His Tempting Bride (The Brides of Paradise Ranch - Spicy Version Book 5) (11 page)

“It won’t get any—”

The objection died on Miriam’s lips as they stepped out into a world that had turned pure white. Snow now fell in heavy sheets, obscuring their vision. Cody was right. She’d come to know Haskell a bit in the last two weeks, but she didn’t entirely trust herself to walk halfway across town to the livery when she could barely see as far as the next building.

The news when they got to the livery wasn’t any better.

“I was hoping you’d come along,” Travis said, stepping away from the stall where he was busy feeding the livery’s horses and preparing them for even worse weather. He came to stand in front of Cody and Miriam as they inched toward the stable’s stone hearth to warm up. “I’ve been meaning to send someone to ask you, but as you can see, with Freddy suffering from that cold, there’s just me to handle things at the moment.”

“Ask us what?” Cody rounded on his brother.

“If those Chinese twins made it back to the hotel okay.”

Miriam’s heart thundered with panic. “They never went back to the hotel. At least, I don’t think so.”

Travis’s expression flashed to concern. “I told them not to take that wagon far, told them the weather wasn’t going to hold out.”

“What wagon?” Cody asked.

Travis let out a breath and a desperate curse with it. “They kept going on about someone named Lou. I figured they were talking about Lou Adler down by Bent Creek. I know Lou makes shoes and boots sometimes, and I thought maybe they bought some from him.”

“Liu.” Miriam almost shouted the name as too many details came together in her mind. She whipped to face Cody. “You mentioned a man named Liu at lunch. He could be their brother.”

“They’ve gone looking for their brother out at Jasper Katz’s place.” Cody picked up exactly where her thoughts had gone.

So did Travis. His eyes flew wide with alarm. “They’ll die out there without shelter in weather like this.”

The truth of it was so harsh that Cody didn’t bother to contradict his brother, not even to ease the fear that froze Miriam to her place. Instead he said, “We have to go after them.”

“Not alone, you don’t.” Travis launched into action, whirling back to open one of the stalls. “They took one of the wagons, so they can’t have gotten far, even if they have been out for a few hours.”

“We can catch up with them if we’re on horseback,” Cody agreed, launching into action to retrieve his own horse from one of the stalls.

“Assuming we know where they’ve gone.”

“We do,” Cody told him. “They had a map. They’ll head for Katz’s ranch.”

“Then we might be able to find them before it’s too late.” Travis nodded.

“I’ll start out and see if I can reach them,” Cody went on, beginning to saddle his mount. “You see if you can find a few more men willing to go out and look too. There’s no telling if they’ve veered off course in this weather.”

“Right.” Travis nodded once, then the two brothers continued to work in silence.

Travis finished with his horse first and set out to find help. Cody was done and saddled a moment later.

“I’m coming with you,” Miriam told him, standing in the doorway before he could leave.

“It’s dangerous out there, Miriam. We don’t know what we’ll find, if anything. The blizzard could get worse.”

“Then you need someone else with you to keep you warm,” she insisted.

As dire as the situation was, Cody grinned. “I’m not going to be able to talk you into staying put, am I?”

“No.”

He nodded, reaching down for her. “All right. Come on.”

Cody wished that it had never started snowing. He wished that he had never said a word about Liu Chen working over on Katz’s ranch. He wished the Bonneville sisters had never barged into The Cattleman Hotel’s restaurant and interrupted his all-important conversation with Miriam. Most of all, he wished that Miriam had never gotten involved with the theater. Although he liked Juan Bertran and was glad to know Miles Kopanari.

But there was one thing Cody had no regrets about, and that was taking Miriam with him in the search for Meizhen and Meiying.

Even if she slowed him down.

“Wait, wait, we have to stop at the hotel,” she called out before he could nudge his mount to run.

“There might not be time,” he insisted.

“My…my shoes.”

“What?”

“I have thicker boots in my room. I…I don’t think I’ll last long in these shoes.”

Suppressing a sigh, Cody turned his horse to head up Main Street and over to the hotel. Why women were always so damn concerned with their shoes was beyond him. Why Miriam had gone out in inappropriate footwear in the first place was another mystery. But she was right about the need for thick, warm boots if they were going to ride out into a blizzard.

And as luck would have it, the hotel was a wise stop.

“What’s going on here? You look as though you’re preparing for a steeplechase instead of a theatrical extravaganza.” Howard Haskell himself greeted Cody in the lobby.

Miriam nodded to him, picked up her skirts and rushed up the hotel’s grand staircase. Cody removed his hat to bat off the snow and squared his shoulders.

“The twins have gone missing,” he told Howard.

Howard blinked, brow furrowing. “Which twins?”

“The Chinese twins, Meizhen and Meiying, that are part of the show.”

“But they can’t be missing,” Howard boomed. “The show goes on in two hours.”

“Yeah, I’m not so sure about that.” Cody winced and ran a hand through his matted hair. It was already a little damp from running down to the livery. He would be frozen through in no time if he didn’t handle this search carefully. “The Bonnevilles have already backed out, and several other people from town are more interested in hunkering down to ride out the weather than seeing or being in a grand entertainment tonight.”

