Accidental Sweetheart. Lisa Bingham

call, his hand leaving his revolver and lifting to his hat when he saw Stefania Nicos and Marie Rousseau, two of the mail-order brides who often volunteered to help prepare the morning meal.

      “Miss Nicos. Miss Rousseau.”

      The women shared a secret, inscrutable glance.

       Where were their guards?

      He turned back to call to the miners and ask them to alert his office that he needed one of his men, only to discover that they were nowhere in sight. That meant Gideon would have to escort the ladies safely home.

      “Miss Nicos, I—”

      The women had disappeared as well.

       What on earth?

      He glanced down the nearby alley. Nothing. Checked inside the door to the company laundry.

       Nothing.

      Where had they gone?

      He hooked his thumbs into his belt and surveyed the street from one end of Aspen Valley to the other. Not even a stray dog roamed the boardwalk. It was as if the inhabitants of Bachelor Bottoms were being plucked out of thin air, and the mining community was gradually becoming a ghost town. There were no stray workers, no women, no wagons, no horses. If not for the dripping of the melting icicles, Gideon could have believed he’d been dropped into a painted backdrop for a melodrama.

      Which only added to his uneasiness.

      Gideon resumed his walk, his gaze restlessly scanning back and forth. Maybe it was time to get a team of men together and sweep the area. He wasn’t sure what he was going to tell his men to look for, but he’d think of something.

      Sighing heavily, he gave up on the thought of a sandwich for now, passed the cook shack and headed to the three-story frame building that housed the Pinkerton office and their barracks. Opening the door, he called out, “Dobbs! We’ve got a pair of runners! Miss Nicos and Miss Rousseau are on the loose.”

      Except for the echo of his own voice, there was no response.

      Gideon had a unit of thirty men who’d been hired by the mine to guard the silver ore and provide security for the shipments being sent to Denver. But, since December, Ezra Batchwell had insisted that the Pinkertons spend their time hovering over the mail-order brides “for their own protection.”

      Gideon snorted. In his opinion, the fifty-odd women who’d been marooned here when their train had been pushed down the mountain by an avalanche didn’t need any protection whatsoever. It would have been easier to guard the miners. In the past few weeks, the women had been testing their boundaries even more than usual—a result, no doubt, of the fact that Ezra Batchwell had broken his leg and had been confined to his home. Without his bullish insistence that the ladies be kept at bay, the brides seemed determined to challenge the willingness of Gideon’s men to corral them.

      To be honest, the Pinkertons hadn’t tried that hard to rein them in. With the warmer weather, everyone in the valley knew it was only a matter of weeks before the women would be forced to leave. When that moment came, Aspen Valley would return to an all-male population. Even worse, they would lose the joy that the brides had brought with their fine cooking, bright smiles and effervescent personalities.

      But that was the way things worked at the Batchwell Bottoms Silver Mine.

      “Dobbs! Winslow!”

       Nothing.

      The chance for a sandwich seemed to be getting further and further out of reach.

      Gideon stepped outside. Once again, the hairs at the back of his neck prickled. The roads, the boardwalks, were empty.

      He knew that production had stepped up in the mine since a new tunnel had been blasted. Crews were larger, shifts longer. As soon as the canyon had cleared enough for repair crews, the railway lines would be restored and then the ore they’d amassed the past few months would be shipped out of the camp.

      But that didn’t explain why there was no one around today.

      A trio of miners exited the Hall, relieving Gideon’s misgivings slightly. Maybe things weren’t quite as strange as he—

      “Mr. Gault.”

      He stiffened. Without turning, he recognized the voice of Miss Lydia Tomlinson, one of the marooned women. As a self-professed suffragist, she’d become the unofficial leader of the ladies in the past few months. In Gideon’s opinion, the woman meant trouble with a capital T. She had a way of putting...ideas in the other brides’ heads. And since she didn’t have much regard for authority, she could be a handful.

      Gideon mentally prepared himself, knowing that any conversation with Miss Tomlinson would prove to be an intellectual skirmish. She could talk a mule into surrendering his left hind leg if she had a mind to do so—and the mule would give it up willingly.

      He leaned in to the Pinkerton office one more time—as if by some miracle, one of his men would appear and relieve him of the need to match wits with Lydia. But there would be no such deliverance. Instead, he was forced to step outside.

      Automatically, his gaze swept the boardwalk, looking for the miners who’d come out of the hall—but there was no sign of them.

       He was losing his ever-loving mind.

      In the meantime, Miss Tomlinson scrutinized him from the tip of his hat to his dusty boots, then regarded Gideon as if he were slightly daft.

      Sighing, he touched a finger to the brim of his hat. “And how are you this lovely morning, Miss Tomlinson?”

      One of her brows lifted. Clearly, she’d caught the thread of resignation in his tone.

      “Quite well, Mr. Gault. Nevertheless, I wondered if you and I could have a word.”

      Gideon seriously doubted such a thing was possible. Lydia Tomlinson didn’t exchange a word. She talked and talked and talked. To be fair, she was an intelligent creature with a good head on her shoulders. But she could be so bossy.

      “About?” he asked cautiously.

      Her eyes narrowed. “You needn’t look like I’m proposing to escort you to a firing squad.”

       Apparently, she could read minds as well.

      Gideon purposely relaxed the line of his shoulders and tried his best to make his hands hang loose at his sides.

      “There was no such stuff in my thoughts.”

      “Mmm-hmm.” Her lips thinned. “I wish to discuss a matter of business with you.”

      Gideon couldn’t imagine what kind of “business” the two of them might share. But he supposed that since Ezra Batchwell was unavailable, and Jonah Ramsey had been quarantined at home with measles, Gideon was probably the next company man on her list with whom she intended to argue.

      “What can I do for you?”

      She shifted, her gaze roaming the streets around them. For a moment, sunlight slipped over her cheeks and highlighted the delicate curve of her jaw. She really was a pretty woman—tall, slim, with honey-colored hair. If she weren’t so...snippy...

      “I would rather divulge the subject inside. Away from prying eyes.”

      One last time, Gideon allowed his gaze to roam Main Street, from the mine opening to the slopes of the Uinta mountains in the distance. Near as Gideon could tell, there wasn’t a soul in town who could “pry.” But there was no use arguing the point.

      He held the door wide. “After you, Miss Tomlinson.”

      “You may call me Lydia, Mr. Gault.”

      Gideon was pretty sure that if he used Lydia’s Christian name, his own mother would roll over in her grave. Clotilde Gault had been a stickler for proper social customs and morés, and an unmarried gentleman