Kate Bridges - Welcome To Wyoming

He wanted no part of wives and obligations and possible children who’d grow attached to him and...and detective agents who’d deliver the news, as they had to Clay’s widow and Eli’s mother, that their loved ones had been killed in gunfire in the line of duty. God almighty, Clay even had a young boy, Tucker, who’d been left behind. Simon knew all too well how it felt to be deserted by a father.

He reminded himself again.

Natasha O’Sullivan was poison.

Chapter Three

He wasn’t that taken with her. The hurtful thought rippled through Natasha’s mind at dinner and became even more apparent as Jarrod walked her to her room.

Her high-heeled boots padded along the carpet runner behind him as her disappointment grew.

At dinner, there had been moments when he’d looked across the table and she had sensed that he was drawn to her. He’d waited for her to answer some of his questions as though there was nothing more important to him in the world. But at the end of their meal, she had noticed a slight hesitation, an almost-imperceptible coolness that seemed to blanch his heart. It was almost as though he’d been testing her in some way, and she had failed his qualifications.

Why? What could it be about her that he disapproved of?

She couldn’t help it, but she was also ruffled by the fact that he took charge without much discussion with her—he’d told the front-desk clerk that he’d like one room with a pretty view for an unspecified period. Why not discuss the waiting period with her? Why did he think she wished to rest up before “plunging” into this? The bellboy had left to deliver her trunk to the room, while she and Jarrod remained to fill out the guest register.

She stepped beside him and decided to voice her opinion. “Jarrod, it’s not that I wish to rush into a wedding, but it’s not precisely rushing into it when we’ve been thinking and anticipating it for three months, now is it?”

“Huh?” He rubbed his bristly neck. “It’s just that I wish to give you time to settle in.”

“Perhaps it’s a silly notion, but I fantasized that upon meeting you, you might lift me in your arms and tell me how you couldn’t wait to be with me. That you had a minister waiting this minute.”

“Ah. I see.” He gulped. Why was this conversation making him nervous? “This way,” he said, motioning with his hand and making a sharp left.

She followed in the narrow corridor. Why was he so controlled with his feelings when all she wanted was to be encircled by his arms and held for a little while?

She hadn’t been held for a very long time.

But perhaps she should be happy that he wasn’t rushing her into marriage. That he wished them both to take their time. Perhaps she should learn to temper her loneliness and her desire to connect with another person. It would come in due course. Impatience on her part wouldn’t help.

Her folks had never talked to her about boys. They’d had a loving relationship with each other, and with her, but the pain of losing them made her wary of getting close to a boy and possibly losing him, too. The last man who’d kissed her had been a young man who’d come from an upstanding family her grandfather had known. Granddad had rarely introduced her to potential suitors, had never rushed her nor tried to force her to marry young.

Wait for the right one, he’d often say. Be guarded like your grandmother, dear Elizabeth, was until we knew each other well.

Natasha had liked her last suitor well enough, but there’d been no mad rush to see him, no quivering in the pit of her stomach when they kissed. It had been more brotherly—playing checkers and strolling along the river together. Before him, she’d known several boys while growing up, but none she’d dreamed of with wild intensity. She had wondered if there’d ever come a time when she would meet a man who would turn her heart and soul upside down. She’d wondered it on the entire train journey here. She wondered it now as she watched Jarrod’s thigh muscles flex beneath his wool trousers, as she watched his shoulder blades move beneath the shadows of his jacket.

“I think we’re close,” he said, turning his cheek slightly as he looked at the numbers on the hotel doors to match the one on the key.

They passed the bellboy. “Folks, it’s straight ahead and to the right.” He pointed that way.

Jarrod tipped him some coins, and they continued down the hall.

What had Jarrod thought when he’d first read her advertisement in the paper?

Looking for a man of solid worth. I am a hardworking young woman of good moral standing and excellent health. I adore children. I also have skills in jewelry repair, can handle a revolver and a horse, and would dearly love the adventure of living west of the Mississippi. Please write to Miss Natasha O’Sullivan...

Now that she’d left Chicago, however, she felt an ache in her heart she couldn’t suppress. Her friends were left behind, and she hadn’t realized how much she had relied on them. They were trusted souls who gave her straight answers.

She thought she would find all of that and more with Jarrod. His letters had been cordial and, although a bit detached, had filled her with an intense desire to join him in his travels on the railway, tending to his jewelry shops across the West and scattered over the Rockies, and creating an empire of prosperity.

Yet why was there such a chasm between them?

Granddad would never approve of her becoming a mail-order bride.

Perhaps that was why she’d done it. That thought burned inside her. But there were extenuating circumstances, she reasoned, trying to push away her shameful feelings that she wasn’t quite good enough for her grandfather’s standards.

She’d always tried to be such a good girl, abiding by his rules, listening to all of her elders with politeness, being ever so demure. It was her time now, wasn’t it? Time to do as she pleased with whom she pleased. Time to follow her heart and any desire to fulfill her life with her own dreams, no matter how silly or outlandish they might appear to any onlooker.

She had that right.

“Ah, here we are. Room 208.” Jarrod inserted the key into the door at the end of the corridor.

He turned the knob, swung the door open and stepped aside for her to enter.

“Is that it, then, Jarrod? No more talk of wedding plans?” Why was he elusive?

“Only until tomorrow. It’s been a long day for both of us.”

“Long day?” she snapped. “That’s how you think of this? Of me?”

“Of course not, darlin’.” He swooped in to brush his lips against her cheek.

The light kiss was unexpected. A sexual current rippled between them, hot and fierce, as she wavered past his looming body, inches close to his chest and his firm, square jaw.

His skin, bristling with unshaven shadows, held the scent of fresh outdoor air mingled with leather. She inhaled sharp and quick, and his gaze snapped down to hers. A moment of fire burned between them. Who were they to each other? Soon-to-be husband and wife?

The thought that they would soon share a bed made her tremulous. Heat shot through her chest, flushing her skin and heating her limbs.

She was so inexperienced yet so lonely that she couldn’t wait to share her nights with Jarrod.

Her nostrils flared with the heady scent of his masculine presence, and she stepped past him, desperate to breathe neutral-scented air. It was almost as though she couldn’t think straight when he came too close.

And she had to think straight to surmise her next step. What would be the proper requirements to set her mind at ease that he was indeed the man she should spend the rest of her days with?

“Jarrod, I don’t wish to be one of those couples who pretend for appearances that we are happily wed, when beneath the surface we might live in separate homes in separate towns in separate beds.”