The Cowboy & The Shotgun Bride (The Brides of Grazer's Corners #1) Read online

  “Do me a favor, ma’am.” The amber eyes bored into hers. “If it’s up to you, don’t call the police just yet, will you? Give me half an hour, that’s all I ask.”

  The request made no sense. Why didn’t he want protection? “Whatever you say. But...”

  “Is she all right?” Moose edged toward them.

  “Is this lady related to you, sir?” inquired the stranger.

  “She’s my fiancée.” The mayor’s customary bluster crept back. “And I’ll thank you to take your hand off her.”

  “That hand is supporting my elbow!” Kate snapped.

  “I can see I’m interfering here.” She could have sworn she glimpsed disappointment on the cowboy’s face as he handed her to Moose, then rounded the truck. “You’d best get indoors before they return.”

  Kate didn’t want to leave the scene just yet. Even if she hadn’t been elected sheriff, she would still have felt an obligation to help this man who was obviously in trouble. But Moose pulled her toward the store, and at the moment she lacked the fortitude to stand on her own.

  The truck roared to life. It made a quick circuit of the square and turned at the Corner Church, going west on Grape Street.

  The most exciting man Kate had ever met was disappearing from her life. The warmth of his hand lingered on her arm, and she registered the memory of his soft breath whispering across her cheek.

  Who was he? And why did she have the sense that a great adventure had just passed her by?

  Moose tugged her the rest of the way into the store. They had barely cleared the threshold when the van roared up.

  It paused for a second as if the occupants were staring at the space where the truck used to be. Then, through its open windows, a stream of cuss words befouled the air.

  “Cover your ears!” Moose yanked the door shut. “You didn’t catch that, did you, Kate?”

  She couldn’t believe he was more concerned about her hearing a few barnyard phrases than he had been about the possibility of her getting shot. As the van sped down Almond Grove Avenue, Kate’s voice, and her temper, returned full force.

  “Why, you big oaf!” she sputtered as the store employees poked their heads from behind the counters. “You left me out there to get killed!”

  “You told me to,” Moose protested.

  “I did not!”

  “You told me to go away and let you do your job.” He sounded hurt. “I was trying to respect you as a professional.”

  “A professional what?” she growled. “I couldn’t see a darn thing, the way my contact was hurting. You left me out there helpless!”

  “I didn’t know you couldn’t see!”

  “You knew I was facing three masked gunmen!”

  “I’m really sorry, Kate.” Moose hung his head sheepishly. “At first I figured it might be some kind of trick you were playing, to pay me back for the election. Then I kind of panicked.”

  It was a plausible explanation. In the face of his contrition, Kate could feel her fury waning, but she didn’t intend to let him off the hook that easily. “A total stranger showed more concern for my safety than my own fiancé! I don’t see how I can ever trust you again!”

  Behind the makeup counter, Betsy Muller crouched, her heavily lined eyes widening hopefully. There was one strand of purple in her dyed-platinum hair, and this was the one she twisted around her finger as she waited breathlessly.

  The young woman had nursed an unrequited crush on Moose for years. She’d gone into a deep funk as the wedding date approached, and now the possibility of a broken engagement must loom like a last-minute reprieve.

  But did Kate really want to end her relationship with Moose? The cowboy was long gone. Even if he turned up again, he hardly struck her as marriage material for an elementary school principal.

  “Well...” She tapped her foot as she tried to frame an appropriate reproach.

  “I made a mistake.” The admission startled her, coming from a man who was usually expert at stonewalling. “I didn’t think, Kate. Please forgive me.”

  “I guess it was kind of hard to sort out what was happening,” she heard herself say.

  “As for that cowboy, I’d say he bears checking out,” Moose continued, picking up steam now that forgiveness was in sight.

  “He’s not the one who tried to shoot me!” Kate said.

  “We should report those bandits, too,” Moose added quickly. “They’re probably all heading down Route 59 toward the freeway. I’ll call the highway patrol.”

