Colorado Bride Read online

  “But that’s awful.”

  “I’ve no doubt, but ‘twas safer.”

  They had reached the steps and Carrie stood staring at the dilapidated station.

  “I might as well warn you. Most likely you never saw anything like the inside of this place, so don’t be overset. Though it’ll be small blame if ye are. ‘Tis enough to make your stomach turn.”

  They stepped inside and Carrie stared about her in shock. The dishes from the previous meal were still on the table, but more dirty plates were stacked on a table against the wall, several pots covered with the leavings of what had been cooked in them were piled against a corner of the stove, and the cabinet doors stood ajar, their contents haphazardly left open to the ravages of flies and spoilage. The room itself hadn’t been cleaned in months and every surface was caked with grease. Carrie had no idea how she was going to get everything cleaned in time to get dinner ready.

  “Here, let me lend you a hand,” Katie offered.

  “No,” Carrie said with sudden resolution, “this is my job, and I have to do it myself.”

  “Then you’d best be changing your dress, or you’ll never wear it again. There be rooms in the back, probably as filthy as this, but you’ll have some privacy.” Carrie found two rooms, both incredibly grimy, but she made herself ignore the debris for the time being. First things first, and the first thing she had to do was to get dinner ready for the passengers she was expecting.

  “There be a stage coming through at half past six,” Katie announced as Carrie came back into the dining room. I’m thinking that leaves us something over five hours to get this place looking decent.” She had already found a big pot, filled it with water, and put it on to boil.

  “I told you I could do this myself,” Carrie said, slightly irritated that Katie had started without her permission. She had thrust herself into this job and it was her responsibility to see that it was done.

  “Ye can’t be doing it all yourself and ye know it,” Katie stated, never pausing as she scraped several pots and threw their cold, congealed contents out the back door. “Besides, I’m so starved for female company I probably won’t leave your side more than a minute before Brian comes for me. And I can’t stand about doing nothing while you work yourself to death. Me mother brought me up to hard work, but she also brought me up to share. It makes the work go that much faster for a little company, some lighthearted gossip, and a wee bit of laughter.”

  “It certainly does,” agreed Carrie, her momentary pique gone. She started to stack the plates on the table. “And from the looks of this place, it’s going to have to go mighty fast if we’re to have dinner ready by six-thirty. You start washing the dishes and I’ll see if I can remove enough grease from this table for us to sit down and have a bite to eat. I didn’t have any lunch, and I’m hungry too.”

  But it was nearly two hours later before they could sit down to eat. They washed every dish in the station, scrubbed every surface until it shone, and scraped the stove clean of all the baked-on food that hadn’t already turned to charcoal. They still had to clean out the cabinets and the storage closet, make an inventory so Carrie would know what staples she needed to order, scrub down the walls and floors, replace the curtains, and clean the windows, but the pots were soaking in hot soapy water and she had found enough food to be able to plan a good, nourishing dinner.

  “How long do you intend to wait?” Carrie asked once the edge was off their hunger.

  “What for?”

  “For your fiancé. You said it had already been a week. Suppose something has happened to him and he can’t come?”

  “Happen I’ll find myself a job then. I’m young, strong, and I can work.”

  “Don’t you want to go back home?”

  “I lack the money. Brian paid me passage, but I wouldn’t go back if I could. I cooked and cleaned for a passel of men long enough. I made up me mind the next man I done for would be me husband, or I’d do for no one.” It sounded so much like Carrie’s own situation she experienced a strong surge of sympathy.

  “Do you have any family?”

  “Do I ever. Eight years it is I’ve cooked and cleaned for me father and six brothers since me mother died. Still things weren’t too bad until the oldest brought home a wife. Hadn’t but one look passed between the two of us, and I knew we could never live under the same roof without making everybody’s life a misery. I’m thinking we’d have killed each other before long. Anyway when Brian Kelly wrote his ma asking her to pick him out a wife and she asked me, I jumped at the chance, lb be sure when he was home, Brian used to be swayed by temptation too often to suit me, but I always say any ship in a storm is better than getting bashed to death on the rocks.”

