Montana Mail-Order Wife

Some religious zealot dedicating his life to visiting the sick? She quickly rejected that idea. The man had too much devil in his deep brown eyes.

Maybe he was a plainclothes policeman. Had she been fleeing some crime when her train crashed? After her heart stopped thundering in her chest, she discarded that possibility, too. Although she couldn’t remember, she could still feel, and she didn’t feel like a criminal.

In frustration, she pounded her pillow with her fists. No use wondering who Wade Garrett was when she’d probably never see him again.

The thought gave her no comfort.

“Rachel. Rachel O’Riley.”

She repeated the name, hoping to trigger a response, but her mind remained a wasteland, barren of any recollection except the most mundane.

“The doctor says fresh air will do you good.” Wade Garrett lounged in the doorway of her room, one elbow propped against the doorjamb, the thumb of his other hand tucked in the low-slung waistband of his jeans.

His sudden appearance delighted and annoyed her, immobilizing her with indecision. “Who are you?”

His intriguing face crumpled with dismay. “Don’t you remember?”

“I know you’re Wade Garrett,” she said with impatience, “but what do you have to do with me?”

“You feel up to a walk around the grounds?” His slow smile heated up the room.

“If I walk with you, will you answer my question?”

He regarded her solemnly for a moment, then nodded.

A younger, more handsome version of the Marlboro Man, that’s who he reminded her of, with his chiseled features, sun-streaked hair and wind-burned skin. Another useless bit of information remembered. She clenched her fists in frustration at the quickening of her pulse and the flush that seared her cheeks.

Hoping to fill the emptiness with his presence, she couldn’t deny she’d been waiting for him all morning. But only for what he could tell her, she assured herself. Her racing blood and somersaulting stomach at the sight of the stranger were due strictly to her thirst for information. Neither Dr. Sinclair nor the nurses would tell her anything, but maybe Wade could furnish the facts she couldn’t recall.

She forced a smile with more bravery than she felt. After all, he’d promised answers. “I’d take you up on that walk, but my legs are a bit shaky.”

They’d gotten a whole lot shakier since he arrived.

His gaze scanned her legs, from the bottom of her short hospital gown to her ankles, crossed atop the covers. “They look fine to me.”

Her misgivings melted as the heat in his dark eyes transferred to the pit of her stomach. In a futile effort, she tugged at the hem of her gown. No sense going all warm and snuggly over Wade Garrett, when, for all she knew, she had a husband and three kids somewhere, waiting for her to come home.

Home.

Where was home? And what was she doing here, fighting the desire to throw herself into a tall stranger’s arms and have him take care of her?

She swung her legs off the bed on the side away from Wade and tugged on the shapeless cotton robe the hospital had provided. Shaky legs or not, she’d accompany him until he’d given her some explanations. She slid her feet into frumpy hospital slippers and stood on wobbly limbs.

In an instant, Wade was beside her, gripping her elbow to steady her. “Lean on me.”

She jumped at his touch and would have fallen if he hadn’t grabbed her.

What was the matter with her? Why had she hopped like water on a hot griddle at the pressure of his hand? She glanced into bottomless brown eyes that registered his confusion at her reaction. He’d offered a simple gesture of help and thoughtful words. She’d responded as if he’d electrocuted her.

Bewilderment brought tears to her eyes. She dashed them away with the back of her hand. Undeterred, Wade reached for her elbow again, but she shook off his assistance, hesitant to be indebted to a man she knew nothing about.

“I’ll be okay.” She didn’t sound convincing, even to herself.

Ignoring her protest, he slid an arm around her waist and bore the brunt of her weight. She would have protested further, but without his support, her legs would have buckled.

With Wade’s help, she shuffled into the hallway. He nodded toward the exit at the end of the hall. “The hospital garden’s just past those doors.”

She traversed the hall, aware of the searing heat of Wade’s strong hip pressed against her torso. She forced weak muscles to carry her forward, and Wade matched his pace to hers. When she stepped from beneath the entrance portico, morning sunlight toasted her face, banishing the chill of air conditioning.

If only it could unlock her memories as well.

