“So?” she asked. “You're going to have to help me here, Lisa. . .I'm afraid the bell's not ringing for me.”
“Not a problem,” Lisa said, smiling. “Go to the last page.”
Once again, Sally did as asked. She saw nothing distinctive, so she gave Lisa another questioning glance.
“Back page,” Lisa said simply.
Sally flipped the page over and saw a series of small boxes that contained some very tiny print. She had to squint hard to read it, and even then it was hard to differentiate one box from the next, so she turned her attention to the section heads.
The first set of titles was easy enough to read. The list included “Want Ads,” “Lobbyists,” “Fundraisers,” along with several other similar titles, and Sally rolled her eyes at the familiarity of it all.
Then she saw another title that was obscured by the others, down near the bottom of the page.
“Mail Order Brides.”
Sally shook her head skeptically—surely this couldn't be what Lisa wanted her to look at. But when she looked up, her friend was grinning at her, and Sally blinked, then started to laugh for a moment. Then she paused to get her breathing under control.
“Surely you can't be serious?”
Slowly, Lisa reached into her purse and pulled out another piece of paper. Sally rolled her eyes, wondering what in heaven's name she had in mind this time, then watched as her friend carefully unfolded it.
“Umm. . .Lisa? What are you doing?” Sally asked.
Lisa smiled, smoothing out the creases that had become exaggerated due to all the folding.
“Just putting a thought in your head,” she said, handing her the paper.
Sally immediately recognized the handwriting as her friend's, and she looked at it, puzzled.
“What is this?”
Lisa grinned. “Your future, maybe.”
“OK?”
“It's a written out version of one of the ads in Frontier Times, the paper I just handed you,” Lisa explained. “It's too small to read, so I decided to copy it out for you.”
“You're serious about this?” Sally asked, her eyebrows arching.
“I am!” Lisa said. Lisa was usually relatively quiet when she spoke, and her extra volume and enthusiasm definitely got Sally's attention. “I think you should do it.”
“Do what?” Sally frowned.
“Why, reply to it, of course,” she said.
“This is crazy,” Sally commented. “They'll put me in the loony bin.”
“Could be,” Lisa agreed. “But isn't that better than a life as Jack Haversham's wife, and having to deal with your father's drinking?”
She cocked her head. “You do have a point there, perhaps,” Sally acknowledged. Then she smiled and shook her head. “But I should probably read it first, no?”
Lisa shrugged, then nodded at what she'd copied, indicating that she'd be patient while Sally went through it. As always, Sally enjoyed Lisa's neat, slanted handwriting, which made all her correspondence and memos a genuine pleasure to read.
Greetings!
I am the assistant to a legislator in the Colorado state senate here in Denver. I am young and single, with a Christian background and serious work ethic. I have been described as honest and forthright, and am eager to find a woman of character to share my life with and raise a family.
I would strongly prefer that my future wife at least be interested in politics, for I have serious aspirations and would do well with a partner who understands the demands of a life in politics. And of course she must have strong Christian beliefs and an equally strong desire to work hard and raise a family with me.
I am planning to leave Denver and run for mayor in a wonderful Colorado town called Last Chance, where there have been many successful marriages involving mail order brides. I have assessed my chances of being elected, and they are very strong, especially if I have a faithful Christian partner to assist in my efforts.
I hope this letter draws the attention of a woman with the appropriate background and interests. If you are interested in my prospects and my proposal, please reply to the box number listed below and I will promptly reply forthwith.
With much hope and anticipation,
Carson Jackson
Sally read it through, then read it again. The language certainly seemed credible enough, which made it possible to believe that Carson Jackson was who he said he was.
She smiled and looked up at her friend. “Well, it's different, I'll say that,” she said. Sally paused and pursed her lips. “May I ask what prompted this?” she finally asked.
“Everything!” Lisa exclaimed. “You and Jack, plus your father, me working for James Devlin. . .our lives, our future here. All of it.”
“It's not all that bad,” Sally said, trying to take the edge off her friend's words.
“Sally! Wake up—are you serious?” Lisa shook her long dark curls. “Think of what our future holds.”
Sally tilted her head in thought. “Well, it certainly doesn't look promising for me at the moment,” she said. “But your life isn't so bad.”
“Please,” Lisa said, rolling her eyes skyward. “We all know I'm headed down the same road as you. A semi-arranged marriage to someone exactly like Jack Haversham, or at least similar to him. And James Devlin may not be as bad as your father, but I can see the signs, the corruption beginning to creep in. It's only a matter of time.”
Lisa looked at Carson's letter as if it were a lifeline. “It's just impossible to escape all the tentacles this legislature throws out,” she concluded.
“You may be right,” Sally acknowledged. “But this man does the same thing. Wouldn't he be likely to be the same way?”
“Perhaps,” Lisa responded. “But let me ask you something. . .”
“OK.”
“When was the last time you heard a Maryland politician talk about his Christian faith and honest values when it wasn't part of a campaign or a stump speech?” she asked.
“Good point,” Sally admitted. “He does seem to be quite earnest about that part of it.”
