His Forbidden Bride (The Brides of Paradise Ranch (Spicy Version) Book 7) (12 page)

“No, seriously. What is going on here?” Solomon grew serious.

“We all know that you’ve got a heap of trouble on your hands,” Trey started. “And we are all committed to making sure it goes no further than it’s already gone.”

A mix of gratitude and embarrassment to have caused so much disturbance sat uncomfortably in Solomon’s stomach. He sipped his beer to try to dispel it.

“None of us is willing to see anyone get hurt,” Travis continued. “We’ve been trying to keep an eye out for you in an informal way these last few days.”

“So I’d noticed,” Solomon drawled, arching his brow.

“We want to make it a more formal arrangement,” Trey went on. “As sheriff of this town, I can’t allow any of its citizens to bully any of the others, or worse.”

The “or worse” was spoken almost as an afterthought, but every one of them knew it was the more important concern.

“I thank you for your concern, gentlemen,” Solomon began with a wince, “but I can’t ask you to go out of your way for a problem I created.”

Luke snorted. “
You
didn’t create any of this. Bonneville did.”

“All you did was marry the girl that anyone with eyes could see you’d been longing for these last few years,” Travis added.

Solomon sat straighter to fight the wave of awkwardness that rippled through him. If they only knew. “Regardless, I’m not asking you to untangle the knots I created by following my heart.”

An unexpected pang hit him. Would he have broken down and pursued Honoria even if she hadn’t come to him with her plight? Would he have had the courage to follow his heart without her prompting? He wasn’t sure, and that devastated him. To the world, Honoria appeared meek and retiring, but she was strength personified. In just a week, she’d become the core of his strength.

What would he do without her when she was gone?

“I know that look,” Trey went on with a lop-sided smirk.

No, Solomon doubted he did, but he kept his mouth shut.

“You’re a proud man, Solomon, and we all admire you for it, but there comes a time when even the proudest man would do well to accept the help of his friends.”

Solomon drew in a breath and crossed his arms. “What do you have in mind?”

The others shook off some of their tension and lit with enthusiasm.

“Gunn and I are here to help with the financial end of things,” Howard explained.

Solomon nodded, growing more uncomfortable—and more grateful—by the second. “I managed to sell a chunk of stocks, and the proceeds have been trickling in for the last day or so.”

“I’ve sent for some cash as well,” Gunn added. “It will be there if you need it.”

“We have a bit saved up too,” Domenica surprised them all by speaking out in her sonorous, Spanish accent.

“I couldn’t ask you to part with your hard-earned money,” Solomon said with a smile. He instantly regretted calling the money hard-earned. Chances were that any money coming from Bonnie’s girls was as bitterly won as possible and more.

Domenica shrugged. “I will speak to the girls.” She headed back to the saloon’s back room.

The men watched her go with admiration. “She always was a fine woman.” Luke grinned.

Sam swatted him. “You’re a married man, Luke!”

Luke’s expression dropped to mock offense. “Yeah, one who never patronized Bonnie’s girls in the first place,
Sam Standish
.” The name was an accusation, and Sam had the good grace to blush and glance over to the other side of the room.

Trey cleared his throat and went on. “Before we start arguing over who does and doesn’t spend time over at Bonnie’s, I propose we set up a rotation of guards for the bank and for Solomon and Honoria’s home.”

The others hummed and nodded in agreement. Solomon sighed and rubbed his face. “Honoria isn’t going to like it.”

“No?” Howard asked.

“She’s a newlywed bride.” One whose health would begin to decline any day now. In fact, Solomon was surprised that with a diagnosis of consumption, she was able to breathe as deeply and make the glorious sounds she did when they were in bed. The thought pinched his brow and started him wondering.

“I bet she’d rather know you were safe than be certain there were no ears nearby to hear,” Luke said. “I know Eden would prefer I was wrapped up in cotton-wool and tucked in her pocket than worry about me getting hurt.”

“True,” Solomon sighed. “I still think that privacy is important to Honoria.”

“And I would humbly suggest that you are
more
important,” Gunn added.

