Last Chance Bride

by Jillian Hart

  He wanted her touch. It was more than sexual—it was deeper than that. He craved her. Even now.

  Her wheat blond hair was tamed, plaited neatly and pinned around her head. Jacob wondered what it might be like to work his fingers through that thick, silken softness and watch it fall free.

  She picked up her fork, and the movement brought his gaze lower, to her lap, seeing the roundness of the small life growing within her. To the reality he could not afford to forget: women died in childbirth.

  On the ride back into town. Libby clutched her sewing box in one hand and squinted beneath her sunbonnet’s brim into the bright midmoming sun. After eating, she had offered to help with the dishes but Jacob refused, not looking at her. She finished measuring Emma and accepted a ride back into town.

  Now Emma chattered merrily at her elbow, between them, talking on about the horses, and it being Sunday and the picnic she and her pa were going on later.

  Libby did her best not to care too much. She watched Jacob’s gaze slide across her belly several times.

  He may understand, but he would not forgive. She sensed it like the scent of autumn leaves on the wind.

  Town came into view, a string of three intersecting streets and the buildings huddled along them. Smoke rose from smokestacks in thick gray plumes, filling the town with the cozy scent of wood smoke.

  Jacob halted the team at his livery.

  “I can walk from here,” she said quietly.

  “Don’t leave,” Emma pleaded.

  Over her dark head, Jacob’s eyes found hers. A similar plea lurked there, between shadows, between what could only be doubt.

  “I’d like to stay, Emma, but I have to get started on your dress. Soon, September will be gone and the winter weather will be here. You’ll need that warm dress then.”

  “Aw, pshaw.” Emma waved her hand.

  “You sound like your grandpa,” Jacob commented wryly.

  Emma giggled.

  Libby longed for such gentle affection, but deliberately turned away and hopped down from the buckboard, spurring Jacob into action.

  “I wanted to help you down.”

  She hated the kindness in his eyes. It only made her want him more. “I don’t need help, Jacob. I don’t understand why you even want me to sew this dress in the first place.”

  “Because I don’t sew.” He shrugged his brawny shoulders. “Because I wanted an excuse to know you better.”

  “Why? I don’t understand.” Confusion tore through her. “Emma, hand me down my sewing box.”

  The girl complied. “You have to come with us.”

  Libby hated looking into those deep blue eyes and saying the words, but she did it. “No, I’m afraid I can’t. I’m sorry, Emma.”

  Her fingers caught the wood handle and she turned away.

  “Emma, stay there.” Jacob’s command rang in the back yard of the livery. Then came the thud of his boots pounding against the hard-packed earth. “Elizabeth.”

  She kept walking.

  “Elizabeth.” He caught up to her. “Why are you walking away? I wanted to ask you to come with us.”

  “Thank you, Jacob, but I don’t need your pity.” She walked faster, her entire heart fracturing. I want your love.

  “My pity? What gave you that idea?”

  “Little things. Like that sad little pinched look around your eyes. Like your silence.”

  “I couldn’t talk about this in front of Emma.”

  “Good. Because I don’t want to talk about it at all.” She whipped around the corner of the livery, Main Street in plain sight.

  Jacob snared her wrist, swinging her around. His imprisoning grip felt bruising. “I don’t pity you, damn it. I... You confuse me.”

  “Well, you confuse me.” She wrestled her arm free, tears stinging behind her eyes.

  “Did I hurt you?”

  Concern so wide in his eyes. She bowed her chin so she didn’t have to look at it. “Yes. It will probably bruise.”

  “Oh—” He looked stricken. “I’m sorry.”

  Nothing mattered, not the bruise, not her silly dreams. “I appreciate the sewing work, I really do, but don’t feed me out of some misplaced sense of obligation.”

  “Obligation? Where are you getting these ideas?” he asked, his dark brows knitting together. “Have I ever said or done anything to make you think that?”

  “You tried to give me money for my passage when we agreed I would pay my own way.” She wouldn’t look at him. She wouldn’t. Looking at him would break down her resolve. She wanted him, not to fight with him.

