Читать книгу: «Luke's Would-Be Bride»

Chapter One

Luke Carson reached for his black bag with one hand and his black Stetson with the other, then hurried toward the door. The telephone started to ring before he’d taken his second step. Shoving his hat on his head and his bag under one arm, he grabbed the receiver and bit back a curse.

“Jasper Gulch Animal Clinic.”

He was vaguely aware of the bead of perspiration trailing down the side of his neck, but most of his attention was trained on Butch Brunner’s voice on the other end of the line. “You gotta get here as soon as possible, Luke. This is the second steer to take sick this week.”

While Butch talked on, Luke glanced at his watch and rummaged through the clutter on his desk. He never thought he’d see the day when he actually missed the gumsmacking girl who used to work for him, but in the three months since Brenda left Jasper Gulch for the lure of the big city and better job prospects, his filing system had gone from bad to worse.

It had been a long, hot day, and it was only 9:00 a.m. The drought wasn’t helping anyone’s temper, least of all his. One of the area ranchers had called around four that morning because a cow was in labor and the calf was coming breech. Luke had gone straight out there, bleary-eyed and unshaven, and hadn’t stopped since.

“Okay, Butch,” he said. “I’m due out at the Anderson ranch in a few minutes. I’ll stop at your place on my way by.”

As he hung up the phone, his elbow hooked a stack of folders, sending an avalanche of papers to the floor. He grabbed for them, missed, dropped his bag to the desk and muttered one short, succinct word befitting his mood.

A sound near the door drew his gaze.

“Excuse me. I was wondering…” A woman he’d never seen before stood in the doorway.

Even in her loose-fitting shorts and tank top, she looked tired and warm, but these days who didn’t? She had blue eyes, a mid-Western accent and, as far as he was concerned, universal appeal. Her hair might have been a little too red to be considered classically beautiful. It just so happened that red was his favorite color.

“Are you here about the ad?” he asked.

She turned her head toward him and studied him before answering. “Yes, I suppose I am.”

If Luke Carson had been a man prone to smiles, a grin the size of South Dakota would have spread across his face right then. Glancing at her fingers, which were long and tapered and bore no wedding ring, he asked, “Can you do bookkeeping?”

Her eyes narrowed slightly. “Well, yes.”

“What about filing?”

“Filing?”

“Can you do it?”

“Alphabetically? Numerically? Or by subject?”

It was all he could do to keep from raising his face and letting loose a yowling yee-ha. He didn’t even bother to scowl when the phone started to ring again.

“How soon can you start?”

She opened her mouth to speak then closed it.

“Look,” he said, glancing at his cluttered office. “I know how this must look, but there really is a method to this madness. We’re in the middle of a drought out here, and the only other vet is more than a hundred miles away. The cattle are getting rangy, the horses are jumpy, and the area ranchers and cowboys are wound up tighter than a whirlwind in May. But I pay well, and I’ll take whatever hours you can give me.”

He turned up his famous Carson charm, pulling at the brim of hat and looking intently at her. “What do you say?”

He felt her eyes on him, liking the way her gaze trailed over his face, down the column of his throat all the way to the toes of his scuffed cowboy boots. He liked it even more when she finally walked into the room.

She took her time turning around, her shirt and hair settling into place with a quiet swish. Making a show of reading his name on his vet certificate on the wall, she said, “I think I could work mornings for a while, at least. When would you want me to start?”

His heart thudded, and his breath caught in his throat. “How does yesterday sound?”

The smile she gave him went straight to his head, but when she laughed out loud, every male hormone in his body came to life.

“I guess I’ll see you tomorrow morning,” she said. “About eight o’clock?”

“Eight o’clock sounds good.”

“By the way, my name’s Jillian Daniels. Oh, there’s one more thing. Is that silver pickup truck outside yours?”

Luke nodded.

“Your lights are on.”

A split second later, she was gone. And Luke was left staring at the empty doorway of his cluttered veterinarian’s office on the end of Main Street.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d reacted so strongly and so immediately to a woman he’d just met He couldn’t remember the last time it had felt so good.

Luke came out of his musings with a start. Striding outside, he turned off his lights then released a long breath. It was hotter than blazes out here. He’d grown up here in South Dakota and was accustomed to the high summer temperatures. But this summer was different. The sun shining overhead was merciless. It was going to be another scorcher; as usual, there wasn’t a cloud in sight.

