His Secret Bride (The Brides of Paradise Ranch (Spicy Version) Book 8)

by Merry Farmer

  It sounded so high and mighty. Part of Rupert wanted to believe Bonnie was Saint Mary herself. But facts were facts. “Do you or do you not employ women who sell their favors to whatever men show up at your Place with cash in hand?”

  She didn’t jump to answer. Her lips remained firmly closed as she glared at him. The only thing she could manage to say in the end was, “I didn’t realize you were such a prude when it came to consensual relations between grown adults.”

  “I am when my wife is involved,” he told her with a flat voice and flatter stare.

  “Then sign the paper and I won’t be your wife anymore.” She nodded to the document in his hands.

  “No.” He thrust the divorce decree back at her.

  “No?” Anger and something suspiciously close to panic filled her eyes.

  “You heard me. No.” He started to step away from her.

  “Rupert, you can’t do this.”

  Yep, that was definitely panic in her voice. He turned around before he had gone more than a couple of steps. For a flash of a second, she didn’t hide the truth of her emotions from him. In that moment she looked as young and innocent as the day she’d stepped off the train to marry him. All too soon, that innocence vanished, leaving the scarred and jaded woman who stood so beautifully in front of him.

  It was his fault. He’d made her into that woman.

  He shook himself to chase away the too-painful thought, then took a step closer to her. “Marriage is forever, Bonnie. I don’t care what that piece of paper says. We were married good and proper in the eyes of the law and, more importantly, the eyes of God. You can’t just take that back now because your little chickadees need fresh crinolines to kick up.”

  “That’s not what I spend—” She stopped shaking with rage. One, long breath later and she fired back with, “Do you propose to provide me with the capital I need, then?”

  He knew he was walking into a trap, but he charged on anyhow. “I’m not—”

  “No.” She didn’t even let him finish. “I didn’t think so. You couldn’t provide enough to keep food in my belly then, so I have no reason to think you’d be able to do the same now.”

  Her words stung like a slap in the face. She’d been so thin and frail when she walked out on him nine years ago. He hadn’t been able to remember the last time she’d had more to eat than watery oatmeal.

  “Rex has money,” she snapped. “He’s willing to give it to me as long as I make sure everyone knows what I’m giving to him.”

  “And I suppose you think that flaunting your time in another man’s bed is supposed to make me mad enough to sign those papers?” he nearly shouted. The rest of the patrons of The Gingerbread Man, including his friends, were trying hard to pretend they weren’t listening, but Rupert got the point. He and Bonnie had become the town’s main attraction.

  “I don’t spend any—” Bonnie pressed her lips together and huffed out a breath through her nose. The thump from under her skirts betrayed that she’d stomped her foot in frustration. “Are you gonna sign or not?”

  “I’m not.”

  He wanted to add that she was his wife, that he would never agree to her marrying someone else when his heart was still hers and only hers. He wanted to drop to his knees and beg her to stay in Everland, to leave the stain of her old life behind and try again with him. He wanted to tell her that she was better than a life as a rich man’s trollop, that she was too clever for a life on her back.

  Instead, he stormed past her, grabbing his coat from the back of the chair where his friends watched him with wary eyes. He kept right on walking, through the bar and out the door. But he knew as much as he’d ever known anything that he wasn’t walking away from his problems. They’d only just caught up to him.

  Chapter 3

  Work was usually the one thing Rupert could count on to take his mind off of his problems. The day after Bonnie waltzed back into his life, he climbed the scaffolding that had been set up around the sturdy chimney Rocky Mason had built for the new cottage Skipper had designed. He motioned for two of the workers to raise the beam structure that would start the frame of the cottage’s roof. For all of one minute, he could stop thinking about Bonnie and focus on the task. One minute. As soon as the structure was upright and the rest of his crew were hammering away, his thoughts drifted back to her.