  Kate remembered her rescuer’s request to delay calling anyone for half an hour. Unless she found good reason to do otherwise, she intended to honor it.

  “I’ll call them myself,” she said. As Moose reached into his pocket for his cell phone, she added, “From the sheriffs department. Excuse me. I’ve got a job to do.”

  Head high, she strode out of the store. On the sidewalk, a moment’s queasiness struck as she noted a bullet hole in the window at the Grazer Gazette, the town’s weekly paper. It reminded her of how close she’d come to being mowed down.

  She gave a prayer of thanks that neither she nor anyone else had been injured. Already, people were emerging from the bank and the bakery, searching for damage and, judging by the expansive hand gestures, embroidering their own narrow escapes.

  In a sense, those intruders had done the town a favor, she mused with a glint of humor. As Moose had said earlier, Grazer’s Comers was a quiet place. This would give people something to talk about for at least a week.

  Kate walked around the square toward town hall, which stood opposite the department store. In the park, a sudden gust of wind set the flag to flapping sharply, and she jumped.

  She had to get her nerves under control. People depended on Kate to stay calm, and she couldn’t let them down.

  To her relief, no one came out of the newspaper office as she passed. The sidewalk in front of town hall was deserted as well, and Kate slipped unnoticed into the courtyard of the Spanish-style complex. Already, she felt a little steadier.

  A fountain bubbled halfheartedly in the sunshine, and a couple of pigeons pecked at the courtyard’s tile floor. The door to the town clerk’s office stood open, and Kate could hear someone talking inside.

  As she came closer along the walkway, she recognized the dry, cracked voice of the clerk, Agatha Flintstone, a seventyish lady who also owned the town’s bookstore. Kate glanced inside, right through the empty outer office and into Agatha’s chamber, where the clerk sat in profile at her desk, so absorbed in a book she didn’t seem to realize she was reading aloud.

  “Gleaming in his armor, the knight loomed above her, his lance erect...” The town clerk fluffed her gray hair, which was already teased to near Marge Simpson heights. “Her bosom heaved as she contemplated his massive presence...” Absently, she tugged at the neckline of her homemade, flowered smock.

  Kate hurried past, loath to be caught snooping even though Agatha made no secret of her fantasies about being ravished by a Norman conqueror. It was said that Sneed Brockner’s ego had shriveled years ago as a result of being inspected daily and found wanting.

  Fantasy could be healthy, as Kate reminded parents when they criticized the recommended reading lists. Not every book had to be reality-based. Given Agatha’s minutely ordered life, no wonder she sought escape in make-believe.

  And my life? she wondered as she neared the sheriffs department. Isn’t it just as stifling?

  A vision seized her, of Moose’s two-story stucco house in the northern part of town. In her mind, barbed wire topped the ironwork perimeter fence and bars covered the windows. Peering out, as from a prison, was Kate’s own bleak face.

  What on earth was wrong with her? How could a chance encounter with a cowboy make her yearn for—for something she couldn’t name? Adventure, maybe. The unexpected. Tingles that crept along her nerve endings, and heat that flooded her body.

  Kate could still smell his cologne and see the concern in his gaze. His frame wasn’t mas
sive, like Moose’s, but tightly packed and protective. If only she could feel those strong arms around her one more time, and listen to that deep fluid voice!

  Whoever those bandits had been, surely they would get caught sooner or later. Once he was rid of them, perhaps the stranger would remember a woman he’d saved in Grazer’s Corners, a small, slender lady with swingy hair and dreamy eyes—at least, she hoped they’d looked dreamy rather than red-rimmed and irritated—and he would come back and run his hands along her shoulders until she melted against him.

  Good lord, she was worse than Agatha! Dismayed, Kate lifted her chin and opened the door.

  “Hi! I was hoping you’d drop by.” Jeanie Jeffrey, the clerk-dispatcher, beamed at Kate from behind the stacks of flyers, reports and mail littering her desk.

  The battered office smelled musty, probably because the only window had been painted shut long ago. Jeanie, who happily described herself as a burrowing creature, disliked both fresh air and sunshine. Also filing, Kate noted.

