River Lady (James River Trilogy 3)

“My…cousin,” Wes answered. “What difference does it make who she is?”

Justin looked at Wes as if he were crazy. “Difference? I guess it matters to me because she’s the most magnificent woman I’ve ever seen. Did you see the way she handled that team? And the way she risked her own life looking for that guy that drowned? I could see you had your hands full with that screaming bit of uselessness. Lord deliver me from women like that! Who is she anyway?”

“The woman I’m going to marry,” Wesley said rigidly.

“Oh well…ah…I didn’t mean anything,” Justin stammered. “It’s just that when you see the two women together, it makes that blonde seem worthless. No, I didn’t mean that exactly.”

“I think you’ve said more than enough.”

“Right,” Justin said sheepishly, but quickly raised his head. “Who is she?”

“Kimberly Shaw. The man who drowned was her brother.”

“Oh I see. That’s why she worked so hard to save him. I wonder if any of my sisters would risk their lives for my dead body. He was a lucky man to have a sister like her.”

“No,” Wes said softly. “Kimberly is the blonde. Leah is the woman who did the diving.”

“And what is her relationship to the dead man?”

“None,” Wes answered.

Justin turned away toward the trees. “Your cousin, is she? You were born under a lucky star. She attached to somebody? No, don’t tell me. I don’t care if she’s plannin’ to marry somebody. I think I’d go after her no matter how many men stood in my way. How’d you like me for a cousin by marriage?”

“Wait a minute, Justin. You’re going too fast. You know nothing about Leah. She’s pretty, I grant you, but she’s the kind of woman that makes a man feel useless. You spend an hour around her and you’ll begin to wonder if men are needed on this earth. There isn’t anything she can’t do all by herself and she always lets you know she needs nobody else. You marry her and in a year she’ll be running your farm and your life and you won’t be worth your weight in horse manure to her.”

After an astonished moment, Justin began to laugh. He slapped Wesley’s shoulder. “You can have all your pretty little blondes who sit on a wagon and scream while their brothers drown, but for me, I want a woman.”

“You don’t know what you’re asking for,” Wes warned. “Two weeks with Leah and you’ll be looking for someone to make you feel like a man.”

Justin smiled. “All she has to do is be a woman and that makes me feel like a man. Now I think I’ll bed down. Tomorrow I’m going to start courting.”

“Courting? But—,” Wes began.

“Do you have any reason to object?” Justin asked coolly.

Wesley could only shake his head.

“All right then. Let’s go to bed. In the morning we’ll have a funeral.”

Wesley watched Justin lay out a pallet where he could watch Leah in her sleep, then Wes went to where his own bed was. “Poor man,” he muttered. He wished there was some way to save Justin from himself.

Chapter 9

Leah woke early to the sounds of Kimberly’s sobbing. Wesley was holding her and trying to comfort her, but Kim seemed inconsolable. With a groan for her aching head, Leah threw back the blanket covering her, then gasped because she was stark naked. With a blush that covered her entire body, she remembered what had happened the night before. A quick glance around the campsite showed that the stranger was not there.

“Wesley,” Leah said through a hoarse throat.

Wesley, intent on Kim’s problems, didn’t hear her.

Leah cleared her throat. “Wesley!” she said urgently.

He looked around, obviously annoyed. “Yes?”

“Could you get me some clothes?” She hated to ask him, but she wasn’t going to parade before him wrapped in a skimpy blanket.

With one eyebrow raised, Wes left Kim to go to the wagon and extract a brown cotton dress for Leah, not bothering with her underwear. “You certainly do make an impression on a man when he first meets you,” he said, eyeing her bare shoulders.

Leah snatched the dress from him. “Go back to your Kimberly,” she said angrily, just as Kim let out a loud wail.