Lucky Bride

Parker could tell that his bout with frostbite and fever had taken a toll. Back in the Black Hills, when he’d been at his most enthusiastic about the mine, he’d worked for sixteen hours or more without a break, well into the late-summer twilight. But right now he felt much as he had when he’d been beaten up by Big Jim Driscoll’s thugs after Claire’s death. Every muscle was screaming.

He and Smokey had spent most of the morning baling, with Molly appearing every now and then to check up on them and add one more chore to their list. At noon Smokey had left to get dinner started, leaving Parker glumly eyeing the endless mound of hay left to bale. According to his new boss lady, after finishing with the hay, he was to shore up the timbers around the pigpen, then repair the chute at the end of the corral, put a new set of hinges on the bunkhouse door, clean the stable…what else? Parker plunged his baling fork into the ground and leaned backward, stretching out the muscles of his long back.

“Getting tired, cowboy?” Molly asked from behind him.

He turned around in annoyance. One of these days he was going to figure out how to hear her coming. “You part Indian or something?” he asked her.

She frowned. “No. Why?”

“’Cause you sure do know how to sneak up on a person.”

“That’s what you get for daydreaming on the job. I suppose you were pining away for whatever fancy pen-and-paper job you used to do back in New York City.”

“I worked in a bank.”

Molly gave a little laugh of triumph. “I suspected as much. Kind of hard to build up a sweat adding up numbers, isn’t it?”

She was wearing her typical oversize pants, but thanks to the warmth of the day she had discarded her ever-present baggy jacket and was wearing a blouse that looked almost feminine. Certainly the curves molded by the silky fabric looked feminine. She wasn’t as amply built as either of her sisters, but everything was most definitely in the right place.

Parker gave himself a shake. In Deadwood one night last spring when he’d been discouraged about his mine and homesick for his family back in New York, he’d sought solace at Mattie Smith’s tidy main street brothel. There he’d met Claire Devereaux, an almost ethereal beauty who had grown up as an orphan when her parents drowned on the family’s passage from France. She’d shared her hopes and dreams with Parker along with her perfect body, and he’d fallen irrevocably in love. When Claire had died in the dreadful smallpox epidemic that swept through Deadwood last fall, he’d thought it would be months—years, maybe—before he’d ever want a woman again. But it appeared that the body had a way of continuing to work even when the heart inside it was dead.

“I’ve built up a sweat or two in my day, Miss Molly,” he answered her quietly.

Something had flickered behind his eyes that made Molly pause. Her head was telling her that she would never get the upper hand with Parker Prescott unless she stayed on the attack, but her resolve kept weakening. She hated to think that she was as silly as Susannah and Mary Beth, dazzled by his easy charm and New York manners. “Well, you’ll sweat plenty while you’re working here,” she said finally. “But I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to go easy to start. Three days ago we didn’t even know if you were going to live through the night.”

“I’m ready to earn my keep.” He pulled up the fork and stabbed at a pile of hay.

Molly watched him work for a minute. Who’d have thought a tenderfoot Easterner could have shoulders like that? She backed away. “No, really, Mr. Prescott. You can stop now and come in for dinner.”

“Come in?”

She bit her lip. She’d set out this morning determined to establish her authority over her new hired hand. Instead, she felt even more tongue-tied than she had in the bunkhouse with him last night. “Yes, come in. Inside. We don’t have time to be settin’ up separate dining for just one lone cowboy,” she said, echoing Susannah’s arguments of the morning.

Parker turned toward her, the forkful of hay stopped in midair. “I’d be honored to join you and your sisters, Miss Molly, but only if you’ll call me Parker.”

She nodded.

“Fine. I’ll just wash up, then, and change my shirt.”

“No need for formalities at our table, Mr. Pres…Parker. We all know what a barn smells like.”

Parker grinned at her. “So do I, but it doesn’t mean I have to smell like one myself. There’re barn smells and there are man smells, Miss Molly. You might enjoy learning the difference one of these days.”

He threw the hay, fork and all, over onto the pile, then tipped his hat and walked away. Molly watched him head toward the bunkhouse, her cheeks flaming with a blush for the first time in her life.

After the first few moments it felt entirely natural to have Parker sitting at the big Lucky Stars dining-room table. Not long after Charlie Hanks’s death, Smokey had taken to joining the girls there. Parker sat opposite him, next to Susannah, while Molly took the hostess position at the end. No one sat in their father’s old place opposite her.

Their new hand’s presence had enlivened the meal. Molly couldn’t remember when the conversation had been so spirited, the laughter so frequent. Certainly not since Papa died. Parker seemed to know a lot about many things. He’d traveled all the way to Paris and had studied for a year at Harvard University before he’d become restless and returned to work at a bank in New York City. He was just a year older than Molly herself, but he’d seen and done wondrous things that she couldn’t imagine doing in an entire lifetime.

Of course, it might be that he was showing off a bit for Susannah. His conversation had been directed her way often enough during the meal. Molly studied the pair as he leaned his dark head toward Susannah’s blond one to catch something her sister was saying. Susannah was wearing a simple blue gingham gown today that made her eyes the deep blue of an autumn sky. The two made an attractive couple. Molly wondered if she should relax her guard a bit and see if anything developed between them. Susannah and Mary Beth had to find husbands at some point, and, goodness knows, there weren’t many candidates to choose from around Canyon City. As Molly drummed absently with her spoon on the table, Susannah gave one of her magical little laughs, bringing a flare of response from Parker’s bright eyes. It was an interesting thought…her sister and a Harvard man.

Suddenly he was addressing her. “So do you agree, Miss Molly?”

“I…I’m sorry. I guess I was daydreaming.”

“Dangerous practice,” Parker said gravely. A hint of a smile twitched his full lips. “You never know what kind of varmint might sneak up on you when you’re daydreaming.”

Molly gave a reluctant smile as Mary Beth explained, “Smokey was saying that with the weather this mild, the cattle should last until Christmas without extra food. Parker asked if you agreed.”

Parker’s gaze had moved back to Susannah. Molly took a deep breath. “Yes, I agree. And we’d better be right, because if we have a hard winter, we’re going to lose some animals. We don’t have too much supplementary feed left.”

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