Secondhand Bride

by Linda Lael Miller

  She put the thought aside, touched her hair, now washed and brushed and bound into a tidy chignon, and smoothed her black sateen skirt with both hands. She was wearing her best white shirtwaist, with her grandmother’s cameo pinned at the throat, and wanted to be perceived as a lady when she met with Becky again.

  “Jeb McKettrick,” she said primly, “wake up. Immediately.”

  He groped for the hat with one hand and lifted it just high enough to uncover an eye. “You,” he said, almost accusingly.

  As if she were the one out of place, not him. “What are you doing here?”

  He took the time to yawn and stretch, and the combination was so damnably sensual that Chloe’s body got to remembering again, with no prompting at all from her mind. He swung his legs down off the sofa and sat up. “I told you last night I meant to protect Becky,” he said, but there was a twinkle in his azure eyes.

  She considered snatching up a sofa pillow and whacking him with it, but she needed the teaching job, having spent most of her savings since being ousted in Tombstone, which meant a degree of decorum was called for, lest word get back to the committee. Assuming she hadn’t already ruined her chances by creating a spectacle the day before, of course. “From what I’ve seen of Becky,” she said, “she is quite capable of looking after herself.”

  Jeb grinned, intensifying the lingering effects of the stretching and yawning, which brought Chloe’s temper to a slow, steady simmer. “That she is,” he agreed. “You’ve found me out, Miss Chloe. I reckon the truth is, I’m here to aggravate you as much as possible.”

  “That’s probably the first honest thing you’ve said since we met,” Chloe retorted. “Well, you can go now, because you’ve aggravated me plenty.”

  He let his gaze drift over her before rising languidly to his feet. “You cleaned up pretty well,” he observed.

  Chloe folded her arms and tapped one foot.

  He chuckled and shook his head. “You little hellion,” he said. Then he leaned in slightly and lowered his voice. “I considered pressing my rights as a husband last night, but I figured you’d scratch my eyes out if I crawled into your bed.”

  “You’re d—darned right I would have,” Chloe said, though secretly she wasn’t so sure. She tended to lose all good sense when he kissed her and when they made love…

  She gave herself a mental shake. They had never “made love,” they’d only torn each other’s clothes off and coupled, always in a sweaty tangle of arms and legs.

  Chloe fanned herself with one hand. Jeb grinned, as if he knew exactly what was going on in her mind.

  She would have killed him, school committee be damned, if Becky hadn’t come down the stairs just then.

  “Well,” said that worthy woman, “if it isn’t Mr. McKettrick. I would have thought you’d be in jail by now, given the state of your temper when I saw you last.” She smiled. “Join us for breakfast?”

  “I wouldn’t think of refusing,” he said, looking at Chloe while he spoke.

  She tried to singe him with her eyes. “I can’t think why you’d want to sit down to a meal with a lying, sneaking cheat like me,” she said.

  “Oh, dear,” Becky objected, though mildly. “You didn’t really say that, did you, Jeb?”

  He smiled endearingly. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “I surely did. And I meant every word.”

  Chloe had to stay herself forcibly from picking up a sofa pillow. What had she ever seen in this man? Her body answered the question quickly enough, but her heart was less forthcoming. “Go away,” she whispered, though she had no real hope that Becky wouldn’t hear. She was standing too near and listening too intently.

  “It would be rude to turn down such a generous invitation,” he said, with a slight nod in Becky’s direction. “Besides, I could eat a bull elk.” His eyes gleamed with mockery as he looked down into Chloe’s flushed face. “Thanks to you, Mrs. McKettrick, I missed supper last night.”

  “It’s your own fault,” Chloe snapped. “You could have stayed at the ranch, where you belong.”

  “Mrs. McKettrick?” Becky asked.

  “My name is Wakefield,” Chloe said.

  “That isn’t what you told my father yesterday, out behind the bunkhouse,” Jeb pointed out affably.

  Chloe felt her cheeks catch fire; it was the curse of a redheaded woman, this blushing so easily. If only she’d been a blonde.