“Where is their sense of adventure?” Howard bristled, disappointed. He immediately shook his head to ward off those thoughts. “More importantly, are they not helping the search? These poor twins could be anywhere.”

Cody shook his head. “I believe they’ve headed out to the Katz ranch to see if Liu Chen is their brother.”

“Liu Chen must be fifty if he’s a day. He can’t be their brother.”

“They didn’t wait long enough for me to tell them that.”

The smack of the hotel’s front door being blown shut grabbed both Cody and Howard’s attention. Cody’s gut flopped like it always did as Wendy rushed into the lobby. She held a bundle in her arms, and as soon as she saw Cody, she rushed to him.

“I just saw Travis. He told me what’s happened. I want you to take this.” She thrust the bundle into Cody’s arms.

It was something made of thick wool and fur. “Wendy, I don’t—”

“Those poor girls don’t have the right kind of clothes for a blizzard,” Wendy cut him off. “Travis says you think you know where they are and that you’ll be able to catch up to them before anyone else can form a posse to hunt for them.”

“A posse.” Howard brightened. “Good idea. I’ll gather the best and strongest men to form a search party right now.” He marched off, but swerved and changed directions when Gunn walked out of one of the back halls. “Gunn, we have to form a search party.”

Cody left the two of them to figure things out and turned back to Wendy.

“They might be freezing,” she said before he could add anything or thank her. “They’re probably scared and alone. I don’t know if they’ve ever experienced weather like this.”

Several thoughts flashed through Cody’s head as his sister-in-law glanced up at him with worried eyes, wringing her hands. This was Wendy’s first Wyoming winter. There was a fair chance that she was as frightened as she supposed the twins were. And yet, here she was, giving him what were probably expensive cloaks or blankets for the lost women. That thought snapped hard to thoughts of everything Miriam had started to tell him earlier.

Miriam and Wendy knew each other from Hurst Home. Hurst Home was a place for women who had been badly treated. The connections formed in Cody’s mind so fast his head spun. Wendy—his brother’s smart, generous wife—had a story behind her as painful as Miriam’s…and he’d only added to that pain by rejecting her for the color of her skin all those months ago. If anyone had done the same to Miriam, he would have given them a black eye.

“I’m sorry,” he blurted out, hands fisting in the garments she’d given him.

Wendy’s anxiety resolved into a puzzled start. “What for?”

Prickling embarrassment washed through him. “For what I did to you all those months ago. For rejecting you.”

Wendy laughed nervously. She rested her hand on his arm. “Cody, you’ve apologized before. Several times before. And we’ve all agreed that things worked out for the best. Travis and I are very much in love, and we’re going to have a family soon.” She rested a hand on her stomach.

“I know,” Cody rushed on, “but these last few weeks… Miriam was at Hurst Home too... She’s real special… I should have…” His words tumbled out on top of each other, none of them making sense.

“It’s okay.” Wendy squeezed his arm. “Yes, I know Miriam has experienced difficult times. But she has you now.”

Cody swallowed to keep his throat from closing up. “I don’t know what to do for her. She started telling me about her past, but we were interrupted. I could kill that…” He clenched his jaw, shoving those useless thoughts aside to make way for thoughts that might actually do some good. “What do I do, Wendy? How can I make her see that I don’t care about any of that, I just want her to stay here and marry me?”

A warm, wistful smile spread across Wendy’s face. “By telling her just that. That’s all she needs to hear.”

“Is it? Because as far as I can tell, she’s ready to run.”

Wendy shook her head. “She won’t run. Not if you’re holding her. If there’s one thing I learned about Miriam Long in the time we spent living under the same roof, it’s that more than anything, she wants someone to hold her close and accept her for who she is.”

Cody wrinkled his brow. “Are you sure? Because she ran away once, and if she didn’t care so much about her friends, I think she would have run away again.”

“But she didn’t,” Wendy assured him. “And once she sees that the past is behind her and the best thing she could run to is you, she’ll stay.”

Cody wasn’t completely convinced, but when Miriam appeared at the top of the stairs and stomped her way down in boots that were surprisingly well-suited to a blizzard, an extra scarf or two and the tail end of a shawl poking out from under her coat, the thumping of his heart drowned out any further questions his head might have had.

“I’m ready,” she said, already breathless as she skittered to a stop in front of Cody and Wendy. “Let’s hurry. We have to find them before the storm gets any worse.” Without more than a second’s pause, she blinked at the bundle in Cody’s arms. “What’s that?”

“Warm cloaks for the twins, when you find them,” Wendy said. “Now hurry. You’re right, you do have to find them before it gets worse.”

Miriam nodded, and then, to Cody’s complete surprise, she leapt toward Wendy and gave the woman a tight hug. “I’m so glad you’re here,” Miriam blurted before pushing away, gesturing to Cody, and running for the door.

