Bittersweet Promises

  Bittersweet Promises

  Trana Mae Simmons

  Bittersweet Promises cover design

  and copyright 2012 by

  Angela Rogers

  Misadvmom @ yahoo.com

  Copyright 1994, 2011 by Trana Mae Simmons

  Bittersweet Promises originally published as

  A Leisure Lovespell by Dorchester Publishing

  in 1994

  Montana Surrender Excerpt Copyright 1993, 2011

  by Trana Mae Simmons

  Montana Surrender originally published as

  A Leisure Book by Dorchester Publishing

  in 1993

  Smashwords Edition

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to where you purchased it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, or by any means existing now or in the future, in whole or in part, without the express written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

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  Dedication:

  To Barney

  Thanks for the hot meals when we

  would have had cold cuts

  the days I was glued to the computer!

  Chapter 1

  February 13, 1866

  The door on the general store slammed open and the stagecoach driver clumped across the board walkway, halting at the edge to bite off a hefty chaw from his newly- purchased tobacco plug. One of the coach horses pricked its ears and whuffed out a steamy cloud of breath as it turned its head toward the voice.

  "Danged fool passengers," the driver grumbled around the bulge in his cheek. "Got nothin' better to do than set inside and rest their legs and backsides, while I ride up there in the weather. Then they 'spect me to be their lackey and carry their bags back to the hotel, just 'cause I didn't stop there an' let them out!"

  "I heard that!" Shanna pushed the door she had caught in mid backswing open further and marched after the driver. "I'll report your insolence! Don't you think I won't!"

  The driver rolled his eyes and shook his head before he turned around. "You an' that boy can carry your own bags. Don't look to me like there's a derned thing wrong with neither one of you."

  Realizing her little brother had followed her outside didn't calm Shanna's anger a bit. "Our passage money entitles us to your assistance in handling our baggage. Every other driver we've had on this trip gave us that courtesy."

  "Yeah, well those other drivers probably didn't have to wait an extra fifteen minutes in the morning for you to primp your face. You put me behind schedule, and now I gotta make up the time."

  The driver climbed into his seat as Shanna glared at him indignantly. Fix her face, indeed. All she'd been trying to do was at least get her upper body washed and her dress changed. She darned sure hadn't lingered over that breakfast of half-cooked oatmeal.

  "You're a disgrace," she finally spat at the driver as he reached for the reins. "I'm going to make that report in writing, not just verbally. I'm also going to tell the company how rude you were to Toby and me at the waystation this morning, and ask them to discipline you."

  "Won't do you no good," the driver said with a sneer. "Coach lines can't hardly get drivers these days, 'specially ones good with a gun — an' I am. The lines are makin' money 'cause all the train tracks was tore up in the war, an' they ain't about to fire me just 'cause I won't haul your blasted bags to the hotel. Should've brought your fancy-pants maid with you, you wanted someone to wait on you hand and foot!"

  He spit a glob of tobacco juice over the side of the coach and it spattered on the step to the walkway, just below Shanna's feet.

  Shanna instinctively jumped back, her face contorting with fury. "You...you barbarian! I hope every one of your darned horses go lame before you get to your next stop, and you have to walk fifty miles!"

  The driver pursed his lips again, then thought better of it. He released the brake and picked up the whip, cracking it over the team's heads. The coach surged forward amid a jingle of harness and plops of pancake-size hooves, leaving Shanna nothing to yell at but the rear of the departing vehicle.

  Still, she swept her skirts up and, avoiding the glob of tobacco spittle, climbed down to the second step. With her fist half raised, it suddenly dawned on her how ridiculous she would look to her five-year-old brother if she shouted the words pushing at her throat. Lord, that would be some example for Toby!

  Instead, she gazed up at the sky while she breathed deeply and tried to smooth the anger from her face before she looked at Toby. A biting wind chilled her cheeks and the bank of purple-black clouds scuttling overhead foretold yet another blizzard on the way, perhaps as bad as the other two storms they had encountered on their journey.

  For just a second, she felt a stab of sympathy for the coach driver, having to fight to keep his schedule in the inclement weather. But she quickly shifted her concern to the horses. That old coot could freeze for all she cared.

  "Shanna, are you gonna stand there all day?" Toby asked.

  Shanna gave a start and finally dropped her arm, unclenching her fist and lifting her skirts again. "I'm coming, Toby," she said as she climbed the steps. "You must be freezing."

  "Yeah," Toby admitted. "And I thought you were freezing there for a minute. You looked like you were gonna run after the stagecoach, then you just stood there like you couldn't move. You sure looked funny."

