demanded icily.
He chuckled. “Can’t a man visit his own sister?”
Not wanting to be in the room with Dalton Jeffries for another minute, Kayla stood up and nervously smoothed her dress. “If you’ll excuse me, Rachel, I think I’ll go change.”
Ignoring Dalton Jeffries, she made her way across the room and into the
bedroom Rachel shared with her husband. Through the door, she could hear
muffled voices coming from the other room, and though she changed into her other dress quickly, she waited until she was sure that Dalton Jeffries had left before going back out.
Rachel’s face was flushed, indicating that she was clearly agitated by her brother’s visit. “Do you know that Dalton actual y had the audacity to ask me when your wedding is? As if you and Cord would want him there!”
Kayla’s stomach churned at the thought. “You didn’t tell him, did you?”
The other girl shook her head. “But it doesn’t matter. Copper Creek’s so small that everyone, including Dalton, will know when the wedding is soon enough.”
That was probably true, Kayla thought. “Your brother came by the other day to make an offer on the ranch,” she said. “Cord wasn’t too pleased. I thought they were going to get in a fight right there.”
“I’m not surprised,” Rachel said.
“What is it with those two? Is it just because your brother wants to buy Cord’s ranch?”
“That’s part of it,” Rachel said, going into the small kitchen to heat water for tea. “But by no means all of it.”
Kayla followed, her brow furrowing. “Then what?”
Rachel sighed. “Cord came to Copper Creek a few weeks after Dalton got
married. Hannah was the daughter of another rancher, so it was natural that her father gave his blessing when Dalton asked to marry her.” She two mugs down from the shelf beside the stove and set them on the table. “When
Hannah saw Cord, though, she immediately fell in love with him.”
Kayla knew where Rachel was going with this, and though she didn’t want to hear about how much Cord had loved this other woman, she had to know.
“And he loved her.”
Rachel shook her head. “No, he didn’t,” she said, much to Kayla’s surprise.
“Cord’s too honorable for that. He was Hannah’s friend, and that’s all. But my brother refused to believe that. I suppose it didn’t help that Hannah spent as much time with Cord as she could. A lot of people say that she wanted to
leave Dalton, which I imagine is probably true. I also think he became so
furious with her that he beat her a few times, though no one real y knows for sure. What everyone does know for sure, though, is that she left Dalton’s
ranch in the middle of a terrible rainstorm. Everyone thinks that she was trying to get to Cord’s ranch as fast as she could, but with the darkness and rain that night, she never got there. They found her body the next morning at the bottom of a rocky gorge just above Cord’s ranch house,” she explained.
“Maybe she became confused in the dark, or maybe she was just scared and
running from my brother. Either way, she shouldn’t have been in that gorge.
As Dalton sees it, Hannah was cheating on him, and so he blames Cord for
what happened to her, whereas Cord believes that Hannah never would have
been in that gorge if she hadn’t been running from an abusive husband.
They’ve hated each other ever since then.”
Kayla chewed on her lower lip. She could certainly understand why Cord was so protective of her now. And she could almost guarantee that she knew
exactly which gorge Rachel had been talking about.
Rachel made their tea and set the mugs on the table, but didn’t sit down right away. Instead, she excused herself and went into the bedroom, only to come back a few minutes later. Taking the chair across from Kayla, she smiled.
“Every bride needs something borrowed on her wedding day, so I thought that perhaps you’d like to wear this,” the other girl said, opening her hand to reveal a beautiful locket on a gold chain.
Kayla reached out to take the necklace, carefully holding it in her hand.
“Rachel, it’s beautiful. Thank you.”
“I wore it on my wedding day, and I want it to bring you and Cord as much
luck and happiness as it has Matthew and me,” her friend said.
Kayla smiled, but said nothing. The necklace was beautiful and she would be honored to wear it, especially since it had brought Rachel such good fortune in her marriage. With all the lying she had been doing to Cord, she thought wryly, she would need as much good fortune as she could get.
Chapter Five
When she awoke on her wedding day, Kayla could think only of one thing. By evening, she would be Mrs. Cord Holderness, and she couldn’t be happier.
Somewhere in between the moment she’d first stepped off the stagecoach,
the picnic that day he had taken her riding, and all the spankings he’d given her, Kayla had fallen in love with Cord. And though it probably should have made a difference to her that he would be marrying Abigail Murray today
instead of Kayla Mathison, strangely enough, it didn’t. She would be Cord’s wife in every way that mattered, she told herself. What was in a name,
anyway?
After taking a warm bath, Kayla padded barefoot over to the washstand
where she brushed her long hair until it shone. She then piled it atop her head in loose curls before slipping into her wedding dress. Surveying her reflection in the full-length mirror, she then left the room to make her way downstairs.
Cord was waiting for her in the foyer, and he turned at the sound of her
footsteps.
He had dressed for the occasion in dark-colored trousers and a crisp white shirt with a long string tie, over which he wore a matching vest,
