Last Chance Bride Read online

  “I’ll never forget you.” A depth of feeling resonated in her small voice, sad like the dying ring of a church bell.

  “Have you decided on a name for her?”

  “I’m going to call her Beth.”

  Even Libby knew why Emma had chosen it. Jacob called her by her given name, Elizabeth.

  Heavy boots thudded to a stop outside her open door. Libby twisted around to gaze up at the darkly dressed man framed in the threshold.

  Jacob.

  At the dark wrath in his eyes, Libby braced herself. He didn’t want her. And he didn’t want her near his daughter.

  Libby stood. “We were just saying goodbye.”

  The tight slash of Jacob’s mouth told her the depth of his disbelief. “It didn’t sound like it to me.”

  “Pa, this is the pie I helped Jane make.” Emma hopped to her feet, excitement shining in her eyes. “Come have a piece with us. Please.”

  “No, Emma. This isn’t going to work. I’m not changing my mind.”

  “But—”

  “Help Jane pick up the dishes.” His hands fisted tightly at his sides, an effort at control.

  Libby’s heart skidded in her chest. He didn’t understand. She tore her gaze from the sight of him, so strong and heart-drawing, framed by the threshold, and began stacking the huckleberry-juice-stained plates into the bottom of the basket.

  “Pa’s got a temper,” Emma whispered. “But don’t go away because of that. Nobody’s perfect.”

  She certainly wasn’t Libby closed her eyes. Awareness tingled down her spine. She turned around to find him watching her.

  “Don’t get angry with Emma because of me,” she pleaded.

  Tall and formidable, he said nothing, stepping into the room. “Say goodbye, Emma.”

  He thought the worst of her. Libby slipped the last plate into the basket. The packing was done.

  Emma obediently stood. “I know I already thanked you for making me the doll, but I really love her.”

  All those hours spent late into the night pushing a threaded needle through muslin now felt like too little. “You take good care of Beth for me.”

  “I will.” With sadness in her eyes, Emma ambled past her father, into the hallway and out of Libby’s sight.

  Jane placed a hand on her arm. “I live in the little white house on the trail north out of town. I won’t be leaving for another few weeks yet. Remember me, if you need anything. Even someone to talk to.”

  Jane’s kindness warmed her like nothing she’d known in so long. “Thank you,” she managed to reply.

  Jacob waited until Jane closed the door before he turned to her, his gray eyes as harsh and as cold as a winter’s storm. “Just what game are you playing with my daughter?”

  Chapter Five

  The color drained from her face, her slender hands clenched rigidly at her sides. She looked ready to break apart.

  “Jacob...” Elizabeth’s lower lip trembled. “I’m so sorry about the way this looks. I didn’t invite her, although I’m glad she came.”

  “You had no right to keep her here.”

  “You have no right to think I would use her.” Embarrassment might flicker in her eyes, but pride lifted her chin. “I promised you I would never hurt Emma, and I meant it.”

  “Why was she here in your room?”

  “Why do you think?” Her eyes filled. “She thinks she can still get us together.”

  “She’s wrong.”

  “I know that.”

  Silence.

  Jacob watched the fight slide from the rigid line of her shoulders. Fragile. She was so fine-boned, so small. He suspected most women were fragile, tenderhearted and easily hurt.

  “Jacob, I’ve hurt her, haven’t I? By coming here, letting her think we would marry and I would be her mother.” Tears stood in her eyes. She tucked her bottom lip between her teeth.

  His breath caught. “No, she understood all along this might not work out. I prepared her. I wanted to make sure she wouldn’t end up with a broken heart.”

  “She’s just a child. She doesn’t understand....”

  Their gazes met. He saw anguish in her morning-sky gaze, remorse, and guilt. But her heart was there, too, pure and good.

  She wasn’t a bad, deceitful woman. Deep down, he knew it. Jacob’s heart twisted in his chest. “Emma will be disappointed,” he said at last. “I will make sure she understands. She won’t show up here trying to matchmake again.”

