Read Online Taming Rafe by Susan May Warren - Free Book Online Page B

curtains flapped from the open windows, and a pot of dead geraniums told her that Mrs. Thatcher—God rest her soul—had been a woman of hope.
    Matthias’s bulk jiggled the car as he got out. “Preacher’s inside. Hurry up.”
    Mary thought he might grab her case from the jump seat, but he marched into the house without so much as a glance backward.
    She had no time for tears. Rosie needed a home. She needed work. Mary eased open the door. Weakness rushed through her, a ripple of despair that had the ability to crumple her. She couldn’t do this. A tear squeezed out, and she wiped it against Rosie’s head, brushing her lips against her daughter’s skin.
    “Mary!” Thatcher stood on the porch, the preacher behind him.
    She saw anger in his eyes and stiffened. Please, Lord, help me.
    “Can I get your case for you, ma’am?” The voice beside her, a soft drawl, seemed calm against her racing heart.
    She looked up, way up, into the blue, shadowed eyes of one of Thatcher’s hands. He tugged on his work-worn cowboy hat with a gloved hand. Wearing a dark blue, long-sleeve shirt pushed up at the forearms and a pair of faded brown canvas work pants, he looked about twenty-two, just a couple of years older than her.
    He lowered his voice. “You okay, ma’am? It’s awfully hot out here.”
    She managed the slightest nod.
    “It’s going to be all right,” he added.
    Mary closed her eyes, suddenly angry that he might have the slightest inkling of what it felt like to bury a husband and marry another in one day. “Go away,” she whispered.
    But he didn’t move, was still standing there when she opened her eyes. In his expression she saw a compassion that found all the bleeding places inside her.
    “I’m not going anywhere,” he said quietly. “I promise.”
    Perhaps it was his solemn tone or maybe his honest eyes. Maybe it was the way he picked up her case and put his hand under her elbow to help her across the dusty yard. Or maybe it was the way he met Matthias’s dark eyes with a look of his own. Whatever the case, Mary believed him. And that belief gave her the courage to go inside with the preacher and marry the man who had killed her husband.
    Katherine ejected the CD from her player and sighed. Poor Mary. How horrible to be so desperate you had to marry for necessity instead of love. What were Mary’s choices, really? Back then, women didn’t have careers, couldn’t get an education. What would Katherine have done? She hoped not the same thing.
    Tapping her brakes, Katherine took the Jeep off cruise and turned west off Highway 59, following the signs to Phillips, thinking of the unnamed ranch hand in the story. Obviously, he knew something of Thatcher, probably even how his first wife had died, but he hadn’t stopped the wedding. Maybe he couldn’t. If it had been Bradley, he would have simply paid old Matthias off or brought him up on murder charges.
    But did that make Bradley any different from Matthias? The thought chafed her as she drove into Phillips. She was being too hard on him.
    Katherine found the tiny Main Street quaint, with its old grocery store hosting coin-operated rides out front, a bookstore, and a cornersaloon. She slowed for the light and saw a community park, then the bleachers of a school stadium and the low building of what she assumed to be the county school. To her left, the cutest diner fashioned from an old railroad car advertised the best pies in Montana.
    Katherine pulled into the diner lot, parked next to a pickup that made her Jeep seem like a gnat, and got out. She stretched, and the fresh air tasted clean and pure. Maybe all she needed was a clear schedule without the foundation and her grandfather to dodge and even Bradley hovering over her.
    The last thought sent a twinge of guilt. She’d call him tonight as soon as she got settled in with her uncle Richard.
    The door jangled as she opened it, and she entered a small room that sucked her back in time to a bygone