He spotted Jillian Daniels on the other side of the street, and suddenly the heat and dry weather didn’t seem so bleak. There was a new woman in town, a woman with red hair and long legs and the softest blue eyes he’d ever seen.

Luke Carson’s day had just gotten a whole lot better.

“It’s been a month, a whole month!” Boomer Brown yelled from the back of the room. “And the only women who’ve moved to Jasper Gulch have brought their husbands and kids with them.”

“Yeah!” another local shouted. “I thought you boys said that advertisement would bring single women to our corner of South Dakota.”

Luke eyed the crowd that had gathered for tonight’s town meeting, vowing to set these men straight as soon as he could get a word in edgewise, which, from the looks and sound of things, was going to be a while.

The sparsely furnished back room of Mel’s Diner was practically bursting at the seams with about thirty ranchers and cowboys and rodeo riders who’d grown weary of the long, lonely nights they faced due to the shortage of women in the area. He’d never seen so many people turn out for one of these meetings, but then, none of them had ever had so much at stake before.

It had been a month since the Jasper Review reported the comments Luke’s brother, Clayt, had made at the last meeting. It had been his idea to advertise for women to come to their town. Before anyone knew how it had happened, several big newspapers had picked up the story, coyly referring to Jasper Gulch as Bachelor Gulch. In the ensuing weeks, scores of women had come to check out the Jasper Gents. Unfortunately most of them had taken one look at the meager stores, the limited job prospects and dusty roads, and kept right on going.

It looked as if one, at least, had decided to stay. Jillian Daniels. Her name conjured up hazy images, while the memory of the smile she’d given him in his office that morning turned those images into an energy he had a hard time hiding.

It took incredible concentration to bring his attention back to the meeting. Isabell Pruitt, the self-appointed leader of the Ladies Aid Society declared, “I told you nothing good would come of this. If that advertisement draws anybody, it’ll be harlots, women of ill repute, I tell you.”

Every man in the room groaned out loud, which only made Isabell rise to her feet self-righteously and say, “Is that what you want? Is it? If it is, let the record state that I want no part of it. None whatsoever. And another thing…”

“Oh, put a sock in it, Isabell,” one of the men groused.

Isabell pursed her thin lips and gave an affronted huff. “Well, I never!”

“Yeah? Maybe you should.”

The argument that broke out between the members of the Ladies Aid Society and everyone else in the room was loud enough to bring down the roof. Luke swore under his breath and stood. Glancing to his right, he found that the other members of the town council—Clayt, Wyatt McCully, and old Doc Masey—had all risen, too.

During a momentary lull, Luke said, “Now, Isabell, we went over this last month when I looked in on Sylvester. How is that old mouser, anyway?”

Thankfully, nobody sputtered that the only thing wrong with that cat was old age, and Isabell nodded stiffly before sitting back down. Luke took advantage of the opportunity to continue.

“Twenty years ago there were more than seven hundred people living in the village of Jasper Gulch and outlying areas. Today the number barely reaches five hundred.”

“We lose more of our women every year,” Doc Masey added. “Not one girl in this year’s graduating class is planning to stay in Jasper Gulch come fall. There are already sixty-two bachelors, and it’s only going to get worse. We need more women in this town if we want it to survive for future generations.”

Wyatt’s grandfather, Cletus McCully, snapped his suspenders and said, “We need more women if there are going to be future generations.”

A couple of his old cronies snickered into their hands, and Isabell’s face turned red all the way to the roots of her springy gray hair. The few people who were opposed to the idea of bringing strangers into their quiet town continued to bicker with everyone else. Luke exchanged a look with Clayt and Wyatt, then slowly sank back into his folding chair.

He called for order. Then called again. The third try was the charm, or at least as close to it as he’d likely see that night, because with it, the men and women of Jasper Gulch lowered their grumbling to a dull roar.

Very little air was moving through the open windows at his back, and the native bachelors were getting restless. Not that it wasn’t perfectly understandable. The drought was the worst they’d seen in twenty-two years. Jasper Gulch needed a nice long rain and several dozen single women.

Luke only needed one.

He doubted that anybody had noticed anything different about him lately. His hair was still brown, his eyes were still gray, his frame the same lanky six foot two it had been since his seventeenth birthday. Aside from a few squint lines around his eyes, he didn’t look much different from the way he had ten years ago when he was twenty-five. But it wasn’t his appearance that was changing. It was as if a need had been sparked in the very center of him. It was the need for a woman, a special woman. He’d almost given up any hope of finding her. Now the possibilities seemed limitless.

