Secondhand Bride

by Linda Lael Miller

  That was when she drew back her hand and slapped him hard enough to loosen his teeth. Rage sang through him, so pure and so intense that it was almost pleasurable. He gripped her wrists, to forestall another attack, though there wasn’t much he could do about her feet. He’d be lucky if she didn’t haul off and kick him in the shins with one of those pointy-toed shoes she was wearing.

  “You bastard!” she breathed. “You unconscionable wretch!”

  He tightened his grasp, taking care not to hurt her. “Is that what you came all this way to say?” he shot back. “Well, now you’ve said it. Get in your hired buggy, Chloe, and go home to your husband!”

  She struggled to free herself, sputtering, too angry to speak coherently. He saw the intention to splinter his bones brewing in her eyes, clear as clouds gathering on a dark horizon, and sidestepped it, still holding her wrists.

  Her eyes shimmered with tears, and she made no attempt to hide them. “I would dearly love to kill you right now,” she informed him, and he knew she meant it. “Jack Barrett is not my husband—you are!”

  “What the devil is going on here?”

  At the intrusion of an all-too-familiar voice, Jeb turned his head, as did Chloe, and saw his pa standing a few feet away, hoary thumbs hooked under his belt. Angus McKettrick was a big man, well over six feet tall, rugged as the Texas plains that had spawned him, and just then, he looked stern enough to have stepped right out of the pages of the Old Testament.

  Riled and chagrined, both at the same time, Jeb let go of Chloe with a flinging motion of his hands, not at all sure she wouldn’t take advantage of the distraction to kick him where it would hurt most, which sure as hell wasn’t his shins. He knew he ought to answer his father’s terse if perfectly sensible question, but he couldn’t think of a single sane explanation. When he and Chloe were together, they either fought like wildcats or made love like monkeys, and there didn’t seem to be much middle ground between the two extremes.

  Chloe visibly smoothed her disgruntled countenance, favored the meddlesome old coot with a wistful smile, and put out a hand, stepping toward Angus as cordially as if they’d met at a garden party instead of out behind the bunkhouse, next to the manure pile, surrounded by chickens. “How do you do?” she said brightly. “My name is Chloe McKettrick. I’m Jeb’s wife.”

  Angus looked baffled for a moment, but then a beatific smile spread across his face. He took the hand she offered and squeezed it warmly. “Well, now,” the big man said, “my youngest here has been claiming he’d taken himself a bride, but I confess I was doubtful, since I never saw any sign of you.” After tossing Jeb a look that would sear the hide off a bear, he beamed at Chloe. “I’m Angus McKettrick, the head of this outfit. Come on inside. The family will be pleased to make your acquaintance at long last.”

  Jeb tried to intercede. “Pa—” Sure, he’d let his father and brothers believe he was married, mostly to nettle them, to shake Kade’s and Rafe’s confidence a little, since they’d been so all-fired sure that one or the other of them would win control of the Triple M, leaving him out in the cold, but it had all been so much smoke and bullshit. Chloe was another man’s wife, whatever her protests to the contrary, and that was the stark reality. “Pa, listen to me, I—she—”

  Angus pointed a work-gnarled index finger in his direction. “Not another word,” he warned, all glower, grit, and gravel.

  Jeb seethed with indignation, but at the moment it didn’t seem prudent to state his case. Besides, it meant saying straight out that he’d been bamboozled but good, and such an admission would have stuck in his throat like a wadded-up sock.

  A regular ladies’ man, Angus crooked his elbow at Chloe, and she swept right around and linked her arm with his, leaving Jeb behind as surely as if he’d turned invisible. The two of them strolled off in the direction of the house, and neither one so much as flinched when Jeb threw back his head, about to split open in frustration, and gave a Rebel yell fit to rend the heavens.

  It sure scared the chickens, though.

  2

  Chloe figured if she hadn’t already dedicated her life and soul to the assiduous education of young minds, she could have been an actress. The performance she put on when Jeb’s father squired her into that grand and rustic ranch house was a consummate one, worthy of the applause of heaven.