It was a stirring thought, one that put a smile on Solomon’s face in spite of the situation. But yet again, the pain of knowing he would lose her before they’d so much as begun a life together put a damper on the joy he so badly wanted to feel.

“What if—”

He was cut off as the saloon doors opened and none other than Rex Bonneville strode in. Not only that, he was accompanied by four men in suits that marked them as something other than rough ranch hands or hired thugs.

“Well, well.” Rex sauntered up to the table, the others following. “We were told we’d find you in here. I just didn’t think it would be quite such a social event.”

Solomon stood to prevent Rex from towering over him as he came closer. Everyone else at the table stood as well. If it wasn’t for the professional dress and demeanor of most of the men staring each other down, any outside observer would think there was about to be a shoot-out.

“Eastman, what are you doing here?” Howard barked, narrowing his eyes at one of the men standing behind Rex. “You too, Lamb.”

Solomon blinked in surprise. Howard knew these men?

The one Howard had addressed as Eastman stepped forward, hooking his thumbs in the pockets of his brocade vest. “The WSGA got word that there’s a bit of trouble here in Haskell. Seems some crooked darkie is trying to swindle good people out of their money.” He glared at Solomon.

As the picture came clearer for Solomon, he tensed. The WSGA. They were Bonneville’s trump card, and a vicious one at that.

“There is nothing of the sort going on,” Howard growled in reply. “In fact, what’s really going on is a case of outright bullying by a man who disagrees with the decisions his daughter has made.”

One of the WSGA members glanced anxiously between Howard and Bonneville. The other three kept their gloating, petty expressions and their airs of superiority.

“We’ll see about that,” Eastman said.

“We’re here to conduct an investigation,” one of the men who hadn’t shared his name yet said. He was tall and rail-thin, and had the look of a vicious schoolmaster about him.

“And who are you?” Howard snapped. “I don’t know you.”

“Jim O’Brien,” the man said. “Special council. The WSGA hired me to audit Mr. Templesmith and his bank.”

“Mr. O’Brien is here to determine if Mr. Templesmith’s business is strictly aboveboard,” Rex said with a smirk.

“If it’s not, well, we might just have to take things into our own hands,” Eastman finished.

Solomon wasn’t fool enough not to know what that meant. He’d seen far too many of his black brothers swept away in the middle of the night never to be seen again, or worse, to be found in trees.

“I can assure you, sirs, that my bank is run within strict guidelines set forward by the National Banking Act of 1863,” Solomon replied, summoning every bit of authority he could manage.

“We’ll be the judge of that,” Lamb said, eyes narrowed.

They all stood there, staring each other down, for several tense seconds. If Rex and his WSGA men were at all intimidated by the show of solidarity from the Haskell men, they didn’t let on. They were, however, the first to break.

“We’ll take that table over there,” Rex said, heading for one of the many free tables. “And we expect a round of whiskey immediately.”

Sam looked like he would mutiny and throw all five of them out, but Solomon shook his head and gestured for him to get whatever the men needed. For a few seconds, Sam still looked like he wouldn’t go for it. Then he sighed, muttered under his breath, and stomped off to the bar.

“Looks like my problems just got bigger,” Solomon sighed.

“Then your defense will just have to get bigger too,” Gunn answered, the look in his eyes that everyone in town both admired and dreaded.

“Don’t you worry.” Howard thumped Solomon’s back. “The WSGA fancies themselves far more powerful than they are. They don’t have as much authority in Haskell as they think they do. You’ll be fine.”

Solomon managed to smile and nod at his friend, but he was anything but certain. Saving his business was one thing, but if Rex had brought in back-up, could he continue to protect Honoria the way she deserved?

“
W
ell here’s a problem
,” Mr. O’Brien grumbled as he stood at the bank’s front desk by Mr. Greeley’s side.

“What problem?” Solomon glanced up from monitoring Mr. Lamb as he rifled through the contents of his desk.

Honoria sat straighter in the chair to the side of the room where she worked finishing a hem for Wendy. She was intent to keep up with the work she’d promised to do for her friend, but after Solomon explained why the men from the WSGA were there, she was loathe to leave his side.