She glanced up at the stranger at her side, hoping he held the key to who she was. If he did, he exhibited no haste to reveal it. A shiver joined the trembling in her legs. Maybe he was hiding something, something she wouldn’t want to hear.

She chastised herself for her fears. Surely nothing could be worse than not knowing. She’d make him tell. The sooner the better.

Bolstered by Wade’s strong arm, she ambled along the brick path through elliptical pools of shade cast by tall Douglas firs. Intent on the enigmatic man at her side, she spared only a cursory glance for the deep purple petunias and mounds of white alyssum that bordered the walk.

When they reached a concrete bench set back from the path under a small maple, he steadied her as she sat, then stepped away.

She drew the cotton robe around her and confronted him. “Isn’t it time you answered my questions?”

Seemingly unperturbed by her abruptness, he dropped to the ground with a natural gracefulness, leaned back against the bench and stared across the garden. She couldn’t see his eyes, only the angle of his cheek and the silky texture of sun-bleached hair that brushed the top of his collar. A twitching muscle in his jaw betrayed his calm.

“What do you want to know?” Something in his even tone hinted at emotions held firmly in check.

She looked around in confusion at the pine-covered hills rising beyond the river toward a range of snow-capped mountains in the distance. “Where am I?”

“You’re just outside Libby.”

“Where’s that?”

“Northwest Montana.”

“Do I live here?”

“You were traveling to your new home at Longhorn Lake, less than an hour west of here.”

Montana didn’t seem familiar, but then nothing else did, either. Her most pressing question concerned her identity. She leaned forward until she could watch his expression. “Who am I?”

His eyes glowed briefly with a curious longing before he looked away. “You’re Rachel O’Riley.”

“That’s only a name. Who am I?”

He shifted toward her, grasped her fists clenched on her lap and smoothed her fingers open with a gentleness unexpected in such a big man. “You’re coiled tighter than a spring. Dr. Sinclair says you mustn’t get worked up over this.”

“How can I not—”

“Shh.” He lifted his index finger to her lips, creating an unaccustomed tingle along the sensitive skin. “If you promise to relax, I promise to answer any questions I can.”

His composure irritated her, but his unyielding expression convinced her to follow his instructions. She inhaled, drawing in the resinous scent of evergreens and the fragrance of unfamiliar flowers on the cool mountain air. Slowly, her tension eased.

“That’s better.” He released her hands with a nod of satisfaction, but his eyes held a burning, distant look, as if he wished he was anywhere but there.

She resisted the urge to grab his hand again, yearning for his touch to drive away her lack of connection to anyone or anything. “Please, tell me about myself, my family, what I’m doing here.”

“You’re twenty-eight years old. You grew up in Missouri.” With a calm she envied, he ticked off the facts on long, capable fingers with clean, square nails. “You’re an only child. Both your parents died years ago in an automobile accident.”

His words generated no response.

No memories.

No pain.

He scanned her face as if looking for signs of the recognition she longed for, but she couldn’t reveal what wasn’t there. For all the impact his words had, he could have been talking about a total stranger.

“And after my parents died?” she prodded.

“A few years ago you sold your home in Missouri and moved to Atlanta.”

The breeze changed direction, gusting across Wade, carrying a pleasantly masculine scent of leather and soap and lifting his hair to expose a high, wide forehead, slightly less tanned than his cheeks.

Had she lost her mind as well as her memories? She should be concentrating on the missing facts of her life, not the all-too-fascinating man before her.

“Did I have a job in Atlanta?” She silently cursed the breathlessness in her voice.

Wade didn’t seem to notice, but if he did, she hoped he blamed it on curiosity. “You worked as a paralegal in a firm that practiced corporate law.”

Corporate law? When she drew another blank at the term, her frustration grew, and she had to force herself to relax again. “What about the rest of my family?”

He shook his head and compassion glittered in his eyes. “There’s nobody. The hospital’s had the authorities searching for next of kin ever since you were brought here. After the accident.”

As if uneasy, he shifted and assessed her with a wary eye, but again she experienced nothing except curiosity in reaction to his words. “What accident?”

“Your train derailed west of Kalispell. You were airlifted to the hospital here.”

So far, he’d given her only fragments of her life, certainly not enough for her to piece together her identity, but too much for a total stranger to know. “How do you know so much about me?”

