Chapter 9
Excitement pumped through Miranda’s veins as Randall hopped off the stage to grab a pair of chairs.
She’d never dreamed anything like this was possible.
Then again, in the last twenty-four hours so many impossible things had happened to her that she’d lost count.
A giddy laugh rippled through her as Randall set the chairs facing each other, then gestured for her to take one. He sat in the other.
“Oh, no, Uncle Buford.” She jumped right into the fantasy the two of them were creating. “ You need to sit down for this, but I am most certainly going to remain standing.”
“Yes, dear,” Randall replied in a strange voice. She blinked, realizing he must be attempting to imitate Uncle Buford, though he’d never met him.
“Uncle Buford had a low, gruff voice,” she whispered, breaking character for a moment.
“Right. Gruff.” Randall changed his voice to suit.
He didn’t have it quite right, but that wasn’t enough to distract Miranda from her purpose. She paced away, then back again, then planted her hands on her hips and snapped, “What gives you the right to ruin my life by leaving me this saloon?”
Without missing a beat, Randall huffed the way a crotchety old man would and said, “Who says I’m ruining your life?”
“I do.” Miranda pointed at herself. “I am the last person suited to run a saloon. A saloon which has obviously been more than that, if the scandalous things we’ve found cleaning up are any indication.”
Randall shrugged. “Where’s the harm in men and women having a little fun with each other? No one was forced into anything. It was a damned good time all around.”
Miranda sucked in a breath and took a half step back.
She could have argued that she was shocked by Randall’s harsh language, but his words struck a little too close to home.
It was surprisingly close to something Uncle Buford would have said.
And she had been enjoying herself, not just the night before, but all week.
No one had forced her to get close to Randall.
Growing more and more intimate with him, and then ultimately intimate, had felt like the most natural thing in the world.
She shook her head at her radical thoughts and returned to her argument.
“That might have been your life—and I should have known that’s what you were up to all these years, since mother and father shook their heads whenever you came up in conversation—but that wasn’t my life.
My life was something entirely different, and you destroyed it. ”
“But did you really like that life in the first place?” He was still speaking as Uncle Buford, but a flash of something purely Randall was in his eyes.
Miranda pursed her lips and crossed her arms tightly over her chest, half turning away. “It was the life I knew,” she answered quietly. “It was a proper life, a respectable life.”
“A life where you weren’t happy,” Randall as Uncle Buford said. “Don’t think I don’t remember the things you told me about your sister being the one who got all the attention, even when she didn’t follow the rules. You, young missy, tried following the rules, and it didn’t work out for you.”
“That’s…” She wanted to finish ‘not true,’ but the words wouldn’t pass her lips. Because it was true.
“You always were my favorite,” Randall went on. “That sister of yours was never as interesting or lively or daring as you were.”
She rolled her eyes and turned back to him. Randall didn’t know Vicky. He didn’t know…
She paused, considering. Vicky was lively and pretty and made conversation easily, but try as Miranda might, she couldn’t think of a single goal her sister had in life other than catching and marrying the right man.
Which she did, though thinking about it now, Micah was nothing compared to Randall.
And ever since marrying Micah, Vicky had been nothing but whiney and boring.
“Yes, well, the saloon is a little too interesting for me,” she attempted to counter Randall-Buford’s argument.
“Poppycock!” Randall exclaimed so forcefully that Miranda jumped.
“Why, you’re bright and witty and willing to try things that most of those milky-faced young ladies would never be brave enough to do.
You just needed the right push to get you out of that stale old life and into a place where your talents could really be put to work. ”
Her heart thrilled at the prospect, but she frowned. “Yes, but here? In this place? It’s a house of every kind of vice.”
“Ah, it was a house of every kind of vice.” Randall leaned forward, pointing at her.
“What it will become is what you make of it. All I gave you was a premises and capital. I never said you had to continue to operate it as a saloon and whorehouse.” He blinked at his own pronouncement and sat a little straighter as if intrigued by the idea.
