Chapter One
Laurel Valley, Idaho, 1892
For all intents and purposes, Elizabeth O’Hara should’ve died on a Tuesday.
The bank was stifling despite the beginnings of a blizzard outside. The heavy oak doors sealed in the day’s transactions along with the nervous energy of a dozen souls, the air thick with the competing scents of coal smoke, damp wool, and the faint traces of rosewater from the banker’s wife who’d left an hour earlier. Every breath that tasted of winter’s promise and human worry. As it was almost closing time, they’d already shut the windows and the brazier was burning hot in the corner. Sweat was dripping in some very unladylike places. Not that anyone in Laurel Valley would call her a lady, but it had never mattered much what other people thought.
There was a line of customers who’d waited until the last minute to do their business for the day. Most were shop owners who knew this would be their last chance to make a deposit before the storm shut everything down. And everything would be shut down. With luck, it would only be for a couple of days. At worst, it could be a couple of weeks.
She worried about the cattle and the ranch—five hundred head of prime beef that represented not just her inheritance from the Ross family holdings, but her future with Cole. The animals would be huddled against the storm by now, their breath creating clouds of steam in the frigid air, but she knew her foreman, a grizzled veteran of thirty Idaho winters, Lester McCoy, and the dozen ranch hands, tough men who could rope a steer in a blizzard and mend fence by moonlight, would take good care of everything. These were men who’d worked the land since her father’s time, men who understood that ranching in Idaho was as much about surviving nature as working with it. Even if she wanted to make it back home, there was no way to do it safely. The storm had already found Laurel Valley.
She watched the gray clouds roll toward them through the western wall of windows like an avalanche of pewter silk, the kind of storm that old-timers still spoke about in hushed voices. The mountains had already disappeared behind a curtain of white, and she could see the wind bending ancient pines nearly in half, the mountains that stood sentinel no longer visible and the snow swirling in several directions like a mad dancer’s skirts. The wheeze of the wind could be heard through cracks in the windows and door. The atmosphere in the room was fraught with tension. No one spoke, and everyone was wondering how long they had to see to necessities before things got so bad they had to find shelter in town.
There were only two tellers behind the counter, Leroy Henry and Miss Adelaide Murchison. Elizabeth had seen the First National Bank of Laurel Valley manager, Samuel Peabody, peek out from his office once and then close the door. Lord knew, if work was involved Samuel was the first to disappear.
Leroy barely came up to Elizabeth’s shoulders, and his body was so round he often gave the impression that he rolled from place to place instead of using his feet to walk. Miss Adelaide Murchison was unusually tall for a woman, nearly six feet in her Sunday boots, almost a head taller than Elizabeth, with the ramrod posture of someone who’d been told to stop slouching so often as a girl that she’d gone the opposite direction entirely, and she had a long, hawk-like nose that she powdered religiously that made it seem as if she were looking down at everyone she talked to, though whether from height or haughtiness, Elizabeth had never been able to determine.
Leroy was a sweet man, but he worked at half the pace of Miss Adelaide. No one had ever called Miss Adelaide sweet. She was the meanest, most contrary woman Elizabeth had ever known. She’d take slow Leroy over Miss Adelaide any day of the week.
Elizabeth tapped the toe of her boot impatiently, the leather worn soft from years of ranch work making barely a sound against the polished bank floor, and tried not to fidget. She’d never been very good at waiting, especially when her plans involved a romantic night with her husband at the Laurel Valley Hotel, where they’d spent their wedding night one year prior. The honeymoon suite with its brass bed and view of the mountains had been calling to her all. Between the combined Ross–O’Hara Ranch and his duties as sheriff and dealing with her father’s death, they hadn’t taken time for an official honeymoon.
In many ways, Cole was still a stranger to her. And she knew she was like a stranger to him too. They shared a bed, shared a name, shared a ranch—but they hadn’t yet learned to share the quiet, intimate spaces between words where real marriages lived. She could count on one hand the number of times he’d laughed in her presence, really laughed, the kind that crinkled the corners of his eyes and made her heart skip. She knew how he took his coffee—black, strong enough to strip paint—and that he always checked the barn one last time before bed, even when Lester had already done it. She knew he had a scar on his left shoulder from a bullet he’d taken during the war, and another on his ribs from a knife fight he’d never talk about. But she didn’t know his dreams, his fears, the things that kept him awake at three in the morning when she felt him slip from their bed to stand at the window, staring out at the darkness as if searching for answers in the stars.
