Mr. Spangler,

I do not know if you are going to understand what I am about to do. I do not know if I understand it myself, but I am leaving Juneau City at the end of the week and will be heading to Colorado. It makes no sense, but lately I have been homesick for a place I have never been and I have been missing a boy I have never seen. The yearning I read in John James’s letters is the yearning I have felt my whole life. It is a need to be important to someone. And I aim to be that to the boy if I am able.

I want to make a difference in your great-grandson’s life. By the time you get this, you will not be able to reach me, and you could not have said anything that would have changed my mind anyhow. I am on my way to meet John James. This is something I need to do. I want your great-grandson to have what every boy deserves—a father who cares about him.

Sincerely,

Wesley M. Burrows

Her Colorado Man

Harlequin®Historical

MILLS & BOON

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Praise for
Cheryl St.John

“Ms. St.John knows what the readers want and keeps on giving it.”

—Rendezvous

“Ms. St.John holds a spot in my top five list of must-read Harlequin Historical authors. She is an amazingly gifted author.”

—Writers Unlimited

Her Montana Man

“Emotional, realistic westerns are St.John’s forte, and her latest…is a satisfying, rough-and-tender novel brimming with true-to-life characters and an understanding of the era that fulfills western readers’ hankerings.”

—RT Book Reviews

His Secondhand Wife Nominated for a RITA®Award

“A beautifully crafted and involving story about the transforming power of love, this is recommended reading.”

—RT Book Reviews

Prairie Wife Nominated for an RT Book Reviews Reviewers’ Choice Award

“A very special book, courageously executed by the author and her publisher. Her considerable skill brings the common theme of the romance novel—love conquers all—to the level of genuine catharsis.”

—RT Book Reviews [4 ½ stars]

CHERYL ST.JOHN
HER COLORADO MAN

Available from Harlequin® Historical and CHERYL ST.JOHN

Rain Shadow #212

Heaven Can Wait #240

Land of Dreams #265

Saint or Sinner #288

Badlands Bride #327

The Mistaken Widow #429

Joe’s Wife #451

The Doctor’s Wife #481

Sweet Annie #548

The Gunslinger’s Bride #577

Christmas Gold #627

“Colorado Wife”

The Tenderfoot Bride #679

Prairie Wife #739

His Secondhand Wife #760

Wed Under Western Skies #799

“Almost a Bride”

The Lawman’s Bride #835

The Preacher’s Daughter #851

A Western Winter Wonderland #867

“Christmas Day Family”

The Magic of Christmas #915

“A Baby Blue Christmas”

Her Montana Man #923

Her Colorado Man #971

Other works include:

Silhouette Special Edition

Nick All Night #1475

*Marry Me…Again #1558

Charlie’s Angels #1630

Million-Dollar Makeover #1688

Montana Mavericks

The Magnificent Seven

The Bounty Hunter

As most writers can attest, this rewarding job often takes a toll on hands, wrists, elbows, necks, shoulders and backs.

I am deeply appreciative of Dr. Steven Shockley, who has adjusted my spine more times than I could say, and who instructs me in methods of exercise to attain optimal wellness. I’m not the only one who has a better quality of life because this dedicated chiropractor is concerned with helping patients achieve natural drug-free healing. Thank you, Dr. Steve, for your genuine compassion and for sharing your gifts and abilities.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter One

Ruby Creek, Colorado

May, 1882

“Watch out!”

Mariah Burrows ducked and ran a good six feet before turning back to look up at the crate teetering atop a stack of similar ones in the cavernous warehouse. Three agile young men scrambled from their positions on ladders and beside wagons to prevent it from falling. Two of them were her nephews, the other a distant cousin.

“Don’t stack these crates over twelve high,” she called. “Better that we take up warehouse space than lose eighty-five dollars or someone’s head. We built this whole building just for storing the lager for the Exposition, so let’s use it.”

Her nephew Roth gave her a mock salute and jumped down from the pile of wooden crates. “Grandpa would’ve had our hides if we’d let that one slip.”