“Exactly!” Lisa said.
“But Lisa,” Sally added, formulating the argument in her mind and realizing as she did how much she enjoyed her debates with Lisa. “We'd be moving out west. Leaving everything we ever know. It's terrifying!”
“In a way,” Lisa responded. “But it's also exciting!”
“I suppose so,” Sally acknowledged. “But dangerous, too, no? Especially for a pair of unattached ladies.”
“I'm certain that parts of it would be perilous,” Lisa said. “But rail travel is becoming more reliable by the day, and the West is being settled quite rapidly. It seems to be far easier to become established in that part of the country.”
“Still a big change,” Sally mused.
“Yes,” Lisa agreed, then smiled slightly. “You are, however, forgetting one of the most important aspects of all.”
“And what would that be?”
“This place,” Lisa said, throwing her hand in the air in exasperation. “The stink of it. The corruption. All the back door deals, the political machinations and the nonsense that goes with it.”
“Wouldn't we just find a different version of that in Colorado?”
“It's possible, I suppose,” Lisa said, then paused. “We'd be making a fresh new start, though, in a place where the way of getting things done is still being established and defined.”
She pointed at the ad. “And you with an ambitious young man who's clearly set on making his mark.”
“He does seem ambitious,” Sally said. “Although we could just be exchanging one set of problems for a similar one.”
Lisa grinned. “Now you're just debating for the sake of a good argument,” she shot back. “All I'm asking is that you think about it.”
Sally shrugged. “Well, there's certainly no harm in that,” she said finally.
“Good!” Lisa exclaimed, looking for the owner so they could pay and leave. “I
promise you, you haven't heard the last of this.”
“Oh, I know that,” Sally said, grinning. “Believe me, I know that quite well.”
Before she could hear more about Lisa's plan, though, Sally got an earful from her boss.
Who also happened to be her father.
He was waiting at her desk first thing when she arrived at the legislative offices, which in Sally's experience was never a good sign.
“Good morning,” Harlan said, his tone decidedly more frosty than usual.
“Father,” Sally replied, nodding, aware as ever of the awkwardness of having him as her boss. “You're here earlier than usual.”
He smiled slightly and tilted his head a bit. “No one to schmooze and take to breakfast,” Harlan said, sounding more than a little surprised. “Definitely an unusual occurrence.”
Sally knew he wasn't being completely honest with her. While it was true that his schedule was full of ongoing breakfast meetings, some were strictly of the liquid variety, and part of the reason he was here early was almost certainly because Harlan had waited to start tippling.
“Well, I hope everything is well,” Sally said, doing her best to sound noncommittal.
“More or less,” he replied, giving her a smile that landed somewhere south of phony.
She moved past him to get to her desk, ready to start working. Sally wanted to eliminate the chance of an extended conversation with her father, even though she knew the chances of that were slim to none.
Sally removed the cover from her typewriter and tried to look as busy as possible, but Harlan jumped in as soon as the keys were exposed.
“By the way,” he began. “There's something I've been meaning to talk to you about.”
“OK.”
“It's about last night,” Harlan continued, shaking his head in a way that let Sally know that he was a lot madder than he was letting on.
“Something to do with the bill?” Sally asked, feigning a lot more concern than she actually felt. She was still annoyed that he'd sandbagged her at the end of the previous day, and the truth was that Sally didn't give a flying fig about the fate of the bill.
“Did it go OK?” she asked nonetheless.
“Oh yes,” Harlan harrumphed. “Got through by the skin of it's teeth at the last possible minute.
He grinned. “Just as I'd planned.”
“Good!” she said. “I was worried about that.”
Harlan took a step away from her desk, as if he was done, a move that Sally knew immediately was completely staged. This was something her father did all the time, pretending he was done with an issue to throw his opponent off balance, then coming back to it at the last second.
She hated thinking of herself as her father's opponent, just as she hated the little white lie she'd just told about being worried about the bill. Sally sat up, steeling herself for her father's next maneuver.
“But there was something else I'm concerned about,” he said once he'd turned back to her.
“Hmm,” Sally said, pretending she didn't know what it was likely to be. “And what's that?”
“Your conversation with Jack,” he said ominously.
Sally felt the hairs on the back of her neck go up.
“What about it?” she asked, realizing immediately that she sounded more than a little hostile.
“Well. . .,” he began, “as hesitant as I am to report this, he insisted on discussing it with me last night.”
Not surprising, Sally thought to herself, wisely deciding to leave that unvoiced.
“Oh,” she said flatly, trying to act surprised.
“Yes,” Harlan said, shaking his head and then smoothing back his glistening mane of silver gray hair. “It wasn't what I wanted to hear at all.”
Sally frowned, doing her best to look puzzled. “I'm afraid I don't understand,” she said.
“He said you basically walked away from him in the middle of your conversation,” Harlan said, glaring slightly at her.
“Oh,” Sally replied, doing her best to suppress the mental images she had of herself doing awful, decidedly unChristian things to Jack Haversham. “I'm sorry. . .I truly didn't realize.”
