Laura Drewry Read online

  “He won you in a poker game?” Gabe’s head spun faster than her words. Bart had done a lot of strange things in his lifetime, but this was way beyond even him.

  “Yes.” She took in a deep breath, smiled, and sat back against her chair.

  “Would you care to explain that?”

  “Actually, no,” she said. “If you are giving me the option, I’d rather not.”

  Gabe smiled back with forced politeness. “You misunderstand me—I’m not giving you the option.”

  “I was afraid of that.” Tess sighed. “Well, you see, the thing is I actually belonged to another man who was at the same table as Bart. And when he ran out of money, he was using whatever else he owned for collateral and I just happened to be one of those things. Me and a lovely silver pocket watch, I must admit, I believe he came by through illegal means. He did have a horse as well, a beautiful black gelding named Norman of all things, but he was adamant about holding on to the animal. I guess I should have been insulted he would give me up so easily and not his horse, but frankly I was so happy to be rid of him that I just didn’t care one bit.”

  Gabe squeezed the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. How much more complicated could this possibly get?

  “I’m almost afraid to ask,” he groaned, “but how is it you refused to marry a ‘perfectly fine’ wealthy man in Boston, yet you’d let yourself be owned like a slave by a man who apparently was not perfectly fine? President Lincoln did outlaw slavery some years back, didn’t he? Or was that whole war thing just a bad dream?”

  “A nightmare is more like it, Mr. Calloway,” she said. “But you’re right, it does sound horrid, doesn’t it? It was such a simple idea at first and then everything just sort of fell apart. I’m not afraid to tell you, I thank the good Lord every day for your brother.”

  “That makes one of us,” he grumbled.

  “I’m sorry.” She smirked. “I didn’t hear you—were you mumbling something?”

  “Never mind.” His grumble turned into a downright growl. “Let’s just get this over with.”

  Tess shifted in her chair, her hands now fumbling with the half-eaten apple in her lap.

  “All right then. As I told you, my father disowned me, and I was left on my own without anything, just what I managed to throw in the little carpetbag I have. I had no money, no skills to speak of with which to gain employment. My poor mother would have died much sooner if she’d thought for one moment one of her daughters actually had to work for a living. Her girls were raised to be ladies, and nice ladies did not perform menial tasks. We were raised to sip tea from bone china, play the piano, and have a taste for fashion. My goodness, Mother is probably spinning in her grave as we speak . . .”

  “Miss Kinley!”

  “Oh, yes, sorry. So what was I to do? I had my dream of moving west and working on a ranch with my husband, having children, that sort of thing, but I was in Boston. Have you been to Boston, Mr. Calloway? It’s in Massachusetts, you know.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “It really is lovely. There’s theater and carriage rides through the park, people play croquet right out on their lawns. There are horse races and . . . I’m getting off the topic again, aren’t I?”

  Gabe nodded wearily.

  “I do apologize, it’s just when I get ner . . . never mind. As you can imagine, my options were very limited. In the time it would take me to find a job and save enough money to come out here on my own, I would be too old for marriage, let alone children, so I did the next best thing.”

  “Which was?”

  “I saw an advertisement in the newspaper that stated there were ranchers looking for wives and I answered it.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “I most certainly did,” she stated, straightening in her chair. “The advertisement said hardworking, honest men would pay quite handsomely for a good wife, and I will make a good wife—a very good wife—the only problem is apparently the money is supposed to go to the woman’s family. And that, as you can imagine, is where things began to go terribly wrong.”

  “No, Miss Kinley,” Gabe sighed. “Things started going terribly wrong the minute you chose to defy your father.”

  “I didn’t defy him!” she cried. “I simply did not agree with him! He was being stubborn and unreasonable and I could not allow him to marry me off to the first rich man to come along. Despite what people might think, I believe a woman is entitled to have a say in how her life will be lived. I didn’t want to spend my days drinking tea and playing silly games with brainless ninnies who have no opinions on anything going on in the world. I want more than that! I want . . .”