  “Let’s have breakfast,” Becky reiterated. Plainly, she’d had considerable experience at keeping the peace, though the hotel didn’t look like the kind of place that would attract rowdies. Boasting a porcelain bathtub and hot and cold running water as it did, not to mention a sink and a commode that flushed, it would have been considered well-appointed, even in Sacramento.

  “I couldn’t eat a bite,” Chloe protested, with a searing glance at Jeb. It was a lie, of course. She had awakened several times in the night with her stomach gnawing at her backbone, and once or twice she’d been desperate enough to consider sneaking down to the kitchen to raid the pantry. Only the fear of being thought a thief had kept her in her room.

  “Guess that’s your choice,” Jeb said, and headed for what must have been the dining room.

  Becky waited, smiling a little, for Chloe to swallow her damnable pride and join them. She did so, with a gulp, and when she caught the scents of fresh coffee and frying bacon wafting from the kitchen, she was completely lost. Pride, after all, makes for a poor breakfast.

  Jeb had chosen a table next to the window, and he stood until both Becky and Chloe were seated, then sat down opposite them. A small woman bustled through the far doorway, carrying a heavy coffeepot in one hand and three mugs in the other, a finger hooked deftly through the handles.

  “Good morning, Sarah,” Becky said cheerfully. “This is Chloe—er—Wakefield. Chloe, my friend, Sarah Fee. I couldn’t run this place without her.”

  Sarah beamed, obviously valuing the compliment, and nodded a greeting to Chloe as she set the mugs on the table and poured coffee for the three of them. It was still quite early, so there were no other customers in the dining room. “Howdy,” Sarah said. “The special is bacon and eggs, with fried potatoes.”

  “Sounds good,” Jeb said. It was a mystery to Chloe how he was so nice to other people, especially women, and so odious with her. Not that he’d always treated her badly. Oh, no. When he’d wanted something—specifically the Triple M—he’d been charm itself.

  “Don’t you have work to do?” Chloe asked Jeb, when Becky left the table briefly, a few minutes later, to speak to someone waiting at the registration desk.

  “No,” Jeb answered, after taking and savoring a sip of coffee. “As a matter of fact, I’m mostly an irritant around the ranch these days.”

  “I can believe that,” Chloe said.

  “Always generous with a compliment,” Jeb replied smoothly.

  “I despise you.”

  “I know.”

  Chloe, having raised her coffee halfway to her mouth, had to set it down again, lest she spill it. “Just go away. Please. I promise to divorce you as soon as I possibly can.”

  “Why go to all the trouble of a divorce?” Jeb asked blithely. “Since we’re not married anyway.”

  “We are married, more’s the pity!”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Prove it.”

  “Dammit, Jeb, you were there. We stood up before a preacher. We exchanged vows. What a joke that was.”

  “Especially the part where you promised to love, honor, and obey.”

  Chloe narrowed her eyes. “Suppose I’m expecting?” she asked, in a whisper, just to nettle him. Actually, she knew for certain that she wasn’t, but the tactic worked nicely anyway.

  Jeb set his coffee cup down on the red-and-white-checked oilcloth covering the table with a resounding thump, spilling some of the contents and burning his thumb.

  “What?” he hissed.

  She smiled coyly while he cursed under his breath and shook his hand, though she felt unaccountably st
ung. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t known what he’d been up to in Tombstone; Jeb wanted a wife and a child—Jack had taken pleasure in telling her that, after that humiliating debacle of a wedding night—and he’d have taken anybody who applied. “You heard me,” she said. He was a poker player; if he didn’t know a bluff when he saw one, well, that was his problem, not hers.

  “Dammit, Chloe, if this is another one of your tricks—”

  “What tricks would those be?” she asked sweetly, as Becky returned. Sarah was back, too, carrying their plates on a tray.

  Jeb was pale; she’d gotten under his skin for sure. Interest and hostility glinted in his eyes, and Chloe almost wished she was carrying his child. It would have served him right, after what he’d put her through, to see her make a grand exit on an outbound stagecoach, to bear and raise the baby elsewhere.

  “Are Sarah and I interrupting something?” Becky asked lightly.

  “No,” Jeb said, uncharitably.

