Judith McWilliams - Instant Husband

Ann took a deep breath and, feeling as if she were taking an irrevocable step into the unknown, said, “No, it’s not a problem. I’m just not awake yet. If you could tell me where the bathroom is?”

“First door to the right at the foot of the stairs. Breakfast will be ready in ten minutes.” He abruptly turned and left.

Ann listened to the sound of his footsteps receding on the bare wooden steps before she flung back the covers and climbed out of bed. She gasped as the room’s icy air pounced on her unsuspecting body and began to freeze her top layer of skin.

If it was this cold in April, what was it like in January? she wondered uneasily. Briskly rubbing her hands over her arms, she looked around for a furnace register to warm herself. She didn’t find one. In fact, she didn’t find much of anything. The only furniture the small room contained was the narrow bed she’d slept on and a huge, battered mahogany chest of drawers that was so ugly it was almost avant-garde. Almost.

The single narrow window was covered with a flyspecked green blind that was ripped along the bottom, while a truly hideous pink cabbage-rose-print wallpaper desecrated the walls. From the look of the water stains beneath the window, the paper had probably been there since the Depression. But the decorating coup de grace, as far as Ann was concerned, was the oversize picture hanging above the bed. It depicted a soul writhing in torment in the fires of Hell.

It had probably been painted by a farm wife who had gotten up at five-thirty one too many times, Ann thought tartly. Whoever had decorated this room had obviously been heavily into self-denial, if not outright masochism.

Although…Ann frowned. Why hadn’t Nick’s first wife redecorated? Because she hadn’t slept here? For that matter, where had Nick slept? Certainly not here. She felt a momentary frisson of regret that she quickly stifled. Where Nick slept was his own business. All she needed to know was that her original supposition about his lack of interest in sex was correct. He obviously didn’t intend to share his bed with her or he would have taken her there in the first place.

Which was one less thing to have to worry about, she told herself as she rummaged through her suitcase to find clean clothes.

Fifteen minutes later Ann emerged from the bathroom with a whole new appreciation for the wonders of modern plumbing. The only positive thing she could find to say about the facilities was that everything worked. At least, they worked as long as one wasn’t too fussy about things like hot water, adequate pressure and much heat.

She followed the smell of coffee down a dark, narrow hallway filled with an underlying odor of mildew. Emerging into the bright, sunshiny kitchen, she instinctively headed toward the coffeepot.

She filled one of the thick mugs sitting on the counter, added sugar with a liberal hand and took a long, reviving swallow.

“The coffee is very good,” she complimented Nick’s back, which was the only part of him that was visible. He was standing over an old stove stirring something in a frying pan.

“Thank you,” he tossed over his shoulder, then lapsed into silence.

Ann took another drink of coffee and looked around the kitchen, barely suppressing a shudder at what she saw. The ceiling was painted a brilliant Chinese red, while the walls were a malevolent shade of acid yellow. The ancient metal cupboard leaning drunkenly against the wall was dented, scratched and rusted around the bottom. The chipped white enamel sink was discolored by dark brown stains, and the cloth skirt someone had hung beneath it to hide the pipes had long since faded to a nondescript gray. The linoleum had not only lost its pattern but it was completely worn away in front of the sink and back door.

In fact, the only thing in the whole room she approved of was the round oak table underneath the window. It was gorgeous. Worthy of a serious collector. She sat down at it and ran her hand over its worn surface. Maybe she could try her hand at refinishing it.

“What’s the matter?” Nick set a heaping plate in front of her and sat down across from her with his own.

“Nothing. I was just—” She broke off as she noticed what was on her plate.

“Did I give you too much?” Nick asked.

“It isn’t how much you gave me, it’s what you gave me.”

“Just what I’m eating.”

“Every morning?”

Nick frowned uncomprehendingly at her “Breakfast is not a one-time affair. Most people indulge every morning.”

“Well, if you continue to indulge like this, you aren’t going to have all that many more breakfasts. You’ll drop dead of a heart attack. Look at this.” She gestured toward the thick white plate.

Nick looked. “Scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon and toast fried in the pan drippings. Lots of protein.”

“Lots of cholesterol,” Ann said firmly. She might not know much about how to make a success of marriage, but she did know about nutrition—a subject about which Nick seemed woefully and dangerously ignorant. “You’ve probably got a whole week’s allowance of fat here. It—”

She turned as the back door suddenly opened and a whipcord thin man of indeterminate age stalked in. He was wearing worn jeans, a faded denim jacket and boots heavily encrusted with a suspicious brown substance.

“One of them fancy purebreds of yours done dropped her calf early. They’s out in the far west pasture and the little critter don’t look none too good neither.”

“Dammit!” Nick got to his feet. “Ann, this is Snake, my right-hand man.”

“I’m glad to meet you,” Ann politely held out her hand. To her surprise, Snake merely stared at her as if she’d just made an indecent gesture.

Finally he shifted a large wad of what Ann feared was tobacco from one side of his mouth to the other and said, “Ya might as well know, I don’t hold with wimmin. They’s trouble. Every man jack of ’em.”

Ann swallowed a grin at his choice of metaphors. “I take it you’re a misogynist?” she said for lack of anything else to say.

“Ain’t neither!” he snapped. “Baptized a Methodist fifty-seven years ago and ain’t never seen no reason ta change.”

Snake turned to Nick. “Ya comin’? This ain’t no time ta be daudlin’.”

“I’m coming.” Nick grabbed a piece of toast and followed Snake out. He paused at the door and turned back to Ann. “I’ll be back as soon as I can, and we’ll go get married.”

“This is my world and welcome to it,” Ann muttered, watching through the window as Nick crossed the bare ground between the house and the barn.

Pushing the offending plate of food away from her, she reached for her coffee. At least her life here wasn’t going to be dull. She grinned as she remembered Snake’s outraged face when she’d called him a misogynist.

In fact, there was a great deal of scope for her here, she thought, bolstering her sagging resolve. The whole house was in desperate need of renovation and so was Nick’s diet. Those were things she could do. Maybe if she focused on what she could do, Nick wouldn’t notice what she couldn’t do.

Ann jumped as the pencil she held clenched in her fingers suddenly snapped with a loud crack that echoed through the silent kitchen. Blankly, she stared down at the pieces for a startled moment and then impatiently shoved them aside.

Relax, she ordered her tense muscles, but her muscles didn’t respond. She felt as if she’d been wound too tightly. As if she might shatter into pieces like the pencil at any second. Her disconnected thoughts seemed to scurry around her mind like mice on a treadmill, going nowhere and solving nothing.

What was she doing here? She looked around the dilapidated kitchen with a sense of unreality. This wasn’t her environment. She’d spent her whole life in New York City. She didn’t know anything about the West or ranching. Or men like Nick St. Hilarion. She must have been crazy to have thought that she could make this work. Mail-order brides were a thing of the past. They had no place in modern society.