Prickles of inspiration broke out along Miranda’s skin.
“That’s…that’s true. He never said I had to continue to operate the place as a saloon.
He never said I had to sink down into the kind of activity that he preferred.
” She tilted her head to the side, a thousand thoughts flooding her all at once, like moonbeams breaking through the clouds.
“Maybe…maybe Uncle Buford didn’t leave me an immoral travesty of an institution after all.
Maybe he left me a way out of the life I was trapped in, a chance to create something new and recreate myself in the process. ” She blinked. “Oh!”
Her pulsed raced, but now it was for an entirely different reason.
This whole time, she’d wedged herself between the proper, stiff, miserable life she’d been leading and the wild, vice-ridden life she imagined her uncle was trying to force her into.
But the middle ground, the area of exploration and innovation, that was where she really stood.
She had the whole spectrum of possibility before her.
All that remained to be seen was what she would do with it.
“Oh,” she repeated, pressing her hand to her chest. “This is a good way to figure things out.”
Randall stood and crossed the space between them. He wore a broad smile and pulled Miranda into his arms. “I think I would have liked to meet your Uncle Buford after all. He sounds like a wise and wonderful man.”
“You know, I suppose he was.”
“Not at all like my father.”
Miranda pulled back to look into his face. “Your father?”
Randall huffed and shook his head. “My father wouldn’t know the first thing about giving someone the means to live their own life. He’s far too busy trying to mold mine into what he wants it to be.”
“Then you should tell him no.” It seemed obvious to her.
Randall laughed, but it wasn’t a pleasant sound. “You don’t know my father.”
All at once, her eyes went wide as inspiration hit her. “Here.” She crossed to the chair where he’d been sitting and plopped into it. “You played Uncle Buford for me, now I’ll play your father. Spit it out, son! What do you have to say to me?” She dropped her voice to a masculine octave.
Randall let out a weak laugh and rubbed a hand over his face. “This isn’t about me, it’s about you finding your way,” he argued.
“Come on, son. If you don’t say what you mean, how do you intend to make something of yourself?” she puffed up her chest the way she had seen the mayor of her hometown in California do when he was being particularly pompous.
Randall frowned. “My father’s idea of a man who’s made something of himself is different than mine.”
Still in character, Miranda barked, “What are you, son? A man or a mouse?”
“I’m a better man than you,” he snapped so suddenly that Miranda had to struggle to stay in her persona.
“What do you have to show for it?” She played devil’s advocate, or rather, father’s advocate. “Where’s your fortune, your prestige?”
“I don’t care about money and position.” Randall threw out his hands, giving in to the fantasy. “I never did. That was your dream, not mine.”
“Pish tosh! What other dream is there?”
“Love,” Randall nearly shouted in return. “I want to do a job I love. I want to stay in one place, in a town I love. I want to marry the woman I love, not the heiress who will bring the biggest fortune with her.”
Miranda arched a brow and pursed her lips. He hadn’t told her that his father had ever pressured him into marrying an heiress, but it made perfect sense. How dare the man! She wanted to shout at him now.
“I want to marry Miranda,” Randall went on, then blinked out of the charade. “I want to marry you.” He looked her straight in the eyes, her, not some image of his father. “I want to build a life with you, here in Mistletoe. I want to…to turn this saloon into a first-class restaurant.”
“Oh!” The idea lifted Miranda right out of her seat. “What a wonderful idea. Your cooking is exquisite, and I don’t think I’d mind playing hostess in a restaurant at all.”
Fueled by her declaration, Randall stepped up to her and took her hands.
The fire from confronting ‘his father’ was still in his eyes.
“I don’t care about any of the things my father has tried to push on me.
I’m glad that I got a chance to travel and experience so many different kinds of lives, but perhaps because of that, I know which one is the life I want.
This one, right here. And I don’t care if we’ve gone about everything backwards and upside down and against the standards of polite society. ”
“Neither do I,” Miranda added, breathless.