Page 97 of His Unforgettable Bride
“What’s this I just overheard?” He stretched out his arms as she walked toward him.
“What are you doing in town?” She asked the question as she joined in the affectionate hug. Maybe he’d be distracted…
But he was just as inquisitive as one of her students. He squeezed her shoulders, then stepped back to look into her face. “You met someone?”
She bit her lip and nodded. Icy wind bit at her cheeks but didn’t cool the blush there.
“How come you haven’t told the family?”
She saw the hint of hurt in his eyes and felt a pang of remorse. “I wanted to make certain that it…that he…”
She couldn’t say the words aloud. There was still a part of her that worried that John would step off the train, take one look at her, and change his mind about the whole thing. Finding a husband to marry, bearing children of her own…her long-held dreams were coming true. Finally.
Drew didn’t seem to know what to say to that, and that was all right too.
“Did you bring the children with you?” she asked.
Drew’s thirteen-year-old son David, ten-year-old daughter Josephine, and five-year-old daughter Tillie were as close as if they were Merritt’s own nieces and nephew, and Merritt missed them dearly.
“Not this time. Gotta grab a load of supplies and head back. Wanted to check if you’re still coming for Christmas.”
In the excitement of John’s arrival, she’d forgotten about her promise to come and stay with the McGraw cousins for Christmas next week.
She’d be a married woman by then.
And John already knew how much her cousins meant to her. “I’ll be there.”
We’ll be there.
The train whistle blew, the sound carried on a stiff wind, still far in the distance.
Her gaze flicked toward the end of town where the station was located. Her heart pounded.
“I’ve got to go,” she said. “I’m meeting…him.”
This was the moment her life would change forever.
* * *
“We’re supposed to get married on Sunday. That’s less than a week away. I mean, isn’t it a lark? When I get off the train, she’ll be looking for my hat and coat.” He patted a red flower—a poppy?—in his lapel pocket.
Jack Easton didn’t turn his head from where he sat in the railroad car. He didn’t have to. Between the quiet, mostly empty compartment, a reflection in the glass window beside him, and the acoustics in the arch of the train car, the young man’s conversation with an older gentleman who wore a neatly trimmed gray beard, in the seat across from him, carried perfectly to Jack’s ear.
“She’s a schoolteacher, been in the classroom for years,” the young man went on.
“How many years?” Gray Beard asked.
Both men were dressed in suits—not the best quality, but a sign they were doing all right financially.
“Nine, I think.” The younger man wore a bowler hat that made him look a mite foolish.
Jack favored a cowboy hat, but he’d lost his in a barroom scuffle a few days ago and hadn’t replaced it yet. He riffled one hand through his hair at the empty feeling on his head.
“Nine years in the classroom?” Gray Beard sounded skeptical. Jack couldn’t see his face in the reflection, but he had a clear view of the prospective groom’s face. “Don’t you think she’s a little…long in the tooth?”
It was a rude thing to say, and Jack took offense on the unknown bride’s behalf.
“She’s twenty-five.” But the groom suddenly looked uncertain.
