Elizabeth Lane - The Widowed Bride

Ethan was bending over the single bed in the south room, scowling as he tested the worn cotton mattress with his fist. The springs squeaked as he pushed up and down. Heaven save her, was he planning on having lady friends up? Maybe she should have asked more questions before agreeing to have him as a tenant.

“The beds are old, but you can have your choice of them,” she said, stepping into the room. “I don’t mind your moving things around.”

“This one will do fine.” He straightened. The sunlight pouring into the room heightened the gold flecks in his dark brown eyes.

“The room hasn’t been cleaned yet.” Ruby focused on brushing a speck of lint off her skirt. She was alone with a compellingly attractive man in what had just become his bedroom. Maybe this arrangement was a mistake.

“It’ll be no trouble for me to clean it,” he said. “But I’ll need a desk or a table for my work. Do you have anything I can use?”

“Not that I can spare.” Ruby had already taken an inventory of the sparse furnishings. “But the agent told me there was some older furniture stored in the cellar. Maybe there’s something useful down there.”

“You haven’t looked?”

“Not yet.”

“Spiders?” A knowing twinkle lit his eyes.

She feigned a shrug. “Actually, I haven’t had time.”

“Then what do you say we go down there now, together? If you see anything you want, I’ll haul it up the stairs for you.”

His suggestion struck Ruby as a sensible idea. Loath as she was to admit it, the thought of entering that dark, spider-infested cellar alone made her skin crawl. She’d plumbed a well of excuses to put off going down there. But with Ethan leading the way, the prospect didn’t seem so daunting.

She followed him downstairs to the kitchen, her eyes lingering on the muscular outline of his shoulders. His black hair grew low on the back of his sun-bronzed neck. Ruby suppressed the urge to reach out and brush the curls clear of his collar. How would he react if she touched him? Would he take it as an invitation?

As a stranger, Ethan would have no idea what she’d done to her husband. Here in Dutchman’s Creek, only a few people did—Jace and Clara, of course, as well as Clara’s family and Sam Farley, the elderly town marshal. None of those good people would reveal her secret on purpose. But scandal had a way of oozing into the open. Sooner or later word was bound to get out. What would the people in town—like her new tenant—think of her when the truth was revealed? For her own sake, Ruby no longer cared. But for the sake of her innocent young daughters…

Maybe she should have settled someplace else—a place where no one knew about her past.

But she would cross that bridge when she came to it. Right now she had more urgent concerns—and one of them was walking right in front of her.

Ethan had said he was looking forward to some good home cooking, a reasonable expectation for any boarder. With no money to hire a cook, Ruby would have to run the kitchen herself.

Unfortunately, she’d grown up in a home where meals were prepared by a housekeeper. Upon her marriage to Hollis Rumford, she had moved into a mansion with a full staff of servants, including a chef.

Heaven help her, she didn’t know the first thing about cooking. She barely knew how to boil water.

What had she gotten herself into? Right now the thought of finding tenants, cooking meals, maintaining the house, laundering a mountain of sheets, collecting rent and managing expenses was more than she could wrap her mind around.

She’d dreamed of having a steady income and a place to live with her girls. The reality was more like a nightmare. But she’d sunk her money into this old house and moved from Springfield with all her possessions. She was here to stay, and she had no choice except to make it work.

The entrance to the cellar lay at the back of the house, next to the kitchen stoop. Its slanted door was the kind that children might have used for a slide in happier times when the house was new. Now the wood was warped and weathered to a splintery gray.

There was no padlock, Ethan noted as he twisted out the stick that fastened the rusted hasp. Anyone, including bootleggers, could have gotten into the cellar. Until now he’d kept his distance from the door, not wanting to raise suspicion by getting too close. But Ruby had given him a perfect excuse to investigate.

Maybe too perfect.

“I don’t suppose you carry an electric torch with you.” She leaned past his shoulder, teasing his nostrils with a sensual whiff of perfume. Ethan recognized the scent as a pricey one. Clearly, the lady had money, or, more likely, knew some man who did. So what was she doing in a place like this? He’d be a fool not to watch his every step.

“With the door open, we should be able to see well enough.” He glanced back at her. “Ready?”

She nodded, all wide-eyed innocence. “Lead the way.”

Gripping the handle, he raised the cellar door. It came up easily, swinging outward on hinges so silent that they must have been recently oiled. Instincts prickling, Ethan started down the rough-cut plank steps. Ruby followed so close behind him that he could hear her shallow breathing. Maybe this wasn’t a good idea. For all he knew, the woman could be scheming to shoot him in the back and leave his carcass down here to rot. Or maybe she had cohorts waiting in the shadows to jump him and drag him away.

He cursed the oversight of leaving his .38 Smith & Wesson revolver locked in his suitcase at the hotel. There was no reason for a man posing as a scholar to carry a gun in a small town, especially on a sunny spring day, or so he’d thought. But that was before he’d encountered a seductively mysterious redhead, who appeared to be in the wrong place for the wrong reasons.

“Watch your head.” He ducked under the bottom edge of the rough concrete foundation and stepped into the low cavern of the cellar. Overhead, cobwebs festooned the timbers that supported the floor of the house. But there’d been no web strands across the entrance, Ethan noted. Someone had been down here, probably within the past couple of weeks.

A jumble of dusty furniture was piled against the far wall, as if it had been pushed there to make room for something else. The rest of the floor, covered in loose clay tiles over bare earth, was empty. If a stash of bootleg whiskey had been stored here, someone must have already hauled it away.

That might explain why Ruby had been so willing to bring him down here.

As he crossed the floor, Ethan suddenly realized she was no longer following him. Glancing back, he saw her hesitating at the foot of the steps.

A vision flashed through Ethan’s mind—Ruby racing up the stairs to slam the cellar door and lock him in. Odds were she hadn’t bought his inane story about being a professor. Hellfire, he probably wouldn’t have bought it himself. He should have insisted on a more convincing cover.

“What’s the matter?” he demanded, turning back to face her.

Her gaze shifted upward to the spiderwebs drooping from the beams. Suspicion crackled along his nerves. Was it an act? He’d be damned if he was going to find out the hard way.

“For Pete’s sake, if we don’t bother the spiders, they won’t bother us! Come on!” He grabbed her wrist and jerked her toward him more roughly than he’d meant to. “No! Don’t—”

Suddenly she was fighting his grip, thrashing like a trapped animal. Ethan struggled to bring her under control. His free hand captured her flailing arm. With an expert twist, he whipped her against him, pinioning her hand against the small of her back. Even then she resisted, straining backward, gasping with effort.