His Innocent Bride (The Brides of Paradise Ranch (Spicy Version) Book 11)

by Merry Farmer

  “It’s Sunday.” She blinked as though the answer were obvious.

  “Yeah,” he nodded. “It’s sleeping late day.”

  Julia laughed, sending his blood pumping to all the right places. At least, until she said, “It’s church day. So get your lazy bones up out of bed, wash, and put on your Sunday best.”

  He spent about three seconds wondering if he should argue and tell her that he wasn’t much of a churchgoer before realizing the futility of that argument. With a grunt, he got out of bed and went over to the side table to pour water from the pitcher into his washbasin.

  Only it wasn’t his washbasin. It was a dainty, porcelain thing with cavorting rabbits painted on it.

  “What in the hell is this?” He held the pitcher up to Julia as she tied her robe and headed to the kitchen part of their space.

  Julia glanced over her shoulder with an innocent, questioning look, then burst into a laugh. “Bebe gave that to me. She said it came all the way from France, but that her sisters decided they didn’t like it, so she couldn’t have it.”

  Sam frowned at the pitcher. Never in his wildest imagination would he have thought he’d agree with Vivian and Melinda Bonneville on anything, but the pitcher and basin were vile.

  He washed up anyhow, grumbling to himself about rabbits and frills and curtains, then dressed in his nicest suit. It was uncomfortable, but worth it when Julia sighed and gushed over how handsome he looked. The breakfast of eggs, ham, and biscuits that she fixed for him made it easier to bear too. By the time the two of them walked into the church, looking as tame and respectable as anyone else in town, Sam was feeling full and satisfied and almost, but not quite, ready to pay attention to everything Rev. Pickering preached about.

  “Wasn’t that exciting?” Julia asked, clinging to his arm as they headed out of the church to join the rest of the town for the Sunday potluck. “‘Do not lay up for yourself treasures on earth’?”

  “I suppose,” Sam answered, baffled about how a Bible teaching could be called ‘exciting’.

  “Doesn’t it remind you of something?” Julia went on.

  “Uh, I think it’s supposed to mean that you shouldn’t put your faith in your possessions and the things of this world, but rather you should put your faith in God,” he said.

  “No, silly.” Julia swatted his arm, smiling in the sunlight. “It reminds me of the loot hidden in the saloon.”

  Sam paused before they reached the edge of the tent where the potluck was set up and the congregation was gathering. “Is that what you were thinking about during the sermon?”

  She sent him a guilty grin. “How could I think about anything else? Aren’t you the least bit curious about what the loot could be or where it’s hidden?” She gasped. “I bet it’s not really bank notes. I bet it’s gold doubloons.”

  “Doubloons?” Sam arched a brow. “Honey, it was a train robbery, not a pirate attack.”

  “Or maybe it was a bank robbery,” she countered.

  Sam rested his weight on one leg. “The other day you were certain it was a train robbery.”

  “Well, we won’t know until we find the loot, will we?” Her eyes gleamed with eagerness, and she practically hovered by his side as if waiting for him to take some kind of action.

  “I’m still not convinced there’s anything to find,” Sam said, in spite of the fact that his insides were starting to hum with the same expectation that encompassed her. “I caught Trey just before he left on his honeymoon, and he hadn’t heard of a single train robbery in the area. The only bank robbery he knows of recently was down near Evanston.”

  “Maybe there’s one he hasn’t heard of yet?”

  Sam shook his head. “We won’t know either way until he gets back from Denver.”

  That didn’t seem to be a good enough answer for Julia. She continued to stand there, clutching his arms, all but bouncing on the tips of her toes. Not even the delicious scents of fried chicken or fresh-baked bread wafting out of the potluck tent distracted her.

  Finally, Sam gave up. “Would you like to go home and search for the loot instead of—”

  “Yes!” She cut him off, breaking into a giggle. More than that, she tightened her grip on his arm and dragged him away from the tent. “We should hurry before someone else finds it,” she said.

  Sam managed a brief wave to Rev. Pickering, who appeared to be on his way over to say hello to them, before being forced onto the path leading away from the church and back into the heart of town.

