Montana Mail-Order Wife

by Charlotte Douglas

  Someone had made coffee, and he’d almost finished the pot. The extra jolt of caffeine hadn’t been such a good idea, not with his nerves already jangling over the prospect of revealing Maggie’s story, but at least he was wide awake. Now that he’d promised to tell Rachel about his deceased wife, he wanted to get it over with.

  He’d about decided to rush upstairs and bang on her door to awaken her when she breezed into the kitchen, carrying a tray of dirty dishes.

  “Where’ve you been?” he blurted, his gruffness covering the surge of tenderness he experienced at her arrival. She looked even prettier than usual this morning, her cheeks glowing, her hair shining in the morning sun and her snug jeans tempting him with curves he dare not touch.

  “Good morning to you, too,” she said with a sweetness he should have been accustomed to, but which still managed to take his breath away.

  “Good morning.” Chastised, he took the heavy tray from her and set it next to the sink. “Did you have breakfast in your room?”

  She crossed to the sink and began filling it with hot water. “I had breakfast with Jordan.”

  “With Jordan?”

  “The child has to eat.”

  “He should eat alone. He’s being punished.”

  “Yes, he is,” she said with a wry smile that managed to creep under his skin. “For something that probably wasn’t even his fault.”

  “We went around and around on that last night. Don’t start again.”

  She plunged the dirty dishes into soapy water. “You’re the boss.”

  “Leave those.” He placed his hand on her shoulder, then jerked it away as if burned. He couldn’t risk touching her. Once he started, he didn’t know if he could stop. “I want to talk to you.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Not here.” Wade glanced upward toward his son’s room. “I can’t risk Jordan overhearing.” He shifted impatiently from foot to foot while she dried her hands. “Come with me.”

  Rachel followed him through the house and out the front door. He pointed to a path that led through the trees to the river. Side by side, they plunged into the deep shade of the overgrown trail.

  The morning sun had already burned away the mist, and the day promised to be warm. Wade welcomed the coolness beneath the trees as he held branches aside for Rachel to pass. He was all too conscious of her presence—the gracefulness of her gliding walk; the way she quickened her steps to match his stride; her unique fragrance, a blend of soap, sweetness, and femininity—and he wished the purpose of their walk was a romantic rendezvous away from the dozens of prying eyes at the ranch.

  Instead, he would be sharing the most painful, humiliating episode of his life.

  All too soon he could hear the river, flooded with melting snow from the high country, bounding over its rocky bed. They rounded a bend in the path that brought them to the riverbank.

  “It’s beautiful here.” Rachel glanced at the sunlight filtering through the trees and creating explosions of light on the rapids below. “Like an outdoor cathedral.”

  At the river’s edge, Wade gestured toward a rustic bench made of split logs. “I used to spend a lot of time here when I was a kid.”

  Rachel settled on the log seat. “Why not now?”

  Wade sat beside her, his gaze on the river. He didn’t dare look at her, or he’d grab her and kiss her senseless. “Running the ranch takes all my time.”

  “Seems a shame to live near such beauty and not take advantage of it.”

  He dived head on into the subject he’d come there to discuss. Its unpleasantness cooled his ardor. “I used to bring Maggie here when we were dating.”

  He turned to find Rachel studying him with cool green eyes. “Are you sure that’s not the reason you’ve avoided this spot until now?” she asked.

  Her perception racheted his frustration up another notch. The one woman he’d ever met who appeared to understand him as easily as breathing was beyond his reach.

  He plunged into his story before he lost his nerve. “Maggie was eighteen when we married. I’d always thought of her as just a kid—she was six years younger than me—until I saw her at one of the Swenson barn dances. Overnight she’d turned into a beautiful, vivacious girl. Dark wavy hair, flashing eyes and a come-on smile. Every guy in the county was crazy about her. I don’t know why she picked me.”

  “She obviously knew quality when she saw it,” Rachel said with a warm smile that made him want to sit on his hands to keep from reaching for her.

  “We were happy at first,” he continued, “but she became pregnant with Jordan almost immediately, and she hated losing her figure. She hated everything about being pregnant.”

