Waiting for Morning (The Brides Of Last Chance Ranch Series) by Margaret Brownley Read Free Book Online

busy staring at her.
    It had been hard at first. By nature she was reserved—shy. But she’d soon found out that if you pretended to be someone else long enough, you eventually forgot who you were. It was for the best, really. As Donny’s protector and caretaker, she didn’t have time to be anything else.

Chapter 6

    C actus Patch buzzed with news of Miss Walker’s newest “heiress,” and that infuriated Bessie Adams. She’d practically knocked herself out these past few weeks planning her nephew’s wedding and not a single person she’d encountered in town mentioned it—not one. Not even the customers gathered in Mr. Green’s mercantile early that Wednesday morning.
    Incensed, Bessie strolled down an aisle checking out the produce, basket on her arm. Now that the nice new doctor was boarding with her and Sam, the list of needed groceries had almost doubled, but her mind was on her nephew’s upcoming nuptials.
    The wedding of Luke Adams to Kate Tenney would be the event of the decade. The town had never known anything like it. Every lamppost, every wooden sign, every door on Main Street had been decorated with large white ribbon bows. Bessie spent hours writing invitations, planning the food, overseeing the bride’s dress, and explaining to her thickheaded nephew and groom-to-be why all this fuss was necessary.
    It wasn’t every day that a man got married. Seeing Luke properlywed fulfilled the promise made on her sister’s deathbed to care for her two orphaned boys.
    Bessie picked up a head of lettuce and gave it an expert squeeze. Mr. Green called over to her.
    “What do you say, Bessie? Wanna bet?” He shook a cardboard box of money. “How long do you think Miz Walker’s latest heiress will last this time?”
    “I’ll give her forty-eight hours,” Harvey Trotter said. A farmer by trade, he wore overalls and a large straw hat the same color as his sun-streaked hair. Puffing on his stogie, he plopped a coin on the counter and Mr. Green wrote down the amount.
    Bessie grimaced in disapproval. Trotter had a wife and six children and could ill afford such folly.
    Saloon owner Randy Sprocket made a face. Thumbs hooked around his suspenders, he shook his head. “Nah. She’s got a brother in a wheelchair. She ain’t gonna last a day.”
    “Did you say wheelchair?” Hargrove was the owner of the local ice plant and Bessie never saw him when he wasn’t dressed for winter. Today he wore a heavy flannel shirt. In this heat!
    “Saw him with my own two eyes,” Sprocket said. “She paid the Miller twins money to lift him and his wheelchair into a wagon at the livery.”
    “In that case, I change my mind,” the ice man said. “I’m only giving her till noon.”
    Mr. Green noted the change on his tally and called over to Bessie. “Come on, Bess. Winner takes all. What do you bet?”
    Bessie sniffed and placed a firm head of lettuce in her basket, which brought a nod of approval from farmer Trotter. “I’m not a gambler.” The nerve of him suggesting such a thing to a fine Christian woman like herself.
    “Anyone who’s married is a gambler,” Hargrove said. “Since you’re the town matchmaker, that not only makes you a gambler but a dealer as well.”
    This brought a frown to Bessie’s face and a round of laughter from the others. Bessie’s temper snapped and she squeezed a tomato until it practically turned to ketchup. In all her sixty-something years she had not so much as touched a deck of cards.
    “The whole idea of advertising for an heiress is ridiculous,” she scoffed, shaking her head. “Even Mr. Vanderbilt with all his money didn’t have such an abundance of heirs.” Before his death Cornelius Vanderbilt was considered the richest man in America.
    She’d lost count of how many women had traveled to Cactus Patch in answer to Miss Walker’s advertisement. The way some of them carried on, you’d think they’d been offered husbands instead of cattle.
    One by one those women had