Free The Christmas Mail Order Bride (Holiday Mail Order Brides, Book One) by Kit Morgan

and told you myself!”
    “You’ve already apologized, Mr. Riley.”
    “Let me finish,” he said as he put a finger against her lips to quiet her. 
    His finger was warm despite the crisp chill in the air.  For a scant second she want ed to kiss it as it lingered there, but he removed it when he spoke again.
    “I’m a suspicious man by nature.  I guess that’s one of the reasons I’ve survived being a lawman.  You don’t stay alive by trusting folks.  You stay alive by listening to what your gut tells you.”
    She stiffened.  Here it comes …
    “Miss James, what I’m trying to say is … well …”
    “Mr. Riley, please … I can’t go back.”
    He looked at her, his brow raised, his mouth half opened.  His eyes darted about a bit before they settled on her once more. “Why?”
    She swallowed hard .  “Bad things will happen if I do. I’ve no where to go.”
    “What about your family?”
    “I don’t have any family.”
    He puckered his brow at her remark.  “No family?  Where are they?”
    She shook her head and almost laughed. “I don’t know.”
He sat up straight and looked down at her like a horn just sprouted out of her head. “What do you mean, you don’t know?”
    “Mr. Riley, I don’t know where my family is because I never had one to begin with.”
    She would not cry!  To admit no one wanted her, that no one thought she was worth keeping, even adopting!  She’d been rejected her whole life and now he was going to do the same!  He was going to ask it. She just knew he was going to ask the question she hated most of all!
    “Why don’t you have a family? What happened?”
    She looked him right in the eye. “Because, Mr. Riley.  I’m an orphan.”
     
     

Seven
     
    “An orphan?” Clayton asked, his voice coming out an entire octave higher than normal.  Summer James was an orphan?  Well, that e xplained a lot. He on the other hand, was about to admit he hadn’t been the one to answer the advertisement for a mail order bride. That his brother Spencer (not to mention his accomplice their mother) had sent in the request to the Ridgley Mail Order Bride Company.  But now this?
    He caught the glistening shine of a single tear in the moonlight as it ran down one side of her face.  He put a finger under her chin and pulled her face up to his.  What he saw made his gut twist and his heart wrench.
    Shame.  She was horribly ashamed to tell him she was an orphan.  “How long have you been an orphan?” Perhaps it was a stupid question, but he wanted to know.
    She sniffed back her tears as more began to fall.  “All my life, for as long as I can remember.”
    “You never knew your parents?  That’s plumb awful! I can’t imagine what that must have been like.  So are you telling me you spent your entire life in an orphanage … until you turned eighteen ?” He knew the law, of course she would have to leave once she turned eighteen.  But to spend her whole life in an orphanage, to never have been adopted… His gut twisted up another notch or two with the thought.
    “Yes, but there was no work to be found, and … and …”
    “And so you sought out the help of a mail order bride service?”
    She shook her head.  “No, actually, they sought me out.”
    “What?”
    She nodded, “Yes, that’s exactly what happened.  They contacted the orphanage. Mrs. Teeters the headmistress sent me there with a letter of recommendation that basically said I can read and write, knew my numbers, and do at least a few things decently.”
    She burst into tears at the admission.
    Clayton’s jaw clenched.  Noooo, not the tears!
    But then something stirred from deep within Clayton Riley in that moment.  Instead of running from the crying woman with his hackles up which usually happened in the company of a sobbing female, he instead sat ramrod straight. In fact the action was pronounced enough to make the swing move.  His jaw tightened and his eyes narrowed as a fierce protectiveness