Josie: Bride of New Mexico (American Mail-Order Bride 47) Read Online Free PDF Page B

I have no hope but to trust you implicitly— as the closest family member I have. My fate is in your hands.” He enclosed her hand in both of his.
    “So, allow me to ensure I understand you correctly.” She firmed her lips, sat little straighter, and even went so far as to glance at the hallway of the rail car and back to the galley to ensure they were alone. “My purpose as your wife is to bring to you my life experience as a wage earner. A worker.”
    Disappointment slammed into him. This wasn’t what he wanted, this seriousness, the way she stated the facts and made it all business. He couldn’t dispute her, but hated that he was responsible for that expression on her face.
    “No, no, Darling. I wanted a wife. I’m ready for a wife. You are, first and foremost, my bride. Granted, I selected you in part because of what you could bring me— a perspective I cannot understand. No amount of schooling can give me the insight you have.”
    He trailed a forefinger along the curve of her cheek.
    She turned into his touch in a rush of warmth nearly made him tremble.
    “I want you. For better or for worse, it’s you and me, Mrs. Taylor. If we can figure this out together, then perhaps we can save Cannon Mining from probable ruin.”
    She looked troubled. Not the reaction he was looking for.
    “If we fail to reach a compromise, a level of lasting communication with the employees, then at least I’ll know we tried. We gave it our best, and more importantly, I’d like to know I trusted the right person. Josie, I’m willing to trust you, completely, from this moment forward.”
    “Why?”
    “I’ve given you my name, my ring, my protection. I plan to grow old with you, Josie Anne Taylor. I plan to live a rich and full life with you at my side. You will be the mother of my children.” Emotion clogged his throat and stung his eyes. He finally knew what his wife looked like, and pleasure at her goodness and beauty welled within him.
    “I plan to love you. I don’t know when, or how, but I will be madly in love with you— and only you.”
     

     
    He planned to be in love with her?
    He planned to be in love. With her .
    He planned to be in love . With her .
    So many of the emotions she’d known earlier in the day came rushing back. The amazing realization during his kiss at the wedding that he was her husband . The joyful anticipation she’d felt. She felt it all over again.
    Shyness at his intensity, and the fact he made her his entire focus, had her unable to meet his gaze.
    “And do you know the best way to fall in love with one’s spouse?”
    She shook her head. But if pressed, she knew all it would take, for her to fall utterly and completely in love with him, was a day or two in his company.
    “Courtship. Every day. For the rest of her life.” He leaned near and kissed her, a brief and chaste meeting of lips. “And your best response is to to allow my courtship.”
    She nodded, awkward and nervous, but breathless too. At the train station when he’d essentially proposed marriage, she’d believed in that moment she could love this man. Now she believed she was already halfway in love with him.
    Now she knew so much more about him… his extended family, the burdens he carried in the company, his honest and almost desperate determination to love her and earn her love in return.
    How could she resist? And why would she want to?
    She could reconcile both views of Mr. Taylor, the charming man who’d looked at her as if she were the only woman in the world, and the businessman who needed what she could give him. A trustworthy, reliable confidant with a view to the world he needed to better understand.
    He didn’t only want a solution for his business. The truth was as plain as could be, on his face, in his eyes.
    He wanted to love her.
    He planned to love her.
    She almost couldn’t breathe.
    When a man like him made up his mind to do something, to achieve something… he did it. The mere thought that she was