  “Sweetheart, if no one has found the loot so far, I don’t think we’re in danger of anyone getting to it before we do.”

  “So you admit that there’s probably a whole hoard of stolen gold or jewels hidden in the saloon?” she asked.

  Sam’s brow went up. “We’re on to jewels now?”

  “Tons of them,” Julia said, breathless. “I bet there are rubies and sapphires and emeralds and pearls too.”

  Sam snorted. “The only pearl that’s been in my saloon is Miss Pearl Pettigrew from Bonnie’s place, and she’s turned over a new leaf now. She only entertains an elite clientele.”

  “Then maybe she could help us search,” Julia suggested.

  He could only shake his head as she dragged him home. At least his new wife wasn’t shocked or appalled by the company he kept. Too many young women would have fainted at the mere sight of Bonnie’s girls, let alone been kind to them. A few had come by the saloon to drum up business Friday and Saturday night, but rather than shriek in horror, Julia had introduced herself and treated them like guests at a tea party. In fact, Sam wasn’t entirely certain the girls hadn’t all planned a genuine tea party to take place on his premises in the near future.

  Well, at least Bonnie would like that, what with the way she was trying to reform so many of the girls. Rumor had it that she had even put her head together with Theophilus Gunn and Elspeth Strong to send some of the girls over to England to start new lives. And good for them, as far as he was concerned. Maybe a new life in a new country an ocean away was just what some of those poor, unfortunate girls needed. Why, he might just look into whether he could help out, sponsor a girl or something. Julia would like that.

  “Hey, what do you think of—”

  “We’re home!” Julia shouted as they stepped up onto the boardwalk in front of the saloon. “You get the crowbar, I’ll find a hammer.”

  Sam paled at the command, visions of his saloon in pieces swimming before his eyes. He forgot about sponsoring one of Bonnie’s girls entirely as Julia pulled him through the saloon’s front doors.

  “Now. I doubt that the loot is hidden in our living quarters,” Julia said as soon as they changed out of their Sunday best. She had procured tools for them from one of the store rooms, and they stood together in the empty main room of the saloon. Sam thanked God he kept the place closed on Sundays, as Howard had requested. “There would be no opportunity for a robber to sneak back there with you living here.”

  “I’m not sure there would be much chance for a robber to sneak anywhere in here without someone noticing,” Sam said.

  Julia shook her head and waved one hand as though that didn’t matter. “And I don’t think he could have hid anything in this main room, since there are almost always people in here. So the loot must be upstairs in one of the guest rooms. We’ll start there.”

  She whirled around, crowbar in hand, and marched to the stairs.

  “Hold on a second there.” Sam jogged to catch up with her. He carried a sledgehammer, even though he had no intention of using it. “You can’t just go barging into all the guest rooms, ripping up floorboards and things.”

  She turned to him as she started up the stairs. “Why not?”

  Sam sputtered, no idea how to answer. “There might still be guests up there, for one.”

  “Oh, I checked before we went to church,” she laughed. “They’ve all gone. Although speaking of that, you might want to have someone give all of the sheets and towels that guests use a th
orough washing before I redecorate these rooms.” They’d reached the top of the stairs, and she waved casually toward the open door of the first room.

  “Redecorate?” Sam’s voice cracked on the word. He shook his head and followed as Julia continued down the hall.

  “Yes. Each of these rooms needs a thorough cleaning along with new linens and washbasins.” She paused and gasped, turning back to him. “Maybe I can ask Bebe about sending away for more of those charming washbasins, like the one she gave me.”

  “Good Lord,” Sam muttered.

  Julia continued down the hall. “Anyhow, I’m sure that the loot is in the room where we found the note, and that we’ll discover it in no time.”

  If only she had been right. Unfortunately, she wasn’t, and Sam was forced to spend the next half hour not only picking through the pieces of the shattered bureau where the note was found—which still hadn’t been dragged downstairs and broken up for kindling—but he had to watch as Julia jammed her crowbar into the floor boards and started prying them up.

