High Country Bride by Linda Lael Miller Page A

way he always did after a long ride. Jeb was there, repairing one of the wagon wheels by the light of a kerosene lantern, and he barely looked up.
    “Where the devil have you been?” he asked.
    “Where is she?” Rafe asked.
    Jeb kept working. “I guess you mean Emmeline,” he said.“Your wife.”
    Emmeline. So that was her name. It had a nice, womanly sound, and he liked it. “Long as you have that straight,” he said.“That she’s mine, I mean.”
    “She’s a woman, Rafe, not a horse blanket or a pair of boots,” Jeb remarked tightly.
    “I didn’t know you were such a modern thinker,” Jeb said. He fetched grain and hay and came to stand facing his brother, his arms folded. “Next thing, you’ll be out stumping for Women’s Suffrage.”
    “Could be,” Jeb said. He wasn’t smiling.
    Rafe didn’t speak again. He just went back into the stall, picked the small stones and mud from Chief’s hooves, then headed for the house, carrying the parcel from town in one arm. His pa was waiting in the backyard when he got there.
    “I ought to take a horsewhip to you,” Angus growled, mean as an arthritic bear waking up in a den full of slush. “Leaving your own bride stranded in town! Why, if your brother hadn’t been there—”
    All the fight had gone out of Rafe, thanks in large part to Jake Fink, who packed a hell of a punch, for a dirt farmer. He sighed and moved around his father, mounting the steps and walking into the kitchen.
    She was there, by the stove, clad in a modest flannel wrapper, her hair in a long, thick braid, and Rafe stopped cold when he saw her, stunned. He held out the parcel.
    “I bought you a nightgown,” he said, and felt his face go a dull, throbbing red. He thought he heard Angus groan behind him.
    Emmeline hesitated, then raised her chin, ignoring the package. If she’d heard him, she pretended she hadn’t.
    “I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. McKettrick,” she said, after some time.“At long last.”
    Rafe might have been sixteen, instead of nearly thirty, for all the awkwardness he felt now, when she was within touching distance.
    His wife.
    “Likewise,” he said, at some length, and drew the parcel slowly back, setting it aside. Obviously, if there was going to be a baby started, it wouldn’t happen tonight.

Chapter 3

 
     
    A LATE SUPPER WAS SERVED at the long trestle table in the kitchen. Kerosene lanterns flickered at both ends of the room, casting soft light through the shadows, and the food, some kind of roasted game, venison, perhaps, or elk, along with boiled carrots, potatoes, and turnips, was plain and wholesome. At Angus’s urging, Emmeline was seated first, on the bench nearest the cookstove, where the air shimmered with welcome warmth, and Concepcion took a chair next to her, at the end. Rafe, still flushed from their earlier encounter, when he’d presented her with the nightgown, sat across from Emmeline.
    Jeb wandered in at an unhurried pace, pausing to favor Emmeline with an encouraging smile and a nod. Behind him walked another man, a year or two older, probably, with chestnut hair and green eyes. “Ma’am,” the second fellow said, with a nod of his own.
    She didn’t respond, but simply clasped her hands together in her lap, sat up a little straighter, and tried to quell a rush of homesickness for Becky and the boardinghouse and all the misguided “girls” in their scandalous dressing gowns. Tomorrow she would begin a letter home, chronicling the long and arduous journey, describing Rafe and Indian Rock and the house on the Triple M. Becky, with her formidable pride, might, or might not, reply.
    “I guess Miss Emmeline already knows Jeb,” Angus remarked, while Jeb and his companion pumped water into the sink and scrubbed their hands with yellow soap, “since he was the one to fetch her home from Indian Rock and all.” The old man sent a brief, dark glance in Rafe’s direction.“I don’t think she’s made Kade’s