As it turned out, the cloaks had a more immediate use than Wendy had probably intended. As Cody looked for a way to stuff them into the saddlebags slung over his horse’s back, he realized that they would be just as useful preventing his horse from freezing as they would for the twins. But the time he and Miriam were mounted once more, the horse looked like it was draped in some sort of woolen, medieval heraldry.

Unfortunately, by that point the wind had also picked up. Somewhere behind the thick snow-clouds, the sun was still up, but only its light was pushing through the storm. Cody tried to stay focused on the positive as he guided his mount along the snow-packed road leading out of town toward the ranches. At least he could still see where the road was. The wind was whipping, but the snow wasn’t so thick that he couldn’t see. Off in the distance, the flickering lights of The Village peeked through the snow. That meant that by the time they neared Paradise Ranch and continued on to other ranches further out—including Katz’s ranch—they would still have lights to guide them.

And Miriam was safely tucked against his chest, huddled over his horse’s neck, gripping the pommel of the saddle.

“They can’t have gone far.” Cody had to shout to be heard over the wind as his horse plodded valiantly onward. “Not in this weather.”

“Unless they had a huge head start,” Miriam called back.

“Yeah, there’s that,” Cody murmured, knowing she couldn't hear him.

“How long does it usually take to get to this ranch?” Miriam shouted as a gust caused the horse to shiver.

“Three or five hours, depending,” Cody answered. He didn’t like it. The more he thought about this crazy scheme, the more he felt as though the twins weren’t the only ones in serious danger.

“Are there places to stop along the way?” Miriam seemed to be thinking the same thing he was. That filled him with courage, strangely enough.

“Plenty.” He gave her waist a reassuring squeeze.

“Then hopefully they’re smart enough to have taken shelter as soon as the weather took a turn.”

And hopefully they’d be smart enough to do the same if it came to it.

The problem was that the wind and the snow couldn’t seem to make up their mind enough to allow Cody to make up his mind. One minute everything went white and the wind howled around them. Cody was convinced they needed to pull off the main road and find somewhere, anywhere, to stop. Ten minutes later, the snow would lighten and the wind would slacken long enough for him to be convinced they had a chance of making it all the way out to Katz’s place. That confidence would be replaced in turn with a deep, anxious fear as soon as the snow and wind picked up again.

They must have been out on the road for more than an hour without seeing a single trace of another living soul when Miriam called out, “Cody, we have to stop. I…I can’t feel my feet anymore.”

That was all he needed to hear. Immediately, he was on the alert, looking for shelter of any kind, but he kept the mood as light as he could by saying, “Even in those boots?”

Judging by the shake of her body, she must have laughed, but the wind carried the sound away. If he could have stopped his horse right where they were and dug a hole in the ground to keep Miriam safe, he would have, but there had to be something better. He pushed forward, eyes searching the bleak, white landscape, praying for anything that could shelter them.

“Do…do you know where we are?” Miriam asked several long minutes later.

“Yep,” he called back, beating the wind. Well, he knew they were on the road to Jasper Katz’s place. He wasn’t going to worry her by telling her he couldn’t be more specific.

About fifteen minutes later, Miriam cried out, “I’m cold,” in a voice so desperate and pitiful that it gored a hole in Cody’s gut. Forget searching for the twins and making sure they were safe, he needed to protect and care for Miriam right now.

“It’s all right, sweetheart. There’s plenty of waystations left over from all those old trails and from cattle drives around these parts. We’re sure to find something soon.” He wasn’t a hundred percent sure if he was lying to her or not. All he could do was hold her as tight as he could and still lead his horse—who was slowing down and showing signs of distress too—and pray he was right.

The bleak, painful thought that Cody had done some stupid things in his life, but this might beat all of them, sank into his bones. He’d been a little bit reckless and more than a little irresponsible for as long as he could remember, but that didn’t seem like such a fun, manly, independent thing to be anymore. In fact, if God would just see him through this, he reckoned it was well past time he put away childish things and acted like the strong, responsible man his brothers had become. For Miriam’s sake.

Ten minutes later, as if by some miracle, a small, square shack appeared through the snow, right off the road. Cody laughed in relief, his whole body relaxing. Even his horse was happy to see the sight. It bobbed its head and picked up its pace to race toward the shack.

“What do we do about the horse?” Miriam asked as they reached the shack and Cody dismounted.

He scooped her in his arms as soon as his feet were steady in the snow and pulled her down with him. “He comes with us. Wouldn’t last five minutes just standing out here.”

“Oh!”

Surprised or not, Miriam accepted the necessity of bringing the horse into the shelter with them. Cody was just glad that the shack was slightly bigger than he’d thought at first approach—more like a cabin than a roadside waystation—and that it was unlocked and unoccupied. The horse didn’t need much coaxing to duck through the doorway and walk into the single, barren room. The space was big enough that the mount could stand in the far corner, out of the way and unobtrusive. Cody only wished that the fireplace was lit, but at least there was plenty of wood and kindling to get one going. In fact, the cabin seemed well-taken care of and ready for exactly what they needed it for.