Mr. O’Brien held up the two boxes of account cards. “You’re keeping your account information in two separate places with no rhyme or reason.”

Solomon’s face was a mask of calm, but she knew him too well not to see the tension in his clenched jaw. “One box contains information for open accounts, and the other is for accounts that have been closed. We’ve been keeping them separate since—”

His explanation stopped when Mr. O’Brien turned both boxes upside down, dumping all of the cards onto the floor. Mr. Greeley yelped and dove to pick up the cards. Mr. Eastman laughed from his spot, tipped back in a chair smoking a cigar.

“Filing systems must comply with Wyoming bank regulations,” Mr. O’Brien sneered before tossing the empty boxes back onto the counter.

“These were alphabetized,” Mr. Greeley moaned.

“Clearly not.” Mr. O’Brien had already moved on to the ledger, turning its pages roughly.

Honoria did her best to catch Solomon’s attention so that she could send him a smile of support, but her dear husband was more distracted than she’d ever seen him. He rubbed his face, massaging his jaw, then rolling his shoulders. She figured it was his attempt to look nonplussed.

“This is not standard ink,” Mr. Lamb said, taking a new, sealed bottle of black ink out of one of the drawers in Solomon’s desk.

“I was not aware ink had standards,” Solomon answered him grimly.

Mr. Lamb snorted. He glanced first to Mr. Eastman, then Mr. Chalmers. For his part, Mr. Chalmers was frowning as much as Solomon as he went over older records in a cabinet to the back of the room. The men from the WSGA had all claimed to be gentlemen and professionals, but as far as Honoria was concerned, Mr. Chalmers was the only one she would have considered applying those labels to. If only he’d speak up.

“Seems to me there are a lot of things you aren’t aware of, boy,” Mr. Lamb said, giving Solomon a look that Honoria wouldn’t tolerate giving to a naughty child. Worse still, before any of them could react, he twisted open the bottle and upended it onto the papers strewn across Solomon’s desk.

Solomon gasped and made a move to rescue the papers, but stopped before he took more than one step. It was too late. The carefully-kept records and timesheets that Mr. Lamb had scattered across the desktop were instantly ruined. Weeks, months, of work were ruined with a splash. The desktop blotter could only take so much. It was more likely than not that the mahogany desktop was stained beyond hope as well.

“I found another offense,” Mr. Lamb snorted. “Improper record keeping for the last three months. That’s a serious offense,
boy
.”

Honoria gasped aloud. How dare the man accuse Solomon of not keeping records when everyone in the room had just witnessed him ruining them? What was even worse was that Solomon hardly blinked. He clasped his hands behind his back and stood there with fury in his eyes as if…as if he’d been treated the same way before and knew there was no point in resisting.

Just like she had spent years assuming there was no point in resisting Vivian and Melinda’s bullying. These men were as bad as her sisters and worse. Vivian and Melinda treated her abominably because they thought it was their right by virtue of birth-order. The men destroying Solomon’s bank in the name of protecting customers and investors had no reason to be so vicious other than the color of Solomon’s skin.

And the fact that he’d had the audacity to marry a white woman.

That thought was the last straw. She stood abruptly, draping her sewing work over one arm. Her fists were clenched, and indignation burned in her eyes. Solomon pivoted to see what had prompted her to stand, and his brow flew up in surprise.

“My darling, is something wrong?”

His term of endearment left the WSGA men gaping. Mr. Eastman recovered enough to spit tobacco from his cigar on Solomon’s clean floor.

“I can’t stand by and let this continue,” Honoria managed to seethe.

Solomon let his arms drop to his sides and rushed across the room to her. “There’s nothing you can do to stop it without making the situation worse. Trust me.”

She stared up into his eyes, holding his gaze. She trusted him with her life. What she didn’t trust was the malice of bullies and brutes. “I will stop this,” she said, barely above a whisper but as certainly as if she held all the power in the world in her hands.

“I’d rather you didn’t interact with these men,” Solomon said, leaning closer and speaking even softer.

Honoria shook her head, drawing in a deep breath. “I don’t need to speak to
them
to stop it.” Solomon frowned in confusion, but she went on. “I’ll be back later this afternoon.”

