When the coffee was gone and the pastries eaten, Mark held out his hand to Ben. “It’s time I take this little lady to her destination, Ben. It’s been a good visit. Thank you for the pastries and coffee, Helen.”
Helen nodded and smiled at him. Molly stood up. “Thank you for your hospitality. It’s good to meet you both.”
Helen stood up and walked with Molly to the door. “Please feel free to stop in anytime. We always have refreshments and are never bothered by company.”
“I’ll do that, Helen. Thank you again.”
Helen surprised her by grabbing her into a hug. She returned it and pulled away with a smile. She hadn’t met such friendly people in a long time.
CHAPTER THREE
KNOW EACH OTHER
KNOW EACH OTHER
“I’m sorry I don’t have a carriage or a coach, Miss Molly,” Mark said, holding out his hand to help Molly into the wagon seat. She giggled and shook her head.
“Don’t be ridiculous. This is fine for me.”
“I don’t want you to be uncomfortable. Would you like to sit on a blanket? Here, let me fix this…” Mark hurriedly grabbed a thick blanket from behind the seat and placed it on top, brushing the dust off it. “Oh, it’s a little dirty here. I’ll just brush that off. It’s clean, I promise, I just…”
“Please don’t trouble yourself. I will be fine.” Molly smiled at him. She rested one hand on his arm and stopped him from brushing off the blanket. “I will be fine.” She repeated and plopped herself down on the blanket, causing a small cloud of dust to come up and swirl around her thighs. She giggled, giving him an amused look.
He smiled back at her and went around the wagon, untying the horses and taking the reins with one hand as he pulled himself up into the seat next to her. He gave her a quick grin and snapped the reins to get the horses to move.
“So tell me about yourself,” Mark said.
“I tire of talking about myself,” Molly replied. “Tell me about you.”
Mark glanced at her. “There’s not much to say about me, to be honest with you, Miss Molly. I’m a single man who does carpentry, has a best friend, enjoys a good beer, and hasn’t left Wickenburg to go further than Louisville in over twenty years. I don’t do much. Not an exciting guy.”
“I’m sure if given the chance, you would be very exciting.”
Mark laughed. “What did you take from my summary that would give you that impression?”
Molly laughed with him. “I don’t know. You seem very friendly. It surprises me that you are not married with a wagon full of children.”
He shrugged. “It’s not that I haven’t wanted that. The right woman never came my way.”
“I wanted a family, too. I am afraid I’m getting too old to believe that will ever happen.”
“What makes you say that? You must be very young. You don’t look more than, I’d say, 25?”
She smiled. “You do know that it’s never proper to ask a woman her age.”
“That’s why I didn’t ask.” Mark laughed again. “I was just taking a wild stab in the dark.”
“I’m older than that. I’m in my thirties.”
He gave her a wide-eyed look. “No. I never would have guessed that.”
She just shook her head. “You don’t need to be kind. I know that I have aged since I lost my husband, Bill, five years ago. I can see it on my face.”
“We don’t always see ourselves the way others do.” Mark paused before continuing. “In fact, we very often don’t see ourselves in the light that others do.”
Molly nodded. “I suppose you are right.”
“I am right. And you are a very beautiful woman. You look very young and healthy. I am sorry about your husband. That must have been devastating.”
“Yes, it was. I… I haven’t really lived since he… passed. I have a large family. My mother and father are still alive and I have cousins and my niece and her family in Virginia. Here, it is only Alice, but I hope they will accept me into their family.”
“Of course they will,” Molly was surprised when Mark snorted. “They accept strangers as family, they will accept family as family even more so.”
“I know I’ve only spoken to one couple and you but it does seem like they are beloved here in Wickenburg.”
“Adam has done a lot for the people of this town. He really has.”
“Does he have a lot of money?”
Mark tilted his head to the side. “I wouldn’t say he has a lot of money. But he is a hard worker and will do favors, as long as he feels the need is there. It’s a little surprising that he hasn’t been offered a deputy position for the sheriff.”
“Oh, my. I don’t remember him very well from the last time I visited, but he does sound like a knight in shining armor.”
Mark laughed. “I’ll laugh for him since he didn’t hear that himself. He would think that was funny. But really, you are right about it. He’s like that. And you were here before? When?”
“When my cousin Holly died, my husband and I came to the funeral. We were not here long.”
“You traveled all the way from Virginia, did you say? And you didn’t stay?”
“We weren’t able to. Bill had work to do in Virginia. He… he was a financial wizard and helped many businesses all around the state of Virginia establish their companies and keep their finances straight.”
“Really. Wow. He must have been a very smart man.”
“He was.” Molly thought about Bill. She could see him smiling at her. She remembered their wedding day as if it was yesterday, even after fifteen years. She licked her lips and tried to sigh as quietly as she could.
“I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to make you sad.” Mark looked at her with that same sympathetic look she’d gotten used to.
She shook her head. “It’s all right. It isn’t your fault. I am not as sad as I used to be. I treasure the memories I had with my husband. It is a shame I was not able to have children with him. We wanted them… but God never blessed us with one.”
