Lucky Bride

Smokey gave a little grunt. “I reckon I’ve unfroze my share of fingers and toes and ears in my time,” he muttered. “Now, you three can just skedaddle on downstairs.”

Molly set Mary Beth and Susannah to fixing supper and some hot soup for when their patient regained his senses, then she went back up to the bedroom with the coal oil. She hesitated at the door. Smokey had stripped off the stranger’s clothes, leaving his lower half covered by a blanket. She’d never seen a man’s naked chest close up. Papa had always said that any hand showing up around the big house without a shirt would be turned off the place. He’d guarded his daughters’ sensibilities as if they’d been princesses in a European castle rather than redblooded girls on a Wyoming cattle ranch.

She averted her eyes from the bed and held out the can of oil. “Are you sure you don’t need any help?” she asked.

Smokey walked over and gave her cheek a little pat. “You go down and get something warm into your gullet, missy. Let me worry about him.”

“Do you think he’ll be all right?”

Smokey shrugged. “He looks pretty froze. But we’ll do the best we can for him.”

“I’ll come back up in a little bit and sit with him, so you can have your supper.”

“Take your time. He’s not going anywhere.”

But Molly found she could not rest easy downstairs without knowing about the stranger’s progress. After gulping a few bites of stew, she said, “Mary Beth, you do the washing up tonight so Smokey can help out upstairs. And Susannah, bring some more firewood up to his room. We’ll need to keep it warm in there all night long.”

Susannah’s lower lip came out slightly. “I can hardly move, Molly.”

Molly felt much the same way herself. The struggle at the canyon and then battling the fury of the storm all the way home had taken its toll. But she pushed herself up from the table and said, “You can haul the wood or wash the dishes. You two work it out between yourselves, just so it gets done.” She stalked across the dining room to the front entryway and the graceful curved stairway that had been her papa’s pride and joy. No other ranch house in the territory had one like it.

“You have to help, too,” Susannah retorted.

“I’ll be up with the cowboy.”

“I’m not sure that he’s a cowboy,” Mary Beth corrected shyly. “Parker, he said his name was. Parker Prescott.”

“Kind of a gentlemanly sounding name, don’t you think?” Susannah added.

“Gentleman or not, he won’t be anything but a corpse unless we keep him warm,” Molly said.

Susannah’s smile dimmed. “I’ll bring up the wood,” she said.

And Mary Beth added, “I’ll bring some, too.”

By midnight the man’s skin had turned red. He still hadn’t regained consciousness. Molly had sent Smokey to bed, but she was determined to sit by their patient’s side through the night. She didn’t know whether Mr. Parker Prescott was a gentleman, but he was a human being. And if he was going to die, she wasn’t about to let him do it alone.

She’d sat with her father through two weeks of restless nights before the pneumonia had taken him last year. And she’d had her share of sleepless nights ever since. Sometimes, usually at times like this in the darkest early-morning hours, the responsibility of it all would overwhelm her. Everything depended on her— the ranch, her sisters, even Smokey and poor Beatrice, both of whom were too old to find a place at any other spread. And now this stranger’s fate had ended up in her hands, as well.

She-sighed and walked over to the bed to examine him. Against the snowy white of the pillow his hair was a dark chestnut color—thick and wavy. He had the chiseled features of an Eastern blue blood, but the upper part of his body, which was not covered by the blanket, was as strong and well muscled as the loggers who came through town on their way to the north woods. She watched the gentle rise and fall of his chest for a few moments. His breathing appeared normal once again. And his skin tone was looking better. She reached out to lift one of his hands. Fingers were often the hardest hit by frostbite. But he’d been wearing thick leather gloves, and she could see no sign of the deadly white spots that would indicate frozen skin.

She held his hand for a long moment, wondering at her own fascination. She’d certainly bandaged enough banged-up knuckles and sprains among the cowpokes. But this stranger’s hand didn’t look like those of the cowboys she’d nursed. His skin was clean and soft, the fingers long. There were, however, calluses on his palm. He’d not been entirely idle, this gentleman of theirs.

With a little grimace she put his hand back. She reckoned the rest of the household was asleep by now, but she wasn’t about to have someone come in and see her musing over some stranger’s hand. She went back and sat in the rocking chair next to the fire. The important thing was that it appeared Mr. Prescott was going to recover. Which meant that soon he could ride on out of here and things would be back to normal.

