With these words he took the garden hoe clutched in his sturdy grasp and threw it reckless to the ground beneath him.
“For all my brother’s annoyin’ meddlin’, I have assured him that I am in no need of a replacement bride,” he insisted, planting his hands firm on his hips as he added, “I want a professional arrangement here, nothing more.”
His eyes flew wide as his guest met these words with a loud joyful whoop, one that came accompanied by a spirited Texas two step that would look right at home at a barn dance.
“Well Ma’am, I’m most pleased that you’re taking this news so well,” he muttered, adding as he pinned her with a sideways glance, “Did you come to that conclusion when you answered my advertisement for a mail order bride? Or at the moment that you saw me here working in the fields?”
Coming to an abrupt halt as her rawhide boots skidded in the dirt below her, Abigail let loose a hearty chortle as she considered this question.
“Oh don’t be ridiculous Gent,” she admonished her host, adding as she pointed a most accusing finger straight in his direction, “You likely qualify as the most ridiculously handsome gent I’ve ever seen. I reckon that your degree of preposterous male beauty probably should be illegal, in point of fact. And most any woman would be more than eager to hogtie you into submission and drag you headfirst before the nearest justice of the peace.”
Blinking with surprise as he considered these words, Cal let loose a robust chuckle as he shifted his boots in the grass beneath him.
“Well you sure do have a way with words Miss,” he praised her finally, adding in a reflective tone, “especially to the ears of a man who hasn’t laughed in a mighty long time.”
Abigail nodded.
“Oh I hear ya. Back at home on the Diamond T Ranch, my folks and I used to laugh the day away. Then when Pa passed, it was all I could do to muster a smile,” she released these words on a tired sigh, adding as she graced her host with a warm, knowing smile, “I have the distinct feeling, Gent, that you and I are two of a kind. One day we’re just moseying through the process of working our own land and living our dreams. Then that pesky ol’ thing called life happened along and threw some big ol’ cow pies in our path.”
Guffawing outright in response to her words, Cal stepped forward to offer the lady his hand.
“At this point Ma’am, I don’t give a lick if you lack one bit of experience in working the land,” he told her, adding as he inclined his head in her direction, “You are hired.”
*****
Two weeks after taking on an additional hired hand at his ranch, Cal Hopkins was pleased to see that she did indeed know how to work the land. This lady, Abigail, in fact proved herself an expert on all things horticultural, standing tall and proud in rows of roses and making them grow and bloom more beautifully than ever; also tending his more conventional crops of corn and cotton, increasing the productivity of his farm while his second career as a law enforcement officer continued to thrive.
Although not a conventional beauty like his Elsa, he loved the way that her bright blue eyes came alight whenever she inspected a radiant rose; and the lovely smile that she displayed whenever she favored him with one of her hilarious jokes.
“I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so much in my life,” he mused at one point, looking on with keen amusement as she charmed him with an impression of an untalented chorus girl who gets her high kicking feet caught up in her voluminous petticoats after sipping on what was perhaps one too many tempered sarsaparillas. “Not to mention—this gal is probably the smartest I’ve met.”
When Cal came home at night, he always looked forward to the home cooked meals that Abigail prepared for him. They were feasts that featured corn and potatoes grown on his own ranch, along with juicy steaks and buttermilk biscuits coated with layers of fresh churned butter.
After dinner the pair reclined in the comfy if rustic confines of his sitting room at the ranch house. It was a room lined with wooden walls and planked floors and filled with samplings of hand carved furnishings. And even as he played chess and poker with his newfound best friend, he saw reminders of the hostess who once reigned as the queen of his modest but well-kept homestead.
A rich sampling of Cal’s home carved furnishings came covered with vibrant rainbow patterned quilts created by Elsa’s delicate hand; and just over his game table stood an ebullient oil painting that portrayed the lady herself—her wholesome blonde beauty shining forth from the canvas as she held one of her signature yellow roses.
