Too Rich for a Bride by Mona Hodgson Read Free Book Online Page A

wouldn’t always require care. He had to believe one day soon, the Lord would heal her heart and he’d be able to bring her to Colorado for a visit. He wanted to show her these magnificent mountains.
    Tucker bounded to the back of the wagon and grabbed the ice tongs before Abraham could. He smiled. “I’ll carry this block. I wouldn’t want your muscles to grow bigger than mine.”
    Abraham, his laugh as heartwarming as his smile, secured the reins to the hitching rail while Tucker clasped a twenty-pound block of ice and followed Otis to the back porch. Abraham then scuttled ahead of them, trailing a new joke behind him like smoke following a flame. Tucker smiled, remembering the boy’s joke about not breaking a sweat under the weight of the ice.
    A generously proportioned woman wearing a shawl over a housedress stood in the doorway and waved them inside.
    Tucker shifted the block of ice to look down at his boots. The tops were dirt encrusted. The fact hadn’t bothered him much until the young woman at the depot dropped a hatpin into one of them. She’d stared at it, then up at him as if he were a vagabond.
    “Don’t you worry about your boots none. I have something for that.” The woman of the house pointed to a shiny brass-and-bristle fixture just outside the door. “Abraham, I do declare that you stand taller every week.”
    Abraham shook her hand, then ran his boots through the contraption. “Yes ma’am. And I’m funnier too.”
    Her cheeks puffed out as she bit back a giggle. “I think you might be right.”
    Smiling, Otis removed his canvas hat. “Good afternoon, Miss Hattie.”After shaking hands with the woman, he scuffed his worn shoes through the brush and stepped into the kitchen.
    Tucker followed his friend’s example. “Ma’am,” he said, ducking his head in a hands-free greeting. The kitchen’s bakery aroma caused his stomach to growl as the door clicked shut behind him.
    Otis pulled the top off the wooden icebox, and Tucker picked a straggling piece of straw from the block and then set it inside. “Mr. Tucker, this is Miss … Mrs. Adams.”
    Tucker set the ice tongs on the lid and removed his hat before accepting the woman’s hearty handshake. “I’m pleased to meet you, Mrs. Adams.”
    “I’m a widow. Please call me Miss Hattie. We’re pretty informal around here.”
    “Informal suits me just fine, Miss Hattie. I’m Tucker Raines, but please call me Tucker.”
    Miss Hattie’s eyes widened. “You’re Will Raines’s son?” She pressed her lips together and shook her head. “Well, if that man isn’t full of secrets. Your father delivered ice to me for months and months. Why, I’ve known him for a year, and I didn’t know he had a son.”
    Apparently, no one this side of Stockton knows .
    “Oh.” The woman’s sudden frown said he’d done a poor job of keeping the pain’s shadow from clouding his face.
    His dark eyes full of compassion, Otis gave Tucker a sideways glance.
    “My father is a private man,” Tucker said to Miss Hattie. “Doesn’t talk about family matters much.”
    If ever .
    Even when he thinks he’s going off to die .
    “I’m sorry about your father’s illness.” She pulled a strand of silver hair from her face with bent fingers. “I heard he had to go to the sanitorium. And your mother?”
    “Thank you. My mother’s staying with her sister in Colorado Springs.”
    “Did you bring a wife with you to Cripple Creek?”
    “I never married, ma’am. I’m a traveling preacher.”
    One eyebrow stretched toward her hairline, deepening the wrinkles on her forehead. “I see.”
    “Miss Hattie, you ready to hear my new joke?” Abraham squirmed impatiently in front of the woman.
    “Is it short?”
    “Real short.” He held his hands out about an inch apart.
    “Then fire away.”
    Abraham tapped the narrow brim of his felt hat. “What did the hat say to the hair?”
    Light danced in Miss Hattie’s silver-gray eyes as she glanced first at Otis,