  Shanna made a valiant attempt to overlook Toby's giggle, smoothing at her cloak and searching in her pockets for her gloves. Trying to appear nonchalant as she pulled out her gloves and worked her hands into them, she turned so she could glance up and down the street. Luckily, she only saw vacant hitching rails, even in front of the two saloons on down the street.

  She breathed out a sigh of relief. The inhabitants of Liberty, Missouri, appeared to be taking shelter from the approaching storm. She didn't see even one other person on the boardwalks who could have witnessed the spectacle she had made of herself.

  Liberty, Missouri. Good grief, she hadn't even known there was a town called Liberty in Missouri until a few weeks ago.

  Cody Garret stepped out of the telegraph office on the opposite side of the street. A satisfied smirk creased his full lips as he stuffed his copies of the telegrams into the pocket of his sheep-skin lined coat.

  He'd told Aunt Bessie a search would be useless. No woman of sane mind would travel very far through the war-ravaged South right now — especially for the paltry salary he could offer. Now maybe Bessie would quit being such a pain in the as...neck and hoist her elderly fanny back out to the plantation — and he could get a decent, woman-cooked meal for a change.

  The half of cinnamon-laden apple pie and two glasses of milk from the well house for breakfast that morning hadn't really appeased his appetite. But it was better than wrestling that black monstrosity of a wood stove into coughing up an edible meal. Aunt Bessie would definitely not have approved, though.

  Cody's smirk dissolved into a wry grin. Twenty-five years old, a widower with a small child, and a war behind him, and he still cringed at the thought of a censuring look from his elderly aunt.

  A flash of sunlight caught the corner of Cody's eye. He briefly glanced at the cloud-laden sky, then realized his mistake. Across the street he noticed what seemed to be the only other two people in town braving the frigid weather.

  He didn't recognize either of them and gathered they had arrived on t
he stage. And he sure as hell would have remembered that woman if he'd seen her before. Or at least that shining, blond hair — the only bright spot of color in the stark, winter day.

  She bent down and tucked the little boy's muffler more securely around his neck, and Cody sighed in disappointment when she straightened and pulled the hood of her cloak forward with a graceful movement.

  Lucky man, whoever that woman belongs to, Cody thought to himself as she walked over to the carpetbags sitting outside the store. And most definitely female. His mouth quirked in appreciation of the swaying gait the long, woolen cloak couldn't conceal as she trudged slowly up the walkway.

  "Probably headed to the hotel," Cody murmured. "Reckon I ought to go over there and offer to help with those bags. The one that little mite beside her's carrying is almost as big as he is."

  A gust of icy wind hit Cody as he stepped down into a street still muddy beneath a thin crust forming in the cold air. He glanced overhead as he grabbed his black Stetson and clamped it more firmly over his chestnut hair, then stopped abruptly when he dropped his gaze from the sky and found another sign of life in town.

  Three riders — mounted on blooded horses like Cody hadn't seen around town since before the war — rode slowly up the street. Long dusters flapped beside their stirrups and hats pulled down almost to their noses shadowed their faces. A glimpse of movement in the alley beside the bank caught Cody's attention, and he could barely detect the outlines of two more horses, standing just far enough back to be almost invisible from the street.

  Cody's senses sharpened and his eyes narrowed. His skin crawled with the same feeling he'd had the day he avoided a well-concealed ambush on his company during the war, and the hair on the back of his neck actually prickled. It took him only a split-second to measure the distance between the woman and the bank.

  Trusting his instincts, Cody leapt back onto the walkway and pushed open the telegraph office door. His voice cut through the quiet office. "Ed, go out the back way and find the sheriff! Tell him to get over to the bank!"

  "What's going on, Cody?"

  "Whatever it is, I don't like the looks of it. Have Dan bring his rifle and deputies!"

  Ed scrambled from his chair, his face strained with worry. "Cody, all my money's in that bank."

  "So's mine and everyone else's in the county," Cody said grimly. "Move!"

  Ed ran for the back of the office as Cody slammed the door. Despite the biting wind, he unbuttoned his heavy coat and slipped the loop from the handle of his sixgun as he angled across the street. Maybe he was wrong. Hell, he hoped he was wrong, but he'd rather look like a too-cautious fool in front of Dan than a gullible one.

  Glancing up the street toward the bank, Cody saw the three horses now riderless and a fourth man he hadn't noticed before sitting in his saddle, holding their reins. The woman and child were approaching the land office, the last building before the alley beside the bank. And the bank was between them and the hotel.