“I’d have told your mother not to serve that apfelstrudel you’re so fond of tonight.”

He laughed and took his cap from his rear pocket to settle it on his head. “You’re a tyrannical boss, Aunt Mariah.”

“Mariah!” A familiar male voice echoed through the high-ceilinged building. “Mariah Burrows!”

“Over here, Wilhelm,” she called. At twenty-two, he was her younger brother by two years. He used her full name at every opportunity. Among the hundred plus employees at the Spangler Brewery, hers was one of the few non-Bavarian or German names, and he lived to tease her about it. “What has you out of the office this morning?” she asked.

“Grandfather wants to see you right away.”

She fished for her pencil in the front pocket of the men’s trousers she wore that were her everyday garb. “I’ll be there as soon as I go over the inventory of last night’s bottling.”

“No, right now. He says it’s urgent.”

She tucked her ledger under her arm and rushed to join him. “Is John James all right?”

“Your son is fine.”

“Grandfather?”

“He’s just anxious to have you in the office for whatever reason.”

Relieved, she turned to wave at Roth. “I’ll be back. Go ahead and start stamping those crates near the conveyor. Seven weeks until opening day in Denver.”

Spangler Brewery spread over an acre located roughly two miles from Ruby Creek. The warehouses were situated with platforms a few scant feet from the railroad tracks, and the production buildings sat close to the cold-water streams that poured from the mountains into the wide creek for which the town was named. Three smoke stacks puffed billowy gray clouds into the bright Colorado sky. The mountains to the northeast were still capped with snow, but fireweed and forget-me-nots bloomed on the hillsides nearer. Mariah breathed in the pungent smell of fermented hops.

“I overheard Mama talking in the kitchen this morning.” Wilhelm’s tone was uncharacteristically solemn.

She glanced up at him as they passed the corner of the four-sided brick clock tower that stood in the center of the open yard.

“She said that sometimes Grandpa forgets what day it is for a moment.”

Mariah had noticed the same thing a time or two. Once he’d said something about an occurrence twenty years ago as if it had just happened. But the next moment he carried on with their business. “He seems perfectly healthy,” she said. “It’s almost like he takes a little trip into the past.”

“No harm there, I guess,” her brother said with a shrug.

Near the front entrance, they entered the four-story brick building that housed accounting offices as well as comfortable quarters for her grandfather. Their work shoes padded on the carpet runner that ran the length of the hall.

Mariah smiled a goodbye to Wilhelm and opened one of the carved walnut doors to enter Louis Spangler’s domain. She’d loved these rooms from the time she’d been a child, when he’d indulgently welcomed her to sit in one of the soft leather chairs that sat before a stone fireplace. She’d listened with rapt attention as he spoke of the old days back in Bavaria and his early days in this country, when he and his father and his uncles had built the brewery from the ground up.

He was the only one left from the old country. He and Grandma used to speak to each other in Old High German, a dialect of which their children and grandchildren could only understand bits and phrases. Mariah hadn’t heard it spoken for many years now.

“You must need something important,” she said. “You’ve spent the last three months cautioning me not to waste a minute until everything is ready for the Exposition.”

Louis moved from where he’d been standing at the wide window that looked out over foothills decorated in a dozen shades of verdant green to his desk. He cast her a tentative glance. “We have something important to discuss.”

“About the Exposition?”

“No. Nothing like that.” He waved her to a chair.

Mariah knew better than to rush him. He would come around to the point in his own good time. She made herself comfortable on a wing chair and waited. The concern in his vivid blue gaze unsettled her.

“I have some news. Something that’s going to affect you and John James.”

She sat a little straighter. Four years ago he’d given her a seat on the governing board, and for the first time in its nearly forty-year history, the brewery had a woman in a principal position. He’d always held Mariah in a place of favor. When her son had come along, Grandfather had given him his favor, as well. She anticipated that one day she would inherit her own share of their family holdings. “What is it?” she asked.

“Wes Burrows is coming here. In just a few weeks’ time.”

