Barbershop down the street for a bath and a shave, Lance walked into the restaurant and was shown to a table by the front window. The white-aproned waitress laid a menu in front of him and slid an order pad out of her apron pocket.
“You new in town?”
“Yeah,” Lance said. “Came in on the train from St. Louis this afternoon.”
“You stayin’?”
“Yeah.”
“Alone?”
“Uh...not exactly. My fiancée is upstairs taking a—She’ll be joining me shortly.”
“Fiancée, huh?” The waitress laid another menu on the table and glanced toward the entrance. “That her?”
Lance followed her gaze and half rose from his chair at the sight of Marianne. She looked so fresh and pretty his thoughts froze for a minute. “Yeah. At least I think so.”
The waitress laughed aloud. “You think so? How long have you two been engaged?”
“Three days,” he murmured.
“Not long enough,” she said. “How long have you known each other?”
He watched Marianne gliding across the dining room toward him. “Not long enough,” he said.
The woman nodded. “Most men think that after the wedding,” she said with a wink.
Marianne settled into the chair across from him and sent him a tentative smile. She wore a striped shirtwaist and a flouncy blue skirt he’d never seen before. Her hair, loosely gathered at her neck and tied with a blue ribbon, looked even shinier than molasses. And he’d never seen her wear a ribbon before. Maybe he didn’t know Marianne as well as he thought.
Her skin glowed. Even after three nights with little sleep, breathing dusty air and eating nothing but stale sandwiches and cold coffee, Marianne Collingwood looked downright beautiful.
She spread out her skirt, and Lance caught a whiff of something that smelled like lilacs. He inhaled appreciatively. She’d never worn scent before, either.
“Good evening, ma’am,” the waitress said.
“Yes, it is, isn’t it?” Marianne replied. “I hope you have steak on your menu tonight. I am positively famished.”
“This is cattle ranching country, ma’am. We have steak on the menu every night.”
Marianne smiled. “Oh, of course. I’ll have mine rare, please. With lots of very crispy fried potatoes.”
The woman scribbled something on her order pad. “And for you, sir?”
“The same,” he said. When the waitress marched off to the kitchen, Marianne leaned toward him. “Lance, I didn’t know you liked your steak rare.”
“Maybe that’s because you never asked,” he said shortly.
She gave him a long look. “I never had time to ask. I was too busy in the kitchen frying steaks for all the boarders to ask, so I fried them all the same way, even my own.”
“And I always ate last,” Lance reminded her. “After everyone else had finished.”
Marianne pursed her lips. “You ate next to last,” she corrected. “I was the one who always ate last.”
“Gosh, I never realized that. Bet you were plenty hungry by the time all the boarders and then me had finished their supper.”
“To be honest, I was too tired to be hungry,” she said quietly. “In fact, never in the last eleven years have I eaten a meal that someone else has cooked.”
Her answer stopped him in his tracks. He’d never thought about working for Mrs. Schneiderman from Marianne’s point of view. Eleven years? She’d been at that boardinghouse for eleven years? Lord God in heaven, no wonder she was so desperate to get away.
He fiddled with the pepper shaker, then began folding his linen napkin into smaller and smaller squares, but he wouldn’t look at her. “I guess there’s a whole lot of things we don’t know about each other,” he said at last. “Maybe we should spend time getting acquainted some before we, uh, get married.”
Marianne gave him a short nod. “In a civilized world like St. Louis, an engaged couple would be expected to wait at least a year before the wedding, perhaps more, getting to know each other. But out here in the wilds of nowhere isn’t exactly a civilized world.”
“Maybe not,” he conceded. “But we’re civilized, aren’t we?”
She leveled an appraising look at him. “Lance, we cannot afford to wait a year before marrying. When I call on Mr. Myers and Mr. Waldrip at the bank to take possession of my inheritance, I must already be married.”
“Oh. Right.”
“You’re not reneging on our bargain, are you?”
“Nope. You still have that Wanted poster in your pocket, and that means I’m still gonna marry you.”
She pressed her lips into a line and turned pink just as the waitress set two huge plates loaded with thick steaks and fried potatoes in front of them.
Marianne attacked her supper with a determined jab of her fork and watched the waitress march back toward the kitchen. She sent Lance an assessing look. Was it her imagination, or did he sound less than enthusiastic about the prospect of marrying her? An unfamiliar little dart of pain niggled into her heart. Was he unsure because she was forcing him into it? Or...she caught her breath. Maybe it was because she was past her prime? Was she too old and work-worn and unattractive to be of any interest to a man?
She glanced down at her bare forearm. Her skin was tan because she rolled up her sleeves and ignored the sun’s rays when she worked outdoors for Mrs. Schneiderman. But her arm still looked plump, even girlish, didn’t it? She hoped the rest of her did, too. At least it had the last time she’d had the chance to stop and really look at herself in the full-length mirror in her room. Except for her tanned cheeks and forearms, she still looked young.
Didn’t she? A paralyzing sense of inadequacy suddenly swept through her. Over the years she had made no attempt whatsoever to look closely at her appearance, let alone enhance it as other young women did. By the time she’d crawled into bed at night she was so exhausted she’d simply unpinned her hair, gave it a cursory swipe with her worn hairbrush and closed her eyes.
All at once a crushing doubt overwhelmed her. She scarcely knew who she was, other than a boardinghouse cook and housekeeper. Worse, she had no idea who this man now sitting across from her really was. She was about to jump into a life-changing venture, and she suddenly realized she was truly frightened. She grimaced and laid down her fork.
“Lance, before we get married, perhaps we should become better acquainted. More than just the polite conversation we had on the train, I mean.”
“Maybe,” he conceded. “Sure don’t have much time, though. We’re getting married day after tomorrow.”
“Well,