  “She was still just a girl.”

  Wade nodded, and with stunning clarity, realized Maggie had never matured. She’d always been a young girl, aching for parties, fun and adventure. She hadn’t lived long enough to develop into a woman.

  Certainly not the kind of woman Rachel was—calm, assured, comfortable with herself.

  “He was born the day before her nineteenth birthday. Although she seemed to adore him, she turned Jordan over to Ursula’s care as soon as she brought him home from the hospital. That’s when the real trouble began.”

  Rachel sat motionless, listening with a gravity that eased his embarrassment at the telling.

  “After Jordan was born, Maggie was never home. She kept later and later hours, and sometimes disappeared overnight. She always had a reasonable explanation—helping her mother, visiting a sick friend, driving all the way to Kalispell to take in a movie.”

  He picked up a rock from the riverbank and pitched it into the swirling water. “But all her excuses were lies.”

  Rachel reached over and placed her hand on his. Her skin was soft and warm, and he knew he should pull away, but he reveled in her nearness. Too soon she would be gone.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  Years of bitterness eased with her touch, and he realized with a jolt that this healing had begun the day Rachel had entered his life. For the first time, he was able to look back at Maggie objectively. His wife hadn’t been a bad person, just a girl who married and became a mother too young, who hadn’t had a chance to stretch her wings before she settled down. He felt as if a block of ice around his heart had been melting away since Rachel arrived, and the corrosive jealousy and resentment that had haunted him for so long had miraculously disappeared.

  He had Rachel to thank for washing away his bitterness, and he longed to gather her in his arms, but he had to finish his story—the worst part.

  “After Jordan’s birth, the doctors warned Maggie against having more children because she’d had such a difficult time with the delivery, but Maggie never listened to what anyone told her. Jordan was still a toddler when Maggie became pregnant again.”

  Wade dragged his fingers through his hair and forced out words he’d never told anyone else. “The baby wasn’t mine. Maggie and I hadn’t made love in over a year when she became pregnant. She never told me who the father was.”

  “That must have been an awful time for you,” Rachel said quietly.

  Wade nodded. “For Jordan’s sake, I begged Maggie to stay with us. Promised her I’d raise the child as if it were my own. She agreed to try to make our marriage work again, but it was too late.”

  He shoved himself to his feet and paced over the rocky bank. “She and the baby died.”

  Rachel rose and looped her arm through his. “Poor Maggie.”

  “Yeah.” Tears welled in Wade’s eyes and a knot formed in his throat. He was finally able to mourn Maggie without animosity and the desire for retribution. “Poor Maggie.”

  “It must have been hard for you. Widowed with a young child.”

  Wade scuffed a rock with the toe of his boot. “I’m ashamed to admit it now, but what was worst for me was my wounded pride. I felt like every person in Lincoln County knew Maggie had made a fool of me, and I hated her for it. Her own family moved away to avo
id the shame.”

  “Is that why you’ve never talked to Jordan about his mother?”

  “I’m not proud of that, but what could I tell him? That his mother was a liar and a tramp?”

  Rachel shook her head. “Tell him what he needs to know.”

  Wade looked at her, not understanding.

  “Tell him,” Rachel said, “that his mother was a lovely, vivacious woman who loved him and you in her own way.”

  He placed his hands on her shoulders and met her calm gaze. “Where did you learn to be so wise?”

  “You know I can’t answer that,” she said with a self-effacing smile.

  Without his noticing it, Rachel had gradually healed his aching heart and his wounded pride. More than anything, he wanted to thank her by holding her in his arms and kissing those soft, coral lips. He leaned toward her and felt the warmth of her breath against his lips.

  Alarm flashed in her green eyes, and she jerked away.

  What had frightened her? he wondered, then realized her withdrawal was best for both of them. He had told her Maggie’s story to buy himself time until her identity was discovered. If he kissed her again, he’d want more than a kiss. He wanted to make love to Rachel, to sample her sweetness and give her pleasure. He wanted to watch her respond to his caresses. But he had no right to take what he wanted, not when she might belong to another man. If he kissed her again, he’d ruin everything.

