The Bride's Arrangement (Western Hearts and Promises #8)

Chapter 1

Maria swept the front step of her father's store the way she did every morning, and she was still holding the broom when the two constables walked up the street toward her. They weren’t looking her way, but she knew before they stopped that they were coming to see her father.

Not because they’d done anything wrong.

Because they’d been told to.

She recognized the taller one first. He had been in the shop twice already that month, asking questions and writing things down in a small book, and each time he left, her father's mood soured for the rest of the day.

She set the broom against the doorframe and went inside ahead of them, her stomach already tight.

"Morning, Mr. Burns," the taller constable said, touching his hat as he came through the door.

Her father looked up from behind the counter, where he'd been sorting a delivery of tinned goods.

Maria watched his face carefully. He was good at hiding what he felt, better than she was, but she had spent nineteen years learning to read the small things.

The way his jaw set. The way his hands went still.

"Officer Reed," he said. "Back again."

"We've had another report. Someone claims you've been moving goods that came off the Haversham warehouse fire last month. Said you'd know how to get a good price on stock nobody's meant to be selling."

"I don't know anything about a fire," her father said. "Everything in this shop, I bought fair, and I've got receipts to prove it. You already know that, but you're welcome to look through the books again, same as you did last time, and the time before that."

The shorter constable was already wandering the aisles, lifting a few tins, setting them down. Maria stood near the counter, watching him touch things that didn't belong to him, and she felt something twist under her ribs. She kept her face carefully impassive, the way she knew her father was.

"Somebody's real interested in your shop lately, Mr. Burns," Reed said. "Third report this month. Makes a man wonder."

"Makes me wonder too," her father said, and there was an edge in it now, something Maria rarely heard from him. "I've run this store for twenty-two years. Never had trouble before this spring.”

“P’raps nobody noticed until now,” the shorter constable said, from where he was still standing in the aisle. Everybody ignored him, including Reed.

Reed studied him a moment, then closed his little book. "Nothing here today that says different. But if it keeps up, we'll have to take it more serious."

"It won't keep up," her father said, “you’ll get bored eventually because there's nothing to find."

The constables left without buying anything, the bell over the door jangling behind them. Her father watched the street through the window until they'd turned the corner, and only then did his shoulders drop.

"Third time," he said, mostly to himself. "Twenty-two years, and now three times in a month somebody decides I'm a thief."

Maria picked up a rag and began wiping down the counter, though it was already clean. She didn't trust her voice yet.

"Papa," she said finally. "I need to tell you something."

He looked at her, and whatever he saw in her face made him set down the ledger he'd picked up. "You know something about this."

"I think I do." She set the rag down too. “So maybe I need to tell you two things. You know I've been writing to this man? The store owner, out in Arizona Territory. Mason's Clear, it's called."

"I remember." Her father's voice was careful now, the way it got when he already suspected he wasn't going to like what came next. “I didn’t know the name of the town, though. You said it was just letters. Nothing serious."

"It started that way." Maria wrapped her hands together in front of her. “I suppose I told you that because I didn’t want you to think me foolish. But he’s a widower. He wants to remarry, but not just for practical reasons. He’s a good man, who wants his family to be whole again, if he finds the right person. ”

“And you think you might be the right person.”

“I might be. And I think he thinks it, too. His letters are beginning to sound that way, more and more.”

“I see. Has he asked you out there, or proposed?”

“No. But if he does, I’d like to go.”

Her father’s face clouded. “I don’t like that,” he said. “But my reasons are mostly selfish. What else did you have to tell me?”

“Papa, I think Jack is behind this.”

“Behind the shopkeeper you’ve been writing to?”

“No. The reports to the constables. I think it's him."

Her father was quiet for a long moment. “I’d believe that.”

"He made a great show, when we were courting, about how little the money mattered to him.

How he loved me in spite of it, or because of who I was, not who my father was.

" She swallowed. "When I called it off, people talked.

They asked why a factory owner's son would be turned down by a shopkeeper's daughter, and I think it embarrassed him more than anything he's ever felt in his life. "

"So he sends the law to harass an old man over tinned peaches."

"He wants people to see that he's powerful. That calling him off cost me something. Cost us something." Her eyes stung, and she blinked hard against it. "I'm sorry, Papa. I should have told you sooner, but I kept thinking it would stop."

Her father sat down heavily on the stool behind the counter. For a while he said nothing, and Maria stood there letting the guilt sit on her like a weight she'd earned.

"You didn't do anything wrong," he said finally. "You turned down a man who never once asked what you wanted. That's not a sin, Maria."

"It's cost you, though. It's cost us."

"It has." He rubbed a hand over his face. “And I think it’s important that I know these things, but I’m more concerned about this man in Arizona right now. Officer Reed won’t be able to touch me if I’m honest in all my dealings, and you know I am.”

“I’m serious. I’d go if he asked me.”

Her father's face went through several things at once, and none of them were happy. "You want to go out to the frontier and marry a man you've never laid eyes on."

"I want to go somewhere Jack Fletcher can't reach me.

Somewhere his money doesn't mean anything, and his name doesn't mean anything either.

" She sat down across from him. "But it's more than that, Papa.

I've read his letters a hundred times. He's kind.

He's got two children who need a mother, and a business that needs help, and he isn't hiding from me what the life will cost. I think, if I stay here, I'll spend my whole life ducking Jack Fletcher's shadow.

Out there, I could build something that's mine. "

"You're not running from him. That's what you're telling me."

“I'm not doing anything yet, but if I go, I’ll be running toward something," Maria said. "I know it doesn't look different from the outside. But it feels different to me."

Her father looked at her for a long time, the way he used to look at her when she was small and had done something he didn't quite know how to feel about.

"Your mother would have understood that better than I do," he said finally. "She always did have more faith in destiny than I've got."

"And you? What do you have faith in?"

He almost smiled. "In you, mostly. Though I don't much like where that faith is about to send you."