Mariah heard his spoken words immediately, but their meaning took longer to penetrate her haze of disbelief. They never spoke of the person he’d just mentioned because that person didn’t exist. Hearing it from him now was like hearing that foreign language her grandparents used to use. “Wha-what do you mean?”

“John James’s father is coming to see him.”

A buzz rang in her ears. “But that—that’s impossible.”

“I’m afraid it’s not. I’ve had communication with him, and he’s already left Juneau City. He should arrive early next month.”

Mariah’s first reaction was to stand. Bolt perhaps. But the room tilted at an odd angle, and she collapsed back onto the leather cushion before she fell. “Could you explain, please? How does a man you invented suddenly write and say he’s coming?”

“I didn’t invent Wes Burrows. The man exists.”

She overcame her light-headedness to stand and release the tension ratcheting her nerves by pacing a few feet away and back again. “I thought your old friend from Forchheim was writing those letters.”

“Otto died. I told you that.”

“No. No, you didn’t.” Just the other day she’d read a few of the letters her son had received recently, and there had been subtle differences in the penmanship and the sentence structures, but she hadn’t suspected a different writer.

Mariah placed a hand on either side of her head as though to keep it from flying off. Was her grandfather confused or was she hearing wrong? “If Otto is dead, who has been writing to—and who is traveling to—see John James?”

“I didn’t expect this,” he said apologetically. “Not in a hundred years. Sit back down and let me explain.”

He wouldn’t continue until she complied, so Mariah sat once again and gripped the arms of the chair. “I’m listening.”

“Otto Weiss had been living in Alaska for quite some time when I asked him to help us with the name of someone who rarely checked his postal box, someone whose name we could use and who would never find out.”

“I know that part.” Seven years ago, when she’d told him she was going to have a baby and had no plans for a husband, he’d sent her to Chicago for a year. She’d been surprised when she’d returned home with her baby and learned that her grandfather had invented a husband for her while she’d been away. The story had already been told throughout the family and in the nearby town of Ruby Creek. Supposedly she’d married in Chicago.

The tale continued that her new husband had gone off to the gold fields of the north, leaving her to wait for him, and because of that she’d chosen to move home to her family until his return.

Living with the stigma of a husband with gold fever had been better than her son or anyone else learning the truth. Louis had found a solution. A no-muss, no-fuss absent husband suited Mariah just fine actually. The ruse had kept away potential suitors and given her the freedom to live her life exactly the way she pleased. A pretend husband had been an easy solution.

“Alaska is at the edge of nowhere,” he said. “I never dreamed anyone in Colorado would hear Burrows’s name.”

When he’d shown her the first letter from this make-believe father, he had suggested that his friend would write and send a few letters so John James could believe his father loved him. “A boy needs to believe his father cares for him,” he’d told Mariah. She hadn’t been able to disagree with that. And the truth would never pass her lips. “All along I thought Otto made up a name to use,” she said.

“We should have simply rented a box in a fictitious name,” her grandfather said. “Or we should have said your husband died like we talked about, but John James loved getting those letters. Telling him that would have been like actually killing his father. He believed the man was real. At the time there was no harm in allowing the ruse to continue.”

“I’m as responsible as you are for that,” she said. “But what about the name that I’ve been using—the name I gave my son? This Burrows is a real person?”

“He is.”

The information was too much to absorb. Thinking back, she had noticed a difference in the letters. She hadn’t read all of them, but she read a few here and there for John James’s safety. She’d read more than usual lately because she’d been intrigued by the writer’s stories. “Who are the letters really from?”

“The real Mr. Burrows. Initially he wrote to me because I always help John James with his letters. He asked me to explain why his post box was filled with mail from a child he didn’t know. I made it clear how much the dear boy longed for a father.” He gave her a sidelong glance. “I may have suggested that no harm would come if the charade continued a while longer. And soon this Burrows fellow was writing letters to John James.”

