She did, however, try her best. “You must have some of it,” she urged with her most winning smile. “Please do.”
Her offer did not have the desired result. Everett only put his hands on his hips. “Do I not suit you?” he demanded roughly.
“What?”
“I’ve just said I won’t marry you. You traveled hundreds of miles to hear me say it.” Appearing markedly confounded, he shook his head. “And now all you want to talk about is cookies?”
Oh. Nellie blinked. “I’m sorry, Everett,” she told him cheerfully. “I thought you’d already guessed. I don’t want a wedding, either! And I certainly can’t promise to marry you.” She chuckled. “That was never my intention at all.”
He seemed put out. “It wasn’t?”
“Well, I did intend to proceed a bit further with the engagement shenanigans and all the wedding to-dos before saying this,” Nellie declared, “but frankly, your not wanting to be married comes as something of a relief to me! I was concerned about hurting your feelings with my not wanting to be married. But since you’re being so straightforward, I think I can be, too.” She examined the rapidly emptying depot platform around them, then looked up at him. “I’ll tell you all about it on the way to your ranch, Everett. I accept your offer to stay.”
Chapter Three
Never in a thousand springtimes had Everett expected to find himself driving along the rutted road between the town of Morrow Creek and his hacienda with a fetching woman by his side. Not today. Not ever. He’d thought that Miss Abbey O’Neill’s desertion had stolen that possibility from him forever. He’d thought she’d made him give up. Forever. But now, today…
Now, Everett had a new beginning to look forward to.
At least it felt that way. Despite Miss Trent’s much-too-nonchalant acceptance of his refusal to marry her, Everett felt things were different somehow. Things were different inside him.
I don’t want a wedding, either! he recalled her saying an instant later. And I certainly can’t promise to marry you.
Well, there was that to contend with. Nellie didn’t want him—at least not for a husband. But Everett reckoned he might be able to change her mind. He could be damn persuasive when he wanted to be. However contrarily, right now he wanted to be.
He wanted to persuade Nellie to smile at him. He wanted to hear her say his name, to feel her touch his arm again, to watch her crinkle her nose in amusement when she
teased him.
Everett didn’t know how it had happened, but he was smitten. If he’d guessed right, Nellie was smitten, too.
Why else would she have accepted his offer of lodgings?
Gratified, Everett returned his attention to the road, his team’s tracings held lightly in his hands. Beside him, Nellie jounced on the hard plank seat with her skirts spread around her, gazing with interest at the landscape they passed. Her curiosity entranced him; her evident appreciation of the sometimes hardscrabble territory he lived in made him feel that perhaps—if he was lucky—they had something in common.
“I thought springtime would never come,” Everett surprised himself by admitting. “Around here, it’s been…bleak lately.”
“Really?” With her usual high-spiritedness, Nellie looked around. “I can’t believe it’s ever less than beautiful here. The hills, the grass, all the trees with their tiny, green, newly unfurling leaves, all those wildflowers…they’re stunning!”
“They’re temporary,” he felt compelled to say. He set his jaw in a harsh line. “Eventually the grass will wither. Those leaves will turn brown. The wildflowers will die away.”
“All the more reason to enjoy them now! Oh! Listen.”
At her urging, he did, prompted by the cute way Nellie cupped her ear. Birdsong floated to him, barely audible above the wagon’s creaking and the clomping of his horses’ hooves, carried on the same breeze that had threatened his hat earlier.
Nellie sighed. “I certainly don’t hear that at home.”
“At home? In San Francisco?” Reminded of the life she’d left behind to come here, Everett glanced at her perky profile. She nodded, making him worry anew. “Do you like it there?”
“Of course! It’s a very exciting place to live.”
Exciting. Everett acknowledged that with a grumble.
Undoubtedly, he reasoned unhappily, Nellie already missed the highfalutin life she’d carried on in the city. She probably viewed her time in the territory as a lark. She probably considered him a yokel who wasn’t worth marrying. After all, she’d already looked askance at his homespun clothing.
Frowning at his britches, Everett shifted in his seat. If he wanted to impress Nellie Trent, it occurred to him, he would have to be more like the men who appealed to her—the men who appealed to all women: citified men. Men who wore suits.
Men like Astair Prestell, who were cultured and erudite.
Everett was neither of those things. He was…ordinary. He read newspapers, not literature. He didn’t know any sonnets. He could not have identified a fine wine or doled out a gossipy tidbit to save his skin. Although he was clean and neat and possessed a strong, healthy body, he did not normally adorn that body with any of the concoctions urbane people favored.
He didn’t own a drop of cologne. He didn’t gussy up his hair with shiny pomade. In fact, for the first time in his recollection, Everett had cause to regret the slapdash way he’d combed his hair that very morning. And his shaving job…Stealthily he raised his hand to his jaw to gauge the effects of his typically casual appointment with his straight razor.
Hellfire. The stubble there could have kindled a fire.
He had to do something to remedy that. Straightaway.
“So you’re probably wondering why I registered with a mail-order marriage bureau and came all this way,” Nellie said, “only to reveal that I don’t intend to get married at all.”