  “You agreed to that, I never did. I always intended to reimburse you, and if you weren’t such a stubborn, independent woman, then you wouldn’t be stuck here without a way to return home.”

  “I have no home,” she said, too late to grab it back. She gasped. “I mean, Omaha wasn’t a home, as much as a stopping place.”

  He said nothing. “I’m sorry, Elizabeth. Hell, I didn’t mean—” He sighed, raking his hand through his hair, standing it up on end. His hat was missing—he must have left it in the buckboard.

  “I know what you meant.” She’d bared her heart to him, let him know her greatest mistake. And he treated her so civilly. It enraged her. It shamed her. She spun away from him. “Just keep your charity to yourself, Jacob Stone. I don’t need you. I don’t need anything from any man. Not ever again.”

  She walked fast, trying to keep the tears in, but they burned with rage behind her eyes. Rage at Jacob for being afraid to love again. Rage at herself for needing him more than she’d ever needed anyone.

  He hadn’t meant to hurt her. She just made him feel so much—so hard, so furious. He took Emma on their picnic, stopping by the hotel to pick up a fried chicken meal, and took out the cart he’d made. The mare that had grabbed hold of Elizabeth’s ruffle needed a good run.

  All week long he avoided her. He needed time to know how to try again to talk to her about what terrified him most.

  Once, he was hard at work mucking stalls and he looked up and saw her through the wide doors of the barn. Rain stained the sky gray and stirred the dusty streets to mud. She’d been wearing the same blue calico he’d seen several times and her white apron, carrying a box of groceries from the mercantile. She’d been walking in the direction of Leah’s hotel.

  Maude Baker from the Faded Bloom stopped by with her stall rent. She insisted Elizabeth didn’t need or want his help. Although, when he declined the money, he saw approval in her measuring eyes. No doubt, she wrongly guessed the baby Elizabeth carried was his.

  Jacob felt at a loss. He didn’t want to go backward to existing without feeling, breathing without living. But he couldn’t seem to move forward, either.

  Another week rolled by before he figured out what to do. He would enlist the help of his daughter. Emma, no doubt, would be happy to see Elizabeth again.

  “There’s a young lady to see you,” Maude Baker said as she knocked on the door.

  Libby, sitting by the window, looked up. “Come in, Maude. You said a young lady? Who?”

  The door popped open to reveal a friendly smile and mysteriously twinkling eyes. “I’m not telling. You’ll have to come see for yourself. Oh, and she says to bring your coat and mittens.”

  “My coat and mittens?” Only a mother would say such a thing...or a child. Emma. “Tell her I’ll be right down.”

  “Will do.” Maude disappeared down the hall, humming.

  Libby grabbed her coat, she had no mittens, and hurried downstairs. Sure enough, a small sprite of a girl waited in the parlor, her blue eyes snapping with excitement.

  “Pa says it’s gonna be cold,” she said, hopping off the overstuffed chair and bounding across the room.

  Libby welcomed the innocent hug around her middle. “What’s going to be cold?”

  “Going on a picnic. It’s too darn cold, Pa said, but he agreed to do it anyway.”

  One look at that grin, and Libby felt trapped. “Where is your
pa?”

  “Waiting in the cart.”

  “The cart?”

  Emma shrugged. “Yep. Pa got a cart for when the buckboard was too much. He exercises the horses with it. And he takes me on rides in it.”

  “Does he?” Through the space between the heavy drapes, she could see a small slice of the street outside. But no Jacob and no cart.

  “You have to come. Please? We got extra chicken and everything.”

  “Say yes.” His voice rumbled in from outside.

  Libby froze. Jacob. He stood framed in the doorway, the cool gray day at his back, his face shadowed. She remembered how angry she’d been at him. “I should stay home and sew. I have work to do.”

  “We won’t be long.”

  How his voice touched her, steady like a caress, hot like a kiss. She shivered inside, remembering.

  “Yes.” The easiest word she’d ever said.

  Emma cheered, bouncing up and down, and Jacob held open the door.

  Libby brushed past him, resolved not to make more of his invitation than a show of friendship, when she stopped dead still on the porch step. “That’s your cart?”