  They entered through the kitchen, a well-used and oft-frequented place in that household, from all appearances: The two men she’d encountered outside, earlier, after crossing the creek like a she-demon, were there, seated at the long table, their sleeves rolled up to reveal powerful forearms, their faces alight with some private glee.

  She knew the larger one, dark-haired and exuding a confidence that fell just short of out-and-out arrogance, was Rafe. He rose in her honor, but belatedly, after the other brother, Kade, had already gotten to his feet and nodded a greeting. He seemed sturdy and self-possessed, though his hair was a chestnut color, and his eyes were green, in contrast to Rafe’s blue ones. They were breath-takingly handsome, both of them, but mere shadows, in Chloe’s estimation, compared to Jeb.

  The devil himself, posing as an angel of light. Damn his shiftless soul.

  Chloe turned her attention to the two women in the room, one young, with golden brown hair and intelligent aquamarine eyes, the other middle-aged, soft and small, and of Spanish extraction. With booming pride, Angus presented Chloe as Jeb’s bride, then introduced the first woman as Kade’s wife, Mandy, and the second as his own, Concepcion.

  Both women greeted her warmly, with smiles and curious looks that made her blush, though not as fiercely as she had before, during the altercation with Jeb. She probably looked like a hoyden to them, with her tumbling-down hair and smudged traveling clothes, and it was an embarrassing certainty that they’d heard all about her rousing arrival from Kade and Rafe. Standing in the yard, they’d witnessed her descent upon the Triple M and kindly directed her to their younger brother.

  “Please, sit down,” Concepcion said, getting a mug down from a shelf and hoisting a huge enamel coffeepot off the stove to pour. It was then that Chloe noticed the older woman’s protruding midsection; she was carrying a child.

  Chloe felt a stab of envy even as she nodded, taking the place Angus indicated, the chair just to the right of the one he’d drawn back for himself.

  “Are you hungry?” Mandy asked, quietly gracious. “Concepcion and I have been baking pies—we have cherry and peach and dried apple.”

  Chloe realized, with a start, that she was hungry. She hadn’t eaten a bite, in fact, since before she left Tombstone, the day before, to ride a northbound stage, never dreaming she’d run into the man who had courted, married, and abandoned her, all in less than a month. She swallowed, nodded. “Please,” she said. “Cherry sounds good.”

  Concepcion presented her with a steaming cup of coffee and refilled the one Angus had apparently left behind when he’d gone out to intercede between her and Jeb. Mandy cut a generous slice of cherry pie and served it on a pretty china plate, brought her a fork.

  “Thank you,” Chloe said, wishing she’d taken the time to bathe, change clothes, and attend to her hair at the hotel in town, but she’d spotted Jeb right away, and she’d been so stung that she’d forgotten her original reasons for making the journey in the first place—the long-delayed telegram crumpled inside her purse, informing her that her uncle, John Lewis, was ailing. In addition, she’d read in the Epitaph that there was a teaching job to be had in Indian Rock.

  One glimpse of Jeb McKettrick strolling out of the Bloody Basin Saloon had driven those worthy objectives straight out of her mind, and she’d traveled all this way in a white-hot dither of a rage, wanting his scalp, or, at the very least, an abject apology.

  During their brief but fiery alliance, Jeb had told her he lived outside of Stockton, California, the lying skunk. He’d said he loved her. Bought her flowers and candy. Won her over, despite his patently reckless nature. On more than one occasion, he’d risked his neck
to impress her, riding horses Satan himself wouldn’t dare to mount, and he’d very nearly gotten into a gunfight with a man who’d spoken disrespectfully to her. Worst of all, he’d lured her into his bed, not once, but several times, and brought out a side of her nature that, in retrospect, appalled and astonished her.

  Now, in the spacious, ordinary kitchen of the Triple M ranch house, she burned, recalling her wanton responses.

  She glanced at the back door, which was firmly shut, and wondered, quite against her will, if her runaway bridegroom would put in an appearance, or if he’d already taken to his heels, as he was so disposed to do. The latter seemed more likely, given recent history, and though she would have preferred to feel just about anything else, an incomprehensible sadness all but overwhelmed her.

  Angus’s mouth being full of dried apple pie, it was Rafe who gave voice to what they were all surely thinking. “Seems to me you and my little brother aren’t on the best of terms,” he said, carefully polite. “Will you be staying here at the Triple M, or moving on?”

