Jesse by Barbara Goss (best romantic books to read TXT) 📗

“Yes.  Once she’d told me you’d killed a man, it didn’t take me long to form a plan.”

Delia sighed loudly.

He walked to the door.  “Just do it.  We’ll all be rich after your new husband has an accident and dies.  You can keep his house and land, and we’ll take his bank account.”

“How will I live?” Delia asked.

Her brother-in-law laughed.  “You have all the right equipment to make a fortune. What you have, men will pay good money for.”  He closed the door, leaving Delia alone in the dingy room above the saloon.

Chapter Two

Cordelia paced the floor.

How could she be a part of something so horrible?  Jesse was rough-looking, but there was a handsome face beneath the whisker stubble.  Otherwise, he looked hard and unapproachable.  His appearance had scared her at first until he'd smiled.

It wasn’t like Delia to hurt anyone intentionally.  The killing in Missouri had been an accident.  The man had made intimate advances, so she'd given him a shove, and he'd tumbled down a flight of stairs.  He’d fallen hard, landed with his head against the wall at the bottom of the stairs, and lain so still, she knew he was dead. She and her sister had fled immediately, knowing that Delia would be blamed, and rightfully so.

What had made her push him away so hard?  She could have screamed or tried harder to get away from him, but he’d scared the wits out of her, harassing her for weeks.  Now, instead of starting a new life in Sunset Creek, she was being blackmailed because her sister had told her husband what happened.  If only she hadn’t told him—her sister had changed since she’d married him.

Delia looked at the clock. It was nearly noon.  Her hands trembled as she put on her gloves.  When she was growing up in Missouri, her family never went to church—they weren’t a praying family—yet she still felt guilty about having killed a man, even if he was evil.

 When her mother had died giving birth to a baby at a later than normal age, and the baby had died along with her, Delia's father had drank himself into the same graveyard as her mother.  Having lost their home, she and her sister had rented a room from a man named Glenn Hackett, the same man who thought he could take liberties with her just because he was the landlord.

Delia had to school herself on what she had to do with Jesse without getting emotional or worse, falling in love with him.  She detested that her brother-in-law planned to kill Jesse, but she could, at least, play her part without guilt—whatever her brother-in-law did with Jesse wasn’t on her... or was it?  Because she'd assisted, she’d have two men’s deaths on her conscience.

She met Jesse in the general store, and he helped her into a rig he’d rented from the livery.

It shocked Delia to see that Jesse had gotten a haircut and a shave, and what a difference it had made.  He was a very handsome man, but like her sister always said, it’s what’s inside that counts.  Too bad her sister hadn’t taken that advice when she'd married her husband.

All the way down the bumpy dirt road, Delia told herself over and over not to fall for the man, even if he was handsome and charming.

 “Where will the picnic be?” she asked.

“You’ll see,” Jesse said with a wink.

They barreled down the road for about a mile before cutting off and onto a rutted path to a newly-built home.  She could tell it was new because the unpainted wood smelled delightfully fragrant.

Jesse stopped the rig beside a shed.

Delia felt nervous.  Was he planning to take her inside the house? She smiled.  That would give her the best opportunity to entice him.

“Wait here,” he said as he jumped from the wagon and entered the house.

She examined the house and the area around it in his absence.  It was a pretty house with trees all around it.  She could picture a white picket fence around the yard and flowers in a garden.

When Jesse reappeared, he was carrying a picnic basket and a large tablecloth.  He helped her down from the rig and walked her behind the house to an enormous tree where he spread the cloth beneath it and waved his hand at the cloth.

“Your table is ready, Miss,” he said.

Delia smiled and took a seat on the tablecloth while Jesse took out the food.

Jesse sat beside Delia and handed her a sandwich wrapped neatly in a cloth napkin.

Delia gave him a curious look.

“Who made the sandwiches?”

“What makes you think I didn’t?”

“The neat wrapping.”

“And you don’t think me capable of wrapping a sandwich?” he said with a chuckle.

“This is a woman’s wrapping. It’s folded so well I don’t know where to begin to unwrap it.”

Jesse chuckled again. “My friend’s wife, Molly, made them.”

He watched Delia find an exposed napkin end to open her sandwich.  “This looks divine.”

Jesse had already eaten half of his. “It’s delicious.”

“So, is Molly married to one of your friends I met last night?”

“No.  Her husband is another friend, Judd Barrick, who’s also a neighbor.  He was one of the men I met while hunting down a bounty.”

Delia scanned the area. “I don’t see any other houses… Oh, wait—I think I see one across that field.  It’s barely visible.”

 “That would be Judd’s, and I think it’s his large stables you’re seeing.  The house is not far, but the trees are blocking it.”

Delia had eaten her sandwich and was trying to fold the napkin the way Molly had. “You have a good many friends—that speaks well for you.”

Jesse handed her a neatly wrapped stack of cookies.  “It surprises me, too,