The Lady's Arrangement (Help Wanted) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Excerpt

  Praise for Colleen L. Donnelly

  The Lady’s Arrangement

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  A word about the author…

  Thank you for purchasing this publication of The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

  Also available from The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

  Ben was tall, and he felt even taller as he took a step closer and leaned my way. “It takes two to bind a contract, and since I’ve just withdrawn, your arrangement is null and void. And just so you know, you can thank your lucky stars I’m not staying to marry you, because I take surprises a lot better than I take orders.” His eyes stayed on mine until his gaze traveled from my face down to my boots. “And wearing trousers doesn’t make you any more suited to giving orders than wearing a skirt would make me fit for giving birth.”

  My nails dug into my palms as I rolled my hands into fists. A word I’d heard Ted say when a pail slid off his bad arm came to mind. The word was immoral, but probably not too immoral for Ben Miller. “Just so you know, Mr. Miller, I’ve been running this ranch for three weeks now, in pants. I find skirts get in the way of things you’d probably be surprised I can do.”

  The half-smile returned. “I won’t argue that. Skirts surely do get in the way.” Ben straightened and slapped his hat tighter on his head. “Been my experience, too. Fortunately, neither one of us has to put up with one, since you can keep right on doing things the way you have been. I’m giving you an early parting. I’m leaving.”

  Praise for Colleen L. Donnelly

  Amazon #1 Bestselling Author

  RomCon 2014 Reader’s Crown Finalist

  ~*~

  “Colleen has the unique ability to draw the reader into her characters’ lives and you become somewhat of an eye witness. I enjoy each of her books and eagerly look forward to the next one. Each story is different but at the same time another chapter into real life.”

  ~Judy Faunce, teacher and avid reader

  “Colleen Donnelly has outdone herself with a fast-paced story and characters! THE LADY’S ARRANGEMENT is a well-crafted dilemma, one that kept me quickly turning pages!”

  ~Ericca Thornhill, author and teacher

  The Lady’s Arrangement

  by

  Colleen L. Donnelly

  Help Wanted Series

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  The Lady’s Arrangement

  COPYRIGHT © 2017 by Colleen L. Donnelly

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or The Wild Rose Press, Inc. except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Contact Information: [email protected]

  Cover Art by Diana Carlile

  The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

  PO Box 708

  Adams Basin, NY 14410-0708

  Visit us at www.thewildrosepress.com

  Publishing History

  First Cactus Rose Edition, 2017

  Print ISBN 978-1-5092-1324-5

  Digital ISBN 978-1-5092-1325-2

  Help Wanted Series

  Published in the United States of America

  Dedication

  To my dad,

  who taught me about farming in Kansas,

  my mom,

  who taught me how to craft a good story,

  my critique partners,

  who helped me polish this one until it shone,

  and my editor, Nan Swanson,

  who has helped me find my author legs.

  “Goodbye.”

  One word.

  And we parted.

  I glanced back only once.

  ~R

  Chapter 1

  New assignment: Tossed out of heaven, being sent to hell. Long before I was ready. ~Rex

  Tiny flickers sputtered between the toes of my boots, the heap of dry grass and twigs catching. At last. “Sorry, Pop.” I stared at the fiery glints, then straightened, rose from my crouch in one steady motion, and looked down, slid the flint and steel back into my pocket, and waited. Waited for the fire to grow…and destroy my boyhood home.

  It waited, too. Sizzling while it sputtered, giving me the chance to change my mind and save everything else my pop had built that waited behind me—his enormous barn with a shed to its side, a smokehouse and outhouse not far away. But the house—the ranch house, the heart of our Red Rock Ranch—stood in front of me. Inches from the smoldering fire I’d started. I couldn’t change my mind. There wasn’t time. Thanks to some widow I’d never seen or heard of until today.

  I dropped a knee to the ground, cupped my hands, and blew, sending embers upward along with a little spray of sparks, several stinging my face. I drew back. Gunpowder always meant business. And flint and steel meant reliable. That’s why I chose them. I knew this job was going to hurt.

  Flames and sparks gobbled away at the grass and kindling I’d laid near the base of our house. I watched them rally, still small enough I could spit them out before they ripened into more of a fire. Leave everything standing until I could come back and use the law—like I was paid to, like I’d tried to—to set things right between my pop, Adler Duncan, and Matt Morrissey, the lowdown swindler who’d stolen this ranch from him. I could hunt Morrissey down the way a Ranger should, sniff him out from wherever he’d hidden himself in this Oklahoma section of Indian Territory, and make him pay for the way he cheated my father. I could. I should. But there wasn’t time. I blew on the flames again.