  “Maybe we should go back to the house,” she suggested in a breathless voice.

  They both turned from the river at the sound of someone crashing through the undergrowth behind them.

  “Wade, where are you?” Leo’s voice boomed out from the path.

  Wade greeted his foreman as Leo strode into sight. “What are you doing out here on a Sunday morning?”

  “I have to talk to you about Jordan,” Leo said.

  “Good grief,” Wade said in exasperation. “What’s the boy done now?”

  Before Leo could answer, the sound of a wildly tolling bell filled the air.

  “What’s that?” Rachel asked.

  “There’s an emergency at the ranch.” Wade broke into a run, with Leo fast on his heels. “Hurry!”

  Chapter Twelve

  Wade raced toward the house, his heart beating as hard as his boots pounded the pathway. Everyone on the ranch had strict instructions never to ring the bell by the front drive except in the direst emergency, a crisis like injury, fire, severe weather.

  The mournful sound of that bell filled him with fear. The last time it had rung, his father had suffered a fatal heart attack in the barn. Wade couldn’t imagine, didn’t want to guess what catastrophe had struck now.

  He broke through the bushes into the yard to find Jordan swinging on the end of the cord, yanking the bell with all his skinny might.

  Wade exploded with rage. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? You’re supposed to be in your room!”

  Jordan pointed toward the barn. “But, Dad—”

  “No back talk, young man—”

  Wade’s gaze followed Jordan’s gesture, and his heart leaped to his throat. In the woods behind the barn, flames were crowning in the tops of the trees. A strong wind was pushing the fire directly toward the ranch buildings.

  “It’s a sleeper from the lightning storm,” Jordan said. “I saw the smoke from my bedroom window.”

  At the tolling of the bell, ranch hands, accustomed to sleeping in on Sunday mornings, poured from the bunkhouse, jerking on boots and jackets as they came.

  Behind Wade, Lefty Starr sprinted up the drive from the front gate, rifle in hand.

  “Leo,” Wade ordered as the foreman joined him, “have the hands evacuate the horses into the east pasture. I’ll use the tractor to plow a firebreak behind the barn.”

  “What about me, Dad?” Jordan asked. “What can I do?”

  “Me, too,” Rachel said, out of breath from her trek from the river.

  “Get feed sacks from the barn,” Wade said, “and wet them down. You’ll need to watch for sparks blowing into the grass, and beat them out.”

  Wade rushed to the barn with his workers behind him. While the hands led the horses from their stalls, Leo helped Wade attach the harrow to the tractor.

  “Damn wind’s pushing the fire fast,” the old foreman said. “You’ll have to hurry.”

  Wade started the tractor and drove it out the barn’s rear doors. Thick smoke choked him, and he stopped long enough to wet a bandanna and tie it over his nose and mouth, then he hopped onto the tractor again. If he could strip the earth of grass between the woods and the clearing behind the barn, the fire would die for lack of fuel.

  Through the thickening smoke, he could see the hands leading the terrified horses out of the barn. Behind the barn, Rachel, Jordan and Ursula, the lower half of their faces covered with wet kerchiefs against the smoke, attacked hot spots in the grass with wet burlap sacks.

  The heat from the fire seared his skin, and sweat poured into his eyes, but he continued driving through the suffocating smoke, turning the dried grass under with the plow blade.

  For what seemed hours, he drove back and forth, widening the firebreak, until his lungs felt as if they would burst from smoke and his skin felt blistered from the heat. But he couldn’t quit. If the fire reached the barn, the wind would blow it toward the house, and he wasn’t going to lose the Garrett homestead to a damned lightning strike. Not while there was still breath in his body.

  Suddenly he realized he wasn’t alone. A large Forest Service earth mover appeared beside him, gouging huge swaths between the fire and the barn, increasing the distance the fire would have to leap to reach the buildings.

  Above the roar of the vehicles, Wade could hear the ranger issuing orders to his smokechasers. Then came the rumble of another engine as a Forest Service tanker crew arrived and began to spray the fast-approaching blaze with water.