  Carrie thought of her own decision to take on the management of the station and felt she had come to much the same conclusion.

  “After a time of being tossed about on that wee bit of a ship, I was sorry I hadn’t settled on somebody closer to home, but ever since I got to these hills, I’ve felt right at home,”

  “These are the Rocky Mountains,” Carrie informed her.

  “To be sure they are a little big, but I’m game to tackle anything as long as it carries no gun.”

  The conversation stopped abruptly at the sound of footsteps on the porch. Carrie’s first thought was that Baca Riggins had come back, but when the door swung open, she found herself staring up into the unnervingly handsome face of Lucas Barrow. Kate had only seen him next to Baca Riggins, so she was stunned to discover just how tall six feet two looked when you were sitting down staring up at it. He was a slim, powerfully built man, but his presence seemed to fill the room and make him seem even more imposing. Despite herself, Carrie felt her breath catch and her pulse quicken; the there presence of this man charged the air with energy even though he moved slowly and used fewer words than anybody she’d ever known. The channels of her mind were immediately clogged with questions, but they were overridden by the force of his physical presence. It was like an electrical shock, and Carrie found herself staring up at him with wide eyes and a slack jaw.

  “You mean to leave those trunks in the yard?”

  Carrie continued to stare at him, her mind making only a feeble attempt to deal with anything as unimportant as words.

  “Of course she doesn’t,” Katie answered for her, “but you can’t expect her to go hauling those heavy things over to the cabin by herself.”

  “My t-trunks,” stammered Carrie, pulling her disordered wits together. “No, I don’t mean for them to remain in the yard. To tell you the truth, we were so busy here I forgot all about them, but I suppose they should be brought in before the next stage arrives.” Why did she feel so foolish? And she was talking exactly like one of her silly sisters-in-law.

  Take them up to the cabin,” Katie told Lucas before turning to Carrie. “You can’t stay here until we’ve scrubbed those rooms from top to bottom.”

  “I don’t want to run you out.”

  “You won’t. There’s two rooms. Besides, it’s yours anyway.”

  “Which will it be?” Lucas asked, breaking in on their exchange.

  “Take them up to the cabin, please,” Carrie said, happy to accept Katie’s advice until she could refocus her distracted wits. She ought to concentrate on what she was saying and not pay attention to his eyes, but she had never seen eyes that shone with such brilliant intensity.

  “I don’t work for the station,” Lucas stated flatly.

  “I’m sorry. I just assumed …” Carrie searched her dazed mind for words.

  “But I’ take your trunks up to the cabin. You’d never get them up there yourself, not if you were to put both of you in harness.”

  “Thank you,” Carrie said rather coolly. Once again she was becoming irked by his attitude, and that helped her to gather her wits and determine to put him in his place if it was the last thing she did. “Naturally I’ll pay you for your trouble …”

  “No you won’t.”

  “I
beg your pardon?”

  “I don’t take money from women.”

  “Why not? It spends the same as from men.” Really, he was ruder than she had thought.

  “I’m sure it does, but I still won’t take it.”

  “Don’t let it fret you,” Katie advised Carrie. “Half the men out here treat a woman like she was dirt, and the other half like she was some kind of angel. Be glad he’s one of the angel kind.” Carrie decided this wasn’t the time to go into it, but she intended to let them both know that Lucas’s behavior bore no resemblance to her idea of angel-like veneration. She felt more like an errant child or a plain nuisance.

  “You ought to go back to Denver,” Lucas said.

  “What?” Carrie asked angrily. His effrontery had now gone well beyond rudeness, and she informed him, “I have a job here.”

  “You ought to leave on the next stage.”

  “I assure you I intend to stay. My husband—”

  “Come back when your husband is with you. This is no place for a woman alone. I can’t always be around to help you, and Baca Riggins isn’t the only one of his kind. There are any number of men who’ll take advantage of a female if given the chance.”