  “Morrissey, you won’t be laying your head in my pop’s house or stabling a horse in his barn.” I leaned back on my haunches and waited some more.

  Tiny ripples of heat rose abov
e the flame’s orange tips, luring the fire upward until it caught, stretching and gaining momentum like an angry rattler snaking along the bottom of the house my father had built for him and for me—Rex, his oldest son—while I was too little to do more than drag boards or fetch nails. Or to understand. I watched, hating the greedy flame as it roped what he had built for the two of us, claiming that simple square of one or two rooms for itself. Those boards he and I had put together had a different color from the ones the fire was racing toward, ones he added later when he married and built on, turning it into a house large enough to accommodate the woman who became my stepmother and the boy they had together. Little Brother. I always called him that, only half-brother meaning more to him than it ever did to me.

  I stood as the fire hurried past the original square and on to the different shade of wood that had held us all together as a family. I wallowed spittle in my mouth. Not enough to stop what I had started, now.

  “You won’t be sitting in our outhouse, either. Not after I’m done.”

  There was no reply other than the crackling, the biting and devouring of the wood. No one to respond to anything I said. But I said it anyway, and I meant it, wishing Morrissey were here to wrangle over what he wrongfully claimed was his. He hadn’t been man enough to face me about what he’d done, knowing I had hold of the law’s end of a waiting noose. One that said he’d come by this ranch crooked, a form of thievery worthy of death. A different sort of thievery than burning to the ground everything he’d stolen.

  I ran my fingers over my trousers’ pocket, feeling the flint and steel, their combination more of a weapon than my pistol had ever been. I understood fire. It had been a part of my life out here in the middle of Indian Territory and had meant a lot of things to me growing up on Red Rock Ranch. It had meant warmth and food. And it meant red—I’d always been partial to red. It also meant new growth for what prairie we had. It meant life out of death.

  But not this one. This fire meant death.

  Loose blades of grass and broken sticks tumbled out of what was left of my pile of kindling. They lay in the dirt at the toes of my boots, their tips smoldering. I stared at them, watched their dying sputters. Another chance to stomp out the growing flames, fight what was creeping along the base of the house, and leave everything my father had built intact. Leave it for that lowdown swindler, Morrissey, until I could get back and do things the way they should be done.

  I wouldn’t do that. My pop built this place. It was his and ours. I kicked the grass and twigs back to the fire and held them there with my boot. More sparks shot upward around the dry, worn leather, flames jumping higher up the ranch house’s boards, their heat penetrating the front of my trousers and even my shirt as they grew—clothing adequate for a spring evening like this, but nothing against the fire’s increasing fervor. Everything on me, from my toes to my shoulders, burned against my skin. I let it. I stayed right where I was—close to our old home, taking some of the heat from the last seconds of its life and holding on to memories as it let go. I was a part of this place, and it was a part of me. I would stay with it as long as I could.

  The flames licked fast along the wood as I drew my toe from their base. Their hunger and the way they lapped up the weathered boards made my stomach churn. They spread, stretching out in fingers long and thin, and then into hands—broad hands that hurried to destroy this place. Different from my father’s hands. His had created; his had embraced our home.

  “If you’d been keeping a better eye on things, Little Brother…” I spat to the side, the heat searing my cheek as I did. Luke. He called me part-brother instead of Big Brother, or even half-brother. I stared at the wet ball of dirt. He kept me on the outside all of our lives, never doing his part when he left himself within. I ground the spit with the toe of my boot.

  I ducked my head, forcing each boot a half step back. “Sorry it had to be this way, Pop.” My voice came out wrong this time as I spoke into the flames. Maybe it was the heat making me sound nothing like the thirty-three-year-old man I was. A man who’d traversed the red dirt of Indian Territory on horseback day after day, swallowed dust and hot rays, icy wind and hard rain, and still spoke with the strength of a Ranger. What came from my throat just now was the tenor of a child. A boy who loved what his pop had built. Enough to destroy it rather than leave it in a crooked man’s hands.

  The heat pressed harder against my clothing and face. I latched onto the brim of my hat, lifted it, and ran a hand through my hair, straight hair, as black as the hat itself. Just like my father used to do, through hair the same color as mine until the gray set in on him. I stepped back farther, settled the hat on my head, and stared at the destruction I’d created. No Ranger would do something like this. Break his promise to uphold what little law there was—the law I was paid to instill. Set a ranch on fire and burn it to the ground to take back from Morrissey the only way I could. For now. I’d get it all back someday. At least what was left of it.