Harlan sighed deeply. “Unfortunately, he seems to think you did,” her father added. “Jack says you did it deliberately.”
Sally felt her blood begin to boil. “That's simply not true!” she exclaimed, deciding that picking a fight about this represented a better strategy than facing the simple truth of Jack's accusation.
“He also said you've done it before,” Harlan added. “Jack said he was very disappointed in you.”
Why? Sally thought to herself. Because I shot him down again when he tried to ask me to dinner?
“Well, I'm sorry he's disappointed,” she replied, lowering her tone a little to indicate that an all-out fight might not be necessary if he backed down a bit. “But he's wrong.”
“Is he?” Harlan asked, his eyes widening.
“Yes, he is,” she insisted, crossing her arms over her chest in defiance. “I did not walk away from him!”
“Hmm,” her father said, clearly considering the possibility of backing down. Sally had been known to shed a tear or two when she pitched a fit like this, which was the one thing he wished to avoid at all costs. “Well, I have come to trust Jack and accept him at his word.”
“At my expense!?” Sally asked, furious. “Is that what you're saying?”
“No, no, not at all,” Harlan said, raising his hands, palms up. “I'm just saying I don't like this situation at all.”
“Well, neither do I,” Sally said, raising her volume a bit and making it clear she was willing to go to war over this particular issue.
Her father cupped his chin in his hand. “I'm just not sure what to do about it,” he said.
“Well, I can help you there,” Sally said.
Her father sighed. “How?”
“By telling him not to ask me to dinner again,” she said simply, bristling. “I'm not interested, and he knows it. And so do you.”
Harlan let out another sigh, this one noticeably deeper. “Sweetie, we've talked about this,” he said, the word “sweetie” setting off alarm bells for Sally.
“Yes, we have,” she replied warily.
“His interest is genuine,” her father began. “And he's a good man.”
“I don't disagree,” Sally said, agreeing about Jack's interest but not so much about Jack being a good man. “It's just that I'm not particularly interested in him.”
“I know,” Harlan said, shaking his head. “But Sally. . .”
“What?”
“We've talked about this,” he said for what seemed like the thousandth time. “Jack's a good prospect, and you're not getting any younger.”
When she heard his argument, Sally didn't know whether to laugh or cry. She knew her father was at least partially right, but the last thing she wanted to think about at the moment was the possibility of becoming an old maid.
“I know you're concerned for me, father,” she said, trying to lower the tension between them. “I just can't bring myself to like the man.”
Harlan blinked. “Well, I'm convinced he would grow on you if you gave him a chance.”
Sally bit her tongue hard, knowing she wasn't going to win this part of the argument. She'd given Jack Haversham a couple of chances, but some conversations early on had convinced her he was a bad fit. He was as vain as a lone rooster in a chicken coop, and Sally knew all she wanted to know about his corrupt double-dealing with her father.
Then there was the lunch “meeting.” That was the one thing Sally had followed through on for her father, right at the beginning, when Harlan had first latched onto the idea that she and Jack would make a good match.
Jack had insisted they have lunch together, justifying it via the need to discuss a particular bill that was utterly trivial and extraneous. Sally agreed, quite reluctantly, then was forced to listen while he talked non-stop for over an hour about his plans, his
achievements and then how Sally might fit into them.
He barely mentioned the bill at all, and his ego seemed to grow exponentially as the “meeting” progressed. By the time they were done, Sally had nearly gone cross-eyed from listening to Jack talk about himself, and she'd somehow resisted the urge to sprint from the restaurant when they finally left.
But she still had to walk back to work with Jack. And as she did, he made it abundantly clear that he wanted to see her again, under more informal circumstances.
That was when Sally had nipped things in the bud. She tried being as direct as possible at first, but when Jack Haversham wanted something associated with his monumental ego, he could be incredibly dense.
So she'd begun dodging him. At times her little game had become almost comical, involving moves and subterfuge that Sally had never dreamed she'd even consider. And her father was part of the process, monitoring her every move and trying to steer her back in Jack's direction.
Which was exactly what he was doing now.
“Well, I'm doing my best with it, father,” Sally said, deciding that acting resigned to the situation was the best way to defuse her father's constant need to argue and debate.
“It's not an easy thing at all.”
“I understand,” Harlan said, backing off a bit and placing his hand gently on Sally's shoulder. “I just want you to be happy, and more than anything I want peace among my staff.”
The way he voiced his concerns told Sally everything she needed to know about her father's priorities. Perhaps, she thought to herself, it was time to take Lisa's idea a bit more seriously.
“Do you think you can do that?” Harlan asked her, completely breaking her train of thought.
“I'll do my best, father,” Sally replied, trying to summon up an optimistic smile. She decided to remind him of the most important thing that had occurred. “And I'm glad the bill went through!”
“Yes!” he said, grinning, and Sally did her best not to think about all the poor farmers who would be displaced when the inevitable eminent domain order came down.
“That's the most important thing!” Harlan added enthusiastically.
Christmas Miracles: Mega Mail Order Bride 20-Book Box Set: Multi-Author Box Set Page 64