His Tempting Bride (The Brides of Paradise Ranch - Spicy Version Book 5) (6 page)

“Hear say he move east with railroad,” Meizhen added.

“We look for him.”

Miriam clasped her hands to her chest. “What a beautiful, sad story. And how frightening to arrive in a foreign land, barely speaking the language, alone, friendless.”

The twins looked at each other and laughed.

“We speak English,” Meizhen said.

“We have uncle in San Francisco,” Meiying added.

They both shrugged, and Meizhen said, “Big adventure.”

“Much fun,” Meiying seconded.

They grinned and giggled over their predicament to the point where Miriam felt as though she was even more of a coward than before. Here her friends had gone through a much more frightening trial than she had, and yet they were able to face whatever life threw at them without getting cold feet. If Cody had sent for one of them, they would be married with babies on the way by now.

“Handsome cowboy is right,” she sighed, slumping, then flopping to her back.

“Why handsome cowboy right?” Meiying asked.

“You marry handsome cowboy?” Meizhen followed with a wink.

“I don’t know.” Miriam sighed, throwing an arm over her eyes in a dramatic post. “I simply don’t know.”

But if the show was going to go on in Haskell—and it was—she would find out.

The beautiful thing about ranch work, Cody thought as he rode into town the next day, was that there wasn’t as much of it in the winter. At least, there wasn’t enough of it to keep him tied down to Paradise Ranch all day. He was more than happy to leave the last bit of inspecting the part of the herd that hadn’t been taken to market back in the fall to the others. He had more important things to do, more
charitable
things to do. The Kopanari Company had been given the go-ahead to put on a show, so of course they would need help building their stage and stuff.

“They’re doing all the work over at the school,” Gunn informed him when he strode into The Cattleman Hotel looking to help. That’s all he was doing, helping. Spending time with individual members of the troupe had nothing to do with it.

“Right. The school.” Cody swayed back from the desk, craning his neck to look into the restaurant, then the other way up the grand staircase.

“The
entire
troupe is at the school,” Gunn clarified, his face so expressionless that Cody knew the man was laughing at him. “Except for Madame Kopanari, who is resting this afternoon. Would you like me to send a maid up to her room to inform her she has a visitor?”

Cody sent Gunn a flat stare. “No, sir. I’ll go to the school.” He rapped on the front desk, then turned to stride out.

“Tell Miss Long that Olga has said she would be pleased to mend her costumes,” Gunn called after him.

Cody raised a hand to acknowledge he’d heard, but didn’t turn back to face the man. Why was it that everyone in town seemed to think he was sweet on Miriam, or that he
should
be, for that matter? Sure, she was supposed to be his mail-order bride, but she’d wiggled out of that. Why, if anything, his friends and family should be expecting him to get into some kind of confrontation with her. They shouldn’t be grinning like they knew something every time he mentioned her name…or got caught daydreaming…or messed up ordinary tasks.

Haskell’s school was as impressive as any of the other buildings Howard had built as part of his vision for the town. There would be no pokey, one-room schoolhouses as long as Howard had anything to say about it. No, the school was as grand as the town hall, with two stories, large classrooms, and extra halls for dining and assemblies. There were only a hundred or so kids in the entire town, but Howard called that inconsequential. Right now they lumped two grades together in each room and employed only five teachers—which Cody thought was an exorbitant number—but in short time, Howard was convinced there would be hundreds more children filling the halls and desks.

Heck, if folks kept getting married and having babies at the rate they were, Howard would be right. But for now, as Cody walked through the high-ceilinged, white-painted halls of the school, he felt a little like he was in a ghost town. Classes were over for the day, but he could hear children singing behind one of the closed doors. It was the hammering and sawing from the direction of the assembly hall that made him pick up his pace, though.

“
Buenas tardes
, Cody,” Juan greeted him as soon as he passed through the double-doors and into the vast hall. Juan was bent over something long and rectangular that he had been hammering, but he straightened and stepped away from his work to shake Cody’s hand.

“Hey, Juan.” He took Juan’s hand and thumped him on the back. Cody liked the romantic Spaniard. They’d been out to the Silver Dollar twice in less than forty-eight hours. Juan was all right. “What are you up to here?”

