The WESTWARD Christmas BRIDES COLLECTION: 9 Historical Romances Answer the Call of the American West

by Wanda E. Brunstetter, Susan Page Davis, Melanie Dobson, Cathy Liggett, Vickie McDonough, Olivia Newport, Janet Spaeth, Jennifer Rogers Spinola

  He pulled the wagon to a stop next to the town square. “It’s not much yet, but we’re building a park here. We hope to have band concerts here next year. See the structure over there? That’s the basis of what’s going to be tiered seating.”

  It was charming. People walked along the street, and each one waved at them, some calling, “Hello!”

  “Folks are sure friendly here,” she said.

  “Hope is a great little town. Now, if we can only get someone to buy the mercantile!”

  He hopped off the wagon and came around to help her, but she was already on the planked sidewalk.

  Already she liked Hope. It wasn’t the Wild West at all, but it was lovely.

  “The machine part should be at the store,” Tom said.

  She followed him inside. It was dark and cool and packed from one end to the other with all kinds of things from candy to brooms to horseshoes.

  She went right to the ribbon reels as Tom inquired about his order. The thin white ribbon with tiny yellow flowers would be perfect for Annylee’s new dress, and she could tie a little bow of it in her satiny hair to match. She trailed a length of it between her fingers, trying to determine how much she should buy.

  They were the only customers in the store, and she heard a familiar voice.

  She froze, the ribbon dangling from her fingertips, forgotten. That voice. She knew it well enough—she’d heard it nearly every day since she was a child.

  She spun around. “Harrison?”

  He stood behind the counter, in his suit as always, and smiling uncertainly at her. “Hello, Suzette.”

  She could barely breathe as a maelstrom of emotions overtook her. Anger won.

  “You followed me here.”

  “I did, and—” He cleared his throat. “I did, and I didn’t.”

  Suzette sputtered. “This is terrible!”

  Immediately she felt awful. His face fell, simply collapsed, and he looked down.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  Regret flooded her soul. Her mother had taught her better than this. She had no right to hurt him.

  “I’m sorrier,” she murmured.

  “I’m sorriest.”

  She smiled at their old repartee. “Let’s start over. Harrison, it’s quite a surprise to see you here. What made you decide to come to Hope? Was it my parents? Did they put you up to this?”

  “No!” he said with a surprising vehemence. “I came of my own volition.”

  “Really?” She tilted her head and studied him. She’d never known him to do anything that hadn’t been squared away with either his parents or, in this case, hers. He grew in her estimation.

  “I bought this store.”

  She laughed. He must be teasing her. “You did not.”

  “I did.” He stood up straighter. “As of this morning, Carrifer’s Mercantile is mine. The money exchanged hands and the paperwork was signed.”

  “Paperwork?” she asked.

  “Of course there was paperwork. I’m a bookkeeper, remember?”

  Tom reached across the counter and shook Harrison’s hand. “Thank you. You have no idea what you’ve done for Hope. We were desperate, thinking that this store might be shuttered forever.”

  A man entered the store, and Tom said, “You have another customer. Why don’t you come out to our place for dinner tonight, and you can tell us the whole story? I know Winnie would be glad to see you, and you can meet Annylee, the most beautiful baby in the territory.”

  Harrison looked at Suzette quizzically. “What do you think?”

  Her world was still spinning from this recent turn of events, but she nodded. “Yes, come.”

  Tom drew him a quick map to their house, and as they left, he called over his shoulder, “If you find that part, bring it with you.”

  “I will. I’ll see you later.”

  The words were spoken to Tom, but the message in his pale blue eyes was for Suzette.

  In the apartment over the store, he knotted his tie yet again. How many times had he stood in front of a mirror and done this, yet now this action defeated him? It was sideways, it was uneven, it was crumpled.

  Tonight could change the course of his life. He mused over the events of the afternoon, trying to gauge Suzette’s reaction.

