Three Times a Bride by Loretta Chase Read Free Book Online Page A

of gettin’ married.”
    “Not adverse? How can you say that? We’re talking about marriage here!”
    “The way I see it, I was thinkin’ along these lines, anyway.”
    She couldn’t believe he was being so cavalier. “You’re as crazy as my father is.”
    Big Jim motioned to the minister. “Forget all the fancy stuff, Reverend. All we care about is that it’s legal.”
    Rachel caught her father’s arm. “Daddy, stop this! It’s absolute madness! What ever are you thinking?”
    “This is all my fault!” Molly cried somewhere behind them. “All my fault.”
    The preacher chose that moment to say in a booming voice, “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today…”
    Shaking his arm free, Big Jim grasped the chancel rail and leaned toward the pulpit. “Dammit, William, I said to skip all the folderol. Just get to the important parts.”
    Wells coughed and cleared his throat. “As I already pointed out, this is all highly out of the ordinary.”
    “Just do it,” Big Jim shot back. “If I want ordinary, I’ll ask for ordinary.”
    The flustered minister ran a finger down the page to relocate his place. “All right, fine. But, mark my words, it will probably take me longer to locate the important sections than it would to simply recite the entire—”
    “Good grief!” Big Jim interrupted. “Are you tellin’ me you don’t know the words by heart?” He threw up his hands. “You’ve been marrying people for the last twenty years, for God’s sake! How can you not know the words, William?”
    Taking advantage of her father’s distraction, Rachel turned to Clint. Leaning close so she might clearly see his face, she whispered, “You can’t honestly intend to just stand there and do nothing to stop this.”
    “Who says?”
    “I say!”
    He stood with his hands clasped behind him, gaze fixed on the minister, expression deadpan. At the corner of his mouth, she thought she glimpsed a smile and wanted to give him a good kick for not putting a halt to the proceedings. Before she carried through on the idea, she thought better of it. Last night he’d been charming, but he’d been silly with drink and mellow from the valerian. This morning, all boyishness had been wiped from his face. If asked to describe him, she would have said he looked stern and more than a little intimidating, not at all the kind to provoke.
    She jerked her gaze away and scanned the church, dismayed to see that the crowd at the back had dispersed to take their usual places in the pews, not for Sunday services as usual, but to witness a wedding. Her wedding.
    That thought drove Rachel to desperate measures. Straightening her shoulders and lifting her chin to a stubborn angle, she faced her father. “Daddy, I cannot marry this man,” she said, slowly and distinctly. “I absolutely can’t. Nothing you can say or do will convince me otherwise.”
    “Of course you can,” her father replied and, without so much as a pause, he drew his Colt revolver from its holster and pressed the barrel to Clint Rafferty’s temple. “It’s the only thing you can do, honey. Whether he meant to or not, Mr. Rafferty here ruined my little girl. Honor demands that I kill him if he don’t marry you. It’s the way things are, sort of an unspoken code among men. Ain’t that right, Mr. Rafferty?”
    “Christ,” Rafferty said hoarsely.
    Rachel watched her father with mounting horror, an emotion she made every effort to conceal by smiling and folding her arms. “Right. You’re just going to shoot him in cold blood. After a lifetime of upholding the law? Come on, Daddy. I realize I’m a little gullible, but that’s just plain silly.”
    With slow deliberateness, her father drew back the hammer of his gun. “You think I’m bluffin’? Think again, Rachel Marie. His fault or not, he has ruined any chance you have of making a decent marriage.”
    “That isn’t so!” Rachel scanned the church and spotted Reverend Wells’s son, Lawson, who had been