Shotgun Bride Read Online Free

when she looked up and saw Gig Curry standing on the other side of the window opening onto the street, staring at her through the steam-fogged glass. The look in his eyes was colder than the heart of a high-country winter, and he needed no words to convey his message: if she didn’t help him find Cree, he’d kill her for sure.

Chapter 3
     
     
    “W hat do you know about this Sister Mandy woman?” Kade asked Emmeline, after putting out his cheroot and stepping back into the kitchen, where his sister-in-law was busy cutting slices of peach pie and setting them neatly on plates. He felt a wispy recollection tugging at the edge of his mind again, but he couldn’t quite catch hold of it. There was an element of fascination, too, which troubled him.
    Emmeline looked back at him over one shoulder. A tendril of hair curled against her temple, and it was all he could do not to reach out and smooth it for her. Not to send her home to the ranch, or at least into the hotel’s private parlor, to put her feet up and catch her breath for a while. He did none of those things because Emmeline was his brother’s wife, not his own. Keep that in mind, cowboy, he thought.
    “Not a great deal,” she admitted. “She came in on the stage one day, and Becky gave her a job. We figure she’s running from something, but she hasn’t confided in us and we haven’t pressed her much, what with all that’s been happening.”
    “I thought being a nun was a job,” Kade remarked, curiously irritated, pushing the door closed against the cold and folding his arms. He was in no hurry to go back to the dining room and deal with both his brothers at once—they were plague enough one at a time.
    Emmeline shrugged. “Not being Catholic,” she said, still busy, “I wouldn’t know.”
    Kade was not religious himself, at least not in the conventional sense, but Concepcion, his father’s longtime housekeeper, was devout. She knew all the saints on a first-name basis, said her rosary beads regularly, and paid visits to Father Herrera, at the Spanish mission on the other side of Indian Rock, to make confession. He meant to put the matter to her once he got back to the Triple M, though he’d have to wade through a flood of inquiry from her first. Concepcion would want to know everything that had transpired since he went looking for Jeb, and she wouldn’t give an inch of ground until he’d described every tedious detail. “You shouldn’t go trusting everybody who comes along and asks you for work, Emmeline,” he said. He thought of the man he’d seen outside with Sister Mandy. “There are plenty of no-good drifters around.”
    She brushed at the escaped tendril, then took two pie plates into each hand and headed for the inner door, opening it deftly with her hip before pausing briefly to look back at him. Her mouth had a mischievous tilt to it.
    “I assume you’re still set on getting married,” she said, as if in passing.
    He’d forgotten that fact, blessedly, for all too brief a time, and the reminder brought a scowl to his face. “Yes,” he said. His fondness for his sister-in-law was one matter, and his need for the Triple M was another. He intended to get a wife and make her pregnant as soon as possible; there was still a good chance that he could win out over Rafe and Jeb. “The sooner I do that, the better.”
    Emmeline smiled, and her eyes danced. “Well, then, here’s your opportunity,” she said airily. “There are six women out there in the dining room right now, all of them convinced they were meant to marry a McKettrick. Specifically, you.”
    Inwardly Kade groaned. “What?”
    Emmeline chuckled at his expression. “It seems you put the word out that you wanted a wife. Well, they’re here. Take your pick.” With that, she whisked through the doorway and disappeared, leaving Kade reeling in her wake. It wouldn’t do any good to call her back and point out that Rafe had sent for at least one of those women when he