Montana Mail-Order Wife

“Longhorn Lake is a small community,” he said. “A young housekeeper couldn’t live at the ranch without causing a scandal.”

“Then hire an older woman.”

He dropped his hands to his knees and shook his head. “Jordan needs a mother, a real mother—”

“A real mother is the woman his father loves, not a business partner.”

Wade avoided her gaze. “I don’t intend to fall in love. And I can’t marry anyone from the community.”

“Why not?”

“Maggie’s memory,” he said cryptically.

She rubbed her throbbing temples with her fingertips to try to ease her pain and confusion. “I don’t understand.”

He scooted from his chair to the bed, pulled her back against his chest and began massaging her forehead. “I’d rather not talk about Maggie,” he said in a flat tone.

She would have pushed him further, but the lazy circles of his fingers against her temples, the comforting pressure of his chest against her back and the warmth of his breath against her neck distracted her and caused the discontent constantly hovering inside to dwindle for the first time since she’d regained consciousness.

She had never felt so safe in a man’s arms.

Wade’s fingers stalled in their circling, and he dropped his hands to her shoulders. “Jordan needs a woman who’ll be a permanent fixture in his life, someone he can be proud of. Someone he can introduce at school and church as his mom, so he’ll be like the other kids and maybe stop—” He halted abruptly, as if he’d said too much.

So Jordan had some kind of problem, and Wade wanted a ready-made mother to deal with him. “How can you be sure Jordan will like me?”

His fingers, toying with a curl of her hair, brushed the sensitive skin of her ear, transmitting dangerous flutters down her spine.

“You love children,” he explained, as if that fact transcended all difficulties. “You said so in your letters.”

What had she gotten herself into? She had problems enough already. No memory. No family. No money. And no idea how long she’d be confined to this hospital bed.

Just thinking about her troubles exhausted her. She sagged against Wade’s chest and closed her eyes.

“I’m a stupid fool,” Wade said with a growl.

She opened her eyes and forced a weak smile, but her weariness prevented further movement. “From the arrangement you’ve described, I tend to agree with you.”

“I meant—” he stood up, laid her back on her pillow and leaned with one hand on each side of her, his face hovering inches from hers “—I’m a stupid fool to keep you talking when you should be sleeping.”

She inhaled the pleasing scent of leather, soap and sunshine, and gazed into genial brown eyes flecked with gold. The closeness of his deeply tanned face with its sweep of dark lashes and appealing smile made her skin hot.

“I wanted answers to my questions,” she said.

“No more questions now. You need to rest. Sweet dreams, Rachel. I’ll stop in tomorrow. Maybe all those memories will have flooded back by then.”

He patted her cheek with a warm, callused hand, then settled his battered Stetson low on his forehead. At the door, he turned and touched his fingers to the brim of his hat, looking for all the world like a Western movie hero. When he disappeared into the hall, her hospital room seemed empty and cold.

She drifted into a twilight slumber between consciousness and sleep, only to wake with a jolt.

Wade hadn’t answered her most important question: why she had agreed to a marriage without love.

TEN DAYS LATER, although Wade had visited her every day, she hadn’t found the courage to ask the question again. She had hoped for a rapid return of her memories, and with them, her rationale for accepting Wade’s unusual marriage proposal, but her past remained a frustrating blank. With her future and all its uncertainties a gaping void, she clung now to the one solid and steadfast element of her present.

Wade Garrett.

The day of her release had arrived, and she thanked the nurses and Dr. Sinclair for their care. Happy to have exchanged the shapeless hospital gown for jeans, a T-shirt and sneakers the nurse said were hers, she waited for Wade in her hospital room.

A half hour later, Rachel left the hospital and walked at Wade’s side across the asphalt parking lot beneath the sweeping dome of Montana’s big sky.