He shrugged, and the compassion in his face gave way to discomfort. “I learned most of it from your letters.”

“Letters? Like the one you showed me yesterday?”

He nodded, then sat unmoving, almost as if holding his breath.

She studied his face with more care than before, seeing past the composed veneer to a restless energy beneath. “Do I know you?”

“We’ve never met.”

Confusion made her head ache. “Then why was I writing to you?”

“Maybe the rest can wait.” He avoided her eyes.

His evasiveness alarmed her and made her pulse quicken. The rest had been dry facts, meaningless, but she could tell from the tension in his posture that this answer was crucial. “Tell me now. Why was I writing to someone I’ve never met?”

He raised his head and caught her in the powerful gaze of eyes so deep and murky she could have drowned in them.

“Because you were going to marry me.”

WADE SCRAMBLED to his feet and caught the fainting Rachel before she slid off the bench. As he jogged back toward the building with her in his arms, her thick lashes brushed cheeks gone pale, and her warm, supple body bounced, featherlight, against his chest. A fierce protectiveness flared deep in his gut, white-hot with forgotten longing.

You scared her to death, you dadburned fool. Maybe her promise to marry you is something she doesn’t want to remember.

The automatic door glided open at his approach. He rushed past the nurses’ station to her room and laid her on the bed. Drawing the covers to hide her long, sculpted legs, slender hips and the firm, round curves of her breasts from his covetous glance, he stepped back and shoved hands that ached to touch her into his pockets.

He was acting like such a damned idiot, no wonder she’d fainted at the thought of marrying him. Between the train wreck and her amnesia, she’d already suffered too many shocks. News of their engagement had been the last straw. Guilt seeped through him for telling her so abruptly.

And tenderness followed as he noted the sweet curve of her cheek against the pillow, reminding him of countless times he’d carried a sleeping Jordan to his room and tucked him in without waking him.

Ah, Jordan. I thought I’d worked out everything for you, and now look what I’ve gone and done.

“Will she be okay?” He shifted aside for the nurse to check Rachel.

Rachel’s lids fluttered, and she opened her eyes. “I’m fine. Just a little tired.”

The nurse concurred with Rachel’s assessment. “But no more outings until tomorrow. In the meantime, rest.”

Rachel propped herself on her elbows, watched the door close behind the nurse, then turned amazing emerald eyes toward him. “Sorry if I worried you. I’m fine, really.”

Weak with relief, he grinned. “Coulda fooled me. I thought you’d gone into cardiac arrest at the mention of marriage.”

A delightful blush brought the pinkness back to her cheeks, and a dancing smile brightened her eyes. “You’re the first man who’s ever proposed to me.” Her smile dimmed. “That I can remember, anyway.”

His face flamed with discomfort. Because she couldn’t recall the circumstances of their engagement, she’d jumped to all the wrong conclusions.

Not that he blamed her.

Ever since she’d first met him, she couldn’t help noticing the unintended signals of his unexpected and definitely unwelcome attraction to her that he’d been relaying like a microwave tower. He had to set her straight before she embarrassed herself, or him, further.

He dragged a straight chair beside the bed, straddled it backward, and folded his arms on the backrest. Explaining in a letter would have been a lot easier, without his tongue wrapping itself around his teeth. And without the distraction of too-green eyes, kissable lips and a pert nose turned up at just the right angle.

“My, uh, proposal,” he said, “isn’t what you think.”

She had punched the automatic control and raised the head of the bed so her face was even with his. At his disclaimer, she grew so still that, if her eyes hadn’t blinked, he would have sworn she’d gone comatose again.

“If your proposal isn’t what I think, maybe you’d better tell me what it is.” Her clear, steady voice projected an inner strength he hadn’t noticed before.

“We weren’t, uh, aren’t…in love,” he blurted with more emphasis than he’d intended.

She blinked again, but didn’t move. He wished he could guess what she was thinking behind those wide eyes the color of summer leaves.