Without waiting for him to question what she meant or where she was going, she hugged the dress she’d been sewing tighter and marched for the gate in the counter and on to the lobby door.

“I keep asking myself what a pretty little piece like you would be up for without this monkey around to defile you,” Mr. Eastman called after her.

“I’ll thank you not to make comments like that about my wife,” Solomon growled in reply.

“You want to try to stop me?” Mr. Eastman challenged him.

Honoria had reached the door, but she turned back, catching Mr. Greeley’s eyes. “Do
not
let them get into a fight,” she whispered.

“I’ll do my best, ma’am.” Mr. Greeley shrugged.

Leaving was excruciatingly painful, but she had to do it. As soon as the bank door shut behind her, Honoria dashed down the street to Wendy’s shop. She barely had time to return the dress and ask if Travis had any horses at the livery that she could borrow before she was moving on to have him saddle one of those horses. She hadn’t done much riding in her day, but she had been raised on a ranch. She knew enough to hook her knee around the sidesaddle and to nudge the horse into a run.

The ride out to her father’s ranch passed in a blur as her mind swirled around and around over what she could do or say once she got there. It was a huge risk to ride back into the lion’s den after making her escape, but she couldn’t let things continue on the way they were going.

It was a piece of luck that the entire family and Bonnie were sitting out at the table on the porch enjoying their lunch as she rode up.

“Oh my heavens, is that Honoria?” Bebe half stood out of her chair, raising a hand to shield her eyes.

By the time Honoria reached the side of the house, Bebe wasn’t the only one standing. Her father and Bonnie had gotten up too. Only Melinda, Vivian, and Rance continued eating as though nothing were out of the ordinary.

“It’s about time you came to your senses and returned to your family.” Rex greeted her with a victorious sneer.

Honoria struggled down from her borrowed horse and glared at him. “I have not come to my senses.” It wasn’t what she had planned to say, but she was damned if she was going to take back a single word that came out of her mouth where her father was concerned.

“Then why are you here?” Rex’s smugness melted to suspicion.

“Come have lunch with us,” Bebe asked, a hint of desperation in her voice.

“Who are you to issue invitations, you ignorant twit?” Melinda snapped.

“She’s an idiot,” Vivian followed, though not as enthusiastically as Honoria would have expected. “You can’t expect anything sensible to come out of her mouth.”

“But I was just asking if Honoria—”

“Shut up, Bebe!” Melinda and Vivian rounded on their sister simultaneously.

Honoria felt sick to her stomach as her suspicions about the way Vivian and Melinda were now treating Bebe seemed to be proven. It wasn’t long until she had other things to feel sick about.

“You sure are fetching when you’re riled up, Viv,” Cousin Rance snorted. “Gets me all hot and bothered.”

“Don’t you dare touch me, Rance Bonneville!” Vivian snapped with such ferocity and with a hard jerk to the side. Honoria didn’t need to see it to know Rance had groped her under the table.

Honoria had taken advantage of the distraction to tie her horse to the porch railing and to ascend the stairs to face her father. “I want you to tell those men from the WSGA to stop tormenting my husband and to go back to wherever it is they came from.” She was shocked at the strength of her demand, but not shocked enough to back away from it.

For a moment, her father looked like he didn’t know what to make of it either. All too quickly, his brittle grin returned. “Leave them alone to do their work. You don’t understand it anyhow. You don’t understand what’s in your own best interests.”

“Don’t I?” Her voice rose an octave. “I understand what’s right for me far better than you do. I demand you stop this at once.” She clenched her hands into fists at her sides, certain from the heat that infused her that she was red with fury.

“Honoria.” Bonnie stepped forward, hands held out cautiously to her. “Are you quite certain this is the best way to approach things? You’re in such a delicate condition as it is.”

“Did that n— knock her up?” Rance blurted.

The edges of Honoria’s vision blackened with shock and fury. Melinda yelped in offense. Vivian burst into tears and hid her face in her hands.

“So help me, God,” Rex seethed, “if that mongrel has spoiled you with his seed, I will personally see him hung by his entrails.”