  Four years. Not a peep out of his wife for four years, and suddenly she shows up asking to end what never had a chance to get going in the first place. He sighed and glanced out over the cloudy, Wyoming horizon, not seeing much of anything. Bonnie said she’d gotten those damn papers after he’d tracked her down in Haskell and then gotten so angry when he found out she owned a whorehouse. Well, what man wouldn’t be madder than an adder to discover that his wife was not only bedding down with other men for money, but enabling other women to do the same?

  And yet, something didn’t sit right about the whole situation. Like he was missing the obvious. She’d tried to explain things then, just as she’d tried to hint that things weren’t what they seemed the night before. But gol darnit, how much more could there be to that pink-painted atrocity of a “Place,” as Bonnie called it?

  “Whoa! Ahoy there! Man overboard!”

  Rupert shook himself out of his grinding thoughts and searched the ground until he found Skipper standing with his hands on his hips, like a captain at the wheel of a frigate, laughing at him.

  “I’m not over anything,” Rupert called back to him, realizing a second too late that truer words had never been spoken. He would be far better off if he’d just swallow his pride and admit that he still loved Bonnie, in spite of her despicable dealings, and that he wanted her back. What kind of man did that make him?

  “Bertram, could you take over here?” Rupert called to one of the workers as he twisted to descend the scaffolding. Even he had to admit that he was a danger to himself and others in his current state of mind.

  “The crew has the rafters all ready to put in place,” Rupert pretended to focus on business as he strode over to Skipper. “If we work hard, we should have most of the frame up by the end of the day.”

  “Aye, aye.” Skipper nodded, assessing the progress. He glanced sideways at Rupert. “And are you going to join us today?”

  Rupert frowned. “What do you mean? I’m right here.”

  Skipper laughed. “No you’re not. You’re a thousand miles away. Or, no, how many miles is it to Haskell, where the beautiful Miss Bonnie Horner is from?”

  Rupert’s frown darkened, but he couldn’t bring himself to say anything.

  Skipper turned to face him more fully. “Seems to me like the two of you have more of a history than you were letting on than that ‘one that got away’ comment.”

  Rupert kept his mouth shut, staring hard at the construction.

  “And it doesn’t take a look-out to see that those words the two of you exchanged at The Gingerbread Man were an argument.” He studied Rupert carefully, rubbing his chin, then added, “Not sure what to make of my best friend of many years suddenly arguing with a random woman. Unless she isn’t random at all.”

  Skipper’s line of questioning could go on forever. Rupert puffed out a breath, ran a hand over his face, and gestured for Skip to move to the side, away from anyone who might overhear them talking.

  As soon as they’d put a safe distance between themselves and their workers, Rupert said, “I do have a past with Bonnie.” He hesitated. How much of this story did he want to tell? None of it, if he was being honest. But Skipper was his closest friend and he deserved some kind of explanation. “A long time ago, before we met,” he went on. “Back in my mining days in Colorado.”

  “Those were dark days, if I remember rightly,” Skipper said in a quiet, respectful voice.

  Yep, there was a reason he and Skip were friends and business partners. Rupert nodded. “They didn’t start out bad. I was only twenty, but I high-tailed it out to Colorado as soon as silver was discovered. A heck of a lot of young men
like me dropped everything back East to make our fortunes. For a second there, it looked like I would too.”

  “Really?” Skipper’s brow rose. “I thought it was all a bust.”

  Rupert shook his head. “I bought a little strip of land, built a shack, and I actually struck a vein of silver.”

  Skipper’s moment of surprised excitement was quickly eclipsed by a frown. “Something went wrong,” he said. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t have found you in a ditch in Boulder City, looking like you’d been keel-hauled.”

  Rupert sent him a wry look and drawled, “Gee, thanks, you’re a true friend.” Before Skip could so much as laugh, Rupert went on. “I met Bonnie right as my luck turned.” He left out the part about placing the ad for a mail-order bride when he was riding high, losing it all, and having Bonnie show up on the train the next day, thinking she was going to marry a successful miner. “We instantly took to each other.” That much was the absolute truth. “And for a while there, it looked like everything would work out.”

  Skip shrugged. “So what happened?”