  The last thing Chloe intended to do was take up residence in a house where she would be purely unwelcome, at least from Jeb’s point of view. Even though he had told her a little about each of his family members, neatly transporting them to a ranch called the Double L, these people were essentially strangers, and she couldn’t bring herself to roll out the whole shoddy story, right on top of the first howdy-do.

  “I’ll probably check into the Arizona Hotel for a few days,” she said moderately. “You see, I came to Indian Rock to see my uncle and inquire about a teaching position. I did not expect to run into Jeb.”

  The curve of Rafe’s mouth looked suspiciously like a smirk. “Evidently, he was pretty surprised, too.”

  Chloe drew a deep, bracing breath, released it slowly. The damage had been done, but her dignity was about all she had left. “John Lewis is my biggest concern right now,” she said, just as the back door swung open, and Jeb stepped over the threshold, glaring at her. “My uncle is the dearest person in the world to me.”

  Jeb’s face changed instantly when he registered what she’d said, and a weighted silence descended over the whole room. Angus cleared his throat, and Rafe and Kade stared down at their plates, all signs of their previous amusement gone. Concepcion’s brown eyes brimmed with tears, and Mandy put a hand to her throat.

  The pit of Chloe’s stomach dropped like the trapdoor on a gallows. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  Angus’s gaze sliced to Jeb, who stood as if he’d been frozen, just inside the kitchen. “You’d better take your wife into the study,” he said gravely, “and tell her what happened.”

  Chloe’s hand trembled as she laid down her fork. Jeb nodded grimly in response to his father’s statement, took off his hat, and hung it on the peg next to the door with the others. “This way,” he said, indicating a direction with a slight movement of his head.

  Chloe’s knees wobbled as she stood. “What—?”

  Jeb said nothing, but extended a hand to her, and she made her way around the end of the table to take it. He gave her fingers an almost imperceptible squeeze.

  Swamped with dread, Chloe let Jeb lead her out of the kitchen, along a hallway, and finally into a spacious room at the front of the house. There, he gestured toward a chair, and Chloe sank into it.

  Jeb closed the double doors softly, then came over to her, drew up a chair of his own, facing hers, and took both her hands into his.

  “Chloe,” he began, his voice gruff. He stopped, started again. “Chloe, John Lewis is dead. His heart gave out.”

  The room, a bastion of masculinity, seemed to lurch at a sickening angle. “You’re lying,” she said, though she knew he wasn’t. The wire she’d received in Tombstone— she remembered now, with dizzying clarity, that it had been sent by Kade McKettrick, in his capacity as town marshal—had been misplaced for weeks. She’d only gotten it yesterday, and she’d immediately packed up her belongings and purchased a stagecoach ticket. She’d written to the Indian Rock School Committee, in response to their advertisement, well before that, and had intended to wait for a response before making the arduous journey.

  Jeb leaned in far enough to let his forehead rest against hers, and she did not pull away, as she might have done in any other circumstance save this one. “I wish I were lying, Chloe,” he said. “But it’s the truth.”

  She began to cry, softly and with sniffles, and Jeb drew her out of her chair and onto his lap. He put his arms around her, rock solid, and she let her head rest on his shoulder, breathing in the fresh-air-and-trail-dust scent of him. “No,” she whispered. It was impossible for John to be dead, plain impossible. He was the only family she had, aside from her estranged mother and stepfather, who were in Europe, making the Grand Tour. John had been her dearest and most faithful friend—her only friend, it often seemed. She’d kept every one of his letters, along with the small presents he’d sent for birthdays and Christmas. Though his visits had been infrequent, he’d been a powerful influence, shoring up her confidence when it wavered, listening with interest to her sometimes outrageous opinions, assuring her that she could come to him with any problem, at any time, and count on his help…

  And now he was gone.

  She shivered, and Jeb’s embrace tightened. “John was a fine man,” he said, against her temple. “He’s been sorely missed.”

  Chloe gave a soft, plaintive wail.

  “Go ahead and cry,” Jeb said. “You’ve got the right.”