  “The life out west. Yes, I know.” Gabe tried to wrap his brain around this crazy woman’s rationale and it just would not happen; but he’d come this far, he had to hear the rest of it.

  “You see,” she continued, “I couldn’t very well let my family know what I was doing or they would have most certainly had me committed to an insane asylum. Father is on the hospital board, you see, so it would be an easy thing for him to do. Shameful, but easy nonetheless. Come to think of it, Uncle Benjamin might have taken me in. He’s more liberal minded than Father and his shortsighted rabble, but I doubt even he would understand my need to do this. At any rate, I had the man—the one I was to marry, I mean—forward all the correspondence to my dear friend Charlotte. She lives on the other side of the city, she does, but we have been friends since we were very little girls. She’s such a dear, she is. The oldest of five girls! Can you even imagine having five daughters? I’m very certain my father would have gone completely daft if there had been one more girl in our house. My sister and I were more than enough for him!”

  “You don’t say.” Gabe’s hands moved to massage his throbbing temples.

  “Sorry.” She clearly wasn’t. “My plan was a very simple one really. I would use the gentleman’s money to make my way out west, and once I met him, I would decide if I loved him or not. If I decided not, then I would simply return the money that was left and get a job until I could repay the rest.”

  “You’re joking, right?”

  “No.” She shook her head vehemently. “I believe it would have worked, too, except the man came to Boston to collect me personally. He said no man in his right mind would part with that kind of money with no guarantee a bride would show up. Even if he did have a written contract.”

  “How much money are we talking about here?”

  “Two hundred and seventy-five dollars.”

  Gabe whistled. “Smart man.”

  “Not smart enough, I’m afraid, but that’s simply making a long story longer. By God’s good graces, he agreed to hold off on the marriage until we made it west. By and by we made it to Butte where I was used as . . . collateral . . . in the poker game that passed me along to your brother Bart.”

  She had done her best to tell him as many half-truths as possible, and Gabe knew it full well, but he wasn’t sure he could handle the whole truth in one fell swoop anyway, so he decided not to push his luck. There was one thing he couldn’t quite get a handle on though.

  “So how is it if you’re worth almost three hundred dollars to my brother, he just up and let you walk away?” His face darkened like an August storm. “Or did he exact payment from you in some other way?”

  “Oh, no, nothing like that!” Tess’s eyes skittered over his and then back down to her lap. “I just left. Well, to be perfectly honest, I didn’t just leave, I borrowed some of his winnings before I left—just to get me out here, you see, and then I was going to wire it all back to him.”

  A huge smile spread across Gabe’s face. This story just kept getting better.

  “You stole from my brother?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t exactly call it stealing, Mr. Calloway.”

  “Did you ask if you could take it?”

  “N-no, I didn’t.”

  “Did he offer it to you?”

  “No.”

  “Then tha
t, Miss Kinley, is stealing. You’re a thief!”

  “I most certainly am not! I fully intend to repay your brother—with interest—once I am able.”

  Gabe chuckled. “You know what they say about good intentions.”

  Tess was on her feet in an instant, her fists clenching and unclenching on her hips.

  “Mr. Calloway, I assure you—”

  “Now don’t go getting your knickers all in a bunch, I’m not going to turn you in. Fact is, nothing makes me happier than when someone does a turn to Bart he probably would’ve done to them if the opportunity presented itself. You were smart to get away when you had the chance.”

  Tess sunk down into her chair, looking twice as weary than when she first arrived. Gabe watched her fingers twitch in her lap and her teeth chew on her bottom lip.

  “How old are you, Miss Kinley?”

  “Old enough to know that is not a question a gentleman asks a lady.”

  He chuckled again, low in his throat. “I never claimed to be a gentleman, Miss Kinley, and you have yet to prove to me you are indeed a lady.”

  “Why I . . .”

