The Cowboy's Stolen Bride

by Cora Seton

  He led her to the truck and handed her a sleeping bag and mat. It took no time at all for them to set themselves up for sleeping a respectable distance from each other near the fire. He handed Tory a roll of toilet paper, and she disappeared around the side of the lodge. Sometime later she was back.

  “Had to hike into the forest a bit,” she explained.

  He nodded, took his turn, and they both settled into their sleeping bags.

  “This isn’t too bad,” Tory said after wriggling around a bit. “Good night, Liam.”

  “Night.”

  There was silence for a minute before she added, “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For giving me a way out. I don’t think I could have faced my mom again today.”

  “Glad to help.” And to his surprise, he found he was.

  “How about we get some coffee before I take you home,” Liam said the following morning. “Don’t know about you, but I can’t fully wake up until I’ve had some.”

  Tory considered the proposition. Surprisingly, she’d fallen asleep within minutes of saying good-night to Liam and slept straight through, only waking when he’d crawled out of his sleeping bag and walked off to make use of the woods again.

  The morning was sunny and clear, a blue sky arching overhead. Tory took a deep breath and regretted her haste in saying she’d head home this morning. Sleep hadn’t made her any more eager to reconnect with Enid. If anything, the opposite.

  In addition, there was the question of Liam. He’d angered her last night with his comment about Steel, but Tory supposed he was as much a product of his family as she was of hers. Even after being away for so long, she remembered the easy way Coopers used the Turner name in vain. Sooner or later she’d slip a “sanctimonious Turner” into a sentence without even thinking. She couldn’t blame Liam for doing the same.

  “Coffee sounds good,” she heard herself say. “But what if someone sees us?”

  “We’ll stay in Silver Falls,” he assured her. “Doubt we’ll run into anyone here.”

  He was probably right, Tory decided, but she knew she was taking a risk going into town with him. She might have shaken her family last night, but she’d never hear the end of it if people knew who she’d spent it with.

  Fifteen minutes later they were pulling into a small café. Thoughtful Coffee was a tiny establishment, half coffee shop, half diner, with three booths lining one interior wall and three café tables spaced in front of the big bay window at the front of the shop. Liam chose the booth at the very back, near the short hall to the restrooms. Tory gazed at the sunny front tables longingly, but knew he’d made the smart choice.

  A man in his late forties, in work pants and heavy boots, a dark scruff of a beard lining his jaw, looked up at them as they passed his booth and took the next one, his breakfast sandwich halfway to his mouth. Tory thought his eyes narrowed and his gazed hardened as he took in the pair of them, but it had to be her nerves. She’d never seen him before in her life, and Liam betrayed no recognition of the man, either.

  They placed their order with the waitress, a slim young woman with a harried look, and settled in to drink the coffee she quickly brought them.

  “Sure you won’t change your mind?” Liam gazed at her across the rim of his cup. “Can’t you play hooky for just one day? I could take you home later tonight.”

  “I thought you wanted to be alone.”

  “There’s alone, and then there’s alone. If I listen too much to my thoughts, I won’t like what I hear.”

  Tory could understand that. “What would we do?”

  “I know where there’s a canoe.” He flashed her a grin that made her heart stutter. How had she never noticed how handsome Liam was when she was young? Tory supposed that when she was thirteen, he’d been too old for her. And of course he was a Turner.

  “I like canoeing.” She’d gone paddling several times in Seattle, when she’d allowed herself to take a break for a minute or two from work and studies.

  “It’s a date. Or it’s not a date,” he said hurriedly. “It’s a day. Spent with a… an acquaintance.”

  Tory had to laugh at his attempt to make it all seem so safe. “A day with an acquaintance.” She lifted her mug and saluted him with it.

  “You’re a Cooper,” a loud voice came from behind her head. Tory twisted around to see it was the man with the dark scruffy beard who’d spoken. He was polishing off a plate of eggs and hash browns. She exchanged a glance with Liam, unsure how to react to the salvo.

