The Rancher’s Spirited Bride

by Chloe Carley

  “Jace just found out … well, Lily dear… maybe you should sit down for a minute,” Pearl told her.

  “Why?” she asked but came into the room and sat down anyway. No one immediately said anything, and her eyebrows rose as she waited for someone to explain.

  Since no one else seemed to be willing to state what they were all thinking, Sara Jane straightened her spine and bluntly stated, “We think it’s possible you might be carrying two babies instead of one.”

  A smile spread across Lily’s face. “Well, that would explain why it feels like there’s a whole passel of arms and legs inside of me. Yesterday I was getting kicked and punched in so many places I just feel battered today.”

  “That’s it, you’re staying here at the ranch,” Jace told her. He stood up, as if he intended to carry her back to their small house.

  Lily made a face at her husband and shook her head before turning to look at the other women. “You were saying?”

  “I think you should definitely go into town,” Pearl told her. “But before you go stirring up the hornet’s nest too much, make a trip to see Doc Matthews. Maybe he can help shed some light on the situation.”

  “Jace, why don’t you plan on going to town with the women?” Shawn suggested.

  “We have two hundred head of cattle in the western pasture that need to be moved. With those storm clouds hanging overhead, we need to get them moved today, and that means we need all of the ranch hands mounted and helping out,” Jace told them.

  Sara Jane knew his comment was also meant for her, but today she was going to do what she wanted. “I am perfectly capable of driving us into town and seeing that Lily visits with the doctor before we return. We only plan to be gone a few hours,” Sara Jane interjected. “That’s why we are leaving so early. As soon as we get back, I’ll mount up and ride out to help.”

  “I don’t like it,” Jace told the room but then he looked at his wife and sighed. “But we need to know. Be careful and go see the doctor and then come straight back home. Sara Jane, did you hear that? You bring her straight back here.”

  “I heard you and we’ll be back before high noon, how’s that?” she offered as a compromise.

  “Doesn’t look like I have a choice. Lily, are you sure you’re up to riding into town today? You said…”

  “I know what I said, but I’m fine. Go gather up your cows and the girls will take care of me,” she told Jace with a smile for him alone.

  “Well, with that settled … ladies, let’s go,” Sara Jane smiled at the room.

  “Sara Jane,” her pa called after her as she started to leave the dining area.

  “Yes, Pa?”

  “You and Riley will share your plan for the ladies in town with the rest of us tonight.” It wasn’t a question but a demand, and Sara Jane nodded.

  “Of course, Pa. After this morning, we may need to make a few changes, but we can discuss that this evening.”

  “Very well.” As she left the room, she heard her Pa tell the others, “I’ve given that girl too much freedom and now it’s coming back to roost. I almost feel sorry for the women in town who are going to try and oppose her. They’re destined to lose and don’t even know they’re in a battle yet.”

  Sara Jane smiled and headed for the barns. She’d asked one of the ranch hands to hitch the wagon up first thing this morning and she was pleased to see the team ready and waiting for them. Lily and Riley were right behind her. They used the wooden steps normally kept in the barn to help Lily climb into the wagon, and then Sara Jane and Riley lifted them up and placed them in the back of the wagon. They would definitely need them once they reached town.

  Riley got into the wagon on her own, as did Sara Jane. Sara Jane saw Carl come out of the bunkhouse as the wagon was pulling out of the yard, but she pretended she didn’t see him move toward them or hear him call her name.

  “Playing deaf?” Riley asked.

  “For now,” Sara Jane told her with a smile.

  “I heard about you saving that calf,” Lily told her.

  “Did you also hear about me losing my favorite boots in that mud hole?” Sara Jane asked.

  Lily and Riley nodded and giggled. Lily spoke up, “I also heard about how you sat down in the creek to get some of the mud off and almost ended up frozen like a piece of ice.”

  “Carl talked to Jace,” Sara Jane surmised.

  Lily nodded. “He sounded really worried about you. Did you two have a chance to talk about …”

  Sara Jane did not want to discuss her time with Carl the day before. It was just too confusing and so she did what she always did. She changed the subject. She pasted on a bright smile and then suggested, “So, let’s go over our plan once again.”

  After her incident with the mud and the creek the day before, Sara Jane had decided she needed to expand her daily activities to include things away from the men. She needed a chance to regroup without giving Shawn or Carl a chance to once again throw her failure in her face. Sara Jane only hoped the women would go along with her attempt to avoid thinking about yesterday. At least for a few hours.

  Riley was the first to realize what Sara Jane was doing and nodded. She then launched into a detailed overview of the plan they had come up with. “Polly is a wonderful seamstress and with the passing of the Widow Dodd two months ago, Rio Arriba is currently without anyone to perform those services. If we can get Mrs. Pedersen to begin advertising Polly’s services inside the mercantile, she can start earning a living and the respect of the townsfolk. They can drop off their items that need mending and pick them up right there.”

