His Tempting Bride (The Brides of Paradise Ranch - Spicy Version Book 5) (8 page)

“I…I just had a thought that I’ve never had before.”

Miriam chuckled. “With so many thoughts to think out there in the universe, it’s a wonder we don’t all think new thoughts every day.”

Now
that
was something to think about too. Cody wanted to slip his arm around her and tug her close. Heck, he wanted to stop the wagon and kiss her until they were both as warm as July. Instead, he shook his head and tapped the reins on the horse’s back to urge him to hurry on to The Village ahead of them.

“Ever have a thought that suddenly makes a whole lot of other things in your life make sense?” he asked, turning into the drive of The Village.

“I’m sure I have.” Miriam shrugged.

“Well, I just had one.”

“Oh?”

He waited until he had parked the wagon beside his house before answering. “Yeah. I don’t like it when things change from the way I thought they would be.”

Miriam blinked at him, the fading, winter sunlight making her look as pale as a porcelain doll. She grinned, her cheeks flushing. “I can’t think of anyone who
likes
it when things don’t turn out the way they expect.”

“No, but I
really
don’t like it.” She probably thought he was crazy for sounding so happy about it. “I think that’s why I turned on Wendy when I saw her at the train station, why I was so angry at—” He snapped his mouth shut before he could say anything he would regret.

It was too late for that.

“At me.” Miriam’s face fell. Without waiting for him, she slid to the end of the bench and helped herself down to the snow.

Cody let out a frustrated breath, hopped out of the wagon, and ran around to meet her in back. “That’s not what I mean.” He paused when she crossed her arms. “Okay, so that is what I meant. But not like that.”

She frowned at him for all of three seconds before her face and body softened into a doleful sigh. “It’s all right, Cody. I understand. I would have been angry too. Is this your house?”

His mouth hung open for a moment as he studied her. She wasn’t looking at him. She’d already turned to assess his house. “Yeah, it is,” he said at last. “Come on, I’ll show you inside.”

He tried to take her hand, but she edged out of the way. Maybe he shouldn’t have told her about his thoughts so suddenly. It was a good thing if he understood why he’d done the things he’d done, right? It meant that he could do better, could make things better for her.

Because if Madame Kopanari’s story had taught him anything, it was that he definitely wanted to marry Miriam after all.

“This is the front hall,” he said, ushering her through the door and shutting it tight behind him. “I wish it was warmer, but I don’t want to leave a fire burning when I’m not home. The house was just built. It’d be a shame to burn it down so soon.”

“Smart.” Miriam looked around, walking from the hall into the living room. “It’s very nice.”

Her compliment eased a bit of the tension from Cody’s shoulders. “All the houses in The Village have the same plan. Mine’s the same as Luke and Eden’s and Mason and Libby’s.”

Miriam’s only response was to hum and continue to look around. Her smile wasn’t as bright as he’d hoped it would be. Didn’t she like the house? It could be hers…if he could work up the nerve to propose again.

“The kitchen’s back through this way.”

He took her on a tour of the entire house. It was interesting, showing someone else the things you’d come to know and love. And he did love his house, silly as it seemed. He’d been living there since the summer by himself, and the space had grown on him. More than half of the rooms were empty still, but all that could change if Miriam changed her mind about him.

Funny how he hated change one day and prayed for it the next.

By the time they had looped through the entire house and made it back to the living room, Cody had found his courage.

“It’s a great house,” he said, stepping closer to Miriam.

“Yes, it is. You are all very fortunate to have a patron like Howard Haskell to build them for you.”

Was it his imagination or was she nervous? Well, he was nervous too. It was only natural to be nervous at a moment like this. He took her hands.

“You know, the whole reason Howard built this house for me was because I was supposed to bring a mail-order bride home to it.”

“Yes.” She looked away.

Cody tried not to take that as a bad sign. “And even though I goofed on it the first time, there is a woman who should have been the mistress of this house.”

She made a sound that didn’t form into words as she glanced around the room…looking for shadows.

Cody frowned, but pushed ahead. “It can still be yours if you want it. In fact, I can’t imagine any woman living here with me as…as my wife but you.”

