ROMANCE: Badass Boss (Billionaire Alpha Bad Boy Romance) (Western Mail Order Bride Calendar Contemporary) (62 page)
Authors: Susan Fleming
Chapter 12
The Future
They were married on a Sunday, the second day of the month. The matchmaker sat and watched as the happy young couple completed their nuptial vows. She is happier than everyone else at the wedding, apart from the blushing bride and the limping groom. She is careful not to show just how happy she is, because it will raise questions about why she is so happy for the newlyweds.
Walking over to the reception table, she joins in a conversation with four other women about the “matchmaker” who was going to ruin life in Coleman County.
“He or she is going to take all the good men off the market!” one short, dumpy woman said.
“Yeah!” chimed in another. “By bringing in all of these girls that aren’t from around here, none of the local girls will ever find a husband!”
“I just don’t know,” the matchmaker says, “what is wrong with the young women around here! Why they are so content to let the good ones go by the by!”
“You know, you raise a good point,” said a tall, thin woman who looked as if she fell out of the ugly tree. “The problem isn’t the matchmaker, it’s the girls around here who are content to let the bachelors get away. They need to be more aggressive!”
“Well, I would say that they are being too aggressive,” said the matchmaker thoughtfully. “Perhaps if they would just be themselves, these young men would not be so willing to take a bride that is from so far away.”
The whispers continue, but the matchmaker keeps smiling and feeding the rumors about her identity…but very carefully, so as to not raise suspicion, and make the good folks of Coleman County think that she was the culprit…even though she was, is, and will be.
This deliciously dirty story is a part of Susan Fleming’s super-charged, highly lewd collection of love and lust, written in 2015. Those who attempt to steal any part of this goldmine and take it as their own risk being a fiery, hot death from a hunk bearing copyright notices—and she’s not about to play with you.
This is a work of fiction—although we wish that people like this really existed, it’s nothing more than a figment of a very, very overactive imagination. Any resemblance to someone you know, a place you love or anything you hold dear to your heart is nothing more than a craving in your heart that these carnal desires and actions were true!
It goes without saying that this book oozes with erotic sex appeal, and is filled to the rafters with a smorgasbord of acts that you certainly wouldn’t tell your grandmother about. Bodice-ripping, panty-dropping and glasses-steaming, the scenes contained herein are wickedly naughty!
Although all the saucy characters are flirting with forbidden desires and sometimes taking the naughty fruit they really shouldn’t be, all are consenting adults over the age of 18 and not blood-related. What they are is passionate and eager to explore their carnal desires all day long.
In short, this book is going to get you very, very hot!
© Susan Fleming
All Rights Reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any many whatsoever without the express permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locations is purely coincidental. The characters are all productions of the author’s imagination. Please note that this work is intended only for adults age 18 and over. All characters represented are age 18 or over.
Table Of Contents
Chapter 1: The Matchmaker
Chapter 2: Dwight
Chapter 3: Motive
Chapter 4: Pauline
Chapter 5: Tensions
Chapter 6: The Match
Chapter 7: Trouble Ahead
Chapter 8: The Fight
Chapter 9: Resolution
Chapter 1
The Matchmaker
The Matchmaker is sitting in her booth at the train station, completing her normal mundane tasks of sorting the mail. In the last five months, she has felt more alive than she has in the previous seven years since her dearly departed husband passed away. Sure, it was kind of her younger brother to take her in when Albert died, but these days, the boy either spends his time drinking, or repenting of his alcoholism, stuck somewhere between raising hell and amazing grace.
Things have only gotten worse since their brother got killed last fall. She decided to lay off the matchmaking for a while after her eldest brother was murdered, mainly because she was grieving, but also because the citizens of Coleman County, Texas were even more angry with her than ever in the wake of his death.
“Big Dave,” as he was commonly known in the county, was a prominent cattle rancher, and was a hefty player in the politics of the county. After she had set up the owner of the largest cattle operation in Central Texas up with a mail order bride from South Carolina, her brother had been well placed to fill the void that Junior’s departure from Coleman had created.
