I know it’s too soon to say it, but I will, anyway,
Love, your future bride,
Chantal Morris
How selfish could Macon be? Harper wondered. Didn’t he realize he was leading on confused young girls who had nowhere to turn? Chantal Morris, like so many others who’d written since Macon placed the ad, was undoubtedly frightened out of her mind, and if she wasn’t careful, she might actually find herself at the mercy of Macon.
Which meant Harper’d better talk some sense into Chantal. After all—Harper lifted her eyes toward Star Point—she had been even younger than Chantal, only sixteen, when she and Macon conceived. Harper mulled over how many women he’d dated since his return from Houston—everybody from the new schoolteacher, Betsy, who was from Idaho, and Lois Potts, not to mention Nancy Ludell, a notorious gossip who lived at the end of Harper’s road and who was newly divorced and sticking to Macon like white on rice.
“Chantal Morris needs to graduate,” Harper whispered. “She’s not that much older than my son, and without her diploma, it’ll be even harder for her to take care of a baby.”
Tapping a pen against Chantal’s letter, Harper wondered how to help. Tampering with the U.S. mail was a federal offense, of course, but Harper was on the school board, and her donations did help outfit the Pine Hills Armadillos football team. Surely, she thought, the town fathers would help keep her out of prison if Macon ever got wind of what she was doing. Besides, fate would protect her, since her motives were pure. No, Chantal wasn’t the first misguided, underage girl who mistakenly thought she wanted to marry Macon. Harper had once made that mistake herself.
She reread Chantal’s letter slowly, frowning over every word, and then, assuring herself she was doing her civic duty, she lifted a sheet from the stationary box. The paper was pink and bubble-gum scented—that was unfortunate—but Chantal wouldn’t mind. Nor would the other women with whom Harper intended to correspond, sharing her experience, strength and hope concerning Macon. Shutting her eyes, Harper waited for inspiration and then began to write:
Dear Chantal,
From personal experience, I can imagine what a bad time you’re having in Missouri, so I hope you’ll take my advice: finish high school! You won’t regret keeping your baby, and your diploma will be of great help in the future. I gave birth to my baby just after I turned seventeen, and being a young mom was fun. Now, I wouldn’t have the energy! I’m thirty-three now, and this autumn my son is starting eleventh grade. For years, he’s been my greatest source of happiness. I know it will be the same for you. The right man will come along, so my advice is to stay strong. Don’t let those awful girls at school get you down. You’ve got to finish high school, have your baby and hold out for the man of your dreams!
Lifting the pen, Harper bit down on her lower lip as if that might stop the sudden lurch of her heart. Because she’d been double promoted, Harper had been younger than the other girls at school and, like Chantal, she hadn’t had many friends. She’d loved her husband—Harper really had—and yet…Cutting off the thought, she assured herself that what she’d felt for Macon had been girlish infatuation. She continued writing.
Chantal, fortunately for you, I’m reviewing the Texas Men respondents for Mr. McCann. You have a wonderful future ahead of you—I can feel it in my bones, sweetheart. But, believe me, that future is not in Pine Hills, Texas. Macon McCann is not the man for you, nor would he be a good father for your—or anyone else’s—baby….
1
MACON MCCANN’S soft drawl moved through the ranch office like a mountain cat stalking prey, sounding slow, purposeful and ready to pounce. “I should have guessed our local postmistress was behind this.”
Diego, the ranch’s cow boss, paced thoughtfully, wiping sweat from his brow with a bandanna. “Shoulda, woulda, coulda.”
Three words that definitely pertained to himself and the widow Moody, Macon thought. Being railroaded by his father into advertising for a bride was bad enough, but when no hopefuls even answered his invitation in Texas Men, Macon should have gotten suspicious. At first, he’d even considered renting a second P.O. box, to accommodate all the mail he’d expected. Oh, he prided himself on having no foolish illusions, but Macon’d figured some women would be excited by the prospect of cooking and cleaning at the new house he wanted to build on the ranch.
In order to facilitate the process, Macon had sent Texas Men a picture. No problem there. He was better-looking than most men in the magazine. Wealthier, too.
But nobody answered the ad.
And now the mystery was solved. “Harper Moody,” Macon murmured, hell-bent on not letting his true emotions show. Leaning back, he crossed his boots on a scarred wood desk and stared down dispassionately at the pink sheets he’d taken from Harper’s work station at the post office an hour ago. Not even the aroma of hay and horses overpowered the bubble-gum scent wafting from the sheets, and Macon found it particularly bothersome since beneath that, he imagined he could smell a scent he preferred to forget.
Harper’s scent.
Since she handled every piece of mail passing through Pine Hills, Macon should have known she’d see his ad and do something to thwart him, but had she really opened the respondents’ letters and corresponded with his potential brides?
The screen door breezed open, and Macon glanced up to see his father, Cam, come inside with Ansel Walters, who owned the ranch bordering the Rock ’n’ Roll. “The moment Macon advertised for a wife,” Ansel joked, glancing between the letters and Diego and Cam, “he expected to see those brides come a runnin’.”
“Like on that old TV show, ‘Here Comes the Brides’,” added Diego, his sparkling eyes as black and shiny as the curls sticking from beneath his battered straw hat. “Yes, indeed,” Diego continued as he stripped a sweat-soaked shirt from his middle-aged, wiry frame, folded it over the back of a swivel chair and plopped down with a grunt. “Every woman in the world be desperate to get herself hitched to a rich rancher stud like Macon, right, Macon?”
“Just ask any female,” Cam added as he tossed his work gloves next to the letters. “Marrying my son’s their main goal in life. You boys wouldn’t believe how many brides I had to fight past to get to work this morning!”
Macon shot his father a quelling glance.
Cam laughed. “Oh, c’mon, don’t get mad, Macon. I never told you to advertise for a bride.”
“No, you didn’t,” Macon said, worriedly running a hand over his head, slicking back the gold waves. “But you said you won’t legally hand the ranch over to me until I’m married.”
“Now you’re catching on.” Cam’s left hand was nearly immobile, due to a stroke he’d suffered, but he gleefully clapped the other on his knee. “I don’t want you running the Rock ’n’ Roll yet. It’s my ranch, and no matter what your ma says, I’m not retiring.”
Macon surveyed his father a long moment, his gut clenching as if he’d been punched. Cam’s shoulders, once as powerful as Macon’s, were thin and stooped, and what was left of his hair had turned bristly gray. His face was as wrinkled as a pair of old boots, and suddenly, noticing how his father had changed with age, Macon wished he’d never left home. He missed the years he hadn’t been here, working the ranch with Cam. Macon had been a late baby, the only child, and now Cam was seventy-three.
Harper, why did you make me leave?
And