“Oh.” Mark shook his head, not knowing how to respond. This cousin of Alice’s had already made a good impression on him. She was obviously smart, independent, and resistant to negativity. She exuded a charm and beauty he hadn’t seen in many years. Thinking back, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a woman so elegant without being decked out in fancy clothes like the Queen of England. Her simple blue dress with the white lace around the color and black slip-on shoes did nothing to dampen the class she represented.
“You have no children of your own? You’ve never been married?”
Mark looked at her. “No. I’m afraid not.”
“That is a shame,” Molly’s voice was breathy. He looked at her, wondering what she was thinking. Nervous anxiety struck him and he gripped the reins harder. The last thing he wanted to do was move in on a woman he had met an hour earlier, especially the cousin of his good friends. However, it didn’t stop his thoughts. He had been alone for many years, keeping company only with friends. His only experience with love was with a girl named Victoria when he was 18 years old. She was two years younger and moved out of Wickenburg with her parents a short time after they started talking to each other. He had not met a woman since then who had shown any interest in him.
He glanced at Molly. She was gazing out over the land, moving her eyes as the wagon went along the road. She had a beautiful profile. Her dark eyelashes were long, like small fans over her eyes. He scanned her face until he felt like he was staring. He turned his eyes and searched his mind for something to say. She seemed content to sit in silence but he felt the terrible urge to start talking and keep talking even if he ran out of things to say.
“Adam is a great guy,” he finally said. “I’m glad he’s the one you are staying with. He and Alice are two of the finest people I’ve ever met.”
“Did you know Adam when he was married to Holly?”
Mark nodded. “Oh yeah, we’ve been friends since we were kids.”
“I didn’t think Adam was here when he was a child.”
“Not when he was a child. I mean the later years, you know, teenagers. I guess we’ve been friends since we were about fifteen. That would be twenty solid years. We’ve never fought about anything.”
“That’s truly amazing.” Molly’s voice was quiet. Mark looked at her.
“Do you think you’ll be happy here? I mean, from what you’ve seen so far? It’s a small town, I know but we have a lot of good people here. That’s the Horse N Saddle. If you drink or want to play cards…” He stopped and grinned at her. “That’s where we go. It’s a nice establishment and you can get a good meal there.”
She pursed her lips at him. “Do I look like the kind of woman who drinks and gambles?”
He shook his head. “Oh, no, ma’am. But you do look like the kind who would enjoy a good meal and a friendly game of cards.”
She let herself smile back at him. “I guess you have me on that, Mr.…”
He laughed. “I never told you my last name. You don’t have to call me mister anything. My name is Mark. If you’re going to stay with the Collins family, you’ll have to get used to seeing me. I’m around all the time. In fact, you just might get sick of seeing me all the time. You’ll wonder if I actually have my own home to go to.” He laughed some more, a pleasant sound that made Molly smile. “Just so you know, I do have my own home, but that’s never stopped me from invading the Collins' household as frequently as I can.”
Molly giggled. “I can’t imagine being sick of seeing you. You are a good-looking man. It’s easy to look at you.”
Mark felt a pleasant feeling of anticipation slide through him. He stopped laughing but didn’t stop smiling at her. “That’s very nice of you to say.”
“One thing you will learn about me,” she replied. “Especially if you are around Alice’s so often, is that I do not lie. I never lie. And I have been told I am quite blunt. But I won’t be rude about it.”
“You don’t seem like the cowering mouse to me.” He gave her a side-long glance. “I like a woman who knows who she is and what she wants.”
“I had to learn to be this way.”
“Hmm.” He looked at her directly. “You don’t seem the type that would ever have been a quivering mouse.”
Molly licked her lips and grinned. “No, I suppose I’ve never had those qualities. I’m more of a… an Annie Oakley. Do you know who that is?”
Mark nodded. “I sure do. I’m surprised you do.”
“My husband was well-known to Bill Cody and some of the other people in his traveling show. We had a chance to meet her a few years before he died.”
“I’ve read pamphlets about the show. I’ve never seen one myself.”
Molly looked surprised. “Really? I would have thought this would be the kind of place to travel for that kind of show. We are on the West coast, after all.”
Mark shook his head. “That’s true, but there’s not many people out here with the kind of money to keep a show like that going. He needs big audiences. He won’t find that here in these little towns.”
Molly looked away from him. “I didn’t think of that. I suppose you are right.”
“So you are like Annie Oakley, are you?”
“I’ve been told that, yes.”
“How so?”
Molly was quiet for a moment and Mark thought she might have been offended by the question. He looked at her, but, when she looked back, her face looked amused. It seemed the more times he looked at her, the more he wanted to keep looking at her. She had a beautiful smile and a relaxed, secure attitude that he liked very much.
“I suppose she and I might share a few characteristics.”
“Now you’re going to tell me you’re related to her, aren’t you? Oh, no…” Mark chuckled.
She laughed and shook her head. “No, not at all.”
“How well do you shoot?” He looked her up and down. “Don’t look to me like you could even lift a rifle, you’re so small.” When she looked at him, he winked. “Compliment intended, ma’am.”