Mariah wiped a hand over her eyes as if that might clear the confusion and concern. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I did.” He frowned and his gaze fell to the desktop. “Or at least I thought I did.”

Her heart beat hard and fast at the thought of this stranger coming to expose their lie to her son. John James’s heart would be broken. He would despise her for the lies she’d strung out for so long. A tight knot formed in her stomach at the thought, and suspicion straightened her eyebrows in a skeptical frown. “Why does this man want to come here? What does he expect?”

Louis unlocked his top desk drawer and took out an envelope. He tapped it against his other palm thoughtfully before placing it on top of his desk and pushing it toward her. “It’s all here.”

With trembling fingers, Mariah reached for the envelope. Her grandfather’s name had been written in sprawling black script. She slid out the stationery and unfolded the paper.

Mr. Spangler,

I do not know if you are going to understand what I am about to do. I do not know if I understand it myself, but I am leaving Juneau City at the end of the week and will be heading to Colorado.

For the past six years, I have been traveling between tent camps and post offices. There is money to be made in this land, and I have spent my youth acquiring it. I have witnessed plenty of men getting mail from home, and I have often wondered what it would be like to have family waiting for me, wishing I was with them.

Before I was a mail carrier, I worked aboard a whaling ship. I once tried my luck at gold mining, and I have traveled half the world. In all that time I never felt attached to a place. I never had a yearning to settle until I read the lad’s words about the Spangler family. He writes about his mother and you. I feel as though I have been to Ruby Creek.

It makes no sense, but lately I have been homesick for a place I have never been and I have been missing a boy I have never seen. The yearning I read in John James’s letters is the yearning I have felt my whole life. It is a need to be important to someone. And I aim to be that to him if I am able.

I have had some time to reflect on my life these past weeks, and what I now see is that above all I want to make a difference in this world. I want to make a difference in your great-grandson’s life. By the time you get this, you will not be able to reach me, and you could not have said anything that would have changed my mind anyhow. I am on my way to meet John James.

You have my word that I shall not embarrass or hurt the boy. Neither do I intend to disrupt your life or your granddaughter’s. This is something I need to do. I want your great-grandson to have what every boy deserves—a father who cares about him.

Sincerely, Wesley T. Burrows

Hot tears stung at the backs of Mariah’s eyes. Fear and resentment welled up strong and fierce. The words written in black ink blurred in her vision. Blinking, she folded the letter and slid it back into the envelope. “This is absurd. We don’t know this man. What right does he have to come galloping in here like a savior on a white horse and weasel his way into our lives?”

Standing, she tossed the envelope back on his desk and walked behind her chair. She grasped the leather in both hands in an attempt to stop her violent trembling. “What are we going to do?”

Her grandfather stood and made his way around the corner of the enormous walnut desk. “There’s nothing we can do. We used his postal box for several years without his permission. He’s caught us in a lie.”

“Which gives him the power to come in here and ruin our lives?” she exclaimed. “What if he’s coming to blackmail us? What better reason could he have to travel across a continent to intrude on our family?”

“Blackmail? That’s a pretty big leap. I’ve read his other letters to John James, and I don’t believe he means us any harm. We’ll deal with anything that comes up when the time arrives, Mariah. There’s no call to jump to conclusions.”

“No.” Panic rose in her chest. “You can have someone stop him before he gets here.”

“Who would I ask to deter him? Your brothers? Your nephews? Just what would I tell them? And what would we do with Burrows once we’d stopped him? He’s not breaking any laws by coming here.”

Mariah didn’t like feeling trapped, and she didn’t like anyone having the control over her that this Wes Burrows had at the moment. The man was up to no good. “No one has ever seen him,” she said. “When he gets here, we’ll say he’s an imposter.”

“Mariah, that would—”

“I know—it would raise too many questions and still create a scene for John James.” She paced several feet away and then walked back to face her grandfather.

“I’m going to take his words at face value,” Louis said. “He wants John James to know he has a father who cares about him.”