“This was a bad idea.” Miriam slipped her hands out of his and zipped past him to the hall and the front door. “I shouldn’t have let you bring me here. I have to go. I…I have to…go.”

She threw open the front door and dashed out into the February cold.

Cody let out a heavy breath and cursed. Had he done that wrong? Said the wrong thing?

Or was it those shadows Madame Kopanari mentioned?

Nope, he’d definitely done things wrong. As usual, his problems were his own damn fault.

“Miriam, wait. Hold up.”

He jumped into motion, chasing after her. Shadows or no shadows, he had a long way to go before she would give him the answer he wanted to the question that hadn’t left his lips from the moment he’d spoken to her at the train station. But if she had shadows chasing her, would she ever stop running long enough to listen?

He didn’t understand. Miriam had known from the moment that Cody shared his epiphany about the way he reacted to change that he wouldn’t understand her. He hated change. For Miriam, change was essential. Constant change was the only thing that kept her from being mired down in the tragedy of a life that would never change, a fate she could never escape.

“Cheer up,
Chiquita
,” Juan said with a wink as he passed the spot where she sat in the school’s assembly hall, ostensibly sewing curtains. “The show is in less than a week.”

Less than a week? She puffed out a breath and tried to focus on her sewing. More than a week had flown by since that afternoon with Cody at his house. Where had the time gone? She’d attended teas and sewing circles hosted by her old friends from Hurst Home, worked on the coming show, and gotten to know Haskell, but it didn’t seem like that much time had passed.

“Ow!” A thump and Madame Kopanari’s cry turned both Miriam’s and Juan’s heads.

At the front of the room, Madame Kopanari hopped on one foot at the base of the half-constructed stage. Libby’s son, Petey, stood nearby, a horrified look on his face. He scooped to pick up a hammer.

“I’m sorry, Madame Kopanari. It was an accident, I swear. I didn’t mean for the hammer to fall on your foot.” Pete held out both hands in supplication, one of them brandishing the hammer.

Madame Kopanari lurched back, muttering something in sharp Romani. Petey quivered as though he’d just been cursed.

“I should see if she’s all right,” Miriam sighed. That was the very reason the last week had flown by without giving her a chance to get her bearings. The show had produced one emergency after another as the construction of the set was delayed, the costumes ran into snags, and some of the parents had second thoughts about letting their children participate when they learned “an ungodly gypsy” was telling fortunes at the Silver Dollar saloon in the evenings.

“No, Miles should be the one to soothe her.” Juan arched a brow.

Together, he and Miriam scanned the room. Cody was there with his brother Mason and another ranch hand from Paradise Ranch named Billy putting the final touches on the frame of the stage. Wendy and the maid Olga from The Cattleman Hotel sat on the other side of a worktable from Miriam, sewing costumes for the children and chattering away with Meizhen and Meiying. The twins were more interested in a set of maps of the Territory than they were in anything having to do with the show. And Miles? Miles was nowhere to be seen.

“It’s
his
company,” Miriam muttered, trying not to work herself into a fit. The fact was, she needed Miles to be involved. She needed him to be dedicated enough to sweep them on to their next destination once this show was done. Moving on from town to town was the only way she could feel…well, if not secure, then at least one step ahead of her past.

Juan shrugged and tucked his hands into his pockets. “I saw him with Mr. Gunn from the hotel earlier.”

“Mr. Gunn?” Miriam frowned. “What is he doing with Mr. Gunn?”

“Discussing the hotel business.”

Miriam’s brow flew up. “What is that supposed to mean?”

Hands still in his pockets, Juan leaned closer to her. “If you ask me, I think the Magnificent Miles Kopanari is tired of the gypsy life. If you ask me, I think he’s suddenly become interested in the life of a hotel concierge. If you ask me, I think he’s trying to learn a new trade from the man who is considered the finest hotel manager this side of the Mississippi.”

Fear pierced Miriam’s heart. “No, you must be wrong.” She dove back into her sewing, even though her hands shook. “Miles would never give up the life of the stage. How could he?”