  Someone on the fire line cheered. Wade lifted his head and realized the wind had shifted, blowing the fire back over woods it had already consumed. It was out of fuel.

  The worst was over.

  For another hour, Wade and his hands battled hot spots in the woods with the Forest Service crew until the fire no longer threatened to flare up and damage any ranch buildings. Aching, soot covered, his throat raw and his eyes watering from smoke, he finally walked back toward the barn.

  Ursula and Jordan were pouring cold drinks for the firefighters, and Wade gratefully accepted a glass of iced tea.

  “Is it out for good?” Jordan asked.

  Wade looked at his son with a lump in his throat. If it hadn’t been for Jordan’s sharp eyes, they might have lost the barn and outbuildings, the horses and the main house.

  “Thank you, son. Without your early warning, this could have been a real disaster.”

  “Three cheers for Jordan,” Leo cried, and the hands and other firefighters joined in the praise and applause.

  Jordan blushed with pleasure, but his expression quickly sobered. He gazed at his father with solemn eyes. “If you don’t need me, sir, I’d better return to my room.”

  Without a backward look, the boy trudged toward the ranch house.

  “I need to talk to you about that boy,” Leo said.

  Wade poured himself another glass of tea and settled on a bench. “I’m listening.”

  “I was out behind the Swenson barn last night,” Leo said, “having myself a smoke. You know how Ursula is about my cigarettes.”

  Wade nodded.

  “Anyways,” the foreman continued, “I saw the whole exchange between Sue Ann and Jordan. She was making insinuations about you and Miss Rachel.”

  “What kind of insinuations?”

  “They was pretty crude and don’t bear repeating. The boy asked her to stop, but she wouldn’t. When he tried to get away from her, she blocked his way. He was just trying to get around her when she fell in the muck. It wasn’t the boy’s fault.”

  Wade sighed. Rachel had told him so. He
should have listened to her.

  Rachel.

  “Where’s Rachel?” he asked.

  Leo shrugged. “Last time I saw her, she was with Jordan.”

  Wade searched for Rachel among the crowd of firefighters but didn’t see her. He handed Leo his empty glass and raced after Jordan, catching up with the boy at the front steps.

  “Jordan,” he called.

  The boy turned and cringed when he saw his father. “I’m going straight back to my room. Honest, Dad.”

  With a twinge of guilt at his son’s fear of him, Wade pulled Jordan into his arms. “Your punishment’s been lifted. Leo saw what happened last night and backs up your side of the story.”

  The boy’s face brightened. “Really?”

  “Now,” Wade said, “where’s Rachel? Inside?”

  Jordan shook his head and pointed to the river path. “She went that way. And he went with her.”

  “He?” Wade felt a terrible sense of foreboding.

  “That Mr. Crutchfield, the insurance adjustor guy.”

  “Go find Lefty and Leo,” Wade ordered. “Tell them to bring their guns and meet me at the river.”

  With his heart again pounding in his throat, he set off at a dead run down the path.

  EXHAUSTED, RACHEL slumped on the porch steps. Her back ached and her hands were rubbed raw from handling the wet burlap. The fire was practically out, the barn was saved and no one had been hurt, thanks to Jordan’s early warning. Wade and the others were still mopping up the remnants of the blaze.

  Jordan sprawled on the stairs beside her, drinking cola from a can, looking like a raccoon with his face begrimed with soot.

  “Your sharp eyes and quick action saved the barn,” she said. “Your dad must be really proud of you.”

  “I don’t know,” Jordan said with a doubtful shake of his head. “After last night, he thinks I’m a juvenile delinquent.”

  “No, he doesn’t.”

  “Then why did he lock me up like a criminal?”

  Rachel didn’t have an answer. After hearing Wade tell Maggie’s story, she better understood his adherence to strict discipline. She also understood how much he needed a woman who loved him, and how much Jordan needed a mother. Both were responsibilities she’d love to assume, but not until she’d uncovered her past. She knew she should drive into Libby to talk with Dr. Sinclair, but she was too tired to move.