  Jacob brushed up behind her. “Built it myself.”

  “Come on. I’m gettin’ hungry!” Emma tugged at Libby’s hand, and she followed the girl down the steps toward the small horse-drawn buggy at the curb. Her idea of a cart and Jacob’s idea of one only proved how different they were, how unsuited.

  He helped her onto the padded seat beside Emma, catching her gaze with a smile.

  “Why, this is the mare you told me about,” she commented as they rolled down the quiet midmorning streets.

  “Yes. I need to get her used to driving again. She’s not skittish anymore, is she, Emma?”

  “No. She’s calm as a kitten.” Emma leaned back in the seat, grinning wide.

  The crisp autumn breeze whispered over them on the ride out of town, toward a low rolling meadow split in half by the river. While it was too cold to play in the water, Emma found plenty of room to run while Jacob carried the basket.

  Libby followed, uncertain what to say. She didn’t understand why he’d invited her.

  “I’ve been thinking about what you told me, about the baby’s father.” His voice came gruff, but low.

  Libby’s step faltered. “I understand how you feel, what kind of woman you think I am.”

  “You’re a damn fine woman, Elizabeth. I know it, and Emma knows it. That isn’t what I mean.”

  “I’m not so fine, Jacob. I’m not like you.” She’d been born in a one-room shanty.

  “You are fine enough for Emma and me.” His gaze held hers.

  What was he asking her?

  He set the basket in the grass and unfolded the wool blanket that covered it. “I’ve thought everything over. I can see how a woman as lonely for affection as you were could have been misled.”

  She blushed. She had been misled. Lied to. She hadn’t known what Arthur was doing until he’d done it, laying her over a blanket. She blinked back tears then, so glad it was over. She blinked back tears now. “That doesn’t change things between us. You said you don’t want more children.”

  “I don’t.” His words sounded choked. “I won’t be responsible. I just can’t be to blame...” For another woman’s death. He stared hard at the blanket as he laid it over the rock-hard earth. “But I like you, Elizabeth.”

  “You do?”

  “Very much.”

  Don’t read too much into it. Libby wasn’t going to be a fool a second time. She knelt to smooth a corner of the blanket. “I plan to have Emma’s dress done in two weeks. I’ll have all of Mr. Ellington’s piece work caught up by then, too.”

  “Two weeks is fine.” Jacob began unpacking the basket. “Emma. The food is ready.”

  “I’m comin’!” The crisp wind carried her voice across the tall, dry grasses.

  Tell him the rest. Libby sat down on the blanket and helped set out the tin plates. “I nearly have enough money saved for the coach ride east.”

  His head whipped up. “You’re leaving?”

  “Yes.” She tried to sound casual. “At the middle of next month. Two weeks. I won’t be around to trouble you any longer than that.”

  “You’re no trouble, Elizabeth.” Jacob’s gaze held hers, but he said nothing more.

  Emma clamored up, breathless and hungry, and he looked away.

  “Pa! I saw a deer back there. Think it will eat some of our bread?”

  “It’s a wild animal, Emma.” He spoke gently, but his words sounded tight “Some things aren’t meant to be approached.”

  “But he’s so pretty. Can I take Miss Hodges and show her?” A blue gaze swiveled to hers. “Have you seen deer before? This one has big antlers and everything.”

  “Go ahead and see,” Jacob urged.

  Libby stood, trying not to care how he wouldn’t look at her. It was truly over between them. She offered Emma her hand.

  Chapter Nine

  Frost hardened the ground as Libby crunched through the morning-quiet streets. A cold mist fell, chilling her clear through the layers of wool and flannel. She hugged her coat more tightly and kept walking.

  She’d given her notice to Leah at the hotel and to Maude at the boardinghouse. There was only one detail left. She’d buy a ticket this morning and be on the stage out of town by this afternoon.

  Libby didn’t want to go, but Jacob didn’t want her to stay. After she told him on their picnic she was leaving, he’d withdrawn from her completely. He’d answered Emma’s questions kindly, hitched up the horse, and drove them back into town as soon as they’d finished eating.