  Of course she was surprised to see him. He had run scenarios in his head again and again on the train the day before, practicing what he’d say and do when he saw her, but when the moment came and she looked at him with those brown eyes that could, he was sure, see into his soul, he had floundered. Every single smooth response took wing and flew out the window, leaving him standing across the counter from her, blithering and blathering.

  He frowned at his reflection. This tie was trouble. As he wrestled with it, he recalled the conversation with his parents the day before. They had been just as flabbergasted as she had been, and as much as his father had tried to poke holes in the plan, he hadn’t been able to.

  His mother, though, had taken a different approach. She’d asked him when she would see him again and he’d answered, “Christmas, maybe.”

  She hadn’t spoken after that, allowing Harrison’s father to bluster about the dangers of the Dakota Territory, the perils of investing in a business he hadn’t seen and had no experience in, and the risk of leaving all that was comfortable. The more he spoke, the more Harrison’s heart swelled with excitement.

  After Mr. Farrington’s speech had run its course, he’d departed to attend a meeting, leaving Harrison and his mother alone.

  She didn’t say anything for a moment. He had expected some tears from her, but instead an irrepressible smile flickered over her lips.

  Slowly she poured a fresh cup of tea, offered one to Harrison, was refused, and painstakingly stirred in a partial teaspoon of sugar.

  Still she didn’t speak. She just sat down and let the smile out until her entire face was wreathed with amusement.

  “Christmas, maybe?” she said at last. “How interesting.”

  He knew her too well. If he sat without saying a word, she would fill in the gaps. His father always said, “ ‘Nature abhors a vacuum,’ and so does your mother.”

  Sure enough, she’d begun to talk. “You may fool your father, but you’re not fooling me. I know you’re going because Suzette is there, and that’s a good thing. You need to speak your mind, my son. I’ve watched you two together, and I can feel something between you, but if you don’t tell her what’s in your heart, how is she to know? Is our Suzette a mind reader?”

  She had a good point, but he sat stock-still, not responding.

  She’d continued. “You know that we’ve always wanted you to find a good Christian woman, get married in a good Christian church, and raise good Christian babies. Of course, we’d hoped that the good Christian woman would be Suzette. And I think she is—she was raised well, and I’m sure her faith runs strong and true. The only thing more we could wish for you would be happiness and love. And I think you need to go and state your case.”

  Her eyes met his straight on. “Now, I do have a concern, and that’s your idea that you’ll stay out there, raising those good Christian babies, and I won’t see you again. Promise me you’ll come back for a visit.”

  He shook himself out of the memory and attended to his tie again. Every word his mother had spoken was true, and tonight was his first chance to make things right with Suzette.

  And it all started with a tie that was knotted correctly.

  He abandoned any pretense that the tie would lay flat. By the time he got there, he’d be disheveled anyway, thanks to the wind that rattled the window.

  As he put on his coat, he remembered something else he’d heard his mother say often: Never go empty-handed. Always bring a little something.

  He went down the stairs into the store and looked around. Pickles from the pickle barrel? A pair of new boots? A set of serving spoons?

  He grinned at the idea of him walking into Tom and Winnie’s house and offering any of t
hose. Then he remembered that the store also sold fresh pies made by a woman in town.

  He walked out of the store, a carefully wrapped apple pie in his hand, and stopped just as he was putting the key in the lock.

  Ah.

  A few minutes later, he had the apple pie—and the machine part Tom had ordered—tucked on the base of the wagon, and he headed out to meet his fate. To meet Suzette.

  Suzette swept the living room so furiously that at last Winnie said, “If you don’t stop, we won’t have anything between us and the ground!”

  She paused and leaned on the broom. “I just want it to be neat.”

  Winnie only smiled.

  The goose that Tom had gotten earlier in the afternoon was cooking nicely in the small oven, and the aroma filled the little house. She’d found some carrots in the garden, and with the spinach that had taken heart from the rain and greened up, they had a good meal ahead of them. Under Winnie’s tutelage, she’d made bread, too.

  All in all, it was going to be a lovely dinner.

