Free Hard Luck Ranch by Nan Comargue

Chapter One
     
     
     
    Hard Luck Ranch.
    The name was supposed to say it all, Emma guessed. Hard Luck for its owner, no doubt, trying to scrabble a living out of a few hundred acres of land. And tough luck for her, who had no choice but to come here.
    The path to the ranch was certainly hard enough. The wagon on which she was perched had only a plain wooden board in place of a seat and the entire structure bounced mercilessly over each rocky turn in the road. Several times she’d predicted that she would simply be pitched bodily over the side, but each time she credited the driver’s skilled handling of the lone nag as they managed to stay upright for mile after lonely mile.
    Emma held onto her hat, now viciously mangled from the dry wind and sharp eddies of dust that blew into her face every minute or so. She tried to picture her home back in New York State. Her father’s home, truly, and now, more than anything, her stepmother’s.
    The image of warmth and genteel comfort would not come.
    Perhaps it had never existed. What warmth had been in her life had been in the form of her lovely young mother, now more of a vague sense than an actual memory. She’d died when Emma was three and her father had mourned long and earnestly, leaving Emma to be raised by a succession of governesses.
    She’d been neglected, she realized now when she looked back over her last twenty motherless years. But she’d forgiven her father almost before she recognized her right to a grievance. Her mother had been his childhood love. They’d grown up next to each other and been betrothed since they were old enough to be considered of marriageable age. An age Emma herself was now well past, as her stepmother delighted in reminding her.
    Emma lifted her chin and with that gesture she nearly lost hold of her precious hat.
    Well, she’d shown Mabel, hadn’t she? She managed to get married all on her own—and forever escape from Mabel’s terrible suffocating presence.
    “Hold on,” the taciturn driver told her as he made another sharp turn for no reason at all, as far as Emma could see.
    She held onto the side of the wagon for dear life.
    Yes, she’d gotten herself married. Why was it that the idea that had seemed so good in New York looked so miserable here in Texas?
     
    * * * *
     
    “This is the most stupid idea you’ve ever had, Wes, and no doubt about it.”
    Wesley Miller peered at his reflection in the wavery-looking glass and adjusted his string tie once again. It was his best one, with a wide silver clasp, but it—and him—felt woefully inadequate at the moment.
    And it didn’t help that his only friend in the world seemed to think the same.
    Wes turned away from the mirror. He could hardly make out his own face in the battered glass so what was the point in trying?
    “Come on, Ev, give it a rest now,” he said to his friend. “I need to do this.”
    “A wife?” Everett Montgomery practically spat the word out. “There are plenty of substitutes for one in town. No need for you to shackle yourself to a strange woman you’ve never met for no reason at all.”
    “There is a reason,” Wes said softly, looking around his house.
    It was large and so new that the boards were still bright and yellow, not yet faded to the mellow gray color of every other house surrounding the town. But the vast rooms were bare and unsightly, kept only minimally clean by his housekeeper, Dorry Jenkins.
    The house needed the tender care of a woman. And so did he.
    “Dorry may not be the best cook and dishwasher in the state,” Everett acceded, “but Kimberley down at the Rose is the best fuck money can buy. Will you give up the soiled doves at the Rose once your bride gets here?”
    “Sex is for procreation,” Wes said, feeling like a fool.
    Those were his late father’s words but those old adages only seemed to work for people like his father—the ones who went to church every Sunday and doled out advice to the less holy, whether they liked