Everett had been wondering about little else since she’d announced her nonintention to marry him. Miraculously, given this chance now to find out more, he managed not to leap on it with both big, booted feet. He held his response to a brief nod.
It damn well nearly killed him.
“The truth is, Everett, that I’m not an ordinary woman.”
He couldn’t help nodding. “I could have told you that.”
He sweetened his statement with a mischievous sidelong glance, caught Nellie blushing, and found himself surprised by that. She didn’t seem the timid, tittering, rosy-cheeked kind of woman he was used to. She seemed different. He liked that.
“Well. Thank you.” Nellie clasped her hands in her lap, her posture graceful and her demeanor refreshingly direct. He liked that, too. She inhaled deeply—and affectingly. “I will assume, of course, that you meant that in a complimentary manner.”
How else could he have meant it? “Of course I did.”
“Good. Anyway, as I was saying, I’m not an ordinary woman. I’m…” Here, Nellie faltered. She cast him a helpless glance.
Hmm. The more she hesitated, the more Everett rethought his original assessment of her candor. It seemed such a natural part of her, as inherent as her freckles or the curve of her waist. Yet there were those odd moments—like when she’d tried to forcibly feed him her cookie, claiming she couldn’t possibly finish one of Edina’s wee bizcochitos—that made Everett wonder if Nellie Trent was truly the woman she appeared to be.
Then, finally, Nellie rallied. “I’m a journalist!”
“A journalist?” Everett experienced a sinking sensation. He gripped the weathered leather tracings harder, his mind filled with the disheartening realization that—most likely—a female journalist would doubly insist on having a sophisticated man.
But he was Everett Bannon, damn it! He would not go down without a fight. He liked Nellie. She liked him. They could—
> “Yes. But only for the ladies’ society pages!” she assured him hastily, her cheeks growing pink again. “Only to write about parties and art and recipes! And only until I’m married!”
Her rusty-sounding giggle didn’t suit her. Plagued by a feeling he was missing something crucial here, Everett pointed out the obvious. “I thought you didn’t want to get married.”
“I didn’t.” She flashed him an alluring smile. “I’m becoming more amenable to the idea by the moment, though. In fact, if you could provide me with more of those delicious cookies, I might even be persuaded to consider—”
“You’re teasing me again. I warned you about that.”
“I am. But only a little.” Nellie grinned. “It made you quit frowning about my work at the Weekly Leader, didn’t it?”
He’d been frowning? If he had been, Everett knew, it had only been because he was planning how to become appropriately sophisticated. But he would have sooner died than admit it.
“Yes, you were frowning. You looked fit to spit nails. But I’ll have you know I’m not so very unusual. These days, many women perform clerical work or take factory jobs in the city—”
Everett had had enough of “the city.” “What’s your newspaper got to do with me? With mail-order marriages?”
With your irksome lack of interest in marrying me?
“I’m writing a story for the newspaper about them.”
He was glad to see her directness had returned. He enjoyed that side of her. “A story about mail-order marriages?”
“Yes.” Warming to her revelation, Nellie nodded. “The mail-order marriage bureaus claim that anyone can fetch themselves a ‘perfect match’ for the cost of a few fancifully written letters and a postage stamp. I believe that’s misleading—and maybe even fraudulent! So I set out to discover the truth about things.”
“By positing yourself as a potential bride,” he guessed.
“Yes!” She brightened. “That’s how all the best investigative journalism is done these days. Not that I get much chance at that. I’m mostly relegated to—” Abruptly she stopped. Then added, “Let’s just say I had to lobby very stringently with my editor to be allowed to go forward with this story.”
“But you believe in it.”
“Absolutely!” Her expression shone with true zeal. “Who knows how many people are pinning their hopes—and their hard-earned money—on these marriage bureaus? If they’re as damaging as I think they are, the bureaus’ dealings ought to be exposed before more vulnerable women and men become tangled up in them.”
Her dauntless expression endeared her to him all the more. It required a courageous woman, Everett thought, to take on a challenge the way she had. He admired that about her.
As for the rest, though… “Then you don’t believe in love?”
“Of course, I believe in love! Especially—” Nellie broke off, seeming on the verge of saying more. She gave him a brave, warmhearted look. Quietly she added, “Especially today, I do.”
Her gaze met his, full of hopefulness and inquisitiveness—and budding fondness, too. Everett was sure that’s what it was.
“Today has been…a good day,” he agreed roughly.
She nodded…and in that moment, their newfound
camaraderie grew a little bit more. Like the wildflowers that bloomed along the roadside, their mutual interest seemed to be both hardy and fast growing. It sounded fanciful—but Everett knew that those pricklepoppies, brown-eyed Susans and pink primroses were weedy fighters at heart. They might look delicate, but they were inherently unstoppable. They belonged in that grass. If they were squashed or uprooted, they rallied like tumbleweeds.
“Also,” Nellie said enthusiastically, “if my articles about this issue are successful, it could mean a promotion at the Weekly Leader! I’ve worked very hard at my job, Everett. It would mean a lot to me if I could be assigned more of the—”
“Most interesting ladies’ luncheons and parties?” he asked, sensing again that there was something she was withholding.