  But his silence hurt like a blow.

  She didn’t know what he thought. Was he glad she was leaving town? Was he angry she hadn’t accepted the money he felt he owed her?

  At a loss, Libby hesitated before the gray barn where the blue sign, Stone’s Livery, swung with the brisk wind. One of the large front doors was ajar, indicating he might be in this early.

  “Jacob?” She hesitated at the door.

  He didn’t answer. One horse nickered to her, the small sorrel mare with the single star they’d taken with them on the picnic. Libby crossed through the straw-strewn floor to rub the horse’s velvet nose.

  A loud hammering, followed by several sharp rings in deliberate rhythm, led Libby around to the back of the livery. She found Jacob in a separate room attached to the stable, bent over his fire. Rolled up shirtsleeves exposed his strong arms. Muscles rippled and bunched as he worked.

  He glanced up from the forge. “I’ll be done in a minute.”

  Libby watched as he placed the glowing curve of iron onto the anvil and began a rhythmic pounding. The ringing sound echoed in the small room, hurting her ears.

  She didn’t want to disappoint or hurt him. Not after how good he’d been to her, paying for her room and board at Maude’s. Few men would have been so generous.

  Nerves slipped through her, and Libby placed her hand on her growing belly. Jacob dropped the horseshoe into a nearby bucket. Water hissed and steam rose as he walked toward her.

  “Good morning, Elizabeth. I didn’t know if I’d see you again.” He stopped a safe distance before her, his breath a visible white puff in the cold morning air. He rubbed his blackened hands on his thick leather apron.

  Libby found her voice. “I couldn’t just leave, Jacob. I had to say goodbye. And to give you Emma’s dress. I finished it last night.”

  She unfolded the dress, so he could see it. But Jacob averted his eyes, studying the nearby horse standing patiently, waiting for new shoes.

  “I’m sure Emma will love it. She’s with Mrs. Holt these days.” He hesitated. “You can find her there if you want to talk to her.”

  Libby dreaded facing the very proper Mrs. Holt. “I’ve made you a gift.”

  “What?” His gaze swung up, revealing the surprise on his face, revealing the bleakness in his eyes. “I don’t need a gift, Elizabeth.”


  “It’s in appreciation.” Emotion knotted in her throat. “It’s not the most expensive or elegant gift, but it’s something I made for you.”

  She held up the blue flannel shirt, extra wide in the shoulders to allow for movement as he worked. “This heavy material is the best Ellington had. It will keep you warm enough so you won’t need to wear a coat while you’re here in the bam.”

  He stood framed with the frozen, cold world behind him, a dark figure in black. His face unreadable, his stance stiff and unbending.

  “I notice you wear a lot of blue,” she said nervously.

  “It’s a fine shirt.”

  “I hope you like it. I lined Emma’s dress. It will be warmer.” Looking away seemed easiest. She folded the shirt along with the dress and wrapped them up in the brown paper.

  “Let me pay you.” Jacob drew his billfold from his pocket. His fingers, blackened from his work at the forge, eased several bills from the leather fold.

  “That’s too much,” she protested as he shoved a wad of money into her hand.

  “It’s not enough.” His touch blazed through her, and she quieted the fast beat of her heart. “If you weren’t leaving, if you had decided to stay—” He paused.

  “What are you saying, Jacob?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t want—” He sighed, closing and then opening his dark eyes. “Why the hell are you leaving? Can you answer me that?”

  “Because I don’t live here, Jacob.” Confused, Libby stepped forward, hugging the package to her rounded belly. “I came to visit you, to marry you. Since there’s no home for me here, I can’t stay. People are starting to think this baby is yours.”

  She’d felt the whispers at her back. The eager suitors had long since gone. “You don’t want me here, Jacob. It ruins your life, and confuses Emma.”

  “And leaving won’t hurt me and my daughter?”

  Libby hurt watching him. “Jacob, I thought that was our agreement. If there was no marriage, then I would leave you be. For Emma’s sake.”

  “All I know is when I’m near you, life is easier to live.” His voice trembled with sincerity. “I don’t want you to go.