  “Thank you for your concern and your warning,” Carrie said, unbending slightly, “but I mean to stay. I can take care of myself.”

  “Do you have any guns besides that toy pistol?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do.”

  “Do you know how to use them?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you hit anything?”

  It would serve him right if she used her pistol on him. At least then he wouldn’t have to ask any more impertinent questions. “Mr. Barrow, I appreciate your anxiety, I really do, but I resent this interrogation. I don’t mean to sound rude or ungrateful, but my welfare is none of your business. I have a position here and work to do, and I mean to do it. I won’t be run off by the likes of Baca Riggins or by your warnings. If you are going to carry those trunks up to the cabin, I would appreciate it if you would do it now. It’ll be some time before I am finished here, but I’d feel more comfortable knowing everything I owned wasn’t sitting in the middle of the road.”

  “Where do you want them?” Lucas asked, Carrie’s stern reproof having no visible effect on him.

  “The bedroom on the left,” Katie said. “I’m staying in the other one.”

  “And I’ve got a suitcase in the back room as well,” Carrie told him. Lucas disappeared into the rear of the station, reappeared moments later with the suitcase, and marched out the front door, all without uttering another word.

  “Who is that man?” Carrie demanded, hardly able to deride whether she wanted to be angry with him or be tempted by his tremendous physical appeal. “I never met anyone like him in my whole life. You’d think he hated women and was charged for each word he spoke.”

  “You’ll be mistaken if you’re thinking I know anything about him. He was here afore me. He keeps to himself, and everybody leaves him alone. Seems to me he’s supposed to provide horses for the station, but he never appears to work very hard. He’s always around whenever anybody rides up. You’d think he was a welcoming committee except he hardly ever speaks. He’s said more words to you than I’ve heard him say since I’ve been here.”

  “I was going to ask him if he would be willing to work for me until I could find the time to go into Fort Malone and hire someone, but the way he stared at me when I offered to pay him, I was sure he’d refuse.”

  “Could be he would, but ye can never tell what a man like him is going to do. He’s taken a liking to you, though, so he just might do it.”

  Taken a liking to me!” Carrie exclaimed. “You must be mistaken. I’ve never been spoken to in that manner by anyone in my life, not even the Yankees who came through our place at the end of the war.”

  “I know nothing about any Yankees, but he’s never said a word to me even though I will take an oath he’s been watching out for me all along.”

  “He gives me the same feeling,” Carrie said. “The whole time he was under that tree I felt like his eyes were staring at me. Yet he had that hat pulled down over his face so far I couldn’t see his nose.”

  “He has the appearance of being a strange man, but I think I like him.”

  “I’m not sure I do, but that’s neither here nor there,” Carrie said, getting to her feet. “We’ve got a dinner to fix and there’s still more cleaning to do. I’ll be most grateful if Mr. Barrow will agree to help me at least temporarily, but if he doesn’t learn to speak and behave properly around women, he can eat his dinner in the barn. I’m not sure but what his horse has better manners anyway.”

  But Carrie was certain Lucas was no man to be ignored, and regardless of how he treated her, she was sure she didn’t want him to ignore her.

  Lucas climbed down from the wagon and began to unload the trunks, To the women who periodically glanced out at him from the kitchen window, he seemed to be moving with maddening deliberateness, but his mind was racing. He had not expected the arrival of Carrie Simpson or been prepared for the impact she made on him, and he was still trying to get his feelings under control. And to make matters worse, if they could be made worse at this point, her arrival threatened to seriously disrupt his plans.

  There was no place in his life for a woman, especially not the kind who looked like something out of a dream and smelled of lace curtains and spicy apple pies. He just didn’t have time for that now. One day soon the Overland Stage Company would be his, his uncle was already dying, and it would take every minute he had for the next several years to keep it from being swallowed up by the railroads coming west. He had spent every waking hour for the last twenty years working for his uncle, the last five studying how to take advantage of the railroads, and he couldn’t afford to lose it all for lack of attention.