  It wasn’t Elizabeth’s fault. He knew Emma had motives of her own and needed a talking to.

  “Jane left the basket of food.” Elizabeth’s voice quavered as she turned away, her pink dress shivering around her slender form. “Here. You should take it home with you.”

  The sight of her hands curling around the woven handle—red and rough from years of work—stabbed him with a sad knowledge. Life for her had been hard. She’d never said it, never hinted at it, but he sensed it now.

  “No.” He said, too gruff. “Jane left it here, she meant for you to keep it.”

  “The basket is mighty fine. And there are plates inside.”

  “Then return the plates and basket. Keep the food.”

  She stared hard at the basket. “So much good food. Thank you.”

  More silence. They continued to stand there. Questions and the explanations he owed her knotted in his throat. He wanted to tell her why. He wanted to make her understand it had nothing to do with her. And everything to do with the fragile hold he had on survival.

  Mary had been pretty and kind, gentle and honest. And those qualities hadn’t spared her from a painful, frightening death. He was fortunate Emma had been spared.

  “Cedar Rock isn’t so small a town, I suppose we will probably see one another now and then.” She spoke softly, as if she trusted him enough with her confidences.

  Jacob leaned closer. The scent of her rose water tickled his nose, made his stomach twist. Sunlight filtered through the window, casting gold shimmers in her light hair.

  “Are you staying?” The idea neither frightened nor pleased him.

  “I’ve let a room in Maude Baker’s boarding house. That’s not too far away from your livery stable.” Uncertainty flickered in her eyes. “I didn’t plan it that way. The man at the hotel’s desk said it was the only respectable place for women.”

  “He told you correctly. Baker’s is the best place. I’m glad you’re there. It’s safe. Maude boards her gelding at my stable.”

  “Then you’re not angry I’m staying in town?”

  He wanted to be. “What I think doesn’t matter.” He watched regret shape her mouth. “You insisted on paying your passage here, so I have little to say.”

  “I wanted to come.”

  “Do you want to leave? I’m guessing you can’t afford your way home.” He felt like a jackass. At the time he hadn’t argued over the money. “I always intended to reimburse you for the journey.”

  “I don’t want your money, Jacob.”

  Just my name and my home. Bitterness soured his mouth, then shame. He knew those accusations weren’t true. Elizabeth could have lied to him. Chances were, he would have married her without knowledge of her pregnancy—and it would have forced him to relive fears and memories of Mary he couldn’t face.

  “It isn’t right, you coming all this way for no reason after all.” Jacob tugged his billfold from his shirt pocket.

  “I had every reason to come.” Shyly averting her eyes, Elizabeth brushed at her plain cotton skirts.

  The truth hit him. She’d wanted to love him. She came because he’d unintentionally led her to believe... He couldn’t think about it. Angry at himself, Jacob counted out the crisp bills.

  “Let me do this for you.” He looked up. “Please. You gave up your job and left your home to come here.”

  “But I owe you money.”

  “That can’t be right, Elizabeth.”

  She withdrew a thin collection of bills and coins from her skirt pocket and pressed
it into his shirt pocket “I won’t be staying here in the hotel any longer. I feel as if I should reimburse you for last night, too.”

  Jacob’s stomach twisted. He stared down at the money in his hands, not so much at that, and realized what Elizabeth was giving him. She was letting him know this wasn’t about money, but about respect.

  He wouldn’t argue. He would find a way to give her what he owed her. “You don’t need to be so fair.”

  “I have to. Your letters changed my life.” She smiled in memory. “I can’t tell you how nervous I was when I held your first envelope in my hand. You could have been any kind of man, but I had to meet you. I had to know if I could have what I saw in your advertisement.”

  “What did you see?”

  “Everything missing from my life.” She looked hard at the window. “From your first sentence, I wanted to love you. You seemed so gallant and educated. And with each letter, you made me want to believe men could be good to their wives, good to their children. You seemed to care so much for your Emma. How I wanted you.”

  He heard what she did not say. The loneliness that prompted a single woman without family to answer a newspaper advertisement. The pain behind the man who’d made her pregnant.