Of course, that was before Doc Dawson’s gang murdered him in cold blood, just to piss off “Dandy” Coleman Darby, an employee of Dave’s, and his best friend in the world. Oddly enough, she had been in the process of matching “Dandy” up with a pretty girl from Kentucky, Sarah Anne Tarter, when Dave was murdered. Dandy had met up with Dave’s killer, and buried a bullet in Dawson’s head, taking a bullet in the leg in the process.
These days, Dandy is a well-to-do deputy sheriff under Eliot Vargas, the great-grandson of a Texican who was killed with Davy Crockett at the Alamo, newly married to Sarah Anne, whose belly was starting to become distended, showing that her gun-slinging husband will be a father soon. Considering that Dandy was a masochistic, womanizing whore-hound until he began seeing Sarah Anne, his transformation is especially remarkable.
The Matchmaker, however, has managed to keep her identity secret for eight months now, and because the spring of the 1888 is on the horizon, she feels that she, too, should have a new beginning. When she sits down to think about the many negative things that she has heard about what she is doing, she can’t help but laugh. It seems that every woman in Coleman County is severely angry with her for simply setting up some bachelors with a wife, and right now she is two for two.
Poor Mr. Parker had never married because of the cows that he was forced to call neighbors, and yet those same heifers seemed to think that one of their daughters (or worse…one of them) would manage to con the man into marriage. And therein lay the problem…the men in Coleman County deserved better than they would receive from the local gals.
It only makes sense that somebody would actually take the initiative to set up these very eligible bachelors in a relationship that will last a lifetime. No, she thinks to herself, while going through the letters, I won’t stop setting these men up…and maybe one day these self-righteous heifers will see why I’m doing it!
Chapter 2
Dwight
Silent tears fall down Dwight Butler’s cheeks as he looks at the tombstone at his feet.
Here Lies Amanda Butler
Beloved, Christian Wife and Mother
RIP
1852-1887
Last fall, Amanda had contracted a fever at the funeral of his brother, David Butler. Even though Dwight had always refused to call him by his preferred name, David was well known throughout Coleman County as “Big Dave,” a rancher of better than modest means who had never married.
After his murder at the hands of notorious outlaw Doc Dawson, David had left the vast majority of his property to Dwight and Amanda, with instructions to will at least one hundred acres of the land to Emily, Dwight’s only daughter, regardless of whether she ever married or not.
The rest of his land went to his best friend, one of the cowboys who rode for him occasionally, and David’s best friend, “Dandy” Coleman Darby. Consequentially, Dandy had been the one to bring Doc Dawson to justice, and now was not only a property owner, but a very rich man (Dawson had a $9,500 bounty, dead or alive, on his head).
So it was that Dwight had taken his wife and daughter to the funeral of his older brother last fall, in a cold rain that said the skies were weeping for the loss of David as well. Unfortunately, Amanda did not have a black bonnet to wear, and so went without a head covering, and within a week, she was lying in bed, pale as death with large, dark circles around her eyes.
Even though Dwight worked hard to keep his beloved warm, the fire and blankets simply weren’t enough. The doctor came by twice each day for the last week of Amanda’s life, treating her pneumonia, but saying that while she “could” survive, he had no way of knowing.
Dwight worked each day to keep up David’s cattle operation, while Emily stayed at her mother’s side every hour. Eventually, Dwight was able to pay each of the cowboys who last rode for David exactly what was owed them, while also giving the mother of Jefferson and Davis Garret their compensation for coming to patrol David’s land the night of his (and their) murders. Then, finally, the terrible day came when the doctor exited the bedroom for the last time.
“I’m sorry Dwight. She’s gone.”
“No!” Dwight had yelled in return. “She can’t be gone!”
But she was. First David was, and now his beloved Amanda was dead. Sure, he still had Emily and his younger brother and sister, but his brother is a drunk and his sister is—eccentric and loudmouthed—to say the least.
Just like every other woman in Coleman County, Dwight’s widowed sister is obsessed with that damn match-maker. Always, you could see and hear the women in the county conjecturing on who it was they thought was the mystery person who has so turned the county upside-down.
