Shot Gun Grooms. Maureen Child

hints that she might be tempted into a giggle now and again.

      “I spent most of last evening packing my things,” she said, walking up the center aisle of the small church. She placed her cloak and her gloves over the first pew. “I thought that after the ceremony I would begin to move in my belongings. I assume I may use the back stairs.”

      “Sure. There’s a way up from the hallway behind the saloon, but I don’t guess you’ll want to walk through my place very much.”

      Her blue eyes widened at the thought. “No. Thank you.”

      He pretended to consider the idea. “In case you change your mind, seeing as we’re going to be business partners as well as man and wife, I want you to know that any liquor you drink is on the house.” He squinted at her. “I can’t see you sipping whiskey, but you might enjoy a nice glass of apple brandy in the evening. To help you sleep.”

      Color flooded her face, but she didn’t rise to the bait. “How considerate,” she murmured. “I’ll have to let you know later.”

      “Whenever. The offer stands. Oh, and I’ve put a couple of my men to work on cleaning the rooms. They haven’t been used in years, so they’re quite dusty. There’s also more furniture up there than I’d remembered. Plenty of beds and dressers. All you’ll have to do is provide mattresses, curtains and whatever other doodads you like.”

      “Thank you,” she said, obviously pleased. “How very thoughtful and kind of you.”

      Her words and her smile made him slightly uncomfortable. “It wasn’t anything.”

      “I disagree. It was a very nice something.”

      Light seemed to fill her blue eyes. That, along with the color still lingering in her cheeks, made her look…different. Not exactly pretty, but not quite so plain. But before he could figure out what, if anything, that meant, Pastor Bird, his wife and his oldest boy arrived. It was time for the ceremony.

      Lucas and Emily stood together at the front of the church. Except for the exchange of vows, the large open space was quiet. Lucas tried to remember if he’d ever been to a wedding before, and, although he couldn’t recall a time, the words he and Emily repeated sounded familiar.

      As he promised to love and honor the stranger standing next to him, he felt a flare of resentment that he had to go through all this to keep something that was already rightfully his. Damn Uncle Simon. Did the old bastard really think he could force his nephews into marrying?

      Obviously he had and it had worked. But he couldn’t keep them married. Lucas had never planned on taking a wife and he didn’t intend to keep this one for very long. He sure wasn’t going to turn the marriage into a real one, so there weren’t going to be any children. It was unlikely that Jackson would think any different, so the MacIntyre name would die out with them.

      “You may kiss the bride.”

      The pastor’s words brought Lucas back to the present. Apparently he and Emily were well and truly hitched. He leaned down to do his duty, but she shook her head and took a quick step back.

      “A handshake will do, Lucas,” she said primly as she extended her hand.

      “Yes, ma’am,” he murmured, taking her slender fingers in his and squeezing gently.

      She seemed startled by the contact, or maybe she hadn’t expected him to agree so quickly. She pulled away as fast as she could and busied herself thanking the pastor and his family for their assistance. As he watched her, Lucas had the crazy idea that it might be kind of fun to seduce Mrs. Emily MacIntyre, just to see what happened.

      Then he reminded himself that he had enough troubles already, the main one being getting his brother married before the three-month deadline was up. He hoped Jackson’s mail-order bride had plenty of backbone and didn’t scare easy.

       CHAPTER THREE

      “I heard you got hitched,” Mangus Reeves said, then waved his beer in the air. “Say it ain’t so, Lucas. Not you.”

      “I heard he married that schoolteacher lady.” Barney Jefferson—a tall redhead with a temper to match his fiery looks—shook his shaggy head sadly. “It’s a terrible day when one of our own gives in to a female. And that one in particular. It’s not just that she’s skinny. It’s worse. She has a way of lookin’ at a man as if she knows all the black secrets of his soul.”

      “And disapproves,” another man added.

      Lucas ignored the comments and kept pouring liquor. He’d known that he would get some ribbing about his sudden marriage, not to mention his choice of a bride. He could silence them all by telling them why he’d married, but strangely enough, he couldn’t bring himself to do that. As if by telling the truth, he would embarrass Emily. Although why he cared about her delicate feelings was beyond him.

      “She ain’t so bad,” Hep told the crowd collected around the bar.

      The old miner was on the far side of sixty. Small and wiry, he’d worked the mountain most of his life without ever once striking it rich. Now age and pain in his bones kept him from his chosen profession. Hep was honest and a hard worker, so Lucas gave him small jobs to tide him over through the cold Colorado winters.

      “What do you know about the schoolteacher?” Mangus demanded.

      Hep raised his chin and stared up at the man more than a foot taller and nearly two score younger. “She taught me some learning last winter. My letters and my numbers.” The old man flushed slightly at the confession but kept on talking. “I’d tried before, but figured I didn’t have a head for it. Miss Smythe—” he shot a look at Lucas and amended the title “—Mrs. MacIntyre was real patient and now I can read.”

      Lucas frowned. He hadn’t known that prim Emily had ever bothered with the likes of old Hep. Maybe she wasn’t as spinsterish as he’d thought. Damn. Until Hep had said something to defend her, Lucas had been content to let the men talk themselves out. Now he had to speak up.

      “Emily MacIntyre is my wife,” he said to the crowd. “I’m proud to have her as my bride. Anyone who says a word against her is going to answer to me.”

      He spoke the words easily, but their meaning was clear. He wasn’t a man to go looking for a fight, but he wasn’t afraid of one if it found him, and he generally left his opponent much the worse for wear.

      Everyone got very quiet. Mangus and Barney avoided his gaze while Hep looked pleased.

      “I’m sure she’s very nice,” Mangus muttered into his beer.

      In the silence Lucas heard the sound of people climbing the steps leading to the second story. Emily had three men hauling trunks and boxes up to her new hotel. How many things could she have and how long was this going to take? He had a sudden sense of having gotten more than he’d bargained for when he married Emily that morning. Perhaps he’d better go see what she was up to.

      * * *

      An unexpected delivery, not to mention a brawl over a “friendly” card game, delayed Lucas’s trip upstairs until nearly three that afternoon. He left Perry in charge and made his way up the rear stairs to the top story of his saloon.

      The men Emily had hired had finished a couple of hours before. He found the rear door propped wide and dozens of boxes and trunks open in the large foyer area. Curtains, sheets, blankets and lace things that looked unfamiliar were stacked together in foot-high bundles. A stiff breeze attested to the open windows in all the rooms and he could hear banging from a far room.

      He followed the sound, taking in the swept-and-washed floor and relatively clean walls. Lucas had never paid much attention to the upstairs of his saloon, but obviously this section of the building had been intended as a hotel all along. In addition to the foyer, he counted fifteen bedrooms, two linen closets and a small office just off the built-in reception desk.