  Tears brimmed her eyes. “Coming here to meet you felt like a dream come true. I haven’t had many dreams.”

  He would have married her. She would have been so right for Emma—for him. “You knew you were pregnant when you left Omaha.”

  “No. I honestly didn’t.” She clasped her hands. “I’m so sorry, Jacob. I never m-meant...I n-never w-wanted t-to hurt you.”

  Sobs tore through her, strong enough to break her in two. He reached out, and before he knew it she was in his arms, crying against his chest. He wanted to comfort her. He wanted to push her away.

  “I’ve hurt Emma,” she sobbed. “I don’t know how I can live with that.”

  Perhaps it was the luminous depth of her eyes or the attraction he’d felt buzz through him the first moment he’d seen her in the street. Jacob didn’t know. He didn’t care. Acting on impulse, he touched a callused finger to her gently rounded chin and tilted her face upward.

  Her mouth looked soft and ripe. Jacob brushed her lips delicately, tenderly. She tasted of sweet berries. She felt like fine velvet. At the explosion of feeling, his pulse leaped.

  What was he doing? He would not give his heart a second time. And not to a woman who could die the way Mary did.

  Jacob stepped back, his hand falling away from her chin. She gazed up at him with startled eyes, her goodness shining there like a constant light.

  She needed him. She wanted him.

  Tenderness for her welled in his heart. A useless tenderness. He couldn’t marry her. He could not even bear to look at her, knowing and remembering his Mary. Jacob closed his eyes before he turned away. He did not want to remember Elizabeth’s face as he walked out of her life.

  Libby settled in her new room that afternoon. Even with the windows open, the hot breeze offered no relief from the baking heat. She didn’t mind. This was a new start in a new town. She wanted to think optimistically.

  It didn’t take too long to unpack. She hung her dresses in the tidy wardrobe and folded her underwear and winter things into the small bureau. After she’d made the bed with Maude’s clean, white sheets, Libby opened her second satchel and withdrew the precious quilt.

  The blues and pinks in the double wedding ring design were set against the background of snowy white. Her mother had sewn the careful stitches and the sturdy ties long ago before her own marriage, well before Libby was born. It was the only item she had of her mother’s, and she cherished it. The memories of the gentle-voiced woman who liked to sing had blurred with time.

  Unpacking had helped her block all the unpleasant thoughts from her mind...and the pleasant sensation of Jacob’s remembered kiss.

  Now that the bed was made, her unpacking was done, Libby could not hide. She had no idea what she would do next. She had no husband. No marriage. But she did have a baby on the way.

  She sank down into the lone wooden chair. She needed to keep her hands busy so she wouldn’t long for the man she could not have.

  Determined to forget the amazing sensation of being in his strong arms, of being kissed by him, Libby grabbed her scrap bag from the bureau drawer and began sorting through it.

  She withdrew a tiny piece of pink calico, cut into pieces to be sewn into a doll’s dress. A terrible longing stole over her. She planned to make a whole wardrobe of clothes fitted with tiny ruffles and lace and ribbons, scraps from her own sewing and from the shop she’d worked at in Virginia long ago. The owner had allowed her to take the smaller scraps since they were simply thrown away.

  Now, years and a lifetime later, she’d found a good use for those scraps. It broke her heart that she couldn’t finish the dress for Emma’s sake.

  Jacob wanted her to stay away from his girl. She understood why. It just hurt.

  But the good fabric would go to waste, she reminded herself.

  Libby fingered the darling dress pieces. She hated waste; she had so little all her life that wastefulness felt like a sin. Perhaps Jacob wouldn’t mind if she finished up the bits of fabric she’d already cut. She didn’t have the right to try to see him again, but she felt happier. As if doll’s dresses made from scraps could make up for the hurt she’d caused.

  Jacob set down his pitchfork and wiped the sweat from his brow. The August sun beat with an inferno’s fury, heating the inside of his stable until it felt like an oven.