As they headed west in his pickup along Highway 2, she gazed at his tanned profile, partially obscured by the brim of his Stetson and his mirrored sunglasses. She wondered if he’d sent a picture with his letters, and if the-Rachel-she-couldn’t-remember had fallen hopelessly in love with his sturdy good looks, in spite of his insistence on a strictly business liaison.

No wonder she’d said yes in her letters. Handsome, considerate, good-humored and stable, Wade embodied all the traits of the perfect husband.

Except he didn’t love her. He’d made that crystal clear.

Unable to remember why she’d agreed to marry him in the first place, she struggled now with whether to go through with his bizarre marriage proposal.

She hoped she wouldn’t regret accepting his invitation to stay at his ranch, but, broke and remembering no one, she had nowhere else to go. According to Wade, the authorities reported she had closed her bank account and canceled her credit cards before leaving Atlanta. If she’d had any money, it had disappeared. Her wallet was empty of everything but her ID card and a paper with Wade’s name and address, the information that had caused the local sheriff to summon Wade to her bedside.

“Thanks for offering me a place to stay.”

“No problem.” His agreeable smile hit her with the scorching intensity of the noonday sun. “It was the least I could do, since you gave up your apartment and job in Atlanta to marry me.”

Just the thought of marriage to the mesmerizing rancher created an erratic quiver in her stomach. “You promised—”

“I know,” he said with another heart-stopping smile, “no mention of marriage until you’re ready to discuss it.”

She reclined against the seat and barely registered the unfamiliar landscape flashing by. Her traitorous mind refused to yield its captive memories, swelling instead with seductive images of life as Mrs. Wade Garrett. She had extracted Wade’s promise of silence on the subject of matrimony, not because the prospect was distasteful but because of its disturbing attractiveness.

Twenty minutes out of Libby, Wade turned off the highway, which paralleled a river road signs identified as the Kootenai, swollen now with melting snow, onto a blacktop road that cut straight through a broad, green valley nestled between two majestic mountain ranges.

“We call this God’s country,” he said. “Bet you’ve never seen this part of Montana before.”

She laughed with bittersweet humor. “That’s a safe bet. Even if I had, I wouldn’t remember.”

On the narrow, two-lane road, they traveled past broad pastures where cattle grazed, and sped through intermittent stands of cedars and pines. A cloudless sky of vivid blue arched above the endless miles.

She rolled down her window and inhaled the fragrance of warm grasses and invigorating pine. “It’s good to breathe fresh air instead of the smell of antiseptic.”

“You’re an outdoor girl. Maybe,” he said with rough gentleness as he slowed the truck, “living on the ranch will jar your memories loose.”

“Maybe.”

Wade lifted his hand from the wheel and gave hers an encouraging squeeze. “You mustn’t worry. Everything’s going to be fine.”

His touch cheered her. With hope, she clung to the expectation that her past would soon be restored, and rejected the possibility of her memory loss being permanent. Dr. Sinclair had advised her not to worry about her amnesia, but to take one day at a time.

Wade turned off the blacktop and drove beneath an arched sign of rough-hewn timber with Longhorn Valley Ranch burned into the wood in tall, rustic letters.

His face lit with pride as he pointed west across a wide pasture edged on the far side by a curving line of trees. “The river runs through our property there. The Garretts have owned these grazing lands and forests for over a century.”

She envied his heritage, stretching back a hundred years. He belonged to the land. She could hear the attachment in his voice, see it in his eyes.

She belonged nowhere.

The truck had proceeded only a hundred yards between the ancient cedars that lined the drive when the acrid stench of smoke filled the cab.

She wrinkled her nose. “What’s burning?”

Wade slammed on the brakes, swung out of the truck and lifted his face to the wind. Blowing out of the east, the breeze reeked of burning wood.

“There.” He indicated smoke rising from a stand of mature trees.

“A forest fire. On your land?”

He nodded and his mouth hardened into a grim line. “My best timber, ready for harvest.”