  “You what?” he asked, enjoying all too much the way her neck flushed when she became angry. “All I’ve learned about you is your father should have taken you over his knee and prevented this whole mess from happening. But instead, you’ve bounced from one man to another to another until you landed here. You know nothing about me and yet here you are, sitting on my porch—only half dressed—and you claim to be a lady? I think the real ladies here in town would have a different opinion, don’t you?”

  “But I’ve done nothing wrong,” she hurriedly explained. “I am a good, virtuous woman who . . .”

  “Who happens to be a thief and who doesn’t mind sitting here, in make-do night clothes, with a man you’ve just met and not a chaperone in sight. Hell, the only other woman for miles is Rosa, and since she’s not even married to Miguel, she doesn’t count either!”

  Tess gasped. “She told me he was her husband!”

  That piece of news always seemed to cause a stir. “They’ve lived as man and wife for as long as I’ve known them, but they are not legally married.”

  “Oh my!” Shocked at the revelation, Tess thought no less of either Rosa or Miguel. In fact, she actually admired them—it was such a daring thing to do.

  They sat in the evening silence, both lost in their own thoughts, both sneaking glances at the other as if sizing each other up. It was very distracting to Tess having him sit so close to her. He did not frighten her in any way, even when he yelled like a maddened bear, but the smell of leather and sunshine that clung to him was more than she could possibly be expected to take and not lose her train of thought. It was no wonder she rambled on like a crazy woman.

  Gabe’s mind couldn’t have been more muddled. She couldn’t stay here. He would send her back, but there was something about her. She pulled him in every time she batted those bewitching amber eyes at him, every time she went off on one of her tangents, every time she moved and the soft, sweet smell of honey lingered in her place.

  “You know Bart will come looking for you.” He said it gently, but matter-of-factly.

  “But he doesn’t know where I went, so why would he come here?” For the first time, she almost sounded worried.

  “Because he’s a bounty hunter, Miss Kinley. It’s his business to find people. And besides, you’d be an easy one to track.”

  “Why is that?”

  “A single woman traveling across most of the territory by herself is a sight most folks take note of.”

  Tess almost whimpered. “I never thought about that.”

  “No matter,” he said. “You’ll be back on next week’s stage anyway, so he won’t find you here.”

  “I won’t leave.”

  “Yes, you will.”

  “No, Mr. Calloway, I will not. I made it all the way out here, didn’t I? Don’t you think I deserve the chance to make a life out here?”

  “I don’t honestly know what you deserve, but I do know this is no place for city girls. Sooner or later you’re going to realize that, too, so why don’t you save everyone a whole lot of trouble and go home? Marry that ‘perfectly fine rich man’ and live the life you were supposed to live.”

  “No.”

  Gabe stared straight at her. “No? Where do you intend to stay while you’re in Porter Creek? The hotel costs money.”

  “I’ll stay here.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re a single woman and I’m a single man.”

  “Yes, but you’re an honorable man. I am certain you would not act inappropriately.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Bart told me what a good man you are, how respected you are here in Porter Creek, how conscientious you are, how honorable and upright. . . .”

  “Stop!” he cried through his laughter. “You are the worst liar I’ve ever met. Tell me what he really said.”

  Tess cleared her throat. “Very well. I believe his exact words were high-minded, staunch, and pompous.”

  “Now that sounds more like Bart. And out of that, you came up with honorable, upright, and what was the other one?”

  “Conscientious.”

  “Right. Conscientious.”

  “Regardless,” she said, “Rosa would not allow anything untoward to happen.”

  “Rosa doesn’t sleep in the main house.”

  “Yes, I know, but I do not believe you would try to compromise me in any way.”

  “Is that right? Have you even thought about what staying here will do to your reputation—even if I was honorable, upright, and what was the other one again?”

  “Conscientious.”

  “Right. Conscientious.” He paused. “Well, have you?”

  “Of course I have! And as far as I can see, we have two options.”

  “Really?” Sarcasm dripped from his words. “Would you care to share them with me?”