“She sure was a beauty,” Abigail noted one night, laying aside a final hand of poker as she looked her handsome host straight in the eyes, “and you loved her very much, didn’t you?”
Cal nodded.
“More than anything,” he acknowledged, adding in a soft reverent voice, “My wife was an angel on Earth, and our time together—well it was just magical.” He paused here, adding as he arched his feathered eyebrows in Abigail’s direction, “What about you, Miss Abigail? Have you ever been in love?”
Abigail snorted.
“Love,” she scoffed, adding as she pursed her pink lips in a sure sign of cynicism, “True love is what I shared with my folks. It was pure, sweet, and unconditional. Romantic love is for people who bear a strikin’ resemblance to your wife, God rest her soul, and yerself—and for that matter to my two younger sisters, both of whom were married off to a pair of handsome twin ranchers who whisked them off to Oklahoma. Now, to their credit, they’ve finally come back home to help Ma for the time that I’m away—at least until I can send home enough money for her to cover my father’s debts and then hopefully hire some ranch hands.”
Cal nodded.
“So you’ve never been courtin’?” he asked her, tone curious and thoughtful.
Abigail shook her head.
“Never,” she declared, adding as she rolled her eyes heavenward, “Oh rest assured, as a teen-ager I occasionally poured my big body into a calico dress and went to stand motionless and alone at some barn dance, waiting in vain for some gent to ask me to dance. I almost went so far as to offer my services as a human coat rack for the other guests; heck, I might as well be of some use while I’m standin’ there alone in a corner, grinnin’ like a fool.”
Cal laughed, but only briefly.
“Well it’s too bad that those gents at the barn dance never stopped to talk to you,” he told her, adding as he reached across the table and covered her hand with his, “then they would have realized what a smart, funny gal you are. And at the risk of sounding disrespectful, Ma’am, you do have the prettiest blue eyes I ever have seen.”
He grinned as Abigail ducked her head, her ivory skinned cheeks flushing somewhat as she considered these words of unexpected praise.
“Why thank you Cal,” she acknowledged the praise, adding as she cast those eyes upward in his direction, “I would return the compliment, but it’s just a mite hard to know where to start with you.” She paused here, adding as her gaze took a brief but admiring note of his sheer masculine perfection, “You have the prettiest—well—everything.”
She trembled as Cal met these words with a soft sonorous chuckle, entwining her fingers in his as he asked, “Would you like to know, Miss Abigail, just what it’s like to kiss a cowboy?”
*****
Abigail sat still and straight at the head of the poker table, struggling to tear her gaze from the beauty and charm of her ethereal handsome host.
Every day since her arrival at Elsa’s Rose, Abigail had found herself strongly and inexorably drawn to the man who kept and tended this beautiful ranch.
Aside from being the rare man who liked and appreciated a hardworking woman—one who spent far more time in the fields than she did in the kitchen, and was durn proud of it, thank ya very much—and who always treated her with the upmost kindness and respect, Cal never failed to dazzle her with his own special brand of masculine good looks.
If it was indeed possible for a man to glow, then Cal Hopkins pulled
the trick off to splendorous effect, whether working in the fields in a pair of blue jeans and his trusty felt hat, or dressed for his other work in a black brushed cotton sack coat, a gray wool tweed vest and crisp white shirt underneath and tight black canvas trousers—along with appealing accents that included slick black gloves, a shiny silver star adorning his lapel, and a sleek ebony gun belt and holster that carried his signature sheriff’s six shooters.
And now this gorgeous prince of a man wanted to kiss her, and God help her, she could not resist him.
“Kiss me,” she released a whisper, accepting his soft, intimate offer as she turned her face upward.
She shut her eyes tight as Cal leaned forward to touch her lips with his, his full moist mouth stroking hers in a gentle but quite passionate advance.
Cal swallowed her startled breath as he angled his head over hers, intensifying their kiss as he soon plied her lips with the sweetest kisses.