The meeting progressed in a haphazard fashion. He, Wyatt, Clayt and old Doc Masey did their best to keep things under control, but it wasn’t easy. The room grew hotter by the minute, and so did everyone’s tempers.

“Do you have any idea how long it’s been since somebody put a quarter in the jukebox in my bar?” DoraLee Sullivan complained.

“We might play poker at the Crazy Horse every chance we get,” one of DoraLee’s regulars grumbled, “but we draw the line at dancin’ with each other. No sirree, Bob.”

“See?” DoraLee insisted. “You boys have gotta do something to bring other women to Jasper Gulch.”

“We’re trying, but we all have to be patient,” Clayt declared.

Jason Tucker, who worked for Clayt on the Carson family ranch just outside of town, sprang to his feet. “Patient? You expect us to be patient? Do you know how long it’s been since one of us has had a date?”

Wyatt, the county sheriff, rubbed his chin and said, “Let’s see. What year is this?”

Everyone chuckled, and Luke breathed his first easy breath since opening the meeting half an hour ago. “Clayt’s right,” he declared. “We all have to be patient. That advertisement’s working. New people are arriving every week. We all know we need new blood in our town. We also need plumbers and electricians and builders and bankers and just about everything else there is.”

“The only things we don’t need are more bachelors,” Boomer Brown grumbled.

Luke opened his mouth to speak. “The single women will come. In fact…”

Cletus McCully cut in before he could finish. “I heard that one of those married couples you mentioned is planning to open a plumbing shop, and one of the other families has a daughter who wants to be a doctor someday, which brings me to the point I wanna make—”

“Nobody takes longer to make a point than you,” Karl Hanson complained.

“You can say that again,” someone else agreed.

“Do you boys wanna deface my character or do you wanna hear my idea?”

“Oh, all right,” Karl said. “Let’s hear what you have to say. But get on with it. It’s hotter than blazes in here.”

Grinning like the proverbial Cheshire cat, wrinkled though he might be, Cletus said, “I make a motion that we throw out the welcome mat to the newcomers of Jasper Gulch.”

“The welcome mat?” Luke asked.

“That’s right. The welcome mat. I’m thinking a town picnic would be in order here. We could even set up a dance floor and hire a country-western band.”

“A dance floor!” one of the many bachelors groused.

“Cletus, are you crazy?”

“Who in the world are we gonna dance with? Married women?”

“See what I mean?” Isabell sputtered. “Only ill will come of this, I tell you.”

Just when Luke was sure he’d never gain control of the meeting again, the door leading to the diner opened. A low murmur went through the crowd as Wyatt’s younger sister, Mel McCully walked in. As if on cue, everyone went perfectly still.

Mel wasn’t alone.

Two women, one with dark hair, the other with red, slowly made their way to the center of the room.

“Well, looky here,” Jason declared, looking for all the world like a yearling who’d seen his first female. “Women.”

“Pretty ones, too.”

“I’ll be gol-darned.”

Luke had never seen so many cowboy hats pushed higher off so many foreheads in so short a time. Mel stayed where she was near the back of the room, but the other two women slowly zigzagged toward the front.

“I do believe our prayers are being answered,” Karl Hanson said.

Luke wondered how long Karl could hold his breath and suck in his belly at the same time. The dark-haired woman in front cast a covert glance all around and favored them all with a smile. The second woman turned her head, the overhead bulbs creating golden-red highlights in her hair. Luke’s own stomach muscles tightened, but for an entirely different reason. His eyes narrowed, and a slow heat that had nothing to do with the sweltering temperatures shimmered through him.

He leaned back in his chair. And waited. For what, he wasn’t sure. Maybe for the beating rhythm of his heart to return to normal. Or maybe to see if Jillian Daniels felt the same spark of attraction he did.

With a wink that turned young Jason Tucker’s face three shades of red, the dark-haired woman said, “I’m Lisa Markman, and this is my friend, Jillian Daniels. We just moved into town this morning, and we were hoping you wouldn’t mind answering a few questions.”

“You can ask us anything, anything at all,” Karl declared.

All the men chuckled, all except Luke. Lisa was talking about the family clothing store she planned to open, but Luke hardly heard. He was too busy watching Jillian. She’d changed her clothes since this morning. Now the skirt she wore was one of those trendy wraparound numbers he’d seen on TV—hip-hugging, calf-skimming, a fantasy in the making. He wasn’t sure what it was made of, but the color was a deep, deep green. Her blouse was simple in design, sleeveless, scoop-necked and a rich shade of gold.

