Page 4 of May I Kiss the Bride

“I’M FINE,” REY INSISTED AS the town doctor poked at the skin surrounding the stitches on the side of his torso. “But that cattle prod is cold.”

Doc Smithson chuckled. “If this was a cattle prod, you’d be on the other side of the room by now.” He held up the small, blunt metal instrument.

All right, so it was only about five inches long, but Rey was bruised and the skin was tender.

“If this really hurts,” the doc mused, “it might be infected.”

“It does hurt, but not a lot,” Rey said with a sigh. “I’m just complaining.”

Another grin from Doc Smithson. His red mustache was trimmed as thin as a pencil and his eyebrows as bushy as a runaway caterpillar. The man was a skilled physician, but he had a bit of an unsympathetic way about him.

Case in point, he slathered on some red medicine, slapped a bandage over Rey’s stitches, then used a large amount of tape to close every seam possible. Which would hurt like stepping on hot coals when Rey had to peel it off.

“That bandage isn’t going anywhere,” Rey said in a dry tone. “Even if I was a bull rider, I think it would stay in place.”

Doc’s hand came down on Rey’s shoulder, and he hid a wince.

Things were bruised on his body that had never been bruised before.

The shoot-out with the train robbers had thankfully been short and effective.

Rey had yet to hear if any of the five robbers had been fatally wounded.

He knew he’d gotten a good shot at three of them.

The riders had sped away before Rey could get a good look.

Besides, there was only so much time he wanted to spend on the roof of a speeding train.

He knew he’d been shot, but the pain didn’t kick in until he was trying to climb down the car and land on the platform in one piece.

He’d ordered the open-mouthed engineer to speed up the train again.

Then Rey had been intent on heading back to the lounge car and seeking out a doctor when he’d opened the first compartment door to find Viola. On the ground.

Panic had nearly gutted him. Had she been shot by a stray bullet? It seemed impossible, yet … why had she been on the ground? But before he could demand more answers, she’d gone whiter than a sheet blowing in the summer wind and fainted.

After that, he couldn’t exactly account for events. Someone—likely the conductor because of the name “Mr. Christensen” repeated over and over—came into the train car. And that’s when Rey had passed out. From lack of blood, it seemed.

When Rey had next opened his eyes, he was splayed out on a surgeon’s table in Cheyenne, and Ms. Delany was nowhere to be seen.

He wondered what had happened to her. No one seemed to know.

Not the train station master he’d gone and questioned after he could walk more than a couple of feet.

Not the ladies at the women’s auxiliary who knew everything that went on in Cheyenne.

And not Mr. Baxter, who owned the most reputable hotel in town.

So, today, with hope gone of finding out if Ms. Delany had recovered from her own malaise, he was headed back to Mayfair. They were missing a sheriff, after all.

Because the doc had ordered him not to ride a horse for another week, Rey hired a driver to take him back home in a carriage.

As he settled onto the bench, he was finally able to clear his mind and think about things that didn’t have to do with shoot-outs, stitches, or the mysterious Ms. Delany.

She could be in another state for all he knew.

She’d never said what her final destination was.

From all accounts, she’d been traveling alone. What did that mean?

Rey shoved those questions away—questions he’d never get answered.

He redirected his thoughts to his small ranch and horses and whether Barb and Jeb were doing all right acting as caretakers in his absence.

He could at least report back to his daughter about how her favorite horse, Sky, was doing when Rey returned to San Francisco in a couple of weeks.

He relaxed into the seat and enjoyed the small reprieve. He was sure to get an earful from Deputy Thatcher when he showed up at the office. Thatcher was never quiet on any matters, big or small.

“Whoa,” the driver of the carriage said, tugging on the horse’s reins to slow down the animal.

Rey stuck his head out of the carriage window to see that up ahead, there was a crowd on the boardwalk that ran along Mayfair’s Main Street. Other carts and riders had slowed down, and now there seemed to be traffic. In the tiny town of Mayfair.

“What’s going on up there?” Rey asked the driver.

“Don’t rightly know.” The driver pushed his hat back a few inches and mopped his brow with a seen-better-days handkerchief. “The line of people is going to the bakery.”

“Must be a two-for-one special?” Rey said, mostly to himself. He’d get out and walk if the carriage was going to be this slow. But his place was a half mile out on the other side of town, and the morning was only getting hotter.

As it was, the carriage practically crawled past the bakery, and Rey peered at the crowd.

Interesting that those in line were all men.

In this town, the women did the shopping while their fellas worked the ranches.

But then again, most women did their own baking.

So maybe that’s why the men were filling up the line.

“Hello, Sheriff!” a voice called out.

Rey tipped his hat to Mr. Brunson.

“You’re back already?” another voice called.

“How are you, Gerald?” Rey said to a hooked-nose man.

Other men in line turned and greeted Rey. He knew them all by name, as a matter-of-fact.

“Looks like y’all have a sweet tooth today?” Rey said to a young man named Wallace.

Wallace laughed, displaying his impressive buckteeth. “Sure do, Sheriff.”