“He doesn’t have a father who cares about him,” she said in a tight voice. “I’m not blaming you for anything.” She took a step forward and leaned to rest her hand on his shirtsleeve. “When I came back with a baby, I was relieved that you’d already told everyone the story about a husband. It spared me the embarrassment of making explanations. I accepted the lie because it was convenient. And even when Otto sent those first letters, I could have stopped you from giving them to John James, but I didn’t.” Her throat burned with the truth and the scalding honesty. “I wanted him to believe he had a father.”

She swallowed hard and a trembling began in her knees. “This man coming here is taking the lie too far. Even if his intent is harmless, and he pretends to be a father, he’ll leave eventually. Desertion will only hurt John James more in the end.”

Louis moved his arm to grasp her hand and hold it between both of his. “Let’s say he visits for a few weeks. And then he goes back where he came from. Things will go back like they were and John James will have had a father like all the other children.”

“But it’s always been a lie.” She couldn’t push her voice past a whisper because her chest ached too fiercely. Maybe the lie had allowed her to pretend there was someone out there who would be returning one day.

Louis released her and stared out the window. His hair glowed silver in the sunlight. “It’s a little late to tell the truth,” he said, turning back to level a gaze on her. “Or is there a chance the child’s real father will show up one day?”

She looked into his eyes, eyes that had always looked upon her with loving trust and kindness.

The truth would tear her family apart.

With a dull pain in her chest, she shook her head. “No. He’ll never show up.”

“I’ve never pressured you, Mariah,” he said kindly, and it was true. Nor had he ever condemned her. His love for her had never wavered. “My deepest regret is that you don’t trust me with the truth…but I trust you.”

“You and my father are the only men on this earth I trust,” she said with the acidic taste of guilt on her tongue. But then she repented in her thoughts, because she had four brothers who would die for her at a moment’s notice. “Well, there are my brothers, of course…but I don’t trust this stranger.”

He took several steps to take her in his arms and hold her against his satin vest. He smelled of spice and shaving soap and everything dear and familiar. She had to hold back a sob or drown in a torrent. “Whoever this outsider is, I don’t plan to welcome him or treat him kindly,” she warned. “Even if he were my gadabout husband, no one would expect me to welcome him with open arms after all these years.”

“We’ll do what we have to,” Louis answered. “We’ll do what we believe is right for John James.”

“Wes Burrows doesn’t know what’s right for John James. He doesn’t even know us.” Her voice broke, and she caught herself before she lost her composure. “I’ll figure out what he’s up to,” she said. “And I won’t let him hurt my son.”

She loved her grandfather with every beat of her heart. He’d meant well. They’d both believed that saving her good name and giving her son an identity was best for him. John James had never suffered the indignity of being born out of wedlock, and she’d been spared shame and embarrassment.

Until now.

Chapter Two

That evening as the sun slid toward the western horizon, Mariah caught a ride home in the back of a company wagon leaving the yard. Her brother Arlen gave her an arm up, and she leaped over the side to take a seat in the bed beside her family members.

Arlen lived in the family home with Grandfather and their parents, as did she and John James, her two younger sisters, a widowed aunt and her cousin Marc’s family.

Mariah’s family had lived in a separate house once, but when her mother’s sight had failed, they’d moved into the big house so Henrietta wasn’t alone during the day. Now Wilhelm and his family lived in the house they’d vacated, which was only several hundred feet from this one.

For practicality, all of the Spanglers lived within a half a mile radius of the brewery and each other. Grandfather said it was like having their own Bavarian district. They shopped, worshipped and visited in Ruby Creek on a regular basis, though, always taking an interest in the community and usually attending church.

The good-natured chatter and teasing between cousins and siblings was lost on her today; her thoughts had been narrowed to one subject—and one person—since that morning.

The wagon slowed and Arlen, along with her cousin Marc, jumped down. Arlen reached back for Mariah’s hand and Marc helped his wife to the ground. Faye adjusted her skirts and took his hand as they headed toward the rear entry.

