Page 89 of Snowbound Surrender
“Cheer up, sweetie,” he slurred. “Old Buford mighta been a bit barmy to leave his old place to you, but it’s Christmas.”
Miranda blinked. She planted her hands on her hips. “And?”
Teddy chuckled, stumbling toward Miranda and giving her arm a good pat. “Christmas is a time of magic, of wishing on moonbeams, of miracles. Didn’t your old Uncle Buford ever tell you that?” He hiccupped.
“No, he did not.” As soon as the words were out, she softened her expression and turned to escort Teddy to the door. The man was harmless, dependent on drink, and had been one of her batty uncle’s best friends. “Uncle Buford would have done better to leave this saloon to you in his will, Mr. Potts.”
“Me?” Teddy jerked straighter, swaying as he did. He snorted. “Psht! I couldn’t run a saloon if it had a hundred legs all its own.” He laughed at his own joke.
Miranda wasn’t sure she understood it. She took Teddy’s coat down from a hook and helped him into it. As she waswinding the muffler around his neck, Starla strode back into the room.
“Well, Frank’s taken care of. It sure is nippy out there, though. The clouds are moving in fast. Looks like we’re in for another storm.” She finished with a shudder and marched across the wide room to the huge fireplace. She held her hands out to the crackling blaze. “Of all things, Everleigh Walsh just told me she saw a stagecoach stop in the middle of Main Street earlier.”
Miranda finished helping Teddy into his warm things. “A stagecoach? I haven’t seen one of those in years.”
“We used to ride ’em all the time before the trains came,” Teddy said, his voice muffled. “Nothing like a stagecoach ride.”
“Nothing like your own, warm living room and fireplace either,” she added, pushing Teddy toward the door. “Tell Mrs. Teddy I give her my best,” she added before helping Teddy through the door.
As soon as it banged shut behind him, Miranda turned to the now-empty saloon and let out a weary breath. “What were you thinking, Uncle Buford?” she murmured. She started back toward the bar, dry-washing her hands.
Even across the room, Starla heard her. “My guess is that he was thinking you had the drive and the know-how to own a business.”
Miranda stopped in her steps. “A well-bred lady does not havedriveandknow-how.” Her face pinched at the thought. The words tasted sour in her mouth. She continued on toward the bar, shaking her head. “At least, not when it comes to being asaloonkeeper.”
She cringed, still having a hard time believing that that’s what she was. For two-and-a-half whole weeks, that’s what she had been. It was inconceivable, unbelievable, and also true. She’d arrived on the train in Mistletoe, Montana on December1st, answering a summons sent by the executor of her late Uncle Buford’s estate. The man had handed her the deed to the saloon with a wide, teasing grin, wished her luck, and hopped on the very train she’d just stepped off of.
And that was how proper, modest, respectable Miranda Clarke had ended up as the saloonkeeper of The Holey Bucket. Well, she’d drawn the line at the shingle over the saloon’s door. It had depicted a sacrilegious bucket leaking sudsy beer, hanging on a shining cross. That had been the first thing to go. The next had been the ladies of ill-repute. Not only had they made a habit of loitering around the Bucket’s tables and occasionally kicking up their skirts on the small stage at the front of the room, Miranda suspected they’d transacted other business in the saloon’s tiny backrooms. She chased them all away, but she hadn’t been able to get rid of Starla.
If she was being honest with herself, she wasn’t sure she wanted to.
“Being a clever, competent woman with a head for business does not make you any less of a lady,” Starla said, joining Miranda in cleaning up the remnants of the day’s customers at the bar. “If you ask me, it makes you twice the woman those vapid, preening ladies who do nothing but sit around on overstuffed furniture drinking tea are.”
Miranda sent her a dubious look, but secretly her heart stirred with the compliment. Even if Starla didn’t know it was a compliment. Her whole life, Miranda had sat, stiff and unnoticed, with those vapid, preening ladies, never feeling quite accepted. Her younger, prettier sister, Vicky, had been the darling of those ladies…and most of the gentlemen, even though she never, ever obeyed their rules. Miranda obeyed every rule, smiled at every slight, and where had it gotten her?
The Holey Bucket.
“I just wish the men wouldn’t drink so much,” she added with a sigh, piling the last of the empty, dirty glasses onto a platter. She’d wash them in the sink behind the bar as soon as the platter was full.
Starla laughed. “That is the reason most men come to a saloon, you know.” She took a rag and began wiping the bar clean.
“I can’t say I entirely approve of alcohol.” Miranda walked over to the table where the card-players had been seated and began gathering their bottles.
“There’s nothing wrong with a little nip now and then,” Starla advised her. “It’s when they drink too much that it becomes a problem.”
“Poor Teddy can’t stop himself,” Miranda spoke softly, carrying an armful of bottles to the bar.
“Mmm,” Starla hummed in sad agreement about Teddy. “And you watch out for Chet Jamison when he’s had too many in a bad mood. There’s sorry drunks and then there’s violent drunks.”
Miranda blew out a breath as she fit the empty beer bottles into a crate she had started keeping behind the bar. “Which is why I question Uncle Buford’s wisdom in leaving me this place. It’s unsuitable. It’s unsavory. It’s ruined my chance—” She snapped her mouth shut, sending Starla a guilty look, and picked up a cloth to wipe down the counters behind the bar.
“Ruined?” Starla prompted her. She’d wiped her way to the end of the bar and sauntered back now, that knowing, almost motherly look in her wise eyes. That was the reason Miranda had no real desire to banish the woman from the bar.
There was no point in hiding things from her sudden confidant. Miranda turned from the back counter to face Starla. “It’s ruined any chance I might have had left of finding arespectable man to marry. Not that those chances hadn’t been ruined already.” She leaned heavily against the bar.
Starla reached out and rubbed her arm. “It’s never too late, honey.”
Miranda arched a brow at her. “What kind of man would want to marry a female saloonkeeper?”