The carriage continued on, and Rey had a feeling in his gut that he was missing a vital bit of information. He ran through the men in the line—they were all single—so that made more sense. None of them had wives to bake for them. Must be one whoppin’ pastry sale.

The line extended to the next corner, and Rey’s eyes about popped out when he saw Thatcher wielding his pistol, confronting a man in a dingy white cowboy hat.

“Hold up,” Rey called to the driver. “I’ll be getting out here. Can you drop off my things at my house? I’ll spot you a few more dollars.”

The driver tugged on the reins, and soon the carriage pulled to a stop. The men in line watched with interest as Rey climbed out, adjusted his hat, and rested his hand on his holster.

“Sheriff.” More than one man tipped his hat and nodded in greeting.

Rey kept his gaze on Thatcher. Was it possible that his deputy had gone rogue in his short absence? Was Rey about to witness a gunfight or—heaven forbid—be in the middle of one?

“Thatcher, what’s happening?” He strode to his friend and acting sheriff, an older man with a bit of a pot belly, graying handlebar mustache, and with arms as strong as an ox.

Thatcher swung on Rey, gun still pointed.

“Easy,” Rey said. “What’s going on?”

“Boy, am I glad to see you,” Thatcher huffed. His eyes were bloodshot, and Rey hoped the man wasn’t hitting the bottle during working hours again. It was tricky to keep law and order in a town where the lawmen themselves were being disorderly.

“This here line isn’t supposed to be added to after two p.m.,” Thatcher blustered. “I promised Beth I’d make sure there was a cutoff.”

Beth Cannon was the baker who ran Main Street Bakery. Been doing it before Rey moved into town. A sweet yet outspoken woman. Had been struggling with arthritis the past year, so she’d hired a couple of girls to help her with the baking in the mornings.

Rey wasn’t sure what exact time it was, but he assumed it was now after two, thus the struggle.

“Come on, Thatcher, I got here late on account of my horse going lame,” Billy Warner said. “Can’t blame me for that. Tell ’im, Sheriff Rey.”

“Did everyone run out of food the same day or something?” Rey asked to no one in particular.

“Oh, this man isn’t buying anything,” Thatcher said, pointing at Billy. “The likes of him are just taking a look.” He turned his full attention upon the man. “So, get out of line. No money, no line. After two, no lining up to peek.”

Billy scowled, but he shuffled away, hands in his grimy pockets.

“Thatcher,” Rey said, “put your gun away and tell me what all this fuss is. Looks like a parade, but I don’t see any silver marching band or dancing ponies.”

Thatcher grumbled something incoherent, but he holstered his pistol. “It’s Beth’s niece. Venice, or Vanna, or something. She’s a looker, and all the men want to get a look.”

Rey frowned. “I didn’t know Beth had a niece.”

“None of us did,” Thatcher said. “But she’s the talk of the town. Hair the color of summer wheat—”

“Eyes like a thundercloud,” Gerald said from somewhere down the line. “The kind of storm you want to get caught in.”

“Smile that lights up the whole darn sky,” Wallace added.

The men in the line all nodded, and that’s when Rey saw it. Each one of these unmarried men had that look in their eyes. Like they’d been dumbstruck. Some might call it lovestruck.

“Well, I’ll be. Sounds like an angel,” Rey said through gritted teeth.

“Oh, she’s an angel, all right,” Mr. Brunson chimed in. “Sang in the church choir yesterday, and I could have sworn the birds stopped singing outside to listen.”

“My heart may never recover,” Jeffrey said, clutching said heart. Jeffrey was a reed-thin man who could normally be found at the saloon this time of day. He looked the most sober Rey had ever seen him, wearing a clean button-down shirt.

Rey couldn’t deny that his curiosity was piqued, but he also knew any single, unmarried, half-pretty woman in Mayfair would get plenty of attention.

He wasn’t a regular churchgoing man, so he’d just have to skip out on hearing angels sing.

He just hoped that Beth Cannon was getting the rest she needed, because from Rey’s viewpoint, standing on the crowded boardwalk, the bakery was busier than ever.

He turned to Thatcher. “How long has this been going on?”

Thatcher paused a moment and counted on his stumpy fingers. “This is day five. The niece arrived one day, and by the second day, the lines were forming. Beth had to take me aside, and we set up some ground rules.”

Rey nodded at this. Made sense. But as he scanned the men in line, bouncing in their cowboy boots, mopping their foreheads and necks in the heat, cracking a few nervous jokes, Rey decided that the line was indecent.

The bakery wasn’t a circus peep show. Beth Cannon was one of the most respectable women in town—not respectable in the churchgoing sense—but respectable because she was one of the original homesteaders and was, as far as he knew, the oldest citizen of Mayfair.

“I’m the end of the line,” he announced. “Thatcher, you go ahead and get yourself a cold drink.”

“Thank you, sir,” Thatcher said with an eager nod and hurried off, giving out a couple of glares at loitering men for good measure.

Might as well see what all the fuss was about, Rey decided, and whether he needed to put more measures into place to keep Beth Cannon’s niece away from so many prying eyes and gossiping men.