  On a bulletin board, several ragged Wanted posters were half-covered by announcements of country club dances and school carnivals, now long past. A ring of keys, one of which no doubt opened the town’s only jail cell, hung conspicuously on a nail.

  Kate bit back the instinct to tear into this mess. She wasn’t even officially the sheriff yet.

  “You didn’t call for backup, did you?” she asked.

  “Backup?” asked Jeanie blankly. “For a bunch of firecrackers going off?”

  “It was a shoot-out,” Kate said. “But no one got hurt.”

  “No kidding!” Jeanie’s face lit up. “Wow! Think it’ll be on TV tonight?”

  “Not unless we’re fielding invisible camera crews from Modesto these days,” Kate replied. “I don’t suppose you’ve received any All Points Bulletins from Texas lately, have you?”

  “APBs. Hmm.” Jeanie regarded the sheets of paper littering the floor beneath the fax machine. “Could be one in there. Let me check.”

  “Never mind.” Hurrying around the desk, Kate scooped them up. For some reason, she felt reluctant to have anyone else see them.

  She flipped through the bulletins. There was one from Orange County, another from San Diego. Portland, Oregon. Las Vegas.

  Even before she noticed that the issuing agency was the Gulch City, Texas, police department, the photograph stopped her. The hair hadn’t yet grown shaggy and the eyes lacked the wariness she’d seen, but it was unmistakably him.

  Her stranger. Her rescuer. The man she had imagined might come riding back to sweep Kate Bingham into his arms.

  His name was Mitch Connery. And he was wanted for murder.

  Chapter Two

  The date of the murder was one week earlier. A man had been shot to death, perhaps with the same gun Mitch Connery had used today.

  Kate’s mouth went dry as she read the particulars. The victim was one Jules Kominsky, age 38, occupation cowboy.

  Could he have been a friend of the three bandits? That might explain their murderous rage toward Mitch.

  She skimmed the description of the crime, instinctively translating the law-enforcement terminology into standard English. According to the Gulch City police, Mitch Connery had been involved in a legal dispute regarding a ranch he had formerly owned. One week ago, he had attempted to break into the ranch house and was confronted by the victim, whom he shot.

  It sounded so cut-and-dried. But how could the police be sure what had happened that night on the ranch? What if Kominsky had fired first?

  On the other hand, that didn’t excuse Mitch’s breaking into the place. And, if he was innocent, surely he wouldn’t have fled.

  She realized she must have skipped over his occupation, and reread the bulletin. Now, there was a surprise ! Mitch was listed as an attorney.

  She could hardly believe the man who’d come galloping, or rather driving, into her life today was a paper-shuffler. He’d been—she checked the bulletin to confirm her impression—six feet of sheer muscle, with the tanned leanness you’d expect from a man who’d spent thirty-five years living outdoors.

  According to the bulletin, the fugitive was considered armed and dangerous. Yet he’d risked his life to pull her to safety.

  Dangerous? she wondered with a shiver. Only to her peace of mind.

  Still, she had an obligation as a citizen, even if she wasn’t yet a sworn officer of the law, to report what had happened. Since half an hour had passed, she wouldn’t be betraying her promise.

  Kate put in a phone call to the California Highway Patrol. A dispatcher took down the information on the shoot-out and promised to alert officers to look for the van.

  Despite a tremor of guilt, Kate omitted any mention of Mitch’s name or the fact that he was wanted for murder. She didn’t call Gulch City, either.

  If people believed he was armed and dangerous, they might shoot first and ask questions later. He had saved her life. She owed him that much.

  She debated whether to fill out a report, since she wasn’t yet officially sheriff. It seemed irresponsible not to, however, so she obtained a form from Jeanie and wrote down as much as she could remember. She didn’t feel up to interviewing witnesses, though, not while she was still having trouble keeping her hand steady.

  Kate gave the report to the dispatcher with a sense of relief. It would probably end up at the bottom of a stack of papers, but at least she had done her duty.