“Madame is getting older.” Juan punctuated his comment by glancing over his shoulder to where Madame Kopanari had just sunk into a chair, her skirts flaring, giving her the appearance of a toad that had just settled on a lily pad. “Miles won’t want to drag her around forever, and you know she’s always wanted to return to her homeland. That would leave Miles free to pursue whatever profession he wanted.”

“But we all depend on Miles for employment,” Miriam continued to argue.

“At the moment, the twins are more interested in locating their lost brother.” Juan nodded to the excited twins at the other end of the table. “And to be honest, I’ve been talking to your handsome cowboy about a job at Paradise Ranch.”

For some reason, that more than anything struck terror into Miriam’s heart, but all she could say was, “Stop calling him ‘handsome cowboy.’ He doesn’t like it.”

Juan chuckled. “How would you know,
Chiquita
? Have the two of you been talking about it at your special evenings out?”

Miriam’s cheeks colored, and she snapped her eyes down to her work. “Cody and I were not having supper alone, you know. First, my friend Libby invited me to supper, and Cody happened to be there as well. Then Wendy and Travis had me over, and Cody was there too.”

Across from them, Wendy smiled, seemingly for no reason at all, but obviously she was paying attention to the conversation.

“And then the day before yesterday was the day Howard Haskell invited all of us to supper at Paradise Ranch,” Miriam went on.

“At which time you and Cody sat beside each other the whole evening.” Juan winked.

“I’m not responsible for where Cody Montrose sits,” she fired back.

Her anger was a mask, though. It hid the growing coil of panic in her gut. If Miles stayed and worked for Mr. Gunn, if Juan left to become a rancher, if Madame Kopanari returned to Europe, and the twins left to find their brother, there would be no troupe, no job. Miriam would be stuck, stuck in a town where people knew her and where Cody wanted her. She’d be stuck with nowhere to run from her shadows.

“Cheer up,
Chiquita
,” Juan said again and moved on toward the stage. “You could always finish what you started and become Mrs. Montrose.”

He winked one last time and joined Cody at the edge of the stage, thumping him on the shoulder. Cody glanced quickly past Juan to Miriam, as if he knew full well they’d been talking about him. Miriam’s face burned with frustration and…and need. She clenched her jaw and poked her needle into the curtain she was sewing with such ferocity that she jabbed her finger on the other side.

She yelped and snatched her hand back, shaking it out and sucking on her finger. It didn’t help. Her heart was still on fire, and her feet still itched to run.

Whatever he’d done wrong the day he gave Miriam a tour of his house, whatever he’d continued to do wrong all the times he’d tried to talk to her in the past week, Cody was determined to keep trying to woo Miriam until he got it right. Heck, that’s why he’d spent every spare second of his time helping out with the show for the past week. He just wished Miriam had noticed his dedication. Maybe she did, but maybe he needed to make the point that he was ready to settle down and make promises to her a little more obviously.

That was why he ended up at the door of Miriam’s hotel room at supper time in his best suit, a bouquet of hothouse flowers from Gunn’s private stash in his hand. He cleared his throat, knocked, then danced back on his feet to wait.

Footsteps sounded on the other side of the door, and with them girlish chatter. Uh-oh. Was Miriam not alone?

The door flew open, and the twin, giddy faces of Meizhen and Meiying met him.

“Handsome cowboy!” they greeted him in unison.

Cody swallowed hard, swaying back. “Uh, did I get the wrong room?”

“No, no.” The twins grabbed one of his arms each and yanked him through the doorway. Cody nearly lost the bouquet in the process.

Across the room, sitting in a blue brocade dressing gown with her hair down and her cheeks bright pink, Miriam gaped at him. As she leapt to her feet, the front of her robe sagged enough to give him a teasing glimpse of rosy, rounded flesh.

“Cody?” She pressed a hand to her heart, then must have realized her state of undress. She tugged her robe closed and retied the sash.

“Handsome cowboy come,” one of the twins exclaimed with glee.

“Handsome cowboy come,” the other repeated in a lower, more scintillating tone.

Cody swallowed again, sweat breaking out down his back like it did whenever he walked into Bonnie’s place. “I, um, brought you these.” He held up the bouquet, his voice as strained as the fabric of his trousers.