  “Ye-es,” she said slowly. “I’m a Cooper.”

  “You have the look.” The man had a belligerent set to his jaw she didn’t like. Look? She’d never thought the Coopers had a look.

  “Why don’t you leave us to our breakfast,” Liam said in the kind of tone men adopt when they mean to lay down a warning.

  “Why don’t you leave Silver Falls to people who belong here?”

  Tory had heard of Silver Falls’s reputation for clannishness, but she’d never expected to face it so baldly.

  “We’re having a meal, that’s all,” she said.

  “Don’t give him the satisfaction,” Liam told her. He raised his voice. “We have just as much right to be here as anyone else.”

  The waitress arrived with a nervous look. “Everything okay here? Lisa wants to know if you’re making trouble, Rod.”

  Rod snorted. “I’m not the troublemaker here, Tess.”

  “I don’t know what your issue is, but—” Tory started.

  Rod wiped his face with his napkin and dropped it on his plate. “My issue is you Coopers need to know your place—and it’s not in Silver Falls.”

  Liam half stood, bracing his hands on the table. “Walk away,” he told Rod. “We’re just passing through, and it’s not like we’ll be back.”

  “Good.”

  Tory held her breath. She couldn’t remember the last time anyone had stood up for her. She’d always had to stand up for herself. It was kind of… interesting. She was glad she wasn’t the one facing Liam down, but the stranger didn’t seem intimidated.

  Rod picked up his hat off the table and lifted it to his head. Tipped it to Tess as he stood up and edged out of his booth. “You tell Lisa she should keep the riffraff out of her restaurant.” With a final disgruntled look over his shoulder at them, he left, and Tess turned to Tory, her expression anguished.

  “I’m sorry. Rod Malcolm is such a pill,” she said. “He’s one of our regular customers, but every now and then he takes a real dislike to a person. Of course, you’re welcome here any time.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” Her stomach was in knots, though, a sick feeling that recalled her days in school when she’d walked down the halls between classes, braced for taunts about her father’s criminal exploits.

  “We’ll take the check,” Liam said to the waitress.

  Tory waited for her to retreat to the cash register before telling Liam, “That has to have been about my dad. He used to come to Silver Falls all the time.” She was more disconcerted than she cared to admit. Rod was a life-size manifestation of her worst nightmares. This was what she’d always dreaded about coming back to Chance Creek: facing the disdain and outright hostility that a mention of the Cooper name could summon. “I guess I haven’t been gone long enough. I’d hoped everyone would forget about Dale.”

  “The past never seems to go away here,” he said shortly. He pulled out his wallet as Tess came their way again.

  “You’re a Turner. What do you know about worrying about the past?” Tory asked.

  “A lot.”

  Liam breathed a sigh of relief when they got back to Runaway Lake but realized he hadn’t asked Tory if she wanted to go home instead. She hadn’t said a thing when he’d turned this way rather than toward Chance Creek. Best to keep quiet, he supposed. He wanted her to stay.

  Which meant he’d probably better distract her from what had just happened at Thoughtful Coffee.

  As they rea
ched the beach, he cast a look around and spied the shed a hundred yards away that housed the canoe, along with a number of paddles and life vests.

  “Come on.” He didn’t look back to see if she was following. He’d long since figured out the trick to breaking into the boathouse. The key to the rusty padlock was hanging from a tiny finish nail that had been inserted into a nearby birch tree. It hung on the far side of the tree, and he’d discovered it purely by accident one day when he was teasing a chattering squirrel who seemed to be scolding him for being on the property illicitly.

  The young birch had grown so much during the Hunts’ absence that the key was out of reach from the ground. He quickly shimmied up the trunk, grabbed it and jumped down.

  Tory watched him open the lock. “Adding theft to trespassing now? I told you I’m going to law school, right?”

  “It’ll be fine,” Liam said. “I’ve done it a hundred times.” He pulled open the door. “Help me carry this.”

  Twenty minutes later they were paddling out onto the still waters of the lake, Tory in the bow of the canoe, him in the stern.