He leaped back into the truck and, with a grinding of gears, floored the accelerator. She braced against the door as the truck bounced along the miles of dirt track beneath the trees. Within a few minutes, the road ended in a circular drive in front of a large house, and the pickup screeched to a halt.

Two sprawling stories made of weathered logs, with a wide porch shaded by rambler roses heavy with crimson blooms, the century-old house sat between two gigantic ponderosa pines. Although Wade had said she’d never visited his ranch before, she experienced an illogical sensation of coming home.

Her rush of pleasure at the sight of the stalwart but gracious house was interrupted by the shout of a tiny woman, white haired and frail, who waited on the front porch, her hands wrapped in her apron. “Wade Garrett, you came up that drive like a bat outta hell. Ain’t no sense in getting yourself killed over a little fire.”

Wade wrenched open the door and jumped from the truck. “A little fire! It’s dry season, Ursula, and the wind’s blowing! The whole mountain could go up in flames.”

“No need to panic.” Ursula appeared unruffled by Wade’s outburst. “The Forest Service and volunteers already have everything under control. I’m fixing to feed ’em supper soon as they finish mopping up.”

Rachel climbed down from the cab. “If you’re expecting a crowd, may I help?”

She’d taken a chance, asking. She didn’t remember if she could cook, but memories weren’t required to wash dishes.

Ursula’s smile subtracted years from her weathered face, and she extended a gnarled hand. “You must be Rachel. Thanks for offering.”

The old woman’s demeanor conveyed not only welcome but acceptance, and as Rachel shook her hand, she experienced again an impression of homecoming.

Wade pivoted and headed back to his truck. “I’d better see if they need help.”

“You got more important work—” Ursula jerked her thumb toward the house “—upstairs.”

Wade turned. “Jordan? Is he hurt?”

Rachel registered a shock of empathy at the fear and concern on Wade’s face.

“No,” Ursula said, “but he’s in his room, crying his eyes out, afraid you’ll tan his hide good this time.”

“You know I’ve never laid a hand on…” He glanced toward the smoking pines. “Jordan started the fire?”

Feeling like an intruder, Rachel retreated into the shade of the porch, but she couldn’t avoid the argument between Wade and his housekeeper.

“Don’t be too hard on the boy,” Ursula said. “He was just trying to please you.”

“By burning down my best timber? I’ll—”

“Wade Garrett!” Ursula drilled him with a scowl. “For the past twenty years, you’ve been like a son to me, but if you don’t start giving that boy what he needs, I swear, I’ll disown you.”

Wade yanked off his hat, slapped it against his thigh and pointed at Rachel. “I’ve brought him what he needs. A mother.”

Rachel flinched as the full impact of mail-order bride status hit her. Wade had treated her with no more respect than some fourth-class package.

Ursula stepped toward Wade and shook her finger at him. “Sometimes I think you couldn’t pour water out of a boot with instructions on the heel—”

“Tell Jordan I’ll talk to him at supper.” Wade crushed his hat back on and strode to the truck. With a ferocious grinding of gears, he peeled off in a flurry of dust.

Ursula climbed the porch steps as if her arthritis pained her, and approached Rachel. “Thank God, you’re here, girl. Don’t mind Wade’s rough ways. He’s all heart underneath his bluster. But both Wade and Jordan, they need you more than you could ever imagine.”

Rachel watched the haze of dust that marked Wade’s progress toward the fire. She didn’t doubt his love for Jordan. In the surprising outburst from the man who had impressed her with his even-tempered nature, she had recognized his frustration over Jordan’s mischief.

Most telling of all, Wade obviously believed all his boy needed to cure his troubles was a mother.

Rachel wasn’t so sure. After all, she wasn’t the boy’s mother, but a total stranger. Not the woman his father loved, only someone who had responded to a personal ad. And any skills or experience she might once have used to benefit a troubled boy lay buried deep in her damaged psyche.

With a sinking sensation that she’d stumbled into more than she could handle, Rachel followed Ursula into the house.

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