It had been Cole’s suggestion to take two nights away from everything. And the timing with the storm had worked out beautifully. No one was going much of anywhere over the next two days, and they could spend the time devoted to each other instead of the needs of everyone else.
She and Cole had been two very independent people when they’d married. Elizabeth had never planned to marry at all, but her father’s foresight had protected her and the family ranch that had been in the family since her grandfather arrived in 1847. Of course, she hadn’t realized that her father had asked Cole to marry her if he passed away. She also hadn’t realized her father had known she’d been in love with Cole O’Hara since she was a young girl.
In his own way, he’d played matchmaker to make sure she’d gotten everything she wanted and still had control of her inheritance. If her father hadn’t deeded the Ross Ranch to Cole after he’d agreed to marry her, then it would’ve been taken from her. The bank would’ve put it up for sale to the highest bidder and she would’ve been left with nothing. Women couldn’t own land in this part of the country. But their husbands could. And what she’d needed was a husband to keep her life from changing. With their union, both of their properties had merged. And though it had become an addition to the O’Hara Ranch, the stipulations of her father’s will left her as the one to run it. And as soon as she had a son the property would become his.
And though she’d been in love with Cole for years, he was a good dozen years older than she was. She couldn’t help but wonder… If her father had never approached Cole about marrying her, would he have noticed her at all?
She was hoping more than anything that the two days they spent together would give them a marriage like her parents. Cole had been a good husband. He was kind and patient, but distant. They circled each other, never knowing what to say, so they didn’t say anything and went on about their lives.
The only time she really felt like they were speaking the same language was when they were intimate. They had no miscommunications there. What she needed was to know that Cole loved her, and that she was more than just a favor he was fulfilling for her father.
But her time with Cole couldn’t start until she’d finished her errand at bank.
“Next.” Miss Adelaide’s shrill voice echoed in the building.
Drat. Elizabeth could’ve sworn she heard the person behind her sigh in relief that they weren’t getting stuck with Miss Adelaide. On the plus side, Elizabeth would get out much faster and she could be on her way to the hotel. She straightened her spine and moved toward the old bat’s window.
“Good afternoon, Miss Adelaide,” Elizabeth said sweetly.
“Elizabeth,” Adelaide said sourly. “What’s your business?”
“I need to make a withdrawal.”
“Does your husband know about this?” Her pale eyes, the color of a winter endless Idaho sky, narrowed menacingly.
“Yes, he does. But I’m not withdrawing from our personal account. I’m withdrawing from the combined Ross–O’Hara Ranch account.”
“Hmmph,” she said. “I think your father must have been losing his mind in his last days. And for your poor husband to go along with it…” Adelaide shook her head with disdain, but took the paper Elizabeth slid toward her so she could start the withdrawal process. “What kind of man lets his wife have that kind of control over the finances? Certainly not one I want acting as sheriff come election time. If a man can’t control his wife, he surely can’t control the population.”
“So you’ve said before,” Elizabeth said, her face flushing hotly because Adelaide was talking loud enough for everyone left in the bank to hear.
“This is a sizeable amount of money.” Adelaide pursed her lips tightly as she studied the withdrawal form. “More than you usually take out. I don’t know what you’re planning, but you can be sure that I’ll keep him informed. I won’t allow any funny business on my watch. And you’re just the type of woman to take something right out from under your husband’s nose and do what you want with it. Your father gave you too much freedom growing up, letting you wear men’s clothes and learning to shoot and rope cattle. You’ve got too much independence and not enough sense. You’d think you were a man with the way you conduct yourself. Your mama must be rolling over in her grave to see what you’ve become.”
“I’m sure Mama is resting peacefully,” Elizabeth said between gritted teeth. “Now if you don’t mind, I’ve got an appointment I need to keep.”