  She was beautiful, Liam thought, and he realized he’d already become comfortable with Tory. Back at the restaurant he’d wanted to deck that Rod guy for the way he’d talked to her, and then he wondered how many times he’d called a Cooper similar names—either in his head or out loud—over the years.

  He’d gotten used to thinking of them as enemies, and now that had to change—

  Later, he told himself. Just focus on the present. He was out on a lake, away from his work and responsibilities.

  Sharing a canoe with a woman who pushed all the right buttons.

  What would it be like to be with Tory?

  He imagined a tangle of sheets, sunlight drifting across a bed, the two of them alone in a cabin in the woods—maybe one of the treehouses at the lodge if the little aloft houses were in better shape. A long, lazy encounter during which they could explore each other’s bodies.

  Sounded good.

  The sunlight glinted off her auburn hair. Tory’s paddle dipped into the water and lifted out again. She was examining their surroundings with interest. He wondered if she had as many memories here as he did.

  They were innocent memories, but his thoughts now were far from clean. He kept picturing undressing Tory, and if he kept this up, he’d find himself in an uncomfortable predicament.

  “Don’t you wish we could stay here forever?” She tilted her face back to soak in the sun.

  “Yeah.” His voice sounded rough. Was his longing audible?

  He sure hoped not.

  Tory was enjoying the smooth glide of the canoe through the water. “It’s so calm and beautiful here.” So peaceful she could almost forget the encounter with Rod at the café. She wondered if Rod had known her father—or maybe Steel. Was he aware of the way some of her family members skirted the law?

  Why else would he attack her like that?

  “Sometimes in the afternoons the wind kicks up. Not quite as nice then, but mornings and evenings are pretty great.”

  Liam sounded strange, and Tory wondered if he was second guessing allowing her to stay. Maybe he wished he’d taken her home after the drama they’d just gone through.

  Liam was the kind of man who spoke his mind, though, she told herself. If he wanted her gone, he’d have summarily dumped her on her doorstep instead of bringing her back here.

  He’d kissed her—twice—last night. Probably would have kissed her some more if she hadn’t declared her intention to go to sleep after his comment about Steel.

  She shouldn’t be disappointed that he hadn’t, but she was.

  Liam’s kisses made her think all kinds of interesting thoughts, and while Rod’s unpleasantness had jarred her, her body warmed every time she remembered the feeling of being in Liam’s arms.

  Wrapped up in her troubled thoughts, she kept paddling until the sunlight, the activity and the calm, repetitive action soothed her. An hour stretched to an hour and a half on the water, and Tory realized they’d reached the other side of Runaway Lake. From here, the beach at the Hunts’ place seemed small and far away but still visible.

  “What’s that?” she asked when she turned toward the land on this side and saw a small splash of color high on the hill.

  “I don’t know.” Liam shaded his eyes a moment but shook his head. “I can’t make it out. Let’s go see.” He maneuvered them to a crescent of sand and hopped out when the canoe grounded. Tory got out, too, and they worked together to pull the canoe high on the beach, then set off up the hill. “Hell,” Liam exclaimed when they got closer. “It’s a for sale sign. Can you imagine owning a plot of land out here?”

  Tory thought of herself as a city girl, so she was surprised to find the idea resonated. Maybe it was the idea of no one being around to judge her. Except the caretaker of the large property across the lake.

  “If I owned it, I’d build a cabin right about here,” Liam said, “with a huge deck. In summer, I’d be out here all the time. I’d go for my swim, come up and… I don’t know, whittle or something while sitting outside. At dinnertime I’d cook a steak.”

  “Whittle?”

  “I don’t exactly have hobbies. No time,” he explained.

  “Would you really want to leave the Flying W?” She tried to picture his vision in her mind.

  “Nope,” he said shortly. “I don’t like worrying all the time, but I love ranching.”

  “I don’t think I’d want to live out here full time either. It’s fun to think about, but in winter…” She shivered. “It would get lonely.”