  “This is harder than it looks,” she said with a grunt, pulling back on the wedged crowbar until her face turned a tantalizing shade of pink.

  It turned a similar shade when she was exerting herself in other ways. Her eyes shone with the same sort of delight during those other activities too. In fact, standing back and watching his intrepid young wife, Sam found himself humming with the desire to scoop her into his arms, lay her across the room’s narrow bed, and get all sweaty in the good way with her.

  She stopped tugging at the crowbar and glanced up at him, panting. “You could help instead of just standing there with that wolfish look on your face.”

  Sam’s mouth twitched into a grin. “I was just admiring the scene.”

  Julia raised one eyebrow and grinned in a way that was so wicked, his trousers suddenly felt tight. “Don’t you think I don’t know what that look means,” she said, making the sensation even worse. “I know that you—oh!”

  She stopped suddenly, bending to the board she’d pried halfway out of its place in the floor. A ripple of anticipation hit Sam before he could think better of it, and he crouched to see what she had found. Julia reached into the crack she’d created in the floor…and drew out a nickel.

  “Well, that’s some treasure,” Sam told her with a sly grin.

  Julia pressed her lips together in a teasing smile and met his eyes over the nickel as she held it up. “Very funny. But this just proves that there could be something down there.”

  “Does it?” He grinned, more interested in the treasure squatting in front of him than anything that could be hidden in his saloon.

  Julia slipped the coin into the pocket of her apron. “It does. Now help me lift this board up all the way.”

  Sam did as he was told, fool though it made him. They pulled up more than one board to see what might be hidden underneath. There was no treasure stuffed in a flour sack, but they did manage to find three more coins, half of an old button, and a chewed cigar stub. Any hope that Sam had for Julia to get bored and give up the search after that was squashed by her boundless enthusiasm.

  “We’ll check the next room over,” she declared when it was certain no loot would be found in the room where they stood.

  “I don’t think you’ll find anything,” Sam warned her.

  Julia merely shrugged. “If we don’t, we’ll just move on to the next room. The loot must be here somewhere.”

  But all they found in the next room over was two pennies, a dirty shirt-collar, and an earring that Sam was fairly certain belonged to one of Bonnie’s girls. The room down the hall from that was home to another coin, two more buttons, and a pile of toenail clippings in one corner that nearly caused him to lose his lunch.

  “We’re definitely hiring someone to clean these rooms on a regular basis,” he declared, hoarse and nauseated, as they left the room.

  “I could do it,” Julia insisted. “I worked cleaning houses for a while to earn extra money a few years ago.”

  “You did?” Sam sent her an odd look as they headed down into the main part of the saloon. After searching all of the rooms on one side, they’d decided a cool drink and a snack was in order.

  “Mmm hmm,” Julia went on with a smile. “My Cousin Alonso lost his job as a delivery boy after he was hit by a trolley car. He lost his leg too. The whole family chipped in to pay the surgeon who sawed it off, and to buy him a wooden leg. You should have seen the look on his face when we presented that leg to him, wrapped up like a Christmas present.”

  Sam froze at the bottom of the stairs, jaw dropped, no idea what to say or whether Cousin Alonso would have reacted with joy or horror at what his family had done. He let Julia walk in front of him as he shook his head.

  “Alonso never did get very good at walking with that wooden leg, though,” she went on. “You could say it was a blessing in disguise when that carriage ran over him and he had to have the other one taken off too. He’s much happier in that fancy chair with wheels the driver of the carriage bought for him.”

  Sam was spared the trouble of having to figure out how in the hell he was supposed to respond to that story by a sharp knock at the saloon door. Still shaking his head, he strode across the room to answer it while Julia walked behind the bar.

  “Oh, good. You’re here,” Hubert greeted Sam as he opened the door. The young man’s eyes were round and anxious, and before Sam could ask if anything was wrong, he pushed into the saloon, sweeping Bebe in behind him.

  “I think Papa’s suspicious,” Bebe announced before saying a proper, “Hello, Mr. Standish.”

  “What happened?” Julia asked. She had just set two glasses on the bar and turned to fetch two more. Sam headed back to the bar, curious as to whether his lovely bride would pour them all a whiskey.