He tried to explain. “I didn’t want you to expect—”

He hit a dead end. How could he renounce caring for her when his rebellious heart contradicted him with every beat? But such attraction was ridiculous. A grown man didn’t fall head over heels for a stranger, no matter how perfect. Rachel O’Riley had cast a spell that had to be broken. Otherwise, his well-laid plans were ruined.

“What I mean,” he chose his words carefully, “is that sometimes people do fall in love just by exchanging letters, but…”

Her feathery eyebrows peaked, laughter sparked in her eyes and she blinked again. She seemed to be enjoying his discomfort.

Her amusement goaded him to be more blunt than he’d planned. “Anyway, I don’t love you.”

There, he’d said it.

When he looked at her, he wished he’d cut out his tongue before uttering the words. Her lower lip trembled, tears filled her eyes and her shoulders shook. For a horrible instant, he feared she would break into sobs.

Then, as if she could contain herself no longer, she burst out laughing.

He shoved his chair away from the bed and stood, scratching his head at her reaction. Maybe the knock on her head had caused more problems than amnesia.

“That,” she gasped, “is the most unromantic proposal I hope I’ll ever receive. If it was that awful the first time, I must have been crazy to accept. It’s probably best I can’t remember.”

She wiped her eyes with a corner of the sheet and stared at him, her lips twitching as if she wanted to laugh again.

He stuffed his hands in the back pockets of his jeans and gazed out the window to avoid her ironic smile. He should be happy she wasn’t taking his proposal too seriously, but her amusement annoyed him. “Maybe talking about this should wait until your memory returns.”

“No, please.”

He whirled back toward her at the panic in her voice. “But without all the details, it sounds so…”

“Cold?”

He nodded. He hadn’t had a problem with their agreement before, but now, seeing her so fragile that a puff of wind could blow her away, staring at him from the hospital bed with those big eyes…

“Maybe you’d better tell me all the details,” she suggested in a calmer voice.

“The nurse wants you to rest.”

He needed time to think, to figure out the best way to explain. Time to cool his simmering desire, brought about, he assured himself, only by the intimacy of the hospital room and her scanty attire. He barely knew the woman. How could he be attracted to her?

“I’ll rest better once you’ve told me everything.” Her guileless expression pleaded with him. “If I know the facts, my imagination won’t exaggerate things.”

He couldn’t understand his reluctance. She’d known all the particulars before her accident and had agreed to the arrangement. Why should stating them a second time make any difference?

Because she’s not just words on a page anymore. She’s a real person, flesh and blood with feelings, who makes me feel alive again for the first time in years.

“Okay,” he said with a sigh of resignation, “I’ll try to explain.”

He opened his mouth, but again words failed him. He’d never felt this stupid before. If she’d been a lame horse or an ailing cow, a broken chainsaw or a clogged pump, he’d know exactly what to do, but she was a woman, a beautiful and charming female, and he had almost no experience to fall back on. What little know-how he’d once possessed was rusty from lack of practice.

“Maybe,” she suggested gently, “you should start at the beginning.”

In the beginning there was Maggie, he thought.

“I was married before,” Wade said.

Chapter Three

Rachel tamped down her rising panic. What had she gotten herself into, agreeing to marry a man she didn’t know, a man whose first marriage had obviously ended in divorce?

Out of nowhere, a visceral reluctance to commit herself to any man bore down, engulfed her, then vanished as quickly as mist on the river evaporated in the sunlight. The irrational sensation made her fear the wreck had affected more than her memory.

Maybe she was losing her mind.

Or maybe Wade Garrett’s faltering revelation had induced her fleeting dread of intimacy.

He was taking his sweet time explaining their so-called engagement, but she wouldn’t pressure him. She wasn’t going anywhere, not anytime soon. And if his details were as disastrous as his proposal, maybe she had better absorb them slowly.

Clearing her face of any reaction, she waited.

“My wife, Maggie, died in childbirth six years ago.”

“I’m sorry,” she said with sincerity, feeling stupid for jumping to conclusions about divorce.

His face had hardened when he spoke his wife’s name. Rachel swallowed hard. She remembered nothing about herself or her past, but at that instant, more than anything in the world, she hoped Wade Garrett would never look like that at the mention of her name.