  “And then there are folks like Rod.”

  “But there are folks like Rod everywhere,” she reminded him.

  He led the way back down to the canoe. Tory walked behind him, taking in his broad back and muscled shoulders. Liam was fit the way a man who worked the land was fit. All rangy muscles and tanned skin. She missed his smile.

  “What?” Liam asked. He’d turned toward her. Must have caught a strange expression on her face.

  “Just appreciating the view.”

  There it was. That smile. “Tory Cooper, are you flirting with me?”

  “What would you do if I was?”

  She hadn’t thought the dare through. Liam’s smile grew, and he moved back up the hill toward her. Placing his hands on her hips, he drew her close. “This.”

  His kiss was light at first, then deepened until Tory leaned into him, lost in the feel of it. He tasted good, and the feel of his muscular body pressed against hers was much too distracting to allow her to think clearly.

  Why couldn’t everything be this simple?

  When he pulled back, his gaze searched her face. He must have been satisfied with what he saw there because he took her hand and led her the rest of the way to the canoe.

  Tory found that all her earlier worries had slipped away. It was as if she and Liam had edged into some alternate reality in which only they existed. It didn’t matter that she was a Cooper and he a Turner—or what anyone else in their families had done before.

  Was this what Lance felt with Maya? Or Olivia with Noah? If so, she couldn’t blame either of them for crossing the dividing lines and hooking up with the enemy.

  Still, this couldn’t work long-term. She was going to be a lawyer. Liam wanted to be a rancher. Three years from now they’d live in separate worlds again.

  Chapter Three

  When Liam’s cell phone rang in his pocket, he nearly jumped out of his skin. “Guess there’s phone reception over here,” he told Tory. “I usually stay on the other side of the lake.”

  He pulled out his phone reluctantly. It was Noah. He debated not answering at first, but that would only end with a search party sent out to find him.

  “Yeah?” he said, lifting the phone to his ear.

  “Where the hell are you? None of your chores are done.”

  “Gone walkabout, big brother. You’ll need to handle things for a few days.”


  There was a long pause, and Liam thought Noah would come back swinging, but instead he just said, “You need a break, huh?”

  “Yeah,” Liam said again, thrown off-balance.

  Noah heaved a sigh. “I’ve seen it coming. Been worried about you.” Another pause. “You drinking?”

  “Not right now.” Hell, what did Noah mean by that?

  “Do you have it under control?”

  “Yeah.” When Noah didn’t answer, Liam turned his back on Tory for privacy. “I’m… with someone. Don’t need to drink.”

  “Really? Who?”

  “Not ready to answer that.”

  “She’s real, though?”

  “Yeah, she’s real.” He heard a snort from behind him, turned and shot Tory an exasperated look. “I’ve got to go.”

  “Not so fast. I’m not calling to make you do your chores. It’s… Mom.”

  “What about her?”

  “I don’t even know how to say this, so I’m just going to blurt it out. Seems she’s short on cash.” Noah hesitated.

  Short on cash. Liam rubbed the back of his neck. That explained a few things. “Did she try to sell you on that stupid spa idea?” As far as he was concerned, when his mother walked away and remarried, her concerns became her own.

  “She tried. When I shot her down, she gave me an ultimatum. She wants her share of the worth of the ranch.”

  A shrill buzz behind him made Liam turn to face Tory again.

  Tory drew out her phone, looked at the screen, sighed and paced away to answer it. Liam turned his attention back to Noah. “We don’t owe her anything.”

  “She might have a point—”

  “No.” Liam was done with all this. “She left. She divorced Dad. They must have split assets when they did that. Whatever he passed on to us is ours.”

  “She seems pretty adamant.”

  “I’ll be home in twenty minutes.” Liam surveyed the lake, the canoe, the distance between it and the Hunts’ lodge where his truck was parked. “Hell, more like an hour and a half or more.”

  “No—stay right there,” Noah said. “I can hold off Mom for a couple of days. Let me and Stella work on her for a while. See what the hell this is all about.”