  The food was delicious, and Chloe didn’t even try to pretend she wasn’t hungry. She didn’t say two words throughout the meal, though, and Jeb probably didn’t either, but Becky filled the space with chatter about the furniture she’d ordered for the new part of the hotel, a dress she’d bought for Emmeline, over at the mercantile, and the shameful price of bed linens.

  They had barely finished eating when Rafe came striding in off the street, dressed for a long, cold ride and looking annoyed. His gaze sliced straight to Jeb.

  “There you are,” he said, without a trace of cordiality.

  Jeb shifted in his chair, his face hardening. “Rafe,” he said, by way of a greeting.

  “Begging your pardon, Becky,” Rafe said, and acknowledged Chloe with a terse nod, “but I’ll have to deprive you of such genial company.” He glowered at Jeb. “You see,” he went on pointedly, “we’ve got a ranch to run, and with that new herd of cattle just in from Texas, we need every hand we can scrounge up. Even the slackers, like my little brother, here.”

  Jeb hesitated, plainly wanting to stare Rafe down, but in the end he pushed back his chair, with a loud scraping sound, and stood up.

  Chloe smiled broadly.

  Jeb paused beside her chair, leaned down, and spoke directly into her face. “Don’t look so smug, Miss Chloe,” he drawled. “I’m not through with you, by any means.”

  Having said that, he walked out.

  “Sorry,” Rafe said, though whether he was addressing Chloe herself, or Becky, there was no telling. He followed Jeb onto the street, spurs clanking.

  “So there are people who can cow Jeb McKettrick,” Chloe said, with some satisfaction.

  “Rafe is foreman on the Triple M,” Becky answered. “For the time being, he gives the orders.” She smiled into her coffee cup, hesitated. “I can’t say John didn’t warn me,” she said musingly. Then she moved to the chair Jeb had occupied, across from Chloe. Her expression, full of merriment only moments before, turned solemn, and a hint of tears shone in her eyes.

  The change alarmed Chloe; something dreadfully important was about to be said, her instincts told her that, and suddenly she felt like fleeing or putting her hands over her ears. She did neither.

  “What is it?” she asked, very quietly.

  Becky pulled a lace-trimmed handkerchief from the sleeve of her dress and dabbed at her eyes. “It’s about John,” she said.

  5

  His booted feet propped on a gaming table, Jack Barrett sat alone in the smoky back room of Tombstone’s Broken Stirrup Saloon, pondering the divorce papers he’d taken from one of Chloe’s hatboxes before her hasty departure for Indian Rock. This was all he meant to her, he reflected, a single document, signed by a lawyer and a judge. Resentment surged through him, but he quelled it quickly; a man in the grip of his emotions, he believed, was a man who could be taken by surprise.

  He hated being taken by surprise.

  With a slow smile, he pulled a wooden match from the inside pocket of his silk vest, struck it against the edge of the table, and set the decree aflame. When the fire got too hot, he turned in his chair and dropped the blazing sheets of vellum into a spittoon.

  He watched idly as Chloe’s personal declaration of independence burned, then lit a cheroot and settled back again to smoke and reflect on what he ought to do next.

  He thought of Jeb McKettrick, the man who’d trespassed on his territory, and drew his .44 from the holster on his hip. Snapping it open, he spun the cylinder, frowning. The notches on the handle were a comfort to him— seventeen of them, one for each of the men he’d killed, some in fair fights, some by ambush, for a bounty.

  With the pad of his thumb, he traced the small notches, counting them one by one, like the beads on a rosary, remembering, with a sense of accomplishment, each man’s name and the place where he fell. McKettrick, he decided, would make number eighteen, and he’d strike the ground wherever Jack found him, though the circumstances had to be right. Chloe’s lover had brothers, and from what Jack had heard, the McKettricks being well-known in Tombstone, they weren’t the sort to be trifled with. Best catch the bridegroom alone, and off guard, though it would be a pure pleasure to kill him in front of Chloe. That would be a lesson to her, and a memorable one.

  He felt a peculiar, quivering sensation in the pit of his stomach, thought briefly that it might be fear, and finally overruled the idea. He could avoid the brothers easily enough and, sure, he’d seen McKettrick use a gun, out behind the Broken Stirrup. He was fast, all right, but that had been a boy’s game, shooting bottles out of the sky for money and fun. A way of showing off.