“Constructing a stage.” Juan pivoted and pointed to the far end of the room. “It will go right over there.”

Cody looked where Juan pointed, nodding and humming, but his attention drifted fast. He searched the room. Miles was hammering away at another rectangle like Juan had been building. The back of Cody’s mind registered that the two pieces might eventually fit together to form some sort of platform or dais. Aiden Murphy, Athos Strong, and Jarvis Flint—the foreman on Virginia Piedmont’s half of Paradise Ranch—were busy constructing something more vertical than Juan and Miles’s platform. The Chinese twins sat with Wendy and Corva Haskell in one corner of the room, poring over fabrics and chattering away like a flock of sparrows.

Miriam wasn’t there.

Cody frowned, all the anticipation that had been popping inside him flattening.

“You’ve come to help, no?” Juan asked him.

That’s right, he had. “Yeah.” Cody forced a smile and attempted to push thoughts of Miriam out of his mind. “What do you need me to do?”

“Once we get the frame constructed,” Miles answered, stretching his back as he gestured to his work, “we’ll need to fit the joists in place. We’re starting with the simplest design possible, but I’m designing it so that the whole thing could be expanded on later.”

Cody’s eyebrows shot up at the explanation. He wouldn’t have thought Miles was capable of swatting a fly, much less construction. The man was too refined, too willowy and well-dressed for manual labor. But with his shirtsleeves rolled up and a hammer in his hand, Cody was confident he knew what he was doing.

“Show me where I can start,” he said.

Miles gave him a quick tour of the tools and materials they had at their disposal. He was a capable leader too, and in no time, Cody, Juan, and Miles were busy fitting the frame of the stage together.

They’d been working for fifteen minutes before Miles asked, “You didn’t come here to help, you came here looking for Miriam, didn’t you?”

“No, I came to help,” Cody insisted, a little too fast. When Miles and Juan both chuckled, Cody admitted, “All right, I was looking for Miriam too.”

“She’s auditioning children.” Juan nodded toward the open door leading to the hallway. The sound of children singing was faint, but still there.

“Miriam’s been telling me we should add children to the show since she first joined us back in November.” Miles continued to work as he spoke. “But this is no life for a child.”

Something about the way Miles’s expression clouded prompted Cody to ask, “And you would know?”

Miles laughed mirthlessly. “I’m half Romani. I spent the better part of the first ten years of my life traveling from town to town throughout Europe, performing and begging for my next meal.”

“You ever pick anyone’s pocket?” Cody grinned and finished hammering a nail into the corner joint of the stage.

“Of course.” Miles shrugged. “And unlike some of my childhood peers, I never got caught.”

Cody laughed and straightened. “How’d you end up in America, leading a troupe of performers?”

“I ended up in America because my father was American.” Miles crossed to the pile of lumber against one wall, Cody following him. “He died when I was very young, but my mother was convinced his family would take me in, so we came here. They wanted nothing to do with a dubious gypsy boy, of course. After that, I had to support my mother. She’s always dreamed of returning home to her family, so it’s been up to me to try to earn that money. With no education and nothing to show for myself but the ability to play five instruments and sing, the theater was my best option.”

Cody nodded, considering. “I’d probably have done the same thing.”

They selected several long pieces of lumber and carried them back to the stage.

“When the West opened, the company I was working with made a tour of California. I saw there was opportunity to be had, so Mother and I left and formed our own company. We decided to set ourselves apart by seeking out foreign performers, like Juan here and the twins.” He nodded across the room. The Chinese twins noticed him and smiled back.

“So then, how did Miriam end up with you lot?” Cody asked, hoping that if he kept his eyes on his work, he wouldn’t sound like an overeager schoolboy.

Miles paused before answering. “She’s very beautiful, your Miriam.”

“She’s not
my
Miriam,” Cody insisted.

Across the stage frame, Juan snorted a laugh.

“She’s not,” Cody repeated.

Miles shrugged and shook his head, and focused on setting the joists where they should be.

“The company had been performing in California for two years. We never did more than squeak by financially. Certainly not enough for passage back East and then across the ocean to Europe and Mother’s homeland. About six months ago, half of my performers decided to band together with a larger troupe that promised them more money. I put an advertisement in the newspaper, looking for foreign acts who would be willing to travel.”