“God…” Dwight begins to pray. “I don’t know why it is that you had to take Amanda from me. I don’t know why she deserved to die like that, constantly fighting for breath, and always feeling like she was cold, even though her skin was hot as hellfire…I suppose that it’s my job to just trust that you’ve got a plan. At least, that’s what Preacher Higgs keeps telling me. I suppose…I suppose it would be easier to trust your plan if’n I know what it was. So, if you have a plan, and Amanda had to die for that plan to go forward, I trust you. Give me a sign, and I’ll follow whatever you want. Amen.” Dwight closes, a feeling of extreme exhaustion bearing down on him.
“Amen,” came a voice directly behind Dwight, causing him to jump, startled. “Why so jumpy, ‘Wight? ‘Fraid that somethin’s goin’ ta git ya out here?”
“Hey Dandy,” Dwight says, recognizing the younger man’s voice. “How’s Sarah Anne?”
“She’s got the sickness, and her belly’s gettin’ right big, but other than that, we’re doing right fine, thank ya fer askin’.”
“Any time. I jest came up here to see Amanda.”
“Yeah, Em’ly tole me that I could prolly find ya out here.”
“What? Did ya go by the house or somethin’?”
“Yeah. Went by the house to talk to ya, and yeh weren’ even there!” Dandy says, spitting a stream of juice from the chewing tobacco in his cheek.
“Well, what can I do fer yeh?” Dwight asks when Dandy doesn’t press on.
“Aw, nuthin,’ really. Besides, yer up her visitin’ wit’ ‘Manda, and I don’ want’a spoil that,” he answers, spitting again.
“Come on, now Dandy. I’ve know’d you since you’s a baby. Don’t think you can come all the way up on this hill in Santa Ana and me not think something was up.”
“Well, now that you mention it…”
“I know’d it. Now…what d’ya want?”
“Well, wit’ Sarah Anne ‘bout to have a chil,’ I was lookin’ aroun’ the place, and realized…Big Dave never intended to have chil’ren.”
“Naw, he didn’t I’d know that abou’ as good as any would. You’re point?”
“Well, we’re goin’ to need more space, with the baby an’ all.”
“Ok. And what does that have to do wit’ me, exac’ly, Dandy?”
“Well…I’m goin’ to have to sell it.”
“Jest spit it out, boy.”
“Well, I figgered that since it was your brother’s house an’ all, you might wan’ it.”
“I can’ afford another house, Dandy.”
“But you’d be interested if you could afford it?”
Dwight thought this query over for a few moments before answering. “Well, yeah, I reckon I would. That’s the house I grow’d up in, an’ all.”
“Well, I’ll sell you the house and the 200 acres it sits on fer five hun’red dollars. Cash.”
Shocked, Dwight looks over at Dandy, and says, “five hun’red? Fer the house an’ lan’?”
“Yup. Fer you, five hun’red.”
“But Dandy, that home place is worth at least five times that much!”
“I know, but it means more ta you than me, an’ I need to get a diff’ren’ place an’ all.”
“Where were you thinkin’ ‘bout goin’?”
“Junior Parker’s place. It’s still fer sale, fer $8,500. The bank in Coleman is holdin’ it fer him. If I wan’ed it, I could just have ‘em take the money out o’ my account. I still got most o’ the money from killin’ Doc an’ all. An’ all his cattle are in that price an’ all. I can’t stay a gunman forever, can I? I gots a wife an’ baby to think about.”
“That would be a great place…1200 acres an’ almos’ three hun’red ‘ead o’ cattle? Plus the house an’ barn? Eighty-five hun’red ain’t a bad price fer all that.”
“I know. So what d’ya say ‘bout the place that Dave lef’ me?”
Dwight thinks for a moment, and turns to look at Amanda’s grave once more. If he lived in Voss, he’d definitely be closer to the ranch that his brother had left him. And it would certainly make it easier on him to actually give Emily something of consequence, rather than some barren land that is only fitting for some crazy longhorn cattle.
“I’ll do it. Let’s go to the bank,” Dwight finally says, breaking the pregnant silence that had fallen between them.
“Excellent, let’s go.”