“Well, of course.” Nellie gave a vigorous nod. “Parties! That’s what I meant to say.” She gave another unpracticed titter. “Only the most radical career-minded woman would want to write about anything other than crudités and ball gowns!”
“Humph. Writing about parties sounds like a punishment, not a job.”
Nellie bit her lip. “To you, it might. But you’re a man!”
Illustratively she gestured at him. To Everett, her motion seemed to paint him as some sort of hairy, hulking, ham-handed brute with all the common sense and usefulness of a horsefly.
“I do know how to use a pen and paper,” he informed her.
“And I adore writing about bustles and fruit punch!” With a sort of wounded dignity, Nellie shot him an inquisitive look. “Don’t I appear to be the sort of woman who likes those things?”
“Since the moment I met you at the depot this morning,” Everett told her truthfully, “you’ve seemed to be the sort of woman who isn’t sure what sort of woman she is.”
Nellie crossed her arms. “You could not be more wrong.”
“No, I’m right,” he insisted. As proof, he added, “One minute you’re traveling hundreds of miles on your own, the next you’re insisting you can’t eat an entire cookie by yourself. You say you don’t want to be married, then you say you might.” Everett fixed her with an assessing look, allowing the horses to move at their own pace. “You tell me you like writing about female fripperies for your newspaper…but it’s the possibility of writing a real exposé that makes you sit up straighter and wave your arms and look lively. It’s the chance of stopping people being taken advantage of by mail-order marriage bureaus that sets your hair afire. A man would have to be blind not to see it.”
“Then perhaps you are not as ably sighted as you think.” Decorously Nellie folded her hands in her lap. “Because I am very dainty and ladylike, and I cherish writing about hats.”
Somehow, Everett strongly doubted it. Also, she wasn’t the only one who knew how to tease someone. Piqued by her seeming assertion that he was wrong about the observations he’d made about her—observations he knew damn well were correct, because his attentiveness had never failed him before, and neither had his intuition—he delivered a ludicrous statement of his own.
“Yes. And I, like every man, want a compliant, trusting, wishy-washy, swooning female straight from Godey’s magazine to call my own,” Everett deadpanned. “It’s all I dream about while baling hay and building fences and rounding up wild mustangs.”
Her blue eyes brightened—and not at his wit, either.
“You round up wild mustangs?” Fervently Nellie clutched his arm. “Can I go with you next time? That sounds fascinating!”
If she would continue touching him, Everett knew, he would allow her to go anywhere with him. He was definitely in over his head. “It’s not very dainty,” he warned. “It will be noisy and dusty and dangerous.” Then, belatedly reminded of his quest to impress Nellie with his supposed sophistication, he added, “Besides, we could have ourselves a poetry reading instead.”
Nellie made a face. Then she caught him watching her.
“Oh! Outstanding! Poetry!” she enthused. “Only…perhaps we could have a tiny excursion to see your horses first? I promise I’ll try to bear up under the noise and dust and danger.”
At the valiant tilt she gave her chin, Everett guffawed.
“You know, I believe you will.” Full of wonder at this contradictorily fascinating woman he’d found, he urged his team of horses onward at full chisel. He wanted to get on with discovering Nellie’s secrets—and that was something best done at home. “I’ll promise to try not to scare you too much with my swaggering virile ways and coarse language and clumsy shave.”
Her eyes sparkled at him. “We have ourselve
s a challenge.”
“Pshaw,” Everett scoffed, rubbing his chin. “I’m not that bearded yet. It isn’t even noontime. The truly notable stubble won’t emerge until supper. And as far as my swagger goes—”
“No, I mean with our ‘marriage,’” Nellie said, smiling. “I still want to write my story for the Leader, Everett, and since I’m already here anyway…” She bit her lip again, inciting in him an unholy urge to do the same to her mouth himself…very, very gently. “Would you mind very much pretending to be engaged to me for a while longer yet?” Nellie asked. “I know your men believe you were going to hurl me back onto the train a while ago—”
“I was never going to hurl you anyplace. I’m not a beast.”
Why did she persist in believing he was ungentlemanly?
Gaily she overlooked his disgruntled tone and continued.
“—so they might require convincing of our newfound and immediate rapport.” With a decisive air, Nellie slid across the wagon’s bench seat. She looped her arm in his, then snuggled up to him until their bodies touched full-length along one side. Engagingly she gazed upward. “Do you think this will do?”
It was doing plenty for Everett already. At her nearness, his whole body tightened. Her warmth touched him. Her bosom pressed against his arm. Her softness felt evident, even through all the layers of her dress and petticoats and corset and whatever else she had on. Imagining it, his wits went walking.
With effort, Everett managed not to drop the tracings and pull her into his arms right then. “Do I think this will convince my vaqueros we’re going through with our ‘engagement’?”
“Yes.” She seemed concerned. “Are you all right? You seem…distracted. If this is too much for you to take on, I—”
“No.” He cleared his throat. “Let’s do it. I feel confident I can take on everything at hand and make you feel glad I did.”
Weddings Under a Western Sky: The Hand-Me-Down BrideThe Bride Wore BritchesSomething Borrowed, Something True Page 19