  Weeks had passed since he’d last spoken with Elizabeth. He thought of her often, usually when he was alone with his work or in the silence of night when sleep eluded him.

  He couldn’t get her out of his mind, damn it.

  Long distance proposals didn’t work out all the time. Elizabeth had come here without a promise of marriage. Neither one of them had made promises in their numerous letters, as if equally afraid of the future. But as Jacob unbuttoned his shirt, then tossed it off, he didn’t feel comforted. No, he felt empty, troubled. He pitched the soiled straw from the box stall as hard as he could, trying to purge his feelings. Sweat ran off his brow like water. He ignored it.

  Already he was thinking of her. He’d asked Maude Baker how Elizabeth was doing, and he learned she worked at a hotel near the blacksmith’s shop, cooking in the kitchen.

  Before Jane left for her trip south, she’d let him know the gossip concerning Elizabeth Hodges. As the new woman, she was the talk of town. Single. Pretty. Young. Scores of bachelors lined up to ask her to supper, but she declined every offer.

  Jacob suspected he was the only man in town who knew the most popular woman was pregnant.

  He stopped pitching and closed his eyes. Guilt battered him. Couldn’t he go to her and ask her back? He wanted to. He truly wanted to look past her pregnancy—past the shadows of his own fears—and try again.

  She was the right woman for them.

  But he didn’t want a real marriage. He didn’t want more children. He never wanted to sit in the parlor waiting for another woman to give birth, knowing the risks. Life is too short. Love doesn’t last forever. Death intervenes and leaves you with nothing but suffocating grief.

  Jacob learned these lessons the hard way. He was a fool to consider, even for a second, he could march up to Mrs. Baker’s boardinghouse and ask Elizabeth to be his wife.

  “Deary, I’m sorry but I can’t accept your money.”

  Libby took a step back in Maude’s crowded apartment. Knickknacks crammed the surface of the many tables, low shelves and whatnots in the corners, making maneuvering difficult. “I don’t understand. I owe you next week’s rent.”

  “You don’t owe me a thing.” Maude smiled.

  It only confused Libby more. “I owe you money if I want to live here come Monday.”

  Mischief twinkled in Maude’s wise eyes. “Oh, you’ll be here on Monday, all right. Someone paid your rent for you.”


  What? The moon could tumble from the sky and it wouldn’t shock her as much. “Who would do such a thing? Eight dollars is a lot of money.”

  “Not to some people.” Maude turned with a rustle of homemade petticoats and marched into the small kitchen. “I was just gonna have me some refreshment. Come join me for lemonade and cookies.”

  Refreshment? Her stomach felt too troubled. “It was Jacob, wasn’t it?”

  “He told me not to tell you. He wanted to keep it a secret.”

  “Well, you didn’t try very hard, Maude.”

  “True.” The kitchen echoed with her jolly laughter. “You’re paid up for the entire month of August.”

  “That can’t be. He wouldn’t do that. He doesn’t even like me.” But he kissed me. The remembered tingle of his lips caressing hers heated her face.

  Maude set a plate of sugar cookies on the small round oak table. “A man doesn’t gotta like you in order to love you.”

  Libby stepped over to the table, the kitchen as crammed with breakable knickknacks as the front room. “I want you to refund Jacob his money.”

  “Can’t do it.” Maude grabbed a pitcher tinkling with ice. She poured two cups. “This came over from Trace’s diner. The best in town.”

  Not even the sight of the luxurious lemonade soothed the ache in her chest. “Maude, it’s simple. You find Jacob at his livery and give him his money.”

  “He won’t take it. Besides, after he gave me thirty-two dollars for this month, he and I made an arrangement. He’s giving me free care of the horse I’ve got over at his livery, and I give you free room and board. It’s a fair deal for me.”

  “You can’t do that. I won’t be obligated to him.” She’d caused him enough trouble. Thinking of the baby growing in her belly, Libby blushed.

  “Pish posh. You listen to me. This world is tough on a woman alone. If a well-off gentleman wants to help you out—with no expectations—then I would let him. A girl needs all the help she can get.”