Even as his soft lips lulled her senses and she relaxed to pass into a dreamy otherworld quite foreign to her practical mind, her eyes opened wide to once again grace her vision with the whole of his masculine beauty.
This move proved a serious mistake, as her wandering gaze soon came to rest on the portrait mounted just above their table.
Soon her eyes collided with those of the radiant Elsa Hopkins, and the usually iron willed Abigail found herself withering like a flower in the scope of soft almond eyes, eyes that seemed kind, if wary and all knowing.
“I’m sorry. We have to cease this nonsense. This is just wrong,” she mumbled suddenly, breaking their kiss as she sprang from the table and grasped her plain denim skirts in two resolute hands. She headed for the small corner bedroom that served as her sole refuge in a home that seemed suddenly too familiar—and a man that, in all his infernal beauty, seemed suddenly too tempting to resist.
“Abigail!” Cal bellowed, jumping to his feet as he raced across the room. “Did I do something to offend you?”
Abigail shook her head.
“We were both doin’ wrong,” she insisted, adding as she turned with a flourish to face her tempter in full, “We were kissin’ like lovers in your wife’s house—tarnishin’ Elsa’s Rose!”
These words echoed strong in Cal’s mind the next morning, as he rode hard through the downtown area where he presided as deputy sheriff.
As Cal straddled the back of Midnight Lightning, the sleek ebony stallion that came as part and parcel of his job, he knew full well that he looked the part of the powerful, authoritative deputy sheriff, sitting tall and proud in the saddle as he shifted his regal head to scan the scope of the downtown area—a place punctuated by an endless line of general stores, mills, seamstress shops, and saloons.
“The saloons tend to bring us more trouble than all of the other businesses combined,” he mused, adding with a slight smile, “Now we did face a bit of ruckus at the general store last week, when an overzealous 12-year-old tried in vain to snatch a bottle of sarsaparilla. And at the seamstress shop the week before last, we encountered the unfortunate case of two surly ladies at war over the same wedding dress. We had to pry the inordinately sharp knitting needles from their clutches, just to avoid what surely would have amounted to a woodshed of bloodshed.”
Although he chuckled lightly at his own, admittedly weak attempt at humor, Cal knew in his heart that his strong, dignified presence lent a certain air of security to the area he served as deputy sheriff.
“Funny,” he scoffed now, dipping his head low beneath the brim of his trusty white hat, “Considerin’ the fact that I feel like the foulest, most despicable scoundrel in town.”
After presenting himself as a perfect gentleman to his mail order bride, a woman who he’d come to like, trust and befriend, Cal apparently had violated her trust and thrown up a tall emotional barrier between them. He had stolen a kiss that had caused her to flee from him, thus ruining what had been a perfect evening of sweet memories and kind conversation.
“I wanted only to please her, to perhaps change a mind that seemed to be hard set against the concepts of dating and courtship,” he told himself, heaving a sigh as he added, “And although she sure seemed to be welcoming of and enjoying the gesture, it seems like all of a sudden she changed her mind—and her heart. She bolted away from me like I had the plague—racing into her room and locking the door behind her.”
Although Cal had stood outside her door for nearly an hour, begging her to at least give him a chance to apologize for and explain his actions, a steadfast Abigail had refused to take leave of her own private refuge, finally insisting that he let her alone and go to his own bedroom.
Finally the cowboy relented and retired to the modest, wood planked room that formed his own private haven at Elsa’s Rose, a room occupied only by a camp bed and an unpainted bureau, and adorned only by yet another portrait of his beautiful late wife.
Here he could escape the cold condemnation of his mail order bride. He could not, however, avoid the all-knowing almond gaze that followed him throughout the room, seeming to condemn him even as her smile remained kind and gentle.
“Are you condemning me for betraying your memory with another woman, and in your own house?” he asked her at one point, tossing and turning in his plain cotton sheets in the midst of a torturous sleepless night. “Or for clinging to your memory, refusin’ in the process to go on with my own life?”