  “Won’t people want to know who’s mending their clothing?” Lily asked.

  “Maybe, but we’ll get Mrs. Pedersen to simply say the woman wants to remain anonymous for personal reasons right now and that might change in the future.”

  “Well, that will take care of finding Polly work; what about the others?” Lily asked.

  “Marybeth and Tara are widows and excellent cooks. Jasmine has a way with people and with little Stephanie’s help, the brothel is going to become a restaurant and boarding house.”

  “Will people want to stay there once they know what it used to be?” Lily asked doubtfully.

  “With a little paint and a new sign on the front, people visiting Rio Arriba won’t know any differently. We just need to convince the town to give the women a chance to live respectable lives and earn a living doing respectable things,” Riley answered her.

  “But how are you going to do that? The women in town can be very mean.”

  “I know this all too well, but I believe if we can get townsfolk like the Pedersens, and the pastor and his wife, to help, the attitudes of the rest will change as well. Anyone who refuses to put aside their judgmental mindset will find themselves the minority soon enough. Marybeth made an apple pie and sent it home with Gideon the last time he was in town and it was absolutely divine. The crust was flaky and well, it was good enough I might even be willing to learn how to make it myself,” Sara Jane admitted.

  “Great praise, indeed. Anything that can get you to willingly enter a kitchen must be from the heavens,” Riley teased her.

  “You know it. Anyway, we’ll find Doc and then go visit the mercantile. Our plan right now depends upon the Pedersens being able to help. If this plan doesn’t work, we’ll have to come up with something else.”

  “It’ll work. It just has to,” Lily said, her optimism exactly what the other women needed.

  Sara Jane grew quiet and just listened as Lily and Riley talked about the possibility that there were going to be two babies born soon. She’d never been around many infants, but even she was getting a little excited to meet the newest members of the ranch. Not that she would tell that to anyone who might hold it against her. She’d even secretly been working on a tiny baby blanket up in her room, late at night by candlelight. Her stitches weren’t perfectly even, and she ended up sticking her fingers multiple times, but she was determined to finish it before C
hristmas. Now it seemed she would need to make a second blanket. She only hoped her fingers could handle the additional injury she was sure to inflict upon them. It would all be worth it on Christmas morning when Lily opened her gifts and saw something that Sara Jane had made with her very own hands.

  She wasn’t completely without ladylike qualities and skills; she just chose to keep them hidden away most of the time. She looked forward to seeing everyone’s reaction, especially Carl’s. She could do anything she set her mind to and, right now, she is making blankets for the newest members of the Lazy L Ranch family.

  God, I’m going to need some extra grace and patience to make that happen. If you have any extra just lying around, maybe you could send it my way. Thanks.

  They reached the town fifteen minutes later and immediately put their plan to work. They dropped Lily off at the doctor’s office and then headed for the mercantile. Sara Jane put on her most pleasant face and prepared to argue her case as quietly and politely as she possibly could.

  “Ready?” she asked Riley as they climbed the stairs to the mercantile’s front door.

  “Yes. What do you think our chances are?” Riley asked, as though she was beginning to have doubts.

  “Well, let’s see. You were personally responsible for saving the town, and we both bear the Lawson surname. I’d say our chances are pretty good. Let’s go convince the Pedersens of those two facts.”

  Chapter 5

  Carl was almost sure Sara Jane had heard him call out to her, but she didn’t even turn her head or attempt to stop the wagon from leaving the yard. He had no idea what those three women were up to, but given Lily’s pregnancy, and the fact that Sara Jane had been on the verge of catching pneumonia just the day before, he figured they should all be staying at the ranch.

  He headed for the main building, meeting Gideon, Jace, and Shawn as they exited the house. “I just saw the women leave. Where are they headed off to this early in the morning?” Carl asked.

  Jace sighed and shook his head. “Town. The doctor’s office. To create a ruckus. Take your pick.”

  Carl asked, “And you let them leave?”

  “We couldn’t stop them,” Gideon told him.

  Carl looked at them incredulously. “Sure you could have. You simply tell them they can’t go.”

  The three men chuckled and then Shawn patted him on the shoulder and shook his head. “I’ll be waiting for the day you try that with my sister. She’ll hand you your hat and your boots all at the same time, see if she doesn’t. We’re not their keepers.”

  “When they make foolish decisions we should be,” Carl interjected.

  “A word of advice,” Gideon told him. “Don’t let Sara Jane hear you mistaking concern for high-handedness. You need to figure out a way to communicate your concerns to her without coming off like you’re trying to dictate how her day is going to go.”

  Jace nodded his head in agreement. “Sara Jane’s a bit hard-headed…”

  “A bit?” Gideon barked out a laugh.

  Jace shrugged. “I was trying to be nice. She can be as stubborn as a mule, but she’s also smart. She needs a partner, not a keeper. You get more bees with honey than you do with vinegar.”