  Chloe Wakefield hadn’t shed a tear since she was thirteen years old, when her uncle John told her he wouldn’t be visiting her in Sacramento anymore, and by now she was out of practice. Peculiar how such things came back to a person. She sobbed into Jeb’s shirt and clung to him, and he held her.

  Presently, Chloe got hold of herself and lifted her head. Shadows slipped across the room, as if falling from the books on the shelves, the walls, the very ceiling above. She dashed at her wet face with the back of one hand and eased out of Jeb’s arms. She had two feet, she reminded herself; she would stand on them.

  She moved to the window and stood looking out, her back to Jeb. “He must have wondered why I didn’t come,” she mourned. The creek she’d crossed earlier, in such high dudgeon, sparkled with the last fierce rays of sunlight, while splotches of pink and gold and blue danced on its surface. “I should have been there.”

  “I reckon he knew you would have been if you could.”

  She turned, clutching at a swell of ire the way a drowning swimmer would a sturdy branch extended from shore. “You were acquainted with John,” she accused. “Did you know all along that he was my uncle?”

  Jeb got to his feet. “No,” he said, and he seemed to be telling the truth. Of course, that was no indication that he was—Jeb McKettrick was a trickster, lover, and poet one moment, womanizing, gun-toting, card-playing waster the next. He kept a store of masks behind that handsome face and donned the one that best served his devious purposes at the time.

  Chloe searched her memory, but she couldn’t recall mentioning John to Jeb; their association had been too brief, too breathless, and too full of passion for such an exchange. If Jeb had told her he was from Indian Rock, instead of Stockton, she would have made the connection and spoken of John.

  “When?” she asked. “When did he die?”

  Jeb looked as though he wanted to approach her, take her in his arms again, but, to her combined relief and dismay, he did not. He simply stood there, watching her. “Not long after I left Tombstone,” he answered.

  Chloe fought an urge to dissolve again, to put her hands to her face and weep uncontrollably. “Where is he buried?”

  “In the churchyard, in town,” Jeb said. “I’ll take you there tomorrow.”

  Chloe stiffened. At the moment, stubborn pride was all she had left. No job, no husband, no cherished, always-understanding uncle. “No, thank you,” she said. “You’ve done quite enough, it seems to me. I’ll go on my own.”

&
nbsp; She saw his jaw harden, his hands clench momentarily into fists at his sides. “You’re not doing this on your own,” he ground out. “And that’s the end of it, Chloe. I put that poor nag you drove out here in the barn for the night, but I’ll hitch up another one, and we’ll head into Indian Rock together. Do whatever you have to do to get ready—we’re leaving in fifteen minutes.”

  Chloe opened her mouth, closed it again. Folded her arms. If she could have, she would have put down roots and wrapped them around the beams underneath the floor, just to keep from giving Jeb his way; but he was twice her size and had the look of a man who meant exactly what he said.

  He made for the doors, worked the latches with both hands, and looked back at her over one shoulder. He was a lean man, smaller than his brothers, but agile, and with his blue eyes flashing and his fair hair catching the last of the daylight, he looked for all the world like a young and rebellious god just come from Olympus.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “About John. About everything.”

  Chloe didn’t dare answer aloud, not knowing what would pour out of her if she risked opening the emotional floodgates—frenzied fury? Avowals of love? She spared him a sharp nod and turned away again, back to the window, back to the fading scenery.

  He went out, and if he closed the doors behind him, she didn’t hear it.

  Perhaps five minutes had gone by when Mandy came to stand next to her. The silence was companionable, a consolation to Chloe’s wounded spirit, though it didn’t last long.

  “I’ve put some water on to heat,” Mandy said, “in case you’d like to wash before you go back to town.”

  Chloe sniffled, though she’d long since stopped crying, on the outside, at least. “You’re very kind,” she said, without looking at the other woman.

  Mandy touched her arm. “You won’t rush away, will you?” she asked gently. “It would be a shame if you left too soon, if you didn’t give things a proper chance.”

  At last, Chloe met Mandy’s gaze. She’d been thinking what an unhappy accident it was that she’d ever crossed paths with Jeb in the first place, let alone seen him again in Indian Rock and pursued him through the countryside like some enraged harridan.