Rancher Wants a Wife Read Online Free

like nothing happened.”
    “Glad to hear it,” said Jack.
    “Say, Dr. McColton,” shouted another rancher from across the street. “Could you drop by to inspect that new stallion I got yesterday? He’s jittery. I think the train ride shook him up. And he scratched himself on some barb wire this morning.”
    With hesitation, Jack glanced in Cassandra’s direction, feeling guilty about the time he’d be taking away from her. But he couldn’t let an animal suffer. “I’ll squeeze in a visit later tonight.”
    “Much obliged.” The rancher looked curiously at Cassandra, then nodded goodbye.
    More folks nodded in greeting, but Jack turned his attention back to his bride. Bride . He swallowed hard at the reality. He’d never given marriage much thought. Since Chicago, he’d enjoyed his time with various women and saw no reason to change. Occasionally, he’d thought of marriage in the far future, something that he might do, perhaps should do if he wanted to pass down his land to an heir. Then, when he’d seen Cassandra’s ad, the feelings had come rushing at him like a thundering buffalo.
    He climbed aboard the buggy, settled beside Cassandra and flicked the reins. The vehicle rolled smoothly down the main street, its bolts and springs newly greased for the occasion. He became extremely aware of the woman beside him, the proximity of her elbow next to his, the lilt of her chest, the shifting of her thighs beneath her skirts.
    “This is incredible.” She craned her neck to take in the view.
    Gently sloped hills rolled toward them, terraced with rows of grapevines. Orchards sat on other slopes, filled with peach and plum trees. Raspberry bushes sprang from another acreage. A stream gushed through the valley and on behind the cluster of stores and shops in Sundial, otherwise the place would be as dry as dust. In the distance, saws from the lumber mill echoed in the hills.
    “Where’s your ranch?”
    He pointed to a sprawling house halfway up the slopes, built of stone and fresh-sawed lumber from the mills. “The white one in the middle of the trees.”
    “All that?”
    He nodded with pride.
    “You’ve worked hard, Jack.”
    “And from the sound of it, so have you. You must’ve come to know some of the women at the boarding house quite well.” She’d done odd jobs to help support herself, she’d written in her letters.
    She turned away and peered up at two soaring hawks. “Lovely people, all of them, trying to overcome such tragedy.”
    He wanted to offer his condolences again on the loss of her sister and father, out in the open this time and not simply through written correspondence. How did one convey the depth of compassion after such a catastrophe? The Great Fire had occurred nearly two years ago, in October of ’71, but the loss was still raw. He shook his head at the thought that one-third of the city’s population had lost their homes. And many had buried loved ones.
    “I was so sorry to hear the news about your father and sister. If I had known...I would have been there to pay my respects, and to help if I could.” As for comforting Cassandra, he had mistakenly assumed Troy would be there to do that. How wrong Jack had been. The cousin—the one whose parents had taken Jack in as a boy when his own had passed away from consumption—had offered no support to her at all, because he wasn’t even in Chicago at the time of the fire.
    She swallowed and clasped a pink rose on her lap. “Thank you. You mentioned you were in the new lands of Alaska and didn’t hear about the fire till six months later. How did the news finally reach you?”
    “I was on a ship traveling down the coast, heading to California. There was an old newspaper stuck inside one of the animal cages. When I opened it, there was a photograph of your street. Burned to ashes.”
    He swallowed hard at the memory of pulling out those pages, and the horror of not only seeing it, but being trapped on a ship and unable to do