  The creak of wagon wheels and the clop of a horse’s hooves told her that he was arriving. With one hand, she smoothed the front of her dress and patted her hair to make sure nothing had escaped the low bun at the back of her neck, while trying to give the floor one last swipe with the broom she held in the other. None of her efforts were successful. Her dress would not lay flat, her hair would not stay put, and the floor was hopeless.

  What did it matter? He was a friend. Only a friend.

  He came to the front of the house, and before he could knock, Tom threw open the door. “Welcome!”

  Harrison came into the house, and if he was surprised at the rather ramshackle surroundings, he didn’t show it.

  He smiled at them and shifted the packages he carried to shake Tom’s hand and greet Winnie. He turned to Suzette and said simply, “Hello.”

  Why was her heart beating so loudly that he must surely hear it?

  Annylee gurgled from the bassinette, and he crossed over to it. “Aren’t you the most beautiful baby in the world? Yes, you are! You’re so pretty, and, why, look at you! You’re smart, too! Where did you get those big blue eyes? Did you know that your uncle Harry really loves babies? He does! What a sweetie you are!”

  Winnie caught Suzette’s attention and mouthed, “Harry?”

  Suzette grinned at her and shrugged.

  Harrison continued to coo at Annylee, the two of them making baby sounds in a conversation that only they understood.

  Winnie said, “Sounds like somebody’s ready for fatherhood.”

  She glared at her friend and turned her attention to Harrison, who had now tucked the package he still carried under his arms. He had withdrawn the ends of his tie from inside his vest and was dangling them in front of Annylee, who obligingly wiggled her hands in delight and babbled happily.

  As she watched Harrison with the baby, she noticed the bottom of the package he held was wet and getting wetter. Something in it was spilling.

  Tom must have noticed it, too, because he asked, “Could I take that from you? It looks as if the contents are leaking.”

  He flushed and held it out. “It’s a pie. And,” he added hastily, “the part you ordered, Tom.”

  Tom took the bundle and turned to hand it to Suzette, but stopped, laughing. “Suzette, dear cousin, it’s probably time you let go of that.”

  She noticed with horror that she was still holding on to the broom, and she quickly popped into the bedroom to dispense with it. This was crazy, she told herself, to be acting like a little schoolgirl just because an old friend was visiting.

  Visiting? It was more than that. Of course it was.

  She lifted her head and returned to the living room. Harrison had seated himself in the rocking chair and was holding Annylee—and singing to her. Her downy head was cuddled in the nook of his arm, and her gaze was transfixed on him.

  The song was the same one Winnie sang, “Children of the Heavenly Father.”

  Suzette leaned against the doorway and said softly, when he’d finished the last verse and was humming, “She’s going to think that’s the only song in the world.”

  Harrison shook his head slightly, so as not to disturb the moment with Annylee. “She’ll have plenty of time to learn more. The world will introduce itself, song by song, and this bright little thing will know which is the best by what she hears from her mother.”

  “And from her uncle Harry,” Winnie added.

  “Yes, from her uncle Harry. I hope that’s all right with you. I mean, she’s not officially my niece.”

  “Yet.” Winnie beamed triumphantly, as if she had just put the universe to rights.

  He looked at Suzette and tilted his head. She swallowed hard to quell the funny thing going on in her stomach. He was—handsome. When did this happen?

  Oh, this was not good. Not at all. Not at all.

  Luckily, Winnie, who had hobbled over to check on the goose, pronounced it done, and they squeezed in together at the little table, which Winnie and Suzette had set with the best china—albeit somewhat pocked with chips and cracks. The bread, sliced and covered with a cloth, was tucked into a corner. The vegetables and the pie had been set beside the sink, and the goose, which Tom had taken out of the oven, was now on top of it.

  Her mother would have put an artfully arranged bouquet in the middle of the table, but there was simply no room for it.

  A ray of sunshine burst through the open curtain and bathed them in a golden glow.

  “Grace.” Tom spoke the word not as if it were a command, but as if it were a prayer of thankfulness itself.

  They reached out and took each other’s hands. With her left hand, she grasped Winnie’s prairie-worn fingers, calloused and cut from the last bout of gardening they’d done in an attempt to retrieve the edibles from the spiny wild thistle.