Miriam attempted to smile. She hesitated, then skittered forward to take the gift. “Thank you.” She hid her face by breathing in the flowers’ fragrance. “They’re lovely.”

Cody grinned, glanced awkwardly at the twins—who huddled together at the side of the scene—then cleared his throat. “You probably have fellows bringing you flowers at the stage door after every performance.”

“No,” one of the twins blurted.

“Only handsome cowboy,” the other added. They both giggled.

Miriam sent them a frustrated look.

“Supper,” the first twin exclaimed as though someone had just invented the concept.

“Yes, yes, time for supper,” the other agreed with as much enthusiasm.

“Long time for supper.”

“Yes, long, long time.”

The twins linked arms and rushed for the door.

“We not come back for very long time,” one of them said.

“Veerrry long time,” the other agreed.

They burst out in one final giggle, then zipped out to the hall, shutting the door behind them. The room seemed strangely void without them.

Cody shifted his weight, rubbed the back of his neck, and dragged his eyes to meet Miriam’s. She slowly lifted hers from the bouquet, which was now held like a shield in front of her.

“They sure are—”

“I’m sorry about—”

They both stopped, and a moment later, broke into chuckles. Miriam loosened up considerably.

“Let me just find something to put these in.” She turned and searched the room, zeroing in on a pitcher set beside a bowl on a table in the corner.

As she crossed the room to take care of the flowers, Cody took a breath to steady himself. He’d intended to invite Miriam down to the hotel’s restaurant—an area with plenty of other people around—for supper, not to sneak around with her behind closed doors. But truth be told, the things he wanted to say to her were far better said in private than in public.

“Miriam, look, I’m sorry that things have been so…I dunno, strange between us this last week,” he blurted. “And just when I thought everything was going so well.”

Miriam practically dropped the flowers in the pitcher and spun to face him. “Things are going well, aren’t they? Everything is well as far as I can see. I mean fine. Everything is fine.” The way the words rushed out, as if someone had taken a sledgehammer to a dam, disproved every word she spoke. She leaned backwards against the small table, gripping the corners as if her life depended on it.

Of course, that particular pose formed her body into a perfect, sinuous line. Her hips stood out as the fabric of the dressing gown pulled around her—pulled around her and slipped open at her chest again. Her breasts really were a large, round, perfect handful.

It took a colossal effort of will for Cody to drag his eyeballs up where they belonged—to her eyes. “The thing is, I know you’re worried about where you’re going to go after this and how you’re going to support yourself and what the future holds,” he rushed on before he could chicken out. “But you know I have a fool-proof idea to make all that go away.”

“I do? I-I mean, you do?” She blinked and straightened.

Cody couldn’t decide if he liked her new posture or not. “Yeah. Like I said the other day, we should go right back to where we were before all this mess happened. I say we forget the last four months and just pretend that you’re here to be the mail-order bride I sent away for. I say we get married.”

Silence.

Miriam stared at him, her eyes large and round. And beautiful. Cody couldn’t forget that. Her eyes were vibrant blue, and with her hair falling in luscious waves around her, she looked every bit the angel. Or maybe the siren.

“Cody, I don’t know…” Her chin tilted down, and her eyelids fluttered low. Make that a sad siren.

“What is it, sweetheart?” He took three big steps across the room to her. He reached out for her, and without realizing he was doing it, slipped his hands around her side and brought her close to him. “Am I so bad now that you’ve gotten to know me a little that you still want to run away?”

“No,” she answered so fast her words could have given him whiplash. Instantly, her sharp edges smoothed. “No, Cody.” She rested a hand on the front of his jacket. “You’re not so bad at all. In fact, I kind of like you.”

She peeked up at him through long lashes, her cheeks flushing with just the right amount of coy charm. Bolts of electricity fired through Cody’s blood, igniting instincts as old as man. He tightened his hold around her waist.

“If you like me, this should be easy.” He grinned. If she let him, he’d never get tired of flirting with her. “Say you’ll be mine?”

She swayed toward him, then away. Tension rippled through her, but she placed her other hand on his chest beside the first. Her whole face pinched, and her fingers played with the top button of his jacket. If she found a way to be any more contradictory, he might just explode.