  Jack shook his head at the memory. Where was the challenge in that? It was a waste of good bullets.

  Dollars to dog turds, McKettrick had never put a slug in a human being, and now he never would. Before the month was out, he’d be asleep in the arms of the Lord.

  Giving a philosophical sigh, Barrett snapped his .44 shut and shoved it back into its holster. The way he saw it, he was saving McKettrick’s soul, though he didn’t reckon anybody would appreciate his effort, most especially Chloe.

  His jaw hardened. The little trollop. McKettrick had made a fool of her in front of the whole of Tombstone, marrying her in the afternoon, then leaving her alone in their hotel room while he drank and gambled in this very room. As luck would have it, one of the other players in that night’s game had been the head of the school board, and thus, Chloe’s employer.

  Recalling the scene settled Jack’s nerves a little and brought a smile to his lips. He’d snagged McKettrick in the street, right after the ceremony, shown him the wedding portrait he, Jack, and Chloe had had taken two years before. The beaming husband had turned sullen in the space of an instant. Instead of confronting Chloe, Jeb had joined the poker game and proceeded to get royally drunk, and when Chloe had finally come looking for him, well after midnight, she’d found her fancy mister with cards in his hand and a girl on his lap.

  She and McKettrick had had words, loud, public ones. She’d finally stormed out, but not before her gaze connected with Jack’s. He’d been leaning against the wall the whole while, smoking and watching, and the look in her eyes went through him like a Mexican bayonet. He felt it again, even after all these weeks, and the pain, the insult of it, almost took his breath away.

  He’d loved her so much, and it wasn’t like he hadn’t been patient with her flighty, fickle ways. A lot of men would have killed her for shaming him the way she had, divorcing him before the marriage ever got started, but he’d known she was young and had led a sheltered life up in Sacramento, with those rich folks of hers. He’d been willing to overlook her mistakes and take her back, even to hang up his gun for good, if that was what she wanted. Her folks hadn’t approved of the union, but they’d have come around in time and put up the money for a ranch and some cattle.

  They could have done all right, he and Chloe.

  Was she grateful that he’d set matters straight where McKettrick was concerned? Hell, no. She’d turned on him, claws
bared, said he’d spoiled everything, and that she wished she’d never had the misfortune to make his acquaintance in the first place.

  Jack’s chair creaked as he stood and stretched, the.44 a heavy reassurance against his right hip. Trying to comfort Chloe, after McKettrick hit the trail, he’d told her part of what he’d just learned from a drifter, down from Indian Rock: that her handsome lover was in need of a wife and a child, both of which he had to produce if he wanted to come into his inheritance, and that he was not particularly picky about where he dredged them up—but she’d thrown his wise counsel back in his face and threatened to shoot off his kneecaps with that derringer of hers if he didn’t get out of her sight and stay out.

  It was partly his own doing, he supposed, that she was so quick with that viperous little tongue of hers. He should have straightened her out long ago. Taught her to mind, like a woman ought to do.

  The inside door creaked open, and he almost went for his gun, but it was only one of the saloon girls, simpering at him from behind a veil of war paint. He tried in vain to recall her name, but it wasn’t forthcoming.

  “You feelin’ lonely, Jack?” she cooed.

  He was lonely, all right, but there was only one woman in the world who could ease his yearning, and that was Chloe. His wife. “Send the bartender’s boy over to Carson’s Livery,” he said, ignoring the implicit invitation. “Tell them to saddle my horse.”

  The tramp’s rouged mouth formed a pout. “You leavin’ us, Jack?”

  He snatched up his coat, from the back of one of the scarred chairs, and reached for his hat, lying in the middle of the table. “Yes,” he answered flatly. “Do as I tell you.”

  “Where you goin’?”

  He took a threatening step toward her, and she backed out of the doorway, blinking, turned on her heel, and ran to do his bidding.

  That, he thought, was more like it. Chloe could take a lesson or two from Little Miss No-name. He put on his hat, checked the .44 again, even though it was always loaded, and headed for the bar.

  Half an hour later, with several shots of whiskey under his belt to fortify him for the journey, Jack Barrett rode out, traveling north toward the high country.