Men and women parted in the yard, the men headed for the washhouse. Mariah followed Faye in through the sun porch to the enormous kitchen filled with mouthwatering aromas. Her aunt Ina turned from one of the steaming cast-iron stoves to welcome them with a smile.

Mariah’s mother sat on a wooden stool near a chopping block, peeling potatoes. “Hello, Mama,” Mariah greeted her.

“How was your workday?” Henrietta asked and raised her cheek for a kiss.

“It was long.” Mariah joined Faye at a deep sink to scrub her hands. “I’ll be down to help with supper after I wash up and change.”

“There you are!” her cousin Hildy exclaimed when the two of them nearly collided in the doorway. “John James has been waiting for you.”

Hildy didn’t live with them. She had worked in the brewery for a couple of years, but most recently she’d been a companion to Henrietta. She preferred helping with the household chores and watching over the younger children to a brewery position, and the arrangement suited everyone. Hildy had no children of her own.

“I gave the children toast and eggs after school,” Hildy told her. “Though they’d have much preferred your mama’s cookies.”

“You’re a blessing,” Mariah told her sweet dark-haired cousin and looked into her hazel eyes. They couldn’t have been more different in appearance. Hildy’s father had been of Irish decent, while Mariah took after the fair-haired Bavarian Spanglers.

Instead of using the back staircase, she headed for the front of the house and ran up the wide front staircase that opened into a commons room. There, the four youngsters had their own benches, desks, slates and a case of books, as well as an assortment of games and puzzles for evenings and rainy afternoons.

“Mama!” John James leaped up from his position on the rug to hug her. “I added five numbers together in my head without my fingers. Or the slate.”

“I do believe you have a calling to work in the accounting office with your uncle Wilhelm.” She ruffled his blond hair and knelt to kiss his cheek. He smelled like chalk and soap and little boy, and her heart tripped at the thought of him ever being hurt.

“Oh, no,” he said with a shake of his fair head. “I’m going to work on the machines.” His blue-eyed expression held all the seriousness a six-year-old could muster. “I like the sounds in the bottling house. And you can see the mountains from the big doorway.”

“That you can,” she agreed. “You, my bright shining star, can be whatever you want to be when you grow up.”

“Even the president?” Marc and Faye’s seven-year-old Emma asked, with a grin.

Mariah turned to tweak her pigtail. “Unless you beat him to it!”

“Emma can’t be the pwesident!” Emma’s five-year-old brother Paul said with a wide-eyed exclamation. “Her’s a girl! Pwesident’s got to have beards.”

Mariah laughed and the boys joined her. Emma only gave them a puzzled look.

“Finish your lessons before supper,” she said to John James and hurried along the hallway to her room.

Supper was a noisy affair as always, relaxed and friendly. At home like this she wasn’t anyone’s boss or coworker. She didn’t have a quota or hours and product to tally. She was simply aunt, sister, daughter and mother. Siblings and cousins and aunts and uncles talked over each other while they passed heaping bowls of potatoes and platters of schweinsbraten, their traditional oven-roasted pork. Half a dozen foamy pitchers of dark beer stood on the table at intervals.

Mariah set down her empty glass with a satisfied sigh. Only perfect brews came from the barrels with the Spangler stamp.

Noticing her lack of animation, Mariah’s father, Friederick, gave her a long glance. “Are you well, Mariah?”

She assured him she was fine. “It was a long day. I’m just tired.”

Much later after the dishes were washed and the various families had retired to their quarters, Mariah tucked John James into his bed in the room he shared with Paul. He closed his eyes and she threaded her fingers through his pale silky hair.

Wesley Burrows’s written words came to mind: I want your great-grandson to have what every boy deserves—a father who cares about him. No one wished that more than she, but it would never be. Memories of her son as a chubby infant and a toddling two-year-old assailed her. The other children in their household—in all their family—had fathers to swing them in the air and play catch and teach them to fish and hunt.

Her brothers were wonderful, and she loved them for their devotion to her son. Arlen never left with a fishing pole without asking John James if he wanted to accompany him. Mariah often tagged along and watched as her brother taught him how to dig for worms, place one on the hook and cast the line into the stream.