There was no way for any of them to know that pregnancy was the furthest thing from Honoria’s mind or capabilities, but it only proved what her father was capable of. “I would view any child of Solomon’s growing within me as a miracle and a blessing. If you’re so small-minded that you would destroy an entire family because it doesn’t fit your profile, then perhaps you shouldn’t consider me a part of your family at all anymore.”

“How dare you?” Rex stepped closer, towering over her and raising a hand.

“Rex!” Bonnie rushed forward to grab his fist before he could land any blow. Rex shook her off violently. If not for the nearby porch rail, Bonnie would have spilled to the ground.

“Wow!” Rance called from the table. “I guess if I wanted some fight in my filly, I married the wrong sister.”

Oddly, his boorish comment deflated some of the dangerous tension on the porch.

“You can have him,” Vivian wailed. “He’s nothing but a vulgar, overbearing, foul, heathen who can’t keep his hands—” She snapped her lips closed and hid her face in her napkin.

“Aw, come on, Vivs.” Rance guffawed. “I thought you liked it when I got all handsy with you.” He winked, and in a shockingly bold move, closed a hand around one of her breasts and made a sound like a horn.

Vivian burst into a sobbing scream and pushed her chair back. She leapt up from the table and lunged toward Rex. “Why did you make me marry him, why? He’s nothing but a loud brute!”

“He’s a Bonneville, and since I have no sons—” He glared at Bonnie. “—he’s the closest thing I have to an heir. He will learn how to manage this ranch, and the two of you and your children will inherit it when I’m gone.”

“I don’t want to inherit the ranch!” Vivian wailed. “I don’t want to have his children. Give it to someone else. Give it to her!”

Honoria’s eyes popped wide as Vivian flung a pointed finger in her direction. Vivian then proceeded to wilt with tears, so much so that she would have collapsed if Melinda hadn’t jumped up to catch her.

“Well, I for one am never marrying,” Melinda declared. “I’m not ever going to let a man touch me the way that animal…” She let her proclamation drop as Vivian redoubled her crying.

Up until that moment, Honoria was ready to rush to Vivian’s aid, no matter how horrible she’d been over the years. It was unbearable to think that her sister was being used and abused by a garish husband and a callous father. But something in the overabundance of Vivian’s tears, something in the suspicious way Bonnie pressed her lips together and Bebe rolled her eyes, told Honoria that there was more act than truth to Vivian’s hysterics. Was it possible life with Rance wasn’t as bad as she made it out to be, and that she was only carrying on to suck in all the sympathy she could?

“Not one of you is as useful to me as a son!” Rex bellowed, throwing up his hands.

“Hey!” Rance finally stood, still chewing a bite of roast as he did. “I thought you said I was just as good as a son now. I’m learnin’ the whole ranching business, ain’t I?”

Rex sighed heavily and wiped his hand across his red and sweating face. “If you don’t run the place into the ground first.” Honoria was certain he hadn’t meant to issue his complaint loud enough for her to hear, but hear she did.

Hear and absorb.

Something clicked in her chest. Something that felt very much like leverage.

“I demand that you call off your dogs where Solomon is concerned.” She tried her ultimatum again. “He’s the greatest ally you could possibly look to in your future.”

“What?” Rex snapped, scowling at her.

Honoria laughed humorlessly. “By your own admission, the ranch is in trouble. Your precious ranch that you’ve always loved more than any of us, more than mother.”

The fact that Rex didn’t dispute the accusation, but only stood there looking peevish was enough to prove it.

“Bringing in a cousin to marry Vivian and take over was a horrible mistake, and I think you know it,” Honoria rushed on. “In spite of your meddling, Solomon will rise above the mess you’ve thrown him in. Someday when I’m gone, he’ll be the only person you can turn to.”

“When you’re gone?” Rex paled.

“I’ll be dead before you know it.”

She clamped her mouth shut, certain she would be blushing furiously if she wasn’t already red from anger. She hadn’t come out here to tell her family she was dying. The last thing she wanted was for them to get a single hint of her illness. They would think it made her weak, able to be manipulated.