  Bad luck had happened. Claim-jumping and bullying had happened. Stupidity and starvation had happened. Rupert had been too young and hot-headed to handle his dispute with his neighbors rationally, and he’d been litigated straight out of the mining business.

  “She left me,” he said, rolling a world of shame and defeat, of frustration and bitterness into three words. “She said I’d tricked her, that I couldn’t provide for her, and she wasn’t going to sit around and starve alongside a man who couldn’t drag himself up out of the ditch he’d dug for himself long enough to put a roof over our heads.”

  To Rupert’s surprise, Skipper went red in the face. “Of all the low-down, unfaithful, high-handed, spoiled—”

  Rupert raised a hand to stop him. “She was right, Skip.”

  He didn’t look convinced, but Skip shut his mouth and scowled. “I’m sure you did everything in your power to make her happy.”

  Rupert shook his head. Skip’s anger abated. “Like I said, I was twenty. I was stubborn as a jackass and twice as stupid. I never should have…” He stopped, on the verge of saying he never should have sent away for a mail-order bride in the first place. That much was absolutely true, but marrying Bonnie was still the best accident he’d ever stumbled into in his life. Even though everything was a mess now. It was such a mess that he couldn’t bear the thought of confessing, even to his best friend, that he hadn’t just let down a pretty woman, he’d ruined his wife’s life with his idiocy.

  “Anyhow, what happened happened. I can’t change the past, but I sure do wish I could change the future.”

  Skipper blinked and studied him. “You still love her?”

  Rupert dragged a baleful glance in Skipper’s direction and was about to confess just how much and how hopeless it was when Bonnie’s lilting voice called out. “There you are, Rupert Cole.”

  Both Rupert and Skipper turned to see Bonnie walking toward them, her hips swaying. She wore a deep violet gown in a sophisticated style that seemed to suggest as much as it hid. Dangit, but she had a way of doing that. Bonnie was the only woman he knew who could wear a high collar and long sleeves and give a man the same feeling as if he was looking at bare flesh.

  “You and I have unfinished business,” she told him, sweeping right up to him and tapping his chest with one, long finger.

  Rupert’s insides melted even as other parts of him stiffened. He wanted her back. He wanted her front and side too. He was a damned fool.

  She made eyes at him for half a second before turning her gaze on Skipper. “Good morning, Mr. King.”

  “Miss Bonnie.” Skipper nodded. Rupert couldn’t tell what the expression on his face was. It wasn’t quite a disapproving frown, but it wasn’t exactly a welcoming smile either. Clearly, Skip didn’t know what to make of Bonnie.

  Hell, Rupert didn’t know what to make of her either. “What do you want, Bonnie?” He took her hand to move it away from his chest. Sparks of fire danced between them at the contact. He held her hand for longer than he should have before letting it go.

  “You know what I want, honey,” she answered in a low voice, eyes cleverly downcast to make her look both modest and tempting.

  Rupert leaned closer to her, desperate to take her in his arms and kiss the living daylights out of her. But the thought that she made those eyes at any man with cash in his hand stopped him and threw ice water on his ardor. “You’re not getting it, sweetie pie,” he replied, as sugar-sweet as she was being with him.

  Bonnie’s features didn’t budge an inch from her coy flirting, but her eyes blazed with challenge. And Lord help him, that only made his heart beat faster. Arguing with a woman wasn’t always an exercise in misery. In fact, half the time the two of them had gone at it in those glorious five months of marriage and cohabitation, their arguments were the gateway to much, much nicer things. Some couples just liked to get under each other’s skin that way.

  She stepped so close to him that Rupert could feel the heat of her body, smell her exotic perfume. He ventured an apologetic glance to Skipper—who was now grinning outright—but Bonnie grabbed his jaw and forced her to look at him. “You’re gonna give me what I need, Rupert. I won’t stop until you do.”

  He flushed hot and cold. His hands flinched to wrap themselves around her waist, but he stopped himself. How could he ever had been so stupid as to let her go? And how far could he go now to get her back?