She stretched out on the narrow bed and lay with her face nestled in John James’s hair where it met the collar of his nightshirt. He was never lonely. She’d seen to that. Her family had seen to it. She owed them a debt she could never repay for loving her child and giving him a sense of belonging.

He slept soundly, his breath a soft whisper against the cotton sheet.

She was the one who was lonely. She was the one who watched couples with curiosity and awe. She was the one who lay awake at night, knowing she’d never have anything more than what she had at that moment, and vowing that she was going to be satisfied regardless.

She would never marry. She would never have another child. She would never be loved in the way a man loves a woman. It was unlikely she’d ever love a man who wasn’t her closest of kin.

Sometimes she thought she could embellish the lie she lived by saying that her husband had been killed. She’d imagined a hundred deaths for him. And if he were dead, she’d be free to be courted. Though she was decidedly unapproachable and rarely met men who weren’t her family.

But she couldn’t tell that additional lie just for her convenience. The thought of doing that to John James stopped her. As it was he believed he had a father, no matter how distant. If he believed his father was dead, it would hurt him more.

Wouldn’t it?

The partially closed door creaked open and Faye peeked in. Paul had been asleep since before John James came to bed. Mariah couldn’t see Faye’s gaze, but knew she checked her son before giving Mariah a little wave and backing out.

It didn’t matter now. At this point she didn’t have any power to alter the husband fable. Wesley Burrows was coming to insinuate himself into their lives. And she was going to have to tell John James.

Mariah got up and went to the bureau that held John James’s clothing and opened the bottom drawer. Raising the lid on a hinged wooden cigar box, she lifted out a packet of envelopes tied with a piece of string and left the room, silently closing the door behind her.

Mariah’s room was across the hall from where her son slept and beside her brother Arlen’s. It was a comfortable space, plenty roomy enough for a big upholstered chair beside the fireplace, a writing desk and the four-poster bed in which she’d slept since childhood. A padded seat had been built before a trio of paned windows that overlooked the vegetable and herb gardens, with forested hills in the background.

Mariah lit another lamp and settled at her desk with the packet of letters. After first identifying the differences between two similar, but individual styles of handwriting, she sorted the envelopes into piles accordingly. These weren’t all of the letters, but they were the most recent, dating back nearly a year.

From those with the earliest dates, she scanned a few, and then set them aside. Starting with the first one after the handwriting changed, she began to read.

Dear John James,

As soon as the weather is warm and the rivers are free of ice so that canoes and steamboats can carry the mail, I will send the book I have been saving for you. It holds many drawings of steam engines, and I believe you will enjoy looking at them. Right now, during the harsh winter, the only mail that can be delivered are letters.

One of my dogs had a litter of puppies. They are little balls of fur, with yipping barks and adventurous spirits. The one with a black circle around his eye will make a good sled dog, because he enjoys playing in the snow. I have sketched him for you. I am calling him Jack.

Mariah unfolded the other piece of stationery. A smile touched her lips at the ink line drawing of a playful-looking puppy.

Her gaze fell to the end and she read his signature.

Your loving father.

John James had studied the book filled with detailed drawings so intently that more than once she’d had to remind him steam engines weren’t his schoolwork.

The next letter told of a winter storm and carried an update on the puppies. The following spoke of salmon fishing in icy rivers and camping with a native band of Cree fur traders.

What child wouldn’t be delighted by these newsy letters and exciting accounts of sled races and gold strikes? Who wouldn’t want someone always thinking of him? Who wouldn’t feel important because someone with such an exciting life was sending all these newsy captivating letters? She herself admitted a deep-down fascination. Though skeptical of this man’s motivation, she couldn’t fault his attention to detail or the caring manner in which he addressed her child. The thing that disturbed her most was that closing at the end of each missive: Your loving father.

