The Bride Wore Spurs (The Inconvenient Bride Series, Book 1) Read Free Page A

climbed the wooden stairs to his friend's modest frame home. Rapping twice against the whitewashed door, he pushed it open.
    "You up and about, and decent, Caleb?" he shouted into the room. After a moment of grunts and groans, his friend answered.
    "I am now. Come on in!"
    Hawke stepped into the wide-open room that served as kitchen, dining area, and living room, dropped the trunk on the freshly shellacked floor, then turned and gestured for the ladies to follow him inside.
    Nurse Quinlin marched through the door with her head held high, but Lacey, who'd been left with the traveling bag, hung back. After what she'd overheard at the depot, she knew her arrival wasn't expected, and maybe, not even welcomed. She figured she was better off standing out on the porch at least until Nurse Quinlin—whom she was to address as "Kate" from here on out—had made the private introduction of her husband-to-be. Their escort, an unfriendly sort who wore a mountaineer-style hat with an inverted brim that hid most of his dark features, had other ideas.
    He marched back through the door, took the grip from Lacey's hand, and snapped at her in a gravelly voice which made her feel like she'd done something wrong.
    "Get on in here so I can close the door. Caleb doesn't happen to like flies in his soup."
    The man's arrogance and gruff way of speaking were beginning to wear thin, but Lacey was much too new to both the country and her circumstances to do anything but obey him. Keeping her silence, she hurried across the threshold and took up a stance next to a huge pair of antlers that were nailed to the wall. Right behind her, this John Winterhawke pulled off his hat, hung it on one of the antlers, and stopped to stare at her. He held her trapped in his gaze for several moments, his deep-set eyes both green and gray at the same time and watchful, almost predator-like in the way he looked down at her from beneath the prominent ridge of his wide, strong brow. His open perusal of her was so intense and direct, Lacey honestly didn't know where or how she found the courage to keep looking up at him.
    But she did.
    He had very long hair for a man, long enough that he'd tied the coffee brown lengths into a kind of tail at the back of his neck, leaving it to hang down between his shoulder blades. Lacey had certainly never seen anything like that before, not even during the long journey across the American wilderness by rail! What manner of man was this? she wondered as he abruptly broke away from her and walked over to the stove.
    Hawke lifted a pot from the burner and poured himself a cup of coffee. Turning back toward the stone fireplace, he blew across surface of the brew as he addressed his friend. "Is everything in order over there? Got the right woman, and all?"
    Caleb, who was stretched out on a long couch positioned in front of the fire, gazed lovingly at his intended. "Couldn't be better, friend. I thank you agin for fetching my darling Miss Quinlin to me."
    Kate blushed. Caleb was as rough and Craggy on the outside as a weathered fence post, and he looked to be close to ten years her senior; but there was something about him that stirred her blood and made her feel cherished in a way she'd never known before—not even during the months of illicit trysts she'd had with her first and only true love.
    "'Tis I who gives thanks for ye, Mr. Weatherspoon."
    Caleb beamed. "See what I mean Hawke? I expect we'll be getting along like two pups in a basket."
    Hawke cocked a thumb in the direction of the hat rack. " Three pups unless you've already sent for whoever ordered her."
    Caleb glanced Lacey's way then, noticing her for the first time, and started with surprise. "And who might you be?"
    Kate answered quickly. "'Tis the friend ye said I could bring along with me. The bride for yer neighbor?"
    Caleb, a portly man whose girth was a perfect complement for Kate's apple dumpling figure, gulped audibly. "This here's a, a bride for... aw, dadgummit. I forgot