  “Oh, I’ll give you what you need, all right,” he growled, hoping Skipper couldn’t hear. “But I can assure you, it’s not what you think you want.” He dipped closer still to whisper in her ear, “I always did know exactly what you wanted and how you wanted it.”

  Shivers raced down Bonnie’s spine. Energy and excitement pooled in places she’d tried hard to forget. Prickles broke out on her skin, and more than anything, she wanted to throw her arms around Rupert and kiss him within an inch of his life. The problem was, it would have been within an inch of her life too, and her life wasn’t her own anymore.

  “Boss! Hey, Boss!” One of the workers erecting pieces of the frame of a house called out, and both Skipper and Rupert jumped to attention. For Bonnie, that meant being deprived of the delicious heat and tension of Rupert’s body so close to hers.

  “I’ll handle this,” Skipper said, dashing off before Rupert could so much as open his mouth.

  Rupert stared after his friend, a scowl forming, then glanced sideways to Bonnie, almost as if he didn’t trust himself alone with her. Truth be told, she wasn’t sure she trusted herself with him.

  “That’s a fine erection you’ve got there,” she teased him, stepping to stand side-by-side with him.

  “Excuse me?” Rupert barked, squirming to adjust his stance.

  Lips twitching, Bonnie nodded to the building under construction. “What is it, a house? A business?”

  “Oh.” The flush that had come to Rupert’s face took on a deeper hue. “It’s a cottage. Everland is expanding all the time.”

  “Everland isn’t the only thing that’s expanding,” Bonnie replied under her breath. When Rupert shot her a questioning look, she darted a glance at his trousers.

  “Will you stop that?” he huffed.

  “Stop what?” She batted her eyes with mock innocence.

  “I don’t have time to flirt with you, Bonnie, and if you came all this way out of the blue, I’m betting you don’t have time either.”

  The way he crossed his arms and stared at her with a scolding frown, the firmness in his voice, the way his muscles strained against his shirt, his overlong hair catching highlights in the sun…all of them combined to bring the dusty, old memory of stepping off the train in Colorado to meet Rupert for the first time. There was something undeniably manly about him, possibly because he was so adept at physical labor. His body alone put Rex to shame, but it was his heart and his passion that had won her over, then and now.

  Now? Blast it, she wasn’t here to tickle he
r fancy and dream about things that could never be. She was here to finally end it all.

  Reluctantly, she let her coy grin drop and got down to business. “I’m asking you again, Rupert. Sign the divorce papers.”

  It wasn’t until his expression shifted to painful frustration that she realized he’d softened from his initial anger. She was sad to see it all come back again. “I told you last night and I’m telling you again. Marriage is forever. I’m not putting asunder what God joined together.”

  Irritation at his high-handedness led her to huff and plant one fist on her hip. “I’m not sure God would mind if two people who were young and didn’t know what they were doing corrected a mistake.”

  Rupert’s brow shot up, and he turned away from watching the construction to stare at her. “You think we made a mistake?”

  She blinked, her heart twisting. “Don’t you?”

  He pressed his lips shut, holding perfectly still for a moment. “No,” he murmured at last.

  She waited for more. It didn’t come. “No, you don’t think we made a mistake or no, you won’t sign the papers?”

  His eyes flashed as he looked at her. “No.”

  Now he was just messing with her. She threw up her arms. “You know I’m not going to let you rest until you sign the papers.”

  A self-satisfied grin tweaked the corners of his mouth. “Suits me just fine.”

  Dammit, but he had her there. She’d come to break things off with him for good, not to get tangled up in him all over again. The urge to lose herself in him was as strong as it’d ever been, but a thousand times more inconvenient.

  “It isn’t just my life at stake here, Rupert.” She turned serious. “I can’t emphasize that enough.”

  His humor disappeared. “What am I supposed to think about a woman who puts a bunch of whores ahead of her own husband?”

  “They are not ‘a bunch of whores,’” Bonnie seethed. “They are precious, struggling, hopeful women trying to turn their lives around.”