  “Certainly.” She smiled. “The first option is for you to sleep in the barn or in the bunkhouse with the other men.”

  Gabe choked. “This is my house. I’ll be damned if I’m going to be kicked out of it by anyone—especially a little wisp of a girl like you!”

  “That’s what I thought you’d say. The other option is much simpler anyway. We can get married.”

  Chapter 4

  It was the scent of honey that snapped Gabe back to his senses. Her scent. It lingered in the air, surrounding him, sapping him of any cognitive thought other than her. He struggled through the fog in his brain, trying to decide if she had, indeed, said what he thought he’d heard. Of course she had not waited for him to offer his own suggestions, but instead collected the tray of food and bolted into the house, leaving him on the porch with his mouth agape.

  She had given him two choices, purposely omitting the third and most obvious, which would have Gabe staying in the house with her, reputation be damned. He should do it—just march right in and go on up to bed. This was his house after all, and he certainly had not invited her here. No, he smiled ruefully, he should take her up on her idea and marry her. That would teach her, wouldn’t it? Maybe then she’d find out how unromantic the ranching life really was and hightail it on out of here. Gabe’s smile faded. If it was such a good idea, why did it sit like a rock in the bottom of his belly? Must be the idea of marriage that disagreed with him, because it certainly couldn’t be the notion of her leaving. Hell, he didn’t even know her. But she sure smelled good.

  Cursing under his breath, Gabe cast a final glance toward the kitchen door before trudging out to the barn. Why the hell did his mother—no, Rosa—have to instill such an overactive conscience in him? And how was it she hadn’t managed to do the same with his brother? Bart would have been up the stairs and fast asleep by now, his only concern being whether he would have company in his bed or not.

  The full moon cast a shimmering yellow light across the yard,
but even in the pitch of darkness Gabe would not have taken a misstep. He’d been born and raised right here on the ranch and not a day had gone by when he hadn’t made this trek out to the barn at least a half dozen times. He knew, without counting, exactly how many steps it was from the house, the exact angle at which it sat in conjunction with the house, and exactly where every nail had been hammered to keep the structure sound. He spent at least twice as much time out there than he did in the house and, truth be told, it wasn’t such a bad place to sleep. It was warm in the winter, cool in the summer, quiet, and at this time of night usually still smelled of clean, fresh hay.

  So where was that familiar smell now? And even more disturbing, why the hell did it smell of honey?

  Zeus nickered softly and tossed his glossy black mane.

  “Hullo, ol’ boy,” Gabe murmured. “Looks like we’re going to be spending a bit more time together.”

  He scratched the huge stallion’s ears and muzzle, whispering nothings to him the whole while. Everyone else in town, including his own ranch hands, referred to his horse as Satan, and that was fine with Gabe. The more wary a body was of an animal, the more they tended to respect it and keep their damn hands to themselves. More than one rancher in Porter Creek had lost horses to thieves in the last few years, but not the Calloways. Zeus was a force to be reckoned with, and the only one up to the challenge was Gabe. No one else would even feed him, let alone clean out his stall or ride him. Not that Gabe would have allowed it anyway, but there was a whole other story.

  When Zeus was satisfied he’d not been ignored, Gabe mounted the ladder to the loft and flopped down on the huge pile of straw. The tiny window above his head looked directly back at the house, directly at the bedroom window where Tess lay sleeping. If he peeked out, would he see her there? She seemed to have a thing about looking out at the sky; first it was the sunset, then the full moon. Perhaps she was a stargazer too.

  Cussing into the straw, he shifted and twisted in an unsuccessful effort to relax. Why the hell should he care if she was looking out the damned window or not? All that mattered was she was sleeping in the house while he was stuck out in the barn alone with his thoughts. Being alone didn’t usually bother Gabe; it gave him the opportunity to focus on the ranch, on what jobs needed to be done first, how much those jobs would cost, and how much profit he would make. Tonight, however, his thoughts were stuck on one thing—Tess Kinley.