  Harrison held her right hand, his warm fingers twining into hers. Unlike Winnie’s, his hands weren’t coarsened with work but smooth and unlined.

  “Harrison, would you lead us in the prayer?” Tom asked, and they all bowed their heads.

  “Dearest Lord, our God, maker of all that we see and hear and breathe, we thank You for all the gifts You have given us. The food before us, we know You are the source. The friends and family around us, we know You are the source. The land outside us, the sky over us, the creatures that walk and fly and crawl beside us, we know You are the source. All are from You, and only You, and always You. We thank You. Amen.”

  Suzette lifted her eyes in amazement. “That was beautiful,” she said to him. “I had no idea you could … you were … I mean, the words!”

  “There is probably quite a bit you don’t know about me, Suzette,” he said, “and I about you.”

  The words she wanted to speak wandered in her mind, but before she could press them into sentences, Tom interrupted by passing the bread around the table.

  “I’d rather hoped,” Harrison said as he took a slice, “that you’d make that great flatbread you served in St. Paul.”

  “Flatbread? You mean lefse?” Winnie asked, referring to the Norwegian delicacy that many in the area ate.

  “No, not lefse. I’ve had that. This was thicker, and herbs of some kind were sprinkled on the top. It was absolutely scrumptious,” he answered.

  “It was absolutely a mistake, you mean,” Suzette said. “I’d left the yeast out of the dough and—”

  Winnie threw her head back and laughed, startling Annylee who cried out in protest. Suzette fled the table to pick up the baby and bring her to join them.

  “Mama showed me how to fix it, and that’s what we served,” she explained, hiding her face in Annylee’s sunlit hair to hide her embarrassment.

  “I don’t know about yeast,” Harrison said loyally, “and it may have been a mistake, but it was the tastiest mistake I’ve ever eaten … and I’ve eaten quite a few. If I had to live on my own bachelor cooking, I’d starve to death.”

  She smiled at him, grateful f
or his support.

  The meal was excellent—probably, she thought, because she’d had little to do with it other than setting the table, and they soon were digging into the pie Harrison had brought.

  After the meal, they pulled their chairs out into the yard, just past the front door, to enjoy the light breeze that had blown in. Tom put a blanket down for Annylee, and she occupied herself with watching a grasshopper that hopped lazily nearby.

  “This is so pleasant, sitting out here like this. For once the wind isn’t tearing my hair off,” Winnie said.

  Suzette closed her eyes. The early evening sun blazed over them like a blessing.

  “Tell us about why you moved out here,” Tom said to Harrison. “I’m rather surprised that you did. You never struck me as a frontier kind of fellow.”

  “I needed a change,” Harrison responded simply. “Soon enough, life will contract around me, and I won’t be able to explore my dreams. When Suzette announced her plans—and I have to say that she did so with undisguised glee—I had to reevaluate my own life.”

  Suzette sat up straight. “You weren’t happy?”

  He shrugged. “There’s happy, and there’s happy. I was comfortable, perhaps, but the thought of spending the rest of my life hunched over a ledger and never having seen the world beyond the small sphere of St. Paul, Minnesota, was a bit of an alarm. I knew that if I didn’t seize the chance now, I would never do it.”

  Tom nodded. “I understand. That’s basically what drew us out here. It’s the land. It gives a man the opportunity to see how far he can stretch his talents and interests and gifts, and try his hand at making a life that he can be proud of. It’s our chance at success.”

  “I wonder what ‘success’ is,” Harrison mused. “I’ve been thinking about that for some time. Is it prosperity? Financial wealth? A nice house, good clothes, and costly outings? Or is it more than that?”

  Suzette studied him as he spoke. She’d never heard him be so open.

  “It’s family, that’s what I think it is,” Winnie said, rescuing the grasshopper from Annylee’s chubby fist. “I look at this little girl and at Tom, and it doesn’t matter that our furniture is shabby and that the windows don’t quite keep out the weather. I have everything that makes me happy.”