  My father’s face appeared in the flickering flames I stared into. Creases and grooves, dug deep from thoughts he had never shared, from steady devotion, and from working hard all his life, turned to channels where tears began to flow. I’d never seen my father cry. He stared back at me, his face rippling in the flare, his burning resemblance crying itself out until at last it disappeared. “I’m sorry, Pop…” My voice strained, its usual tenor still not there. “It’s going to hurt when you find out everything you built is gone. As soon as I get back, I’ll explain it was me that did this to your ranch, and I’ll tell you why, so you’ll understand. Someday when it all hurts a little less. And when Morrissey is hanging from a tree.”

  The flames continued to spread, their reach higher and broader as I stood there. I glanced down at the fire’s base.

  “You understand, don’t you?” I looked up. My voice more like my own again, but softer. I waited for her, the one “her” I knew was in heaven and most likely watching what I’d done. The woman Adler married when I was six. Luke’s mother, the woman who took me into her heart and raised me as if I were her own, the only mother I’d ever known.

  I listened for some sort of assurance from her, strained above the crackling flames to hear the voice of the one person who surely understood what I was doing and why. I could imagine her, even after all these years, looking down at me—her soft brown hair, blue eyes, a half-smile I’d never forget. Luke was the best reminder of what she’d been like. He looked so much like her, even down to her not-so-tall stature, the opposite of me—his half-brother, the boy he resented for being so much like our father. I stared back at the flames, the heat burning my eyes. “It’s okay, Ma. You know I’ll make it up to Pop. Even to Luke, as soon as I get the chance.”

  Flames whipped around the windows as I waited and listened. I heard them eating up everything that said Duncan, everything all of us loved.

  Pop kept buckets near the well he’d dug, not far behind me. If he were here, he’d be filling them. Luke would be condemning me, while Pop fought the fire and what I thought was the right thing to do. I turned…looking toward the pails that held far more than a mouthful of spittle as I heard the glass pop—panes our father had been so proud of, and had protected from me and Luke when we were rock-throwing boys. They splintered and shattered in agonizing cracks. Endless explosions like a thousand gunshot wounds. That’s how they would feel to Pop. I turned back toward our home. What used to be windows were now gaping holes, black and empty squares in a glowing house, all encased in a roll of smoke that plumed upward above a fiery red ball.

  The sound of two boys broke above the crackling and the exploding of the panes, their mother’s warnings trailing behind them. I heard footsteps, too, of Luke and me, running through smoke, the way we used to when we were young. I was always bigger and stronger. I could hold my breath and make it through to the clean air on the other side, while Luke staggered behind, coughing and sometimes crying as our mother shouted my name. “Rex, you stop that! Your little brother can�
�t keep up with you. And what if you tripped and fell? Luke could never save you.” Luke hated me for the games he loved but always lost. I don’t know that he would have tried to save me if I fell, but I never took the chance he’d try and fail and walk away even more miserable than he already was. I also would never have let him succumb to the smoke. I stayed on my feet and ahead of him just enough to make him try harder. To turn him into Adler’s son, the way I was and he wanted to be.

  The smoke billowed upward above the curl it formed at the ground. It and the blaze beneath it were staggering—powerful—far more than I’d figured on in the dusky evening. I glanced across the land at the red rocks and hills surrounding what had been the Duncan homestead. It was late enough in the day I’d never pick out a rider coming to see what was happening. They’d be on me before I knew they were there, put a stop to me and what I was doing, or at least be able to describe me well enough Pop would be devastated. He’d buckle under the loss and betrayal before I had a chance to explain.

  I glanced at the barn. I intended to burn everything. Nothing was to be left when I was done. The barn, then the smokehouse, the outhouse, and last of all the small shed, the place Ma always hid little treasures just for me, things no one else ever knew about or needed to see. Especially Luke. She buried them in an old tin, sometimes once a month, sometimes more often. As a boy, I’d dig them up and see what surprises she’d left for me. She’d watch, on occasion, and talk about them. She’d make me feel special when she explained how important those little treasures were. I hadn’t dug into that dirt or touched the tin since before she died. I couldn’t. But I would now. I’d retrieve that box and take it with me, finally look at the last bit of significance she may have set aside for her stepson. Burn the shed, and be gone.

  Flames exploded inside the house, danced behind the empty windows as they gutted our home, consuming everything my father and Luke had left behind. The barn waited behind me. I turned and started toward the monstrosity Pop had been so proud of. Different sorts of memories lived there. Boy and man memories, pieces I’d never let Morrissey claim. I walked to the front of the barn, stopped near the door, and laid a hand against its rough, gray planks. “You’ll never really be gone,” I whispered, the heat from the house warming my back. “I won’t let you.” I pressed hard and ran the flat of my palm down the boards, splinters gathering in my skin like needles, each one an embedded memory. Something Morrissey could never have.