Small-town Texas spinsters find love with mail-order grooms!
Though Caroline Wallace can’t have a family, she can still have a purpose. Becoming Simpson Creek’s new schoolmarm helps heal the heartache of losing Pete, her fiancé, to influenza. Then Pete’s brother arrives, trailing a herd of cattle and twin six-year-old girls.
Jack Collier expected Pete and his bride to care for his daughters until he was settled in Montana. But bad weather and worse news strand Jack in Texas until spring. It’s little wonder Caroline grows fond of Abby and Amelia. But could such a refined, warmhearted woman fall for a gruff rancher…before the time comes for him to leave again?
“Where’s my brother?” Jack Collier demanded again. “Why are you wearing black?”
Lord, help me to tell him with compassion, Caroline prayed.
“I’m sorry to tell you this, Mr. Collier, but your brother Peter passed away this last winter—” she paused when she heard his sharp intake of breath “—during an influenza epidemic.”
“Pete’s…dead?” he murmured. “Why didn’t you let me know?”
The last question was flung at her like a fist, but she heard the piercing loss contained in it.
“I did try. But I wasn’t able to get your address from Pete before…before he d-died.”
She grabbed her black-edged handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes.
“What am I going to do now?” Jack Collier wondered aloud.
“I’m sorry you’ve come all this way, only to hear such awful news…. I’m sure Mama and Papa would be glad to put you up until you feel able to return home.”
“You don’t understand,” Jack Collier told her. “I can’t go back.”
Laurie Kingery
makes her home in central Ohio, where she is a “Texan-in-exile.” Formerly writing as Laurie Grant for the Harlequin Historical line and other publishers, she is the author of eighteen previous books and the 1994 winner of a Readers’ Choice Award in the Short Historical category. She has also been nominated for Best First Medieval and Career Achievement in Western Historical Romance by RT Book Reviews. When not writing her historicals, she loves to travel, read, participate on Facebook and Shoutlife and write her blog on www.lauriekingery.com.
The Rancher’s Courtship
Laurie Kingery
And they said, let us rise up and build. So they strengthened their hands for this good work.
—Nehemiah 2:18
To Stephanie, the teacher in our family, in honor of the teachers who only had one-room schoolhouses to teach in.
To Susan Alverson, who helped me through the rough patches and was always there to listen.
And always, to Tom.
Contents
Chapter One
Simpson Creek, Texas
October 1868
Jack Collier looked up and down the main street of the little town of Simpson Creek, but try as he might, he didn’t see a druggist’s store. A hotel, a mercantile, a post office, a combined barbershop-bathhouse, a jail, a bank, a doctor’s office and a church, yes, but no druggist’s shop. A search of the side streets and Travis Street, which ran parallel to Main Street, netted the same lack of results.
He’d been the recipient of several second looks by the townspeople, as he rode down the streets, his own horse flanked by the dependable old cow pony that didn’t mind his twin daughters riding double on it. People tended to stare at twins, and yet it seemed to be his own face they focused on, not Abigail’s and Amelia’s.
Well, he’d always been told he looked a lot like Pete, so that must be the reason for the stares. He started to ask one or two of them if they knew where to find his brother, but he had wanted his arrival to be a surprise for Pete. He didn’t want anyone running ahead of him with the news.
But where was Pete? Had he gone into some other line of work since he’d last written Jack? It was possible, Jack supposed, but it wasn’t like Pete to change his mind on such a matter. Pete had always set a course, then held to it. He’d traveled up to the Hill Country town in San Saba County last year with the announced goals of meeting the lady he’d been corresponding with and opening up his own druggist’s shop. Around Christmas, Pete had written that he and Miss Caroline Wallace were in love and would be married in early spring. He wanted Jack to be there.
That was the last time he’d heard from Pete—no letter, no wedding invite had followed.
Mail went astray all the time, though. He and his daughters had probably missed the wedding, but Jack