The other woman held up a stack of flyers and said, “I’ve done a lot of research since I saw your advertisement in the Madison papers, and I’ve listed some of the clothing I thought you might want me to stock. I’m going to start with the basics for now and expand as time goes on. I’ve rented the vacant store next door, and I’ve already talked to suppliers and wholesalers. If I pick up the merchandise myself, I should be in business in a week. That’s where all of you come in. If you’d fill out one of these questionnaires and spread the word to your friends and neighbors, I’d really appreciate it.”

Luke thought about the way Jillian had hesitated that morning when he’d asked if she had come about the ad. He’d been referring to his help wanted ad, but she’d obviously thought he’d meant the advertisement luring women to their corner of South Dakota.

She’d really only come in to tell him his lights were on. And yet she’d taken the job. Under the circumstances he wouldn’t have blamed her if she’d taken one look at his ramshackle office and hightailed it out of there. But damn, he was glad she hadn’t.

“What do you want us to do with the questionnaires when we’re through?” Boomer asked.

Lisa answered, “You can either hand them to me tonight or bring them to the store. Or, if you’d rather, you can drop them in the mail. Our post office box is number 113. I always thought thirteen was unlucky, but Jillian has assured me that the way the moon and planets are aligned right now, it’s very lucky, indeed.”

Luke watched as the women separated and began passing out flyers. He didn’t know much about the alignment of the moon and planets, but there must have been something to this luck thing, because today felt like his lucky day.

Jillian worked her way around the crooked rows of chairs, handing a flyer to each man she passed. Within minutes she reached the front of the room where she held out a sheet of paper to Doc Masey and smiled at his friendly greeting. Clayt was next. And then Wyatt.

The only man left was Luke.

He took a deep breath. And waited. With her next step he could hear the soft rustle of her skirt. A rousing dose of anticipation played along his spine. She glanced at the stack of flyers in her hand and then straight into his eyes.

There was an instant parting of her lips and a slight lift of her eyebrows. She hesitated for a moment, then smiled at him the way she had earlier. Now he understood the knowing glint in her eyes. Holding up an old newspaper containing the town’s advertisement for women, he asked, “Why didn’t you tell me you were here about this ad?”

Her lips curved upward the tiniest bit. In a voice barely loud enough to hear, she said, “I knew you’d figure it out. Do you still need me?”

“You have no idea how much.”

Jillian Daniels couldn’t feel her feet. That’s how far her head was in the clouds. For a moment she was afraid that the delicate thread that seemed to have formed between her gaze and Luke Carson’s was the only thing keeping her from floating completely away.

The man was more sure of himself and his masculine appeal than she would have liked, but she could see why. He was tall, even sitting down. He looked more like a cowboy than the town vet. His jeans and shirt were faded, his shoulders broad, his skin tan. His hair was dark brown and in need of a trim. She wasn’t sure if that was what gave him that roguish quality, or if it was the way he grasped the black hat resting on his knee.

There was something about him that seemed familiar. She’d noticed it that morning. Studying his face feature by feature, she couldn’t recall having ever met him. And yet the sense of familiarity remained.

She swallowed with difficulty, then somehow managed to turn around again, finally breaking eye contact. It took her to the count of ten to get her breathing under control. It took even longer to reel in her thoughts. Fanning herself with the leftover flyers, she tried to put her thoughts in order, but that wasn’t easy. Luke Carson was not an easy man to put out of her mind.

Lisa was talking on the other side of the room, and Jillian did her best to follow along. After all, helping Lisa get settled was what she was here to do.

“Does everyone have a questionnaire?” Lisa asked.

Several men held up their light blue sheets of paper. The rest all made agreeable sounds of one sort or another.

“Do you have any questions?” Lisa asked.

“I have one,” a man nearly hidden in the very back of the room called. “Why isn’t there any place on this form for my phone number?”

“Forget about your phone number, Karl,” the stocky man sitting next to him said. “I’d rather know their telephone numbers. You gals are single, aren’t you?”

Lisa’s laugh was deep and throaty. Jillian had a feeling that more than one of these men would hear it in his dreams tonight. Waggling one finger, Lisa said, “I was sure your ad said you Jasper Gents were shy.”

“Shy but willing,” someone called.

“Now, are you gonna answer our question?”