“Oh, my!” Mary Beth’s voice from the doorway woke Molly from her doze. Through the shutter slats she could see that it was daylight, though the storm still raged. She sat up and rubbed her eyes, then glanced over at the bed.

She saw at once the cause of Mary Beth’s exclamation. During the night the man had twisted the blanket around himself in such a way that only the barest portion of his naked body was concealed from view. Fortunately that portion included his most private parts, but it was still a shocking sight. One long, hairy leg was exposed to view clear up to his backside. Molly felt a bit queer in her midsection. She jumped up and walked over to the bed, intent on protecting her sister from seeing anything more.

“Oh, my!” Susannah’s exclamation came like an echo behind Mary Beth. Both girls stepped into the room and stood staring at the bed.

“You two can go on downstairs,” Molly snapped. “It’s not decent for you to be seeing him like this.”

“It’s not decent for you, either,” Susannah said, sounding more intrigued than shocked. She walked across the room, then made a slow tour around the end of the bed. “He’s surely a pretty thing, isn’t he?” she said with a low laugh.

“Has he woken up yet?” Mary Beth asked cautiously. She stayed put over by the door.

Molly grasped one end of the blanket, but it was so twisted around him that she couldn’t pull it free. “I must have dozed myself,” she answered. “But I don’t think he has. His color looks good, though.”

“More than his color looks good, if you ask me,” Susannah said with a little giggle.

“Susannah!” Mary Beth chided.

Molly grabbed a coverlet from its stand and flung it out over the entire bed, burying the patient. “You two ought to be down fixing breakfast,” she said again, facing her sisters with her hands on her hips.

“Smokey’s fixing it. He said we should come up and help you.”

“I don’t need any help.”

“We’ll just watch, then,” Susannah said with a wicked grin.

Molly gave a huff and went back to trying to free the twisted blanket, working underneath the coverlet. In exasperation she gave a forceful tug. The patient rolled, causing the blanket to come free in her hands and knocking her off balance. She ended up in a heap on the bed, not two feet from Parker Prescott’s wide open brown eyes.

“Hello,” he said mildly.

Molly pushed the hair out of her face and scrambled backward, making sure that the coverlet stayed over most of his body.

“Ah…hello,” she said.

Susannah gave one of her musical laughs. “You’re awake!” she said.

Parker turned his head toward the tall blonde standing next to the bed. He blinked a couple of times. “If this is heaven,” he said, “then dying was worth the price.”

Molly felt an odd mixture of relief, irritation and panic. She was pleased that the stranger had recovered his senses and was not going to die in their midst. But she was not pleased at the way he was eyeing her sister. Charlie Hanks had guarded his three daughters like a shepherd guarding a flock of sheep surrounded by slavering wolves, a comparison that, he always said, was being overly complimentary to the cowboys of Canyon City. When he’d died, Molly had simply taken over the guarding duty, as she had all the others. Now all at once she had one of those very wolves lying naked in her father’s bed. What was worse, Susannah’s eyes were sparkling with interest as she returned his gaze.

“La, sir,” Susannah said, her voice flirtatious, “we simple prairie girls aren’t used to such pretty talk.”

Parker looked from Susannah over to Mary Beth at the door, then more briefly at Molly, who had hastily pushed herself off the bed and was standing over him with a glower. Finally he turned back to Susannah and shook his head. “I can’t believe you girls don’t have every eligible cowboy in the territory swarming over this place trying to talk pretty.”

“A few have tried,” Molly said curtly. “We aren’t interested.” She glared at him as she folded the freed blanket.

“Speak for yourself, Molly,” Susannah retorted. “Mr. Prescott can talk to me all day long if he’s a mind.”

Parker looked from one woman to the other. It was almost impossible to believe that they were sisters. Susannah was regarding him with that special kind of male-female look that he’d forgotten how much he missed. Her older sister, on the other hand, was watching him as if he were some kind of poisonous lizard.

Making sure that he was decently covered by the quilt, he sat up. He closed his eyes briefly as a wave of dizziness hit him. When it passed, he said, “Perhaps before we go any further one of you would be kind enough to tell me how I came to be here in the first place.”

“We rescued you!” Susannah said, beaming. “You were near frozen to death.”