  Mitch Connery and the Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight had hightailed it out of Grazer’s Corners. Kate would never see them again.

  The thought gave her a hollow sensation, probably another aftereffect of shock. True, she wished she knew more about Mitch’s past, and what had really happened that night at the ranch house.

  But it was simple curiosity, nothing more.

  SOMETHING WAS WRONG with the way she looked.

  Kate stared into the mirror in the church’s small conference room, which she was using as a dressing room. A heavier-than-usual dose of eye makeup had set her contacts on edge, and she kept blinking as she tried to figure out what was amiss.

  Her hair seemed limper than usual beneath its circlet of roses, but that wasn’t it. The dress that had struck her as elegantly simple now appeared too fussy with its high-necked silk bodice, transparent sleeves and the skirt layered with white-on-white embroidery and lace. But that wasn’t the problem either, not exactly.

  Her glance fell on the bouquet. Jammed together, the roses and baby’s breath had lost any fresh garden beauty they might ever have possessed. They looked like captives. Claustrophobic. Squashed.

  Kate’s mind flashed on the image she’d formed a few days earlier, of Moose’s house with the windows barred. What was wrong, she realized with a start, wasn’t her appearance, it was her sense that she was walking into a prison.

  She wished her parents were here to advise her. Linda Bingham had been a teacher, Kate’s inspiration. She’d married her childhood sweetheart, a businessman, and he had shared his wife’s deep-rooted values.

  Her parents had died within a year of each other, but they’d left behind their deep love for their daughter and for their community.

  And, Kate reminded herself, Moose shared her affection for Grazer’s Comers. He understood how important the school and her students were to her, too. Why, he was the only guy she’d ever met whom she would even consider as a husband.

  Except for a man with tender brown eyes and a hard, lean body. If I were a passionate sort of woman, he could set me on fire with one glance.

  Where had that thought come from? Kate smiled nervously at herself in the mirror. Some people might say she was frustrated from saving herself for her wedding night, although it had never seemed like a burden before this.

  After tonight, she would never fantasize about strangers again, she reminded herself. She would have Moose all to herself, and somehow the miracle of marriage would transform him into all the things a man should be, sexy and exciting and tender, just like...jus
t like...

  A light knock startled her. “Yes?”

  “Dressed?” The door cracked open and the bright face of Charity Arden peered inside. A camera dangled from a strap around her neck. “I’d like to take a couple of ‘before’ shots.”

  “Sure.” Kate started to wipe her hands on her skirt and then thought the better of it. “Is the church full?”

  “Everybody’s here, just about.” Charity, who freelanced at weddings when she wasn’t shooting for the Grazer Gazette, sauntered into the room. She was tall and pretty, with golden brown hair and a heart-shaped face, although she never seemed to take much interest in her appearance. “They’re still buzzing about the shoot-out.”

  There had been no news regarding the cowboy or his pursuers, and Kate preferred not to dwell on the incident. “I hear your editor is going to preserve the piece of glass with the bullet hole and hang it as a souvenir.”

  “Just rumors. At least, I hope so.” With a grin, Charity went to work positioning her subject in the soft natural light streaming through a window.

  Kate yearned for a reassuring circle of bridesmaids, but selecting them would have created an impression of favoritism. Most of her friends were teachers from her own classroom days, and some were among the instructional staff she now supervised.

  Charity quickly put her at ease, however, snapping away and chatting at the same time. As usual, the young photographer was casually dressed in a long denim skirt and a khaki fisherman’s vest replete with pockets for film and filters. Her one concession to the dressy occasion was the lace-trimmed blouse underneath.

  “You look just perfect, honey,” the photographer observed as she framed a shot. “Radiant.”

  “Really?” Kate was surprised at how deceptive appearances could be.

  “I just adore seeing people fall madly in love and plan their futures together.” Charity sounded wistful.

  Madly in love? That wasn’t quite how Kate felt about Moose. Affectionate, yes. Aware of shared values and goals. Those were the things that counted in the long run, weren’t they?