Territorial Bride. Linda Castle

accident he and Missy looked at each other in the same moment. Their gazes caught and held. Her dark eyes reflected the candlelight like a deep, shimmering stream in the first rays of morning.

      Funny that he’d never noticed how wide and luminous her eyes were until now, Brooks mused.

      “Dearly beloved…” the tall, lanky preacher’s baritone voice filled the chapel. “In the sight of God and this company…”

      Brooks adjusted the shoulders and front of his black broadcloth frock coat and tried to focus on the preacher’s words. Missy fidgeted once more, and his attention became riveted upon her.

      Was she nervous?

      Naw. The answer came quickly into his head. Missy O’Bannion was as steady a woman as ever walked God’s earth. But if she wasn’t nervous, then why was her softly rounded bosom rising and falling so rapidly inside the sateen bodice?

      He frowned at her in speculation. Then, as if she felt his attention on her, she looked at him again. Her eyes were darker than bottomless pools, and for a moment he felt himself drowning in their depths. She wore an expression so poignant that he nearly reached out and touched her.

      He shook himself and looked back toward the preacher. He shouldn’t give a hoot in hell about how she felt. If she was frightened it was poetic justice. She had given him undiluted misery this past year. It would serve her right if she was stewing in her own juices.

      No, he didn’t care how she felt. He couldn’t give a tinker’s damn about Missy’s feelings—or any woman’s, for that matter. Life in the Territory had let him see that a lone wolf survived as well as one with a mate.

      That was what he wanted now—to remain alone. A lone wolf, free, unattached and pleasantly sane. None of this madness called love for him, thank you. Brooks intended to remain a bachelor, like Clell. Clell was a man who knew what was what. He had helped Brooks learn to rope and ride and how to laugh at Missy’s sharp barbs.

      “Trace Liam O’Bannion…” The clergyman’s deep voice gained volume. “Do you…”

      The nearest group of candles flickered. Trace leaned over and gave Bellami a little peck on the cheek, quite improper when he was taking his vows, but the kind of thing that Brooks had grown to expect in this half-tamed place. Here men made their own rules to live by. Now that he had become accustomed to it, he liked it.

      Missy shifted on her feet and Brooks glanced at her again. She was smiling. It was an angel’s smile, full of love and innocence. Something hot and liquid coursed through his veins while he watched her face.

      “Bellami Irene James, do you take…”

      The image of Violet Ashland flitted unbidden into Brooks’s head. The memory of that cold, elegant woman filled his mind. Then he glanced at Missy. Where Violet had been cold, Missy ran red-hot.

      “And her hot tongue will sear flesh, as well,” he whispered to himself.

      Brooks caught himself smiling at the memory of Missy’s frequent outbursts and his determination to prove himself. If he was honest with himself, he’d have to admit that he had come to enjoy their verbal sparring. His taste in women had changed, or maybe he had changed in the rowdy environment of the Territory. One thing for certain, Brooks was not the same man he had been when he’d stepped off the train. Besides, if the time came that he wanted to settle down—and he wasn’t thinking that it would—but if it did, then Missy would be here. He cast a furtive glance at her.

      Yep, he could count on Missy O’Bannion to be constant and unchanging. She would always be Missy and she would always be tied to the Circle B Ranch.

      It was a comforting thought, and one that Brooks tucked away in the corner of his mind for safekeeping.

      “The ring, if you please…” The minister’s voice snapped Brooks back to attention. He forced himself to quit woolgathering. He pulled the ring, from the watch pocket of his brocade vest and gave it to Trace.

      Bellami handed her spray of flowers to Missy and allowed Trace to claim her hand. Work-roughened fingers held hers within a protective grasp. In a few more years Brooks’s hands would be as rough. He thought of his old life in New York—the champagne suppers, buggy rides through the park and trips to the athletic club. He glanced back at his parents, sitting side by side in the nearest pew. Brooks grinned. He had withstood Miss Hell-for-leather O’Bannion. He turned back around in time to see Trace slip the ring on his sister’s finger. A smile still curled Brooks’s lips. He couldn’t think of anything or anybody that would force him to return to New York City—not ever again.

       Chapter Two

      A side of prime Circle B beef sizzled on an iron spit over a glowing pile of coals several yards from the ranch house veranda. A coyote howled somewhere off in the twilight and a mournful answer echoed. The smell of burning mesquite wood filled the air. As Clell swabbed spicy chili sauce on the beef, some of the thick concoction dribbled onto the embers. Flames shot upward, as they would inside of everyone’s bellies after a taste of Clell’s secret sauce.

      Missy’s heart was beating hard with happiness and excitement. Clinging to the railing, she lingered on the veranda, content to observe the crowd. Firelight reflected off rows of silver conchas running down the legs of the black calzoneras worn by the mariachi singers as they got in position to serenade the newlyweds.

      Bellami’s cheeks flushed crimson as Trace softly translated their melodic Spanish. Then, as the fiddle players joined the mariachis, Bellami and Trace waltzed for the first time as man and wife.

      It was almost painful for Missy to witness so much happiness. The persistent lump she had been choking on all day came again. She fought back tears of joy and laughed at Trace’s mock awkwardness when the fiddles abruptly quickened and he was forced to dance a Highland jig.

      Nobody could out-celebrate a cowboy, she thought. Fast-moving boot heels clicked on the wood in quick rhythm. Missy laughed out loud when Lupe joined in and lifted her skirt to reveal slender brown ankles and layers of snowy white petticoats. She executed a series of lightning quick and intricate steps. Her movements flowed with such grace and speed that it was hard for Missy to believe the Circle B cook was nearing sixty years old. Her dark eyes flashed with Spanish fire as the mariachis played faster and faster to match her feet.

      Without warning the tempo changed. Strains of two additional fiddles blended with the romantic Spanish guitar.

      Another waltz for the married couple.

      Trace kissed Bellami and pulled her close, and they began to float around the dance floor in a way that made Missy’s heart catch. A part of her hungered to be in the middle of the swirling, twirling couples, but her awkwardness kept her in the shadows at the edge of the veranda.

      Bellami had shown Missy how to wear the complicated frippery of a lady, but she still did not feel like one. She clapped her hands to the brisk tempo while she watched other girls from nearby ranches being swept onto the dance floor by one handsome cowhand after another. Her one consolation was that she was in no danger of making a fool of herself while she was hidden alone in the shadows.

      “Grab a partner,” Hugh bellowed. “Everybody dance! I don’t want to see anybody sitting this one out.”

      “Boo.” Brooks’s voice jarred Missy. “Penny for your thoughts, little lady.”

      She whirled to find him standing no more than six inches from her. His black string tie and long-tailed coat had been discarded. The white shirt was unbuttoned halfway down. An errant breeze ruffled the hair on his hard, muscled chest.

      “And just when I was enjoyin’ a private moment,” she snapped, pulling her gaze from his torso.

      He eyed her with cool detachment and picked a bud from the rose of Sharon that grew in abundance by the veranda.