The Cowboy's Cinderella. Carol Arens

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СКАЧАТЬ Tom.” And he would. “He promised your ma he’d keep you in hand.”

      “I’m of an age.” Tom grinned at her. Sunshine touched his nose, dotting it with fresh freckles.

      “An age for what, you young fool?”

      “Women.” Just saying the word made him blush.

      “Wait until you grow up a bit for that.” Ivy knocked the cap from his hair with a flick of her fingers. “There’s one of our passengers down there on her knees. Looks like she tripped over her fool skirt. I don’t think she’s a lady of the night, though. See if you can find her a safe place to stay.”

      Tom pushed away from the rail. “Sure won’t miss that noisy green bird of hers.”

      She watched him cross the deck, disappear down the stairs then reappear on the stage plank.

      He was carrying the woman’s trunk across his shoulders. She indicated a spot on the ground for him to set it down. It looked like she handed Tom some money for his effort.

      “Gosh almighty.” She sighed. “Uncle Patrick will tan his hide if he spends it at the Sullied Gully.”

      All of a sudden her hat shifted, tipping toward her nose. She caught the small white mouse that slid from the brim.

      “You little varmint, what’s waking you so early? Sun’s not even set yet.” Ivy fished a peanut from her pocket and gave it to the mouse.

      It sat on her shoulder nibbling the treat. After a moment she tucked the furry creature back into the special pouch under a large satin flower that was attached to the brim of her hat.

      “Go back to sleep until dark. It’ll be Hades own chaos if a passenger sees you.”

      To her relief, the mouse snuggled into his space and became still.

      Not even Uncle Patrick knew that her best friend was a rodent.

      * * *

      Moonlight reflected off the liquid face of the Missouri River.

      From the cabin deck of the docked River Queen, Travis Murphy watched the sparkling ripples gliding past, not in a straight line, but with the twisting tug of the current.

      The sight kept him mesmerized, since at the moment, his life resembled those twisting ripples. It sure wasn’t traveling the straight line that he hoped this journey would take him on.

      The future of the Lucky Clover Ranch depended upon him finding Miss Eleanor Magee. But it seemed the harder he searched the more twisted the trail became, the pursuit more urgent.

      At one point, he’d nearly caught up with the woman, but his horse had come up lame. It had taken some time for the poor creature to heal properly.

      That delay had been frustrating, but he’d finally made it to Coulson, a day ahead of the steamboat.

      Now, here he was, the boat finally arrived, but he sure didn’t see anyone who resembled the woman’s twin sister, Agatha.

      Travis swatted a moth away from his face. The determined insect seemed intent upon incinerating itself on the lamp hanging over his head.

      Where the blazes could Eleanor Magee be?

      Hell, he’d only learned of Eleanor’s existence when his boss, the man he loved as much as he remembered loving his own father, confessed on his deathbed that he had another daughter.

      That revelation had nearly kicked Travis to his knees. He’d always felt like a member of the family, believed he’d known everything about them.

      When, at six years old, his parents had been put in the grave, Travis had wanted to leap into the hole with them. But Foster Magee had been there, his big hand pulling him back from the shadow of death. He’d taken him to the big house and raised him as his own.

      But another daughter? In the moment he’d demanded that Foster tell him why this girl’s existence had been kept a secret, why she had not been raised at the ranch.

      The reality was, he’d had no right to demand anything of Foster. But in that moment he had been a stunned son, not an employee.

      The reason turned out to be a divorce agreement. He’d learned the full story while watching tears drip down his mentor’s disease-ravaged face—his stand-in father’s face.

      He’d given up Eleanor in an agreement with Mollie Clover Magee.

      “She was a beauty, my wife,” he’d admitted.

      The proof of that, her portrait, still hung over the mantel of the huge fireplace in the great room back at the ranch.

      “She was a wild flower, a free spirit, the plain opposite of me. Fire and ice I reckon.” he whispered, his voice hoarse, weak from the effects of his illness.

      It was true. Foster Seamus Magee had been a man of purpose. His desire to have the largest and most influential ranch in the state had consumed him. A proper life of social niceties, all the rules of etiquette observed, this was what he’d striven for.

      “My Clover, she was never cut out for that kind of life. I watched her dry up in front of my eyes. My pretty wife... The life I sought sucked the life out of her.

      “Son, you understand that I never stopped loving her, but I had to let her go when she wanted to...just not all of her. I wouldn’t let her have Agatha because of the two girls she’s the one who reminded me of my Clover, with that blaze of red hair and those emerald-colored eyes. Turned out, though, she didn’t have her mother’s high spirit. The girl is sickly...well, you grew up with her, you know.”

      He did know. Agatha was a shut away. She was frail, retiring, and lacking the vigor that the demands of inheriting the ranch would place upon her. He only hoped that Eleanor was different from her twin.

      A lot of livelihoods depended upon her being strong, but even more, that she was willing to step into her role.

      Sweat trickled down the back of his neck, not with stressful thoughts of past and present, but because the heat of the day lingered on the land and shimmered over the water. In the mountains nearby the temperature would be different. He reckoned just a short distance away the night was getting cold.

      Well, not the night so much anymore, but the wee hours. Even the gamblers had taken to their beds.

      He swiped the ticklish moisture from his neck while he strolled to the side of the boat facing west. Maybe there would be a breeze off the water.

      There wasn’t a breeze...but there was a woman.

      A naked woman.

      Naked women weren’t so unusual in Coulson. But here on the riverboat at this hour? Perhaps she’d been entertaining a gambler.

      Propriety told him to look away. Nature urged him otherwise.

      The woman stood on the lower deck, her back toward him and her arms reaching for the night sky. When she lifted her face toward the moon, he saw the slim line of her nose but nothing else.

      He СКАЧАТЬ