Last Chance Bride. Jillian Hart

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