  He was also in the middle of a dangerous undertaking. If this gang that had stolen the gold shipment off his stage even suspected who he was or why he was at Green Run Pass, they would try to kill him. They had already shown that nothing was going to stand in their way, especially nothing as easy as killing. They were well organized and operated smoothly, and it had taken all his time to make the little progress he had these last two weeks. It was difficult enough to maintain his act of the laconic wrangler when he would keep his mind on the job full time. If things started to fall apart, it would be virtually impossible to save his own skin and worry about a woman as well. Two women, he reminded himself, but for some reason he’d never worried about it until Carrie stepped down from the stage.

  It had been his uncle’s lifelong boast that nobody ever took anything off his stages unless they cleared it with him first, but someone had taken that gold shipment, and Lucas was certain they had plans to take several more. It was essential that he discover who was selling information about their cargo, stop the thieves, and recover the lost gold. The loss of one shipment wouldn’t damage his business, but it would hurt his pride, and Lucas Barrow had pride if he had nothing else.

  He’d have to see about getting that woman out of here. And the Irish girl, too. He couldn’t imagine why Carrie’s husband had sent her ahead of him. Any Westerner knew women ought never to travel alone, and certainly not a woman who looked like Carrie Simpson. That wasn’t asking for trouble, it was the same as getting down on your knees and begging for it. He’d have to talk to Simpson and try to convince him to send his wife back to Denver, or at least to Fort Malone. She couldn’t stay here, not with the Staples gang in the vicinity. Jason Staples was known to be hard on men and women alike, but he had a well-known weakness for a pretty woman. In fact, if Lucas had been the type, he would have baited a trap with just such a woman as Carrie. But that wasn’t his way, and he would never have used any woman in that manner, certainly not one like Carrie.

  He couldn’t understand why she kept nagging at his mind. She was a married woman, and Lucas had never allowed himself to even think of messing around with another man�
�s wife. You could kill a man for that, not that he was afraid of Robert Simpson, it was just that he held to a very strict code of behavior. God only knows, if she’d been his woman, he’d have been tempted to kill any man who even looked at her hard.

  He had to stop thinking like this. He was getting himself all worked up over nothing. Carrie Simpson didn’t even like him. She probably wouldn’t like any man of the West. The way she dismissed him smacked of old-fashioned Eastern society, snooty women and stuffy men, all complacent in the security of well-organized towns with a tradition of orderliness and a police force to see it was maintained. She’d never survive out here where there were few rules and those had to be enforced with fists or guns. It was for damned certain Jason Staples wouldn’t fade away into the night just because she looked down her pert little nose at him. And there was nothing about her golden brown eyes or pursed mouth to discourage a man either. Oh, they could look daggers at you and say awful words, but her lips were meant to be kissed, and her eyes seemed to be issuing the invitation.

  She was such a dainty little thing, she didn’t even come to his shoulder, it was hard to see how she could stand up to anybody, although he had been right impressed with the way she squared off against Baca Riggins. Of course, she would have had to leave on that stage if he hadn’t intervened, but he was certain she would have come back. With her husband! He had to try harder to remember her husband. Maybe then he could get over the feeling of wanting to wrap his arms around her and stay close so nothing could happen to her. Maybe when her husband got here, he could get rid of the feeling that if he let her out of his sight for as much as a minute, he would never forgive himself.

  He tried to concentrate on the trunks he was moving, but that was no help. Those trunks were important to Carrie, and that made them important to him. He cursed. Maybe it was time to go bronco hunting. He sure needed to bust something.

  Chapter 3

  “I’m thinking the stage will be here any minute, Mrs. Simpson,” Katie said as she checked the gravy and prepared to put the ears of corn into boiling water. “Why don’t ye take off your apron and meet them on the porch?”