  As Bebe started in with, “I told Papa that I was having tea with you at The Cattleman this afternoon, but I think he saw me leave church with Hubert,” Julia scanned the bottles behind the bar.

  She picked a tall bottle of sarsaparilla, pulled the cork out, and poured four glasses, saying, “That’s terrible. What do you suppose he would have done if he’d caught you?”

  “Bundled me off home,” Bebe answered with a grave expression. “And probably locked me in my room until I swore never to see Hubert again.”

  “And we can’t have that,” Hubert said, his gaze locked on Bebe, his smile proud and moony.

  “So I told Hubert we should come here for a while,” Bebe went on. “You know, since you offered to give us sanctuary.”

  “Now hold on a second there,” Sam said, reaching the bar and holding out a hand. He intended to use the gesture to scold or warn the young couple, but Julia thrust a glass of sarsaparilla into it. Sam blinked and stared at the glass, losing his train of thought.

  “This is perfect,” Julia said, taking a sip of her drink. “Sam and I were just about to take a break from searching for the robber’s loot upstairs. We need to, uh, go in the back and freshen up a little. The two of you can stay out here as long as you want. Isn’t that right, Sam?”

  “Now, I never said that—”

  “Thank you so much, Mr. Standish,” Bebe said before Sam could get his bit in. She took Hubert’s hand and gazed lovingly into his eyes. “Hubert and I don’t know what we would do without you.”

  Sam let out a breath, his shoulders sagging. Whether it was defeat or something softer or more tender inside of him, he didn’t have the will to protest anymore. He could only shake his head at himself as he followed Julia’s not-so-subtle promptings to leave the young love birds to their own devices.

  “Just don’t go getting yourselves in trouble,” he charged Hubert and Bebe as he reached the doorway to the hall. “Don’t—”

  He didn’t get a chance to tell them what else not to do. Julia grabbed hold of his free hand and tugged him into the dark hallway, sloshing sarsaparilla out of his glass and over his hand in the process.

  “Aren’t they just delight
ful,” Julia sighed as they made their way back to their living quarters.

  “Yeah, swell,” Sam grumbled. He shifted his glass to his other hand and shook drops of sarsaparilla from his right hand.

  “I do so hope that Hubert becomes a rich and famous entrepreneur so that he and Bebe can be together, no matter what her father says.”

  “Just don’t hold your breath. Rex Bonneville is as wily as a fox. If he doesn’t like someone, it doesn’t matter how much money they have.”

  They reached their quarters, and Sam headed straight to the sink, setting his glass down and rinsing his sticky hand under the pump.

  “He can’t really be that horrible, can he?” Julia followed him to the sink, her eyes alight with more than just idle curiosity about his friends.

  It dawned on Sam that he should ask what had her grinning like a cat about to pounce on a mouse, but instead he started in with, “He really is. The man just can’t stand the fact that Howard got the jump on him and bought up more land around here than he did, raises more cattle than he does, and—”

  He didn’t get a chance to finish. Julia all but leapt on him, throwing her arms around his neck and pulling his head down so that she could plant a deep, wet kiss on his mouth.

  Chapter 8

  She’d been wanting to kiss him ever since she caught him watching her upstairs with that look in his eyes. A look like that did things to a woman, made her feel like doing naughty things. Which probably explained why more than one of her cousins had skipped happily down a dangerous path.

  “Uh, sweetheart,” Sam managed to mumble around her fervent kisses.

  Julia grinned, moving her arms to circle around her husband’s back and pressing herself against him. “You don’t really want to talk right now, do you?” she said with a sultry hum in her voice.

  “No, ma’am.” Sam surged into her, wrapping his arms around her and slanting his mouth over hers.

  Julia giggled at the heated sensation of his hand reaching for her backside and lifting her up to her toes and against the evidence of the effect she had on him. That side of married life had been a delightful revelation to her. She loved how readily and physically Sam responded to her. She was beginning to learn what sort of things, what sort of touches he liked too, and she slipped one hand down below his waist to cradle the firm muscle of his backside.