heart to someone only to find out it had all been a lie.
He still couldn’t believe that she had been lying to him the whole time. But he should have realized it, he told himself. There had been something off about her ever since she had gotten to Copper Creek. He was surprised he hadn’t
seen it. Then again, perhaps he hadn’t wanted to, he admitted. He’d been so enthral ed with her from the very beginning that he wouldn’t have believed the truth if someone had told him. Hell, at first, he hadn’t even believed it when the bastard claiming to be her fiancé had told him. Until he had seen the look on her face.
Maybe he should have stayed and listened to her explanation, whatever that was, but he couldn’t. It had just been too much to deal with. If it were just Kayla lying, it would be one thing, but the past twenty-four hours had been more than any man should have to take. The corral holding his cattle in
preparation for the drive to Kansas City had been sabotaged sometime last
night. Now the whole herd - that had taken weeks to gather up – was
scattered to the four winds. It would have taken weeks to get them all back together, and that would have put him late getting into Kansas City. He would have lost hundreds of dollars. Then, on top of that, someone had set fire to one of the feed barns on the northern part of the ranch earlier that day.
Finding out that his wife wasn’t the mail-order bride he had paid for was the last straw. Which was why he supposed he had sold his ranch when Dalton
Jeffries had approached him in the saloon. It didn’t matter that Jeffries had been behind the corral fences being cut, or the fire at the feed barn, Cord had had enough. And Jeffries had paid him good money, good enough for him to
get a new start away from all this pain and frustration. Maybe San Francisco...
“Cord, thank God you’re here!”
Cord turned at the sound of Rachel’s voice to see her hurrying into the
general store. She must have been running because she stopped to take a
breath before continuing. “Kayla is at the saloon playing cards with Dalton,”
she rushed on. “She’s going to get herself into trouble. You have to go stop her.”
Cord felt his stomach knot. His first impulse was to go down to the saloon, drag her out of there, and put her over his knee for disobeying him again, but then he remembered that she was no longer his wife. He clenched his jaw
and returned his attention to what he’d been doing. “She and Jeffries are
welcome to each other.”
Rachel stared at him in consternation. “You don’t mean that!”
He shrugged in an effort to appear nonchalant. “She’s not my wife, so what she does no longer concerns me.”
Crossing the room to where he stood, Rachel grabbed his arm and turned
him to face her. “Cord, didn’t you hear me? I know that you’re feeling hurt, but you have to get over it and stop feeling sorry for yourself. Kayla is in trouble, and if you don’t stop this, it’s going to turn ugly.”
Cord’s hand tightened on the can he was holding, but he didn’t say anything.
The thought of Kayla even being in the same room with Dalton Jeffries was
enough to make his blood boil. That she would be foolish enough to play
poker with the man... But things were over between them, and if he went to the saloon and made a scene, it would only confuse the issue, and make it
even harder for him to walk away.
Rachel shook her head. “I can’t believe that you’re being like this,” she said.
“So, she lied to you about what her name was, Cord, but everything else that passed between you two was the truth. She loves you, and you love the
person she is, not the person that wrote those letters to you. In the end, that’s all that matters, even if you’re too darn mule headed to admit it.”
Cord ground his jaw. As much as he might want to deny it, Rachel was right.
He did stil love Kayla, and he knew he couldn’t just leave her to contend with Dalton Jeffries on her own. Swearing under his breath, he thumped the can
he’d been holding back down on the shelf and walked out of the general
store.
Kayla gazed down at the cards in her hands and carefully schooled her
expression. It was the best hand she had had since she’d sat down to play, but she didn’t want Dalton Jeffries to know that. Not that he was paying
attention to her. Across from her, he frowned briefly at the cards in his hand before his expression once more became unreadable.
He had seemed surprised that she could play poker so well, and told her as much. If the compliment had come from any other man, she would have been
flattered, but his tone as he said it was mocking, and that only made besting him even more enjoyable.
Since she had such a good hand, Kayla decided it was time to make Dalton’s humiliation complete, and when it came time to bet, she gave him a sweet
smile and shoved the entire pile of money that had been sitting in front of her into the center of the table. The crowd of men that had gathered around the table to watch the game began to mutter among themselves, knowing that
this was going to be a big hand.
If Dalton was surprised by her bet, he gave no notice of it. Instead he was staring intently at the money. His brow furrowed as his gaze shifted to
contemplate the small stack of money in front of him.
“Well, it seems that I don’t have enough with me to cover this,” he said,
looking at her. “But as everyone here knows, I’m