“Or maybe she just has a mind that you’ve gone half batty, riding around town and having a deep conversation with no one but yourself.”
Cal jumped in the saddle as a masculine voice that he recognized all too well resounded from his immediate left, lifting his eyes to meet the sardonic gaze of his brother, Stephen Hopkins.
Sitting astride Dallas, his prized ebony charger, the young rancher inclined his head in a show of apparent curiosity.
“Are you OK there, Pardner?” he asked Cal, his usually casual tone lined with genuine concern.
He jumped in his saddle as his brother met his concern with a hard, piercing glare.
“No actually I am not OK, dear brother,” Cal countered, adding with a cutting glare aimed straight in his kinsman’s direction, “and that situation is entirely your fault.”
Stephen sighed.
“Uh oh,” he released a hard breath, adding as he shifted his feet in his stirrups, “You don’t like your mail order bride, do you? And so now you blame me for bringing her into your life in the first place.”
Cal shook his head.
“As seems to be usual as of late, you my brother are dead wrong,” he scoffed, adding as he shook his head from side to side, “I like Abigail far more than I ever thought I would. I’m beginning to wonder how I ever ran the ranch without her.” He paused here, adding as he spoke more to himself than to a watching Stephen, “I’m also ponderin’ if I want to live my life without her. I think I might be fallin’ for her—and it’s all your fault! Blast you, you varmint!”
Stephen pursed his full lips, narrowing his eyes as he seemed to consider this nonsensical assertion.
“Well, all things considered,” he began, with a tone thoughtful and deliberate, “isn’t it a good thing to fall in love with your bride?”
Cal sighed.
“That’s the whole problem, Stephen. She’s not my bride,” he informed him, adding in a sad tone, “And at the way that things are goin’, she never will be my wife.”
Stephen gasped.
“So you mean to tell me that you, the dang gum deputy sheriff of this here town, is livin’ in sin with a woman?” he asked, tone harsh and confrontational. “Well no wonder ya can’t make peace with yourself. What would Ma and Pa say? What would your boss, the sheriff of this town, have to say? I did not place that ad so you could take a mistress, Cal….”
Cal had heard enough.
“Abigail is not my mistress!” he thundered, drawing startled gazes from two prim older women who crossed the common dirt road in front of them.
Tipping his hat in the
direction of the ladies, who sniffed sharp and loud in return, Cal waited until they passed to turn with cold eyes in the direction of his still stunned brother.
“When Abigail first arrived at the ranch, we both agreed that we had no true intentions of falling in love, or for that matter of living together as husband and wife. I told her that I never could love anyone but Elsa, and as for Abigail? Well she’s a lone rider. She didn’t want a man at all. So we decided that she would work my land in the role of a ranch hand,” he explained, adding as he made a broad gesture in the air before them, “Then I had to get to know the woman, and she quite simply is the smartest, funniest, hardworking gal I ever did meet. I really am beginning to like this gal, Stephen—but last night when I tried to kiss her, she plum broke away from me and ran from the room! You would have thought I had the croup!”
Stephen smiled.
“Chances are, brother, that you’re both a little skeered—and given your histories and life situations, that’s no surprise at all,” he paused here, adding as he graced his brother’s broad shoulder with a reassuring pat, “It is high time you faced the fact, though, that your sweet Elsa isn’t coming back. Of course she will always live in your heart, but she of all people would never want you to live your life alone and miserable. Abigail is here; she’s alive, so why not give her a chance?”
Cal thought a moment, then nodded.
“I reckon you’re right,” he allowed finally, adding as he shook his head from side to side, “I’m just not so sure that she’s at all willin’ to give me a chance.” He paused here, adding as he rolled his eyes heavenward, “As is almost always the case when we play poker, she holds all the cards.”
The Duke of Ice Page 71