Kate Bridges - Rancher Wants a Wife

‘Welcome to my valley.’

There went her nerves again. Cassandra couldn’t get enough of looking at the new Jack. Goodness. Wasn’t he handsome? Perhaps he knew it. Perhaps this new confidence she sensed in him came from being aware of how he was perceived by the women around him. And those women … they had such fine features and beautiful skin.

It hurt to remember that she’d once looked like that. That she’d once turned heads and garnered male attention.

She composed herself and tried to remain positive. Jack hadn’t asked anyone else to marry him; he had asked her. So Cassandra focused on what the future with him might bring, and gave him a cheerful nod.

‘Nice to be here finally.’

‘Yes, finally,’ he said, as if he were thinking about something more.

She swooped down to inhale the perfume of the roses, hoping the colour heating up her cheeks didn’t show.

Finally, after all these years, Jack McColton would be taking her virginity.

Kate Bridges invites you to her

MAIL-ORDER WEDDINGS

From blushing bride to rancher’s wife!

The Great Fire of Chicago might have changed

best friends Cassandra Hamilton’s and Natasha O’Sullivan’s lives for ever, but they’re determined to carve a new future for themselves as mail-order brides in the West.

Then along come their Stetson-wearing, gun-slinging, breathtaking new husbands—it seems Cassandra and Natasha have got a whole lot more than they signed up for!

Read Cassandra’s story in:

RANCHER WANTS A WIFE

And look out for Natasha’s story

WELCOME TO WYOMING

Coming April 2014

Rancher Wants a Wife

Kate Bridges

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Award-winning and multi-published author KATE BRIDGESwas raised in rural Canada, and her stories reflect her love for wide-open spaces, country sunshine and the Rocky Mountains. She loves writing adventurous tales of the men and women who tamed the West. Prior to becoming a full-time writer, Kate worked as a paediatric intensive care nurse. She often includes compelling medical situations in her novels. Later in her education she studied architecture, and worked as a researcher on a television design programme. She has taken postgraduate studies in comedy screenwriting, and in her spare time writes screenplays. Kate’s novels have been translated into nine languages, studied in over a dozen colleges on their commercial fiction courses, and are sold worldwide. She lives in the beautiful cosmopolitan city of Toronto with her family. To find out more about Kate’s books and to sign up for her free online newsletter please visit www.katebridges.com

Previous novels by the author:

THE DOCTOR’S HOMECOMING

THE SURGEON

THE ENGAGEMENT

THE PROPOSITION

THE CHRISTMAS GIFTS THE BACHELOR

THE COMMANDER

KLONDIKE DOCTOR

SHOTGUN VOWS

KLONDIKE WEDDING

KLONDIKE FEVER

WANTED IN ALASKA

HER ALASKAN GROOM

ALASKAN RENEGADE

Did you know that some of these novels are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk

This book is dedicated to my family for their loving support and for always coming through with their sense of humour.

In writing this story I owe many thanks to my fabulous editor, Carly Byrne, for her talented editorial input and advice. I’d also like to thank Linda Fildew for her support, and the entire team in the UK offices for their friendliness when I came to visit and their dedication behind the scenes.

I would like to thank my marvellous agent, Erica Spellman Silverman, for her enthusiasm and guidance, and the whole team at the Trident Media Group.

It’s a great pleasure to work with all of you.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter One

Chicago, February 1873 Mrs. Pepik’s Boardinghouse for Desolate Women

“What if my husband doesn’t like me? What if I don’t like him?” Cassandra Hamilton leaned forward at the crowded dining table. Her blond braid dipped over her shoulder as she lifted a stack of letters from her would-be grooms.

A dozen other chattering young women jostled around her to read the names and notes.

All these men, thought Cassandra, interested in her?

“Don’t worry so much, my dear. Wedding jitters are normal. Especially since you’ll be our first mail-order bride.” The landlady, plump Mrs. Pepik, peered down her spectacles at Cassandra and patted her hand.

A nearby fireplace sizzled with the last of the ice-covered logs they had rationed for this evening. The warmth penetrated Cassandra’s cracked leather boots.

“You’re pleasant and...and wholesome.” The landlady’s eyes flickered over the scar on Cassandra’s cheek before she politely gazed away from it. “He’ll like you.”

Cassandra ran her hand along her right cheek, wondering if she’d ever be comfortable again with her own looks. Sometimes when she was alone and immersed in a task, she blissfully forgot about the burn injury, but in the presence of others, their curiosity and sympathy rarely allowed her that freedom.

“And as for you liking him,” the landlady continued on a cheery note, “fortunately, you get to make the selection.”

Giggles of excitement erupted at the table. The sound was much nicer to listen to than the sadness and despair when Cassandra had first arrived.

They were all survivors of what everyone now, nearly a year and a half later, was calling the Great Chicago Fire. A catastrophe that had caused over three hundred deaths and had left a hundred thousand people homeless. The fire had stolen the only two people Cassandra had loved—her beautiful younger sister, Mary, and their fearless father—and had made Cassandra silently question in the horrible months that followed whether she wished to go on without them.

Once, on what would’ve been Mary’s nineteenth birthday, Cassandra had walked quietly to the railroad depot and had almost leaped onto the tracks before an oncoming locomotive. The only thing that had stopped her were the nearby voices of two children—a brother and sister arguing over a hopscotch game they were chalking on the pavement. It was then that Cassandra had realized what her little sister would desire, more than anything: for her to live a full life.

And so ever since Mrs. Pepik had come upon the idea of advertising “her young ladies” as mail-order brides in the Western newspapers, the boardinghouse had become a sanctuary of laughter and amicable debates.

Cassandra, good with geography, logically minded and possessing a surprisingly natural skill with investigation, had helped track down some missing persons in the aftermath of the fire. She’d found intervals of employment for herself and some of the other women, and she’d gone to the records office to follow up on lost documents for others. She had comfortably and voluntarily dealt with lawyers, bankers and jailers. Due to her meticulous uncovering of lost people and papers, some of the workingmen she’d encountered had jokingly nicknamed her “That Lady Detective.”

Now, Mrs. Pepik stretched closer, eager to hear of the decision at hand. “Cassandra, which man will it be?”

A slender young woman in the corner spoke up. “I’d take the jeweler in Saint Louis.”