“And Miriam answered that?” Cody blinked up at Miles in confusion. “But she’s not foreign.”

“She pretended to be Swedish,” Miles told him, chuckling as though over a fond memory. “Of course, I saw right through her. I’ve been to Sweden, and whatever accent it was she was mimicking, it wasn’t Swedish.”

“But you hired her anyhow?”

Miles frowned, straightening. “She begged me to hire her. Told me that she was desperate. She…she said that she’d had a terrible misfortune in her past. She said she’d worked on the stage back East, but that her manager had made her do…things she didn’t want to do.”

Cody’s blood reached a boil so fast that his hands clenched around the joist he was fitting into place as if strangling that former manager. Mrs. Breashears from Hurst Home had mentioned something along those lines. How could that have slipped his mind?

“Miriam also told me that she was at the end of her rope, that she’d just been offered an opportunity to escape the sadness of her past, and she’d ruined it.”

Cody glanced up, meeting Miles’s eyes, hoping the man was saying what he thought he was saying.

“She was full of regret.” The light of intelligence in Miles’s expression proved everything Cody wanted it to prove. “I hired her out of the feeling that she needed the comfort of friends to get back on her feet. She was eager to travel, so much so that I began consulting her on where we should go next.” He hesitated, a knowing grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. “It was her idea to stop here in Haskell.”

“I know,” Cody mumbled. He took a breath, squeezed his hand around his hammer, then went back to work. Everything he thought he knew about Miriam and her reasons for doing the things she did was suddenly in question. All sorts of pieces shifted into place. Miriam had pretended to be someone else to get a job, just like Eden Chance had pretended to be someone else to marry Luke. Both of them had dangerous men in their pasts. All the women from Hurst Home did, one way or another. All those women had reasons to run. Miriam had reasons to run. He suddenly didn’t feel half as irritated that she’d skipped out on him as he had.

Cody continued to mull over the problem, working to fit this new, more painful picture of who Miriam was and what she had gone through into the story he’d already told himself about her. He followed Miles’s directions for the stage without paying much attention. It wasn’t until the faint singing from the children stopped and turned into a waterfall of chatter that he looked up from what he was building.

Somewhere down the hall, a door opened, and the children spilled into the hallway. Seconds later, they arrived
en masse
in the assembly hall, with Miriam smiling and laughing in the middle of the group. Cody’s heart seized in his chest, sending warm prickles all along his skin.

“We’re ready to show you what we can do, Mr. Kopanari,” Miriam announced. The children bounced and giggled around her.

“Very well, Miss Long. Let’s see.” Miles put down his hammer, unrolled his sleeves and brushed his hands across his vest to straighten it, then marched to meet Miriam and the children at the other side of the room.

A stab of jealousy struck Cody right in the sternum. Miles had come to Miriam’s rescue. What if that meant he was interested in her as more than just an employee? Worse still, what if Miriam was grateful to have been rescued?

He put down his hammer and marched over to where Miriam was organizing the children into rows. There was no way he was going to lose a woman as beautiful as Miriam to a skinny dandy like Miles Kopanari. Jaw set, he stood tall right next to Miles, proving he was the taller, bigger man.

Miles glanced sideways at him, chuckled, and said, “Don’t worry, she’s all yours.”

Being called out like that took some of the wind out of Cody’s sails, but not so much that he didn’t grin like a fool when Miriam turned to acknowledge him with a smile. “These are the younger children,” she explained. “They want to perform a song together. Some of the older children want to either sing or play an instrument or perform a dance in smaller groups.”

“Hi, Papa,” a set of twin boys who looked to be about eight waved at Athos Strong. Two younger girls in the group waved as well.

“Hello, boys.” Athos waved back, blowing kisses to the girls. “Hello, Millicent and Geneva.” He stepped away from the work he was doing with Aiden and Jarvis and came to watch.

“Four children in school?” Miles asked with a good-natured smile.

Athos barked a laugh. “That’s only half of them.”

Miles’s grin widened. “You have eight children?”

“Yep.” Athos nodded with pride.

Miles looked him up and down. “But you don’t look much older than thirty.”