His antagonism toward his wife, inscribed all over his handsome face, went a long way toward communicating why he had proposed to a woman he didn’t love. Maybe he’d married Maggie, expecting happily ever after, and when it hadn’t worked out that way, decided marriage wasn’t for him.

But why had the-Rachel-she-couldn’t-remember agreed to a loveless marriage? She wouldn’t know the answer until her memories returned.

Unless Wade could tell her.

“My son, Jordan, is eight now.” Affection mixed with frustration glimmered in his deep brown eyes.

An intriguing image of Wade as husband and father flitted through her mind. “It must have been tough, raising a child alone all those years.”

He settled back on his chair. “Ursula did most of the raising.”

“Ursula?”

“Ursula’s my housekeeper,” he said, “and she’s done a good job with Jordan. But now her arthritis is so bad, she can’t keep up with the little rascal.”

Comprehension flooded through her, leaving disappointment in its wake. “So that’s why you need a wife. To take care of Jordan.”

He nodded and relaxed. “I knew you’d understand. You did before when we discussed this in our letters.”

Letters. He’d already told her they’d never met. “Why did you choose me to write to?”

He leaned forward and rested his strong chin with its charming cleft on his forearms, crossed on the back of the chair. His tanned face beamed with enthusiasm. “Your letter was hands down the best answer to my ad.”

“I answered an ad?” She failed to keep the horror from her voice. What kind of woman was she to have answered a personal ad from a stranger?

Desperate?

Lonely?

Crazy?

All of the above?

“I saved your letters,” he said. “If you want, I’ll bring them next time I visit.”

She struggled to dredge up lost memories, but the vast hole where her recollections should have been yielded nothing. “What did I say in my letters?”

“You described how much you’d enjoyed growing up on a farm.”

“I lived on a farm?” The concept seemed so alien, she shuddered. Whatever trauma she had suffered had erased her memories so completely that she couldn’t imagine farm life, much less remember it.

“Until four years ago.”

Without evidence to contradict him, she’d have to take his word. “Anything else?”

“Your experience with country life is important, considering the way I live.”

What kind of life had she agreed to? “You’re a farmer?”

He frowned at the label. “No.”

“Then why is my farm experience important?”

“I’m a rancher. I raise cattle and timber.”

Nothing he said rang any bells, and her head swam with efforts to remember. A single mystery looming in her mind distressed her most. “Did I explain in my letters why I was willing to marry a perfect stranger and care for his child without—”

She floundered, searching for the right word.

Wade was no help. He just sat there, staring at her with amusement sparkling in his eyes. Again he reminded her of the Marlboro Man. A tall, rugged, sexy outdoorsman about as anxious to commit to love as a tumbleweed.

“Without…” She groped for a suitable phrase, bewailing silently that she’d lost not only her memories but her vocabulary, too.

“Without sex?” he suggested.

“That’s not what I meant.” Embarrassment scorched her face, and with relief, she latched on to the words she’d been searching for. “Without all the advantages of marriage. That’s what I was trying to say.”

He lifted his right brow and considered her with a grin. “You don’t think sex is an advantage of marriage?”

“No.” Memories, hovering at the edge of her consciousness, contradicted her.

“No?” Wade’s raised brows registered his surprise.

The memory faded. “I mean yes, but I was talking about love, affection, mutual respect….” She widened her eyes as a possibility hit her. “Sex wasn’t part of our agreement, was it?”

He straightened in his chair, and his teasing expression sobered. “Our agreement is purely business. You take care of Jordan and help run the house and ranch. In return, you have your own room, all expenses paid, and you receive a percentage of the yearly profits. When Jordan reaches adulthood, you can have a divorce, no questions asked.”

She collapsed against her pillows, shocked to learn she’d agreed to such a sad, barren life. As for Wade, his cold, unsentimental terms clashed with his warm personality, and she wondered what had driven him to demand such an impersonal arrangement.

“Why go through the motions of getting married?” she said. “Why not just hire another housekeeper?”

He tunneled his fingers through his thick hair, a gesture she’d come to associate with him, and clasped his hands behind his head. The movement stretched his denim shirt across well-developed chest muscles. Wade Garrett was a good-looking, agreeable man who probably had hordes of local single women beating down his door. Why hadn’t he married one of them?