Jillian met Lisa’s gaze over the tops of more than a dozen cowboy hats. They shared a shrug and a mild shake of their heads before Lisa said, “Yes, it just so happens that Jillian and I are both as single as a long-stemmed rose. Now, we don’t want to keep you from your meeting, so we’ll be going. It was nice meeting all of you. Stop in at the store and see us real soon, ya hear?”

“Oh, we’ll be there.”

“You can count on it.”

“You got that right.”

“Yes sirree, Bob.”

Watching Jillian and Lisa leave, Luke couldn’t help noticing how well the two women communicated with just a look or a gesture. He wondered how long they’d been friends and had to fight the almost overwhelming desire to follow them out the door. Holding on to his composure, he tipped his chair back and hitched one boot over the opposite knee, calculating his next move.

“Cletus McCully, you old dog,” Karl declared. “You were right, absolutely right.”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

“Lisa and Jillian,” someone said reverently. “Those are fine names, don’tcha think?”

“I wouldn’t care if their names were Myrnella and Peerpont. They’re fine looking,” someone else declared.

“My mother’s new furniture is fine looking. Lisa and Jillian are gorgeous,” Jason insisted.

“And single.”

“Yeah, single.”

The front legs of Luke’s chair met the floor with a definite click.

“How old would you say they are?” Jason asked.

“Who cares?”

“Yeah, who cares.”

“Now about this welcome mat Cletus mentioned,” Doc Masey began.

“A town picnic is a great idea,” Karl said.

“With dancing?” Jason asked.

“Yep.”

“With real live women and everything?”

“Yep.”

“I second Cletus’s motion!” Jason exclaimed.

“I third it.”

“I fourth it.”

“Everyone in favor, say aye!” Jason shouted.

The room echoed with a chorus of ayes. Before Luke, who was supposed to be running the meeting, could ask for any nays, Cletus said, “It looks like we’re going to have us a town picnic.”

A cheer went around the room. Cletus stood up and said, “Wyatt? You, Clayt and Luke can work out the details, can’t you?”

“The details?” Wyatt croaked.

“Sure. I’ll bet the kind women of the Ladies Aid Society would help you with the food. Isn’t that right, Isabell? Meanwhile, we’ll all spread the word. Seems to me there won’t be much left for you three boys to do. Don’t dilly-dally with your plans. The sooner we have the picnic the better.”

“Now just a cotton-picking minute,” Clayt grumbled.

Before Luke and Wyatt could add to Clayt’s rebuke, someone who had no authority whatsoever moved to adjourn. Within seconds, men whose scowls had been miraculously replaced with wide grins nearly tripped over each other in their haste to be the first ones out the door. The next thing Luke knew, he, Wyatt and Clayt were alone in the sweltering room.

“It looks like we have a town picnic to plan,” Wyatt said.

“What’s worse, we have to ask Isabell Pruitt to help,” Clayt grumbled.

“I could strangle my grandfather,” Wyatt declared.

“I’d be glad to help,” Clayt sputtered. “But I don’t know how in the hell I’d fit it in.”

Luke didn’t think there was much he could add to that. After all, Clayt did have his hands full these days. It had only been a few weeks since his ex-wife had breezed into town just long enough to dump their nine-year-old daughter on his doorstep, saying that she’d had it with parenting. Haley might not have seemed like such a handful if Luke and Clayt’s mother hadn’t been called away to Oregon to care for her ailing mother, leaving her men to fend for themselves. The fact that the grass was burning up on the family spread only compounded Clayt’s worries.

It took Luke a while to notice that nobody was talking. He looked from Clayt to Wyatt with ‘What?’ written all over his face.

Wyatt was studying Luke through narrowed eyes. “I was just wondering why you’re not complaining louder than anybody about the fact that there are only two new women in town and sixty-two bachelors vying for their attention.”

“That’s right,” Clayt cut in. “Why aren’t you swearing up one side and down the other?”

Luke didn’t think there was much use in trying to deny anything. After all, Clayt and Wyatt both knew him like the backs of their own hands. When he was good and ready, he hitched his fingers through his belt loops and rocked back on his heels.

“I don’t particularly like the idea of competing with at least half the county for a woman’s affections, but it just so happens that I have a little advantage.”

“What advantage?” Clayt asked.

“It’s not a big deal, really.”

“Don’t make me drag it out of you,” Clayt threatened.

“Don’t make me help him,” Wyatt added.

Luke almost smiled.

“Well?” Clayt demanded.

Lowering his voice as if guarding a secret, Luke finally answered. “It just so happens that I know something the other bachelors don’t.”