“Stop calling me ma’am.” She laughed. “Have you forgotten my name?”
“Not at all. It’s Miss Molly Thorn. And I’m Mark.” He tipped his hat to her. “You dodged my question. How well do you shoot? Are you a marksman like her?”
Molly didn’t reply. She just gave him a smile. He slapped his hand flat on his upper thigh.
“You’re not! Are you really? Well, I’ll be. That’s something else, Miss Molly. Guess we’ll have our own ‘Little Miss Sureshot’ right here in Wickenburg!”
“Don’t you tell anyone, Mark,” Molly warned him lightly. “I don’t want everyone in town knowing everything about me. Let them discover what I’m like on their own. No preconceptions.”
“Well, all right, Miss Molly.” Mark twisted an imaginary key in his mouth and pretended to toss the key into the road. “No one will hear a word from me. You have my word on that.”
Molly nodded and put a stern look on her face for a few moments before breaking into a smile again. “I’m glad you offered to drive me to Alice’s, Mark. I’ve had a pleasant time talking to you.”
He smiled at her. “I can say the same about you, Miss Molly. And I didn’t actually volunteer. If you don’t remember, it was Ben who said I should do it.”
Molly drew her eyebrows together. “It was? I don’t remember that.”
“Pretty sure he suggested I bring you out here.”
She shook her head. “No, I distinctly remember you saying you were going to see Adam after that but that you’d drive me out here instead.”
He thought for a moment and realized she was right. He flushed and shook his head. “I’m getting old.”
She giggled. “It’s all right, Mark. We all have our empty-headed moments, don’t you think?”
“Well, clearly I do.” He laughed with her.
CHAPTER FOUR
ALICE AND MOLLY REUNITE
ALICE AND MOLLY REUNITE
They pulled up to the A framed house and Mark shook the reins toward the carriage sitting in front.
“Looks like Alice is here. Adam’s wagon is gone. I wonder why she didn’t come to get you?”
Molly looked at him. “Do you think they are okay? Will you come in and check with me?”
“I’m sure everything is fine,” Mark was already getting out of the wagon and said the sentence under his breath, but Molly heard him. He was trying to convince himself as much as he was her. He went quickly around the wagon, but she had already dropped down and was holding up her skirt so that it wouldn’t brush through the dust as she jogged to the porch steps.
He was on the porch before her, despite her head start. He stopped her from entering and put his finger to his lips. “I’ll go first.”
He raised his fist and rapped on the door with his knuckles. Without waiting for the door to be opened, he turned the knob and stuck his head in the door. Then he swung the door wide and went in.
“Alice?”
Molly’s cousin came around the corner through the door to the kitchen, a towel in her hands and a look of shock on her face.
“Mark? What’s happened? What’s going on?” her eyes moved to Molly and a look of confused recognition covered her face. “I…”
“We were worried about you, Alice,” Mark replied quickly. “It didn’t seem like you to forget to pick up your cousin in town today.”
Alice’s shoulders relaxed and she dropped her head to the side. “Oh, no! Was it today? I thought you were arriving tomorrow! I am so sorry, Molly! Look at you! Such a woman! It’s been so long since I saw you last. It was Holly’s funeral, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Back when Nathan lost his mind,” Molly shook her head and looked up at Mark. “Did you have anything to do with saving my cousin when all that happened?”
“As a matter of fact, he did,” Alice answered for him. He took a few steps back as Alice crossed in front of h
im, her arms stretched out wide to encircle her cousin. “It’s so good to see you, Molly. I hope you like it here. How in heaven’s name did you run across Mark?”
“I was dropped off at the Inn. The Hotel in town.”
Alice nodded, pulling out of the hug and directing Molly to sit on the couch by the window. She sat next to her, still clasping one of Molly’s hands in both of hers. “The Campbells. They are good people.”
“I thought so, too. Mark stopped by for a cup of coffee and offered to bring me here since you are good friends of his.” Molly looked up at Mark, who was gazing at her with a faraway look. When he caught her eye, his eyes sharpened and he smiled at her.
“It was my pleasure, really,” Mark had taken off his hat when he entered and didn’t realize he was clutching it tightly in one fist until he became aware of it and relaxed his hand. He’d been lost in thought, thinking with anticipation that the next few months were going to be good. With the presence of the beautiful woman sitting in front of him, how could it not?
“Our Mark is just the kindest man you’ll ever meet, Molly. He’s the kind of man that gives, expecting nothing in return.”
“Like Adam,” Molly said. Alice smiled wide.
“Yes. Just like Adam. You’d think they were brothers if they looked more alike.”
“He’s the closest thing I’ve got to a real brother.” Mark said. He plopped his hat back on his head and waved to the women. “I gotta get back to town. I’ll see you ladies later.”
“Oh, Mark, you can’t stay for a bit? I’ll be starting lunch soon.” Alice stood up.
Mark shook his head. “Nope, I’m already late for work. But I don’t mind that.” He grinned at Molly. “Not one bit. It was a pleasure to meet you, Miss Molly, and I hope to see you again soon.”
“How about tonight for dinner?” Alice asked.
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