  "Ma'am!" Cody called, though he had little hope his voice would carry over the wind. "Ma'am, wait up a minute!"

  Shanna stopped and frowned, puzzled at the slight sound that had broken into her concentration. Peering over her shoulder, she saw a tall, broad-shouldered man hurrying up the street in her direction. He wore what she had come to think of as working clothes the further south she travelled — a heavy coat, denim jeans and boots. But even at this distance she could tell his denims fit much better than on most of the men she had encountered — or maybe his body was just better proportioned.

  He wasn't close enough to make out the features on the face beneath the hat brim, but one thing she could tell. The man's boots were sinking in mud and clumps of other matter left behind by the horses, spattering clods of muck on the denims, which tightly encased his muscular legs. Obviously, she sniffed to herself, they didn't have street cleaners here.

  Shanna shrugged and placed a hand on Toby's shoulder to urge him forward again. The man couldn't be calling her — she sure didn't know anyone in this town.

  She didn't particularly care about meeting anyone in this town, either, especially if they were anything like that ill-mannered coach driver. It was just another mindless stop on her and Toby's journey, and right now the promise of a soft bed and hot bath at a real hotel urged her onward.

  "Ma'am!" came the voice again. "You there with the child. Wait up!"

  "Shanna, I think that man's talking to us." Toby twisted from beneath Shanna's hand and looked out into the street. "Do you think he's a cowboy?"

  "Hum?" And a hot, well-prepared meal. She hoped that hotel had a decent cook. She didn't even want to think about what might have been in the half-congealed stew served at the wayside stop last evening.

  Shanna halted again and glanced behind her. A tired sigh escaped her lips as she retraced a few steps and reached down to take her little brother's small hand in her own. Wasn't she ever going to get to the hotel?

  "Come on, Toby. It's freezing out here and I can't wait to soak in a hot bath."

  "But Shanna, it's not Saturday," Toby grumbled as he obeyed the tug on his arm and followed his sister.

  Cody glanced at the lone rider holding the horses once more as he climbed the steps to the walkway. The man straightened his slouched shoulders and shifted nervously in his saddle, his head swiveling from Cody back toward the bank window. His hand swept his duster behind him, then rested on his sixgun.

  Cody reached for his own gun, dropping his arm before he could pull it from the holster. Jesus, that woman and child would be caught in a crossfire if shooting started.

  Just then, five more riders emerged from the trees a few hundred yards from the edge of town, galloping their horses at breakneck speed toward the bank.

  "Hell and damnation," Cody muttered. "Hurry up, Dan."

  Where the blue blazes was the sheriff? Cody cautiously started after the woman, keeping his eyes on the lone horseman in case he pulled his gun, but realizing there wasn't really a damned thing he could do about it as long as that crazy little fool and her small companion were in the line of fire. Why the hell didn't she realize she was walking straight into danger?

  "Typical woman," Cody growled under his breath. "Got her mind too full of feminine poppycock to notice the devil if he swished his tail right in her face!"

  "Stop right there, lady!"

  Shanna's carpetbag thudded on the walkway and her panic-stricken eyes centered on the black bore of the pistol the man on horseback aimed at her and Toby from across the alley. Frantically she tugged Toby's small body close to her, her terror warring with the need to protect her brother.

  "P...put that gun away!" she demanded. "What in the world do you think you're doing?"

  The gunman's eyes flickered and the pistol barrel shifted slightly. "You!" he shouted.

  The pistol barked and Shanna screamed. Splinters of wood sprayed the arm of her cloak when the bullet buried itself in the wall at her back. Hysterical with fear, Shanna stumbled backward, pushing Toby behind her.

  "Stay still, lady," a voice hissed. "For God's sake, don't try to run. He'll shoot you and the boy both!"

  The sibilant warning terrified Shanna further, but she bit down on her lower lip, stifling her next scream and clogging the terror in her throat. Behind her, Toby whimpered and Shanna's fingers tightened on his arm until he quieted. Ever so slowly, Shanna swiveled her eyes away from the pistol barrel toward the voice. The mud-spattered figure of the man who had been crossing the street stood a bare yard from her, his hands in the air, a dangerous glint in his eyes and his body tensed.

  "What's going on here?" someone shouted out in the street.

  The man on horseback jerked around in his saddle and the pistol cracked again. The young man running at them clutched his chest and crumbled to the street. His scream of agony was drowned by the rebel yells issuing from the throats of the riders on the five galloping horses, now a scant fifty feet away.