of it that way. That must have been a hard decision.”
“You have no idea,” she sniffled. She wrapped her arms around his waist and rested her head against his shoulder. “Harder than deciding I have to marry Bonneville.”
“Do you?” There was a note of tremulous curiosity in his voice. “I mean, it’s not like deciding you had to sell yourself in order not to starve to death.”
“Isn’t it?” she replied, her words heavy.
“No, it’s not.” He held her at arm’s length, forcing her to look up at him. “Because this time it’s not about living or dying. It’s not about starving or going mad or hanging onto something that was never ours to begin with. This time we have money. We both do. This time we have friends who are willing to help us.” His lips twitched. “Even if they are plumb c
razy.”
Bonnie relaxed into a sniffling laugh. “Yeah. I guess so.”
“All right.” Rupert let go of her completely and stood facing her, arms crossed. “So let’s do what your crazy friends want us to do. Let’s talk this through.”
“How?” She threw her arms to the sides. “There’s no room to wiggle in this situation. Rex more or less finances my efforts with the girls, whether he knows it or not. Even if he didn’t, he holds the deed to the Place and could toss us all out on the street at a moment’s notice. Where else are we going to be able to set up shop?”
“Ah!” Rupert brightened. “That’s it. That’s the question right there.”
“What is?”
“If you lost the Place, where would you set up shop?”
Bonnie blinked. It couldn’t really be that easy, could it? But no, there was nothing easy about setting up a house of ill repute in a town that strove constantly to make itself as respectable and attractive to new businesses and residents as possible.
“People in Haskell aren’t going to let us just move across the street and start entertaining in the saloon,” she argued.
“Are you sure about that? Sam might be open to the idea,” Rupert argued.
Bonnie shook her head. “He’s already said no. He says prostitutes in saloons invite the kind of customers he doesn’t want to attract. I agree with him too. Those aren’t the sort of customers my girls want either.”
“You let them be choosy, I understand.” Rupert nodded, rubbing his chin.
“There’s harlots and there’s harlots,” Bonnie explained.
Rupert chuckled. “Sadly, I actually know what you mean by that. And I admire the fact that you let your girls be…the former? The latter?”
“My girls can be whatever they want to be,” Bonnie told him, using a little more energy than she’d intended. “That’s the point. I didn’t have that choice.”
“And I’m sorry for it,” he answered, barely above a whisper. His gaze met hers, regret filling his eyes. “Bonnie, I’m so, so sorry for it.”