A Wild Woman (Mail Order Bride of Slate Springs 2)

Lane nodded. “She’s dying. When the Tates were at the house, I had gone to the mine, but stopped to see Lil and tell her about you. That’s what you overheard.”

“I don’t care about her history. If you care for her so much, I’m sure she’s wonderful.” I paused, bit my lip. “But… why didn’t you tell me?”

Lane’s body stiffened, as if the words coming were hard for him. “Because I didn’t want you to know about my past. I’m the son of a whore. Not only a whore, but a vicious bitch. She… she was not a good mother.”

That was the reason he’d kept the woman Lil a secret from everyone, even his closest friends? I could sense there was more to his mother just being a vicious bitch because Lane seemed jaded to the worst vagaries of life to be unaffected. But this, this cut him deep, so horribly deep, and he wasn’t going to say. Perhaps not now in front of Jed and Knox, perhaps not ever. And that was more telling than the whole truth. But he’d told me things, things that put everything in perspective. Yet still…

“The Tates all think you have a mistress.”

“They do,” Lane admitted. “Because I went to visit her at the brothel and they assumed I was going for… well, for companionship.”

I snorted at that. Companionship.

“I didn’t set them straight, because like you, I didn’t want them to know the truth.” He reached out to stroke his knuckles over my cheek. I didn’t want to give in to the simple, tender gesture, but I couldn’t resist. “As I told Spur, I’d share the truth about Lil, but I won’t share about my life before her. My childhood. I’m sorry for making you upset, for making you think the worst. I was protecting myself when I should have been protecting you.”

Lane’s pale eyes met mine. Held. I saw the truth there, the sincerity, the disappointment in himself and whatever misery he suffered when he was small.

“Now it’s our turn to talk about you, precious.”

I liked hearing the endearment when it wasn’t dripping in sarcasm or said when I wanted to shoot him. It made me feel… wanted.

My brothers stormed over then, looking at Lane and Spur as if to tell them they weren’t backing off again. “We want to hear this, too. Patricia Strong.”

The gentler moment Lane’s apology provided disappeared as if it never happened. I whirled on my brothers—I was getting quite tired of fending off two sets of men—and gave them my meanest look. “If I were a man, you’d be slapping me on my back for my ingenuity and cleverness and hiding from you as long as I did.”

“If you were a man, we wouldn’t be married to you,” Lane countered. “Talk.”

Yes, so much for gentle.

I pursed my lips and faced my brothers. This wasn’t about Lane and Spur, although they were the ones who’d been slighted by my deception. I loved seeing Jed and Knox, for I’d missed them, and the rest of my brothers, too. But it was time to stand up to them.

“You—the five of you—are stifling. You want me to marry, have a family, but then don’t let any man near me. You shot at Albert Dinker.”

“He was a little shit,” Knox said with a huff.

“Shooting people seems to be a family trait,” Lane murmured, but we ignored him.

“It wasn’t for you to decide,” I said to Jed and Knox. “You know me well enough. I am able to judge a man’s character.” I sighed. “I’d had enough. I took the money I saved up and purchased a ticket on the stage headed west. Also on the stage was a woman named Patricia Strong.” I glanced over my shoulder. “Your mail order bride. She was excited to meet you. To be your wife.”

“What did you do, punch her in the nose to take her place?” Jed asked, poking fun. “Shoot her in the ear?”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “No. She died. She fell asleep on the stage and just didn’t wake up.”

“Died?” Knox repeated, his red eyebrows disappearing under the hair on his forehead.

“Died?” Lane echoed.

I looked down at the worn wood of the boardwalk. “I don’t know how or why, but she was just gone.”

“An aneurysm, perhaps,” Spur commented. Yes, the doctor would probably know. “A bad heart.”

“The stage driver was just as stunned as I, but he didn’t have a dead body falling on him when he hit a large rut,” I added, reminding them I wasn’t the only one to witness her demise.

“He took her to the next stop to be buried and I convinced the man to take me on to Pueblo.”

“Convinced how?” Spur asked warily, as if he wasn’t sure he really wanted to know the answer.

I just shrugged, not wanting to tell them my gun was involved. Again. Turning to face Lane and Spur, I continued. “I’m sorry your wife died. She was very nice. Very pretty. Completely unlike me so I think you would have been happy with her.”