  Carl looked at the eldest Lawson brother and asked, “I don’t suppose you’d care to share what you’ve learned, having dealt with your sister all these years?”

  All three men burst out laughing. “Trust us, if we’d figured out how to get Sara Jane to do what we wanted, our lives would have been a lot calmer these past eighteen years. She doesn’t have red hair for nothing,” Gideon told him, patting him on the shoulder good naturedly.

  “They’ll be back by high noon, or so Sara Jane promised,” Shawn assured him.

  “If they’re not, I’m going looking for them. Jace, how could you let Lily take off for town? She looks miserable, no offense.”

  “No offense taken, and truth be told, I should have gone with her. She’s headed to the doctor to see if maybe she’s expecting more than one baby.”

  “More than one baby?” Carl repeated slowly. “Twins?” When Jace nodded, Carl’s face split into a wide grin. “Well, wouldn’t that be something. Two babies.”

  “Why are you so happy about that prospect?” Shawn asked.

  “Why not? It’s not like you can change anything now,” Carl told them.

  Besides, if Lily has two babies to care for, it will mean the women have to help out even more. I’d like to see Sara Jane tapping into her motherly instincts. Maybe that will be the key to getting her to settle down and stop taking foolish risks. One of these days there’s not going to be anyone around to rescue her and then what?

  The men all looked at Jace, who was only a little pale, and then Gideon advised them, “Let’s not count babies before Lily returns from seeing the doctor.”

  “There could be another explanation,” Jace told them. The men nodded slowly, and started walking toward the barns.

  “And the sky could be green, but it’s blue,” Carl told him in a teasing tone. “Let’s go gather some cattle.”

  “The sooner we get them moved the sooner we can all rest a little easier. Those clouds aren’t going to hold off forever. I was sure we’d wake up this morning to snow on the mountains,” Shawn said as he saddled his horse.

  “You can feel it in the air,” Gideon told him.

  “The other hands are already headed for the far fence line.”

  “Good,” Gideon stated, climbing into the saddle. “Let’s go get this done. It’s already cold out here.”

  “You’ve gone soft,” Shawn teased him.

  “Not at all, I just like spending time at home nowadays,” Gideon replied.

  The men headed out, and Carl took advantage of having them all together to brainstorm ways to get Sara Jane to see him in a romantic light. “So, I need some advice with your sister.”

  “She seemed a little put out with you yesterday,” Shawn stated.

  “She hates appearing weak. Now that I know about the incident with the Indians, I can kind of understand where she’s coming from. What I really need to figure out is how to convince her she doesn’t need to compete with me.”

  “She competes with everyone,” Shawn told him. “She always has. The minute someone can do something better than her, she pushes herself to improve until she’s once again the best, the fastest, the one everyone else can’t beat.”

  “Except for domestic duties,” Gideon added. “She couldn’t care less that Ma or Riley can cook better than she can. In fact, she’s gone out of her way to make sure she only has minimal skills when it comes to cooking, cleaning, and homemaking.”

  Carl asked, “So how do I combat that? How do I convince her I’m not her enemy and that she doesn’t have to compete with me?”

  “You could take up cooking and cleaning and washing …” Gideon teased.

  Carl shook his head. “That is never gonna happen. There has to be another way.”

  The other men remained quiet. It seemed they all recognized the problem, but no one had any answers. All too soon they were herding cattle and going after strays. Talk of Sara Jane, and how to convince her Carl was the man for her, faded away on the wind that was quickly increasing. She was one problem that would still remain when the day’s work was completed.

  *****

  Sara Jane and Riley entered the mercantile and nodded at several other customers. Amongst them were an older woman and a younger man whom Sara Jane assumed was her son. The woman was dressed very smartly in a royal blue skirt and jacket, with white lace around the standup collar and the cuffs of her sleeves. Rather than a bonnet, the woman wore a very small hat that matched her clothing exactly. She was carrying an elegant cane and as she walked around the mercantile, she could be seen turning her nose up time and again.

  Sara Jane was intrigued by the woman, wondering where she’d come from. It was a given that she wasn’t from Rio Arriba or anywhere close by. It was also plain to anyone looking that the woman fou
nd Rio Arriba severely lacking … in everything.

  “Mark, I really believe we should leave now. There’s absolutely nothing in this store that is adequate,” the woman said to the young man.

  “Mother, we came in here this morning to meet the proprietors of this establishment and to introduce ourselves. You know how important the mercantile is in a town of this size. It would behoove us both to make friends with these people. As for this store not having anything adequate, you should get over that thinking right now. This is the only mercantile in town and as such, it will be a necessity to purchase items here.”

  “Don’t remind me,” the woman said haughtily, sticking her nose in the air and sighing dramatically. “Why I let you talk me into coming to this small town, I still haven’t figure out.”