High Country Bride Read Online Free PDF Page A

to the pitiful salaries they received from the city counsel, they always got a special rate.
    Today, the pull of that mysterious room was all but irresistible.
    Emmeline tried to curb her adventurous nature—it was this same reckless bent, after all, that had nearly gotten her arrested for swimming naked in the mill pond, one moonlit night, with one or two “wild” girls, and caused her to break an arm climbing a tree on still another occasion—but the hours ahead were too long and too dull and, quite simply, she succumbed.
    Becky had been gone an hour when, moving like a genie summoned from a bottle after a long, long sleep, Emmeline sneaked into her aunt’s sumptuous bed chamber and opened the massive wardrobe across from the fireplace. The interior swelled with clouds of colorful silk, satin, velvet, and lace—such a delicious contrast to herpractical brown crinoline dress—and a wondrous disarray of feathers, bangles, and beads. After due deliberation, she selected a daring red gown of shiny fabric, with an edging of black lace, scrambled out of her own clothes, and put it on. She stood spellbound in front of Becky’s mirror, adjusting the shoulder straps.
    Emmeline barely recognized herself. She loosened her nearly blond hair, caught up in a prim coronet at her nape, and pinched her cheeks. Her gray-green eyes, usually calm, sparkled with spirit, and she struck a provocative pose, putting her hands on her hips and jutting out her bosom. She smiled a saucy smile, the way she’d seen the other girls do, countless times, and whirled around once, admiring herself.
    She loved the sensation of being someone quite apart from her ordinary self, someone entirely new, someone bold and even a little brazen, and she was reluctant to return to her normal drab personage.
    What harm could possibly be done, she wondered, if she crept downstairs, just for a very few minutes, and mingled? The place was already crowded; the noise from below told her that. If she kept to the far edges of the gathering, she could avoid Becky’s notice and indulge in a little harmless playacting. Flirt with a cowboy or two, play at being a lady of the evening, and then slip back upstairs without ever being discovered.
    The plan nearly unfolded in precisely that fashion.
    Nearly.
    Emmeline put a little extra sway in her hips as she descended the stairs, keeping an eye out for her aunt all the while. As she’d hoped, Becky was busy holding court in a far corner of the room, surrounded by spruced-up wranglers swilling liquor. The other women were equally occupied, chatting, pretending to tell fortunes, serving drinks.
    Her gaze went unerringly to the biggest, most imposing man in the room. His air of authority immediately marked him as the trail boss, or even the owner of some big ranch down by the Mexican border. He had wavy brown hair and hazel eyes, and he was still wearing his long canvas duster, even though the weather was warm. She glimpsed the handle of a pistol, strapped low on his left hip.
    He turned to her like a compass needle finding north, and a smile twitched at one corner of his mouth, almost imperceptible. There was a trace of mockery in it, as though he suspected she was playing a game, pretending to be someone she wasn’t.
    He started toward her, his stride long and slow and graceful.
    Emmeline, still hovering on the stairs, took an awkward step backward and nearly fell on her bottom.
    He gripped the newel post in one leather-gloved hand, watching her. He had removed his hat at the door—that was a rule of Becky’s—and she didn’t allow guns, either. Not normally, anyway. Whoever he was, this man lived by a code of his own.
    “Howdy,” he said. It was enough to mark him as a Texan, the way he said that one, honeyed word, caressing it as it rolled over his tongue.
    Emmeline concentrated on not swallowing her own. “Hello,” she managed, at last, and felt a hot flush course from her toes to her hairline. She wanted to turn