Her Colorado Man. Cheryl St.John

in her thoughts, because she had four brothers who would die for her at a moment’s notice. “Well, there are my brothers, of course…but I don’t trust this stranger.”

      He took several steps to take her in his arms and hold her against his satin vest. He smelled of spice and shaving soap and everything dear and familiar. She had to hold back a sob or drown in a torrent. “Whoever this outsider is, I don’t plan to welcome him or treat him kindly,” she warned. “Even if he were my gadabout husband, no one would expect me to welcome him with open arms after all these years.”

      “We’ll do what we have to,” Louis answered. “We’ll do what we believe is right for John James.”

      “Wes Burrows doesn’t know what’s right for John James. He doesn’t even know us.” Her voice broke, and she caught herself before she lost her composure. “I’ll figure out what he’s up to,” she said. “And I won’t let him hurt my son.”

      She loved her grandfather with every beat of her heart. He’d meant well. They’d both believed that saving her good name and giving her son an identity was best for him. John James had never suffered the indignity of being born out of wedlock, and she’d been spared shame and embarrassment.

      Until now.

      Chapter Two

      That evening as the sun slid toward the western horizon, Mariah caught a ride home in the back of a company wagon leaving the yard. Her brother Arlen gave her an arm up, and she leaped over the side to take a seat in the bed beside her family members.

      Arlen lived in the family home with Grandfather and their parents, as did she and John James, her two younger sisters, a widowed aunt and her cousin Marc’s family.

      Mariah’s family had lived in a separate house once, but when her mother’s sight had failed, they’d moved into the big house so Henrietta wasn’t alone during the day. Now Wilhelm and his family lived in the house they’d vacated, which was only several hundred feet from this one.

      For practicality, all of the Spanglers lived within a half a mile radius of the brewery and each other. Grandfather said it was like having their own Bavarian district. They shopped, worshipped and visited in Ruby Creek on a regular basis, though, always taking an interest in the community and usually attending church.

      The good-natured chatter and teasing between cousins and siblings was lost on her today; her thoughts had been narrowed to one subject—and one person—since that morning.

      The wagon slowed and Arlen, along with her cousin Marc, jumped down. Arlen reached back for Mariah’s hand and Marc helped his wife to the ground. Faye adjusted her skirts and took his hand as they headed toward the rear entry.

      Men and women parted in the yard, the men headed for the washhouse. Mariah followed Faye in through the sun porch to the enormous kitchen filled with mouthwatering aromas. Her aunt Ina turned from one of the steaming cast-iron stoves to welcome them with a smile.

      Mariah’s mother sat on a wooden stool near a chopping block, peeling potatoes. “Hello, Mama,” Mariah greeted her.

      “How was your workday?” Henrietta asked and raised her cheek for a kiss.

      “It was long.” Mariah joined Faye at a deep sink to scrub her hands. “I’ll be down to help with supper after I wash up and change.”

      “There you are!” her cousin Hildy exclaimed when the two of them nearly collided in the doorway. “John James has been waiting for you.”

      Hildy didn’t live with them. She had worked in the brewery for a couple of years, but most recently she’d been a companion to Henrietta. She preferred helping with the household chores and watching over the younger children to a brewery position, and the arrangement suited everyone. Hildy had no children of her own.

      “I gave the children toast and eggs after school,” Hildy told her. “Though they’d have much preferred your mama’s cookies.”

      “You’re a blessing,” Mariah told her sweet dark-haired cousin and looked into her hazel eyes. They couldn’t have been more different in appearance. Hildy’s father had been of Irish decent, while Mariah took after the fair-haired Bavarian Spanglers.

      Instead of using the back staircase, she headed for the front of the house and ran up the wide front staircase that opened into a commons room. There, the four youngsters had their own benches, desks, slates and a case of books, as well as an assortment of games and puzzles for evenings and rainy afternoons.

      “Mama!” John James leaped up from his position on the rug to hug her. “I added five numbers together in my head without my fingers. Or the slate.”

      “I do believe you have a calling to work in the accounting office with your uncle Wilhelm.” She ruffled his blond hair and knelt to kiss his cheek. He smelled like chalk and soap and little boy, and her heart tripped at the thought of him ever being hurt.

      “Oh, no,” he said with a shake of his fair head. “I’m going to work on the machines.” His blue-eyed expression held all the seriousness a six-year-old could muster. “I like the sounds in the bottling house. And you can see the mountains from the big doorway.”

      “That you can,” she agreed. “You, my bright shining star, can be whatever you want to be when you grow up.”

      “Even the president?” Marc and Faye’s seven-year-old Emma asked, with a grin.

      Mariah turned to tweak her pigtail. “Unless you beat him to it!”

      “Emma can’t be the pwesident!” Emma’s five-year-old brother Paul said with a wide-eyed exclamation. “Her’s a girl! Pwesident’s got to have beards.”

      Mariah laughed and the boys joined her. Emma only gave them a puzzled look.

      “Finish your lessons before supper,” she said to John James and hurried along the hallway to her room.

      Supper was a noisy affair as always, relaxed and friendly. At home like this she wasn’t anyone’s boss or coworker. She didn’t have a quota or hours and product to tally. She was simply aunt, sister, daughter and mother. Siblings and cousins and aunts and uncles talked over each other while they passed heaping bowls of potatoes and platters of schweinsbraten, their traditional oven-roasted pork. Half a dozen foamy pitchers of dark beer stood on the table at intervals.

      Mariah set down her empty glass with a satisfied sigh. Only perfect brews came from the barrels with the Spangler stamp.

      Noticing her lack of animation, Mariah’s father, Friederick, gave her a long glance. “Are you well, Mariah?”

      She assured him she was fine. “It was a long day. I’m just tired.”

      Much later after the dishes were washed and the various families had retired to their quarters, Mariah tucked John James into his bed in the room he shared with Paul. He closed his eyes and she threaded her fingers through his pale silky hair.

      Wesley Burrows’s written words came to mind: I want your great-grandson to have what every boy deserves—a father who cares about him. No one wished that more than she, but it would never be. Memories of her son as a chubby infant and a toddling two-year-old assailed her. The other children in their household—in all their family—had fathers to swing them in the air and play catch and teach them to fish and hunt.

      Her brothers were wonderful, and she loved them for their devotion to her son. Arlen never left with a fishing pole without asking John James if he wanted to accompany him. Mariah often tagged along and watched as her brother taught him how to dig for worms, place one on the hook and cast the line into the stream.

      She stretched out on the narrow bed and lay with her face nestled in John James’s hair where it met the collar of his nightshirt. He was never lonely. She’d seen to that. Her family had seen to it. She owed them a debt she could never repay for loving her child and giving him a sense of belonging.

      He slept soundly, his breath