As much as she’d considered and reconsidered holding back the letter that told John James about this man’s arrival, she’d told Grandfather to give it to him, and she’d only had to help him read a few of the words. Maybe Burrows wouldn’t show up and she’d be spared, but John James would be heartbroken. She was pretty sure he’d turn up, though.

She believed he meant what he said, but there was no way of preparing. What did Wesley Burrows have to gain by perpetuating this charade?

She would know soon enough. She would know sooner than she’d like. However long it took him to get from Juneau City to Colorado wasn’t long enough for her.

Early June, 1882

John James had been in a constant state of frenzied anticipation for the past week. He’d told everyone who would listen that his father was coming home. Every time Mariah heard him speak the words, another layer of rigid steel reinforced the protective shell around her heart.

“My father’s coming home,” he had proudly told the postman at the window in the Ruby Creek mercantile that afternoon.

Mariah had steadied her nerves and turned a page in the Montgomery Ward catalog. “Come look at these coats, John James,” she said. “You need a new one.”

“Your husband is returning?” Delia Renlow moved from where she’d been stroking a bolt of deep blue velvet to approach Mariah. “This is interesting news I haven’t heard.”

Dressed in a flowing green skirt and lacy shirtwaist, the curvy redhead dropped her gaze to Mariah’s brown tweed trousers and scuffed boots.

Mariah managed a stiff smile. She’d attended school with Delia, but they’d never been friends. In fact Lucas Renlow, the man that Delia married, had once been sweet on Mariah. “Yes, Mr. Burrows will be here any day now.”

“My goodness! Why how long has it been? You and your man will have to get acquainted all over again.”

“He writes often,” Mariah blurted, and then caught herself sounding defensive.

“A letter is no substitute for a flesh and blood partner, now is it? How long has it been?” she asked again. She looked at John James. “Six years? Seven? I’d be surprised if you even remember what your husband looks like.”

“Yes, well, we’d better be going. We’re celebrating Grandfather’s birthday this evening.” Mariah hurried John James toward the door.

“Give my best to your granddaddy.”

The brass bell attached to the door rang as Mariah escaped onto the boardwalk. The late-afternoon sun cast long shadows from the two-story wood frame buildings onto the hard-packed dirt street. In the distance a locomotive whistled, a sound she rarely noticed, but had been keenly attuned to the past several days. Would he arrive by train? Horseback? Wagon? She had no idea. She had studied the world map in John James’s geography book to surmise that this Burrows fellow would take a steamship to the western coast of the United States. Train would be the quickest mode from there.

“Mama, you didn’t order my coat.”

“We have plenty of time,” she assured him and took his hand and urged him toward the buggy she’d left several feet away.

That evening, the festivities commenced before dinner as family members arrived with platters of food. Wilhelm and Arlen had settled a keg of beer into the scrolled wrought-iron stand that had been in Grandfather’s family for a hundred years. It now stood in the great room near the doorway where a hall led back to the kitchen and dining hall. A bucket sat below the spigot to catch drips, and Louis’s two mountain hounds lapped at the overflow.

Mariah’s grandmother had been gone nearly a decade, so as the oldest of their daughters, Mariah’s mother supervised meals and holidays. Her blindness had no effect, since the family had carried out the same plans in the same manner for so many years that everyone knew their role. But Henrietta took her position seriously and reigned from her stool just inside the kitchen door.

“Where is the rotkohl?” her mother asked. “The dish hasn’t gone to the table yet.”

Mariah used flour sacks to pick up the steaming hot bowl of braised red cabbage. “Right here, Mama.”

She and Faye exchanged an amused glance. Nothing passed without being detected by Henrietta’s exquisite sense of smell.

Faye carried out egg noodles with mushroom sauce and Hildy followed with potato dumplings. The women had been cooking since the day before, and the house had remained filled with the mouthwatering aromas.

Mariah hadn’t had much of an appetite recently, but tonight she was famished. She couldn’t wait for her mother to give the word to begin.

Families grouped together, and the crowd became unusually quiet.

“Good health to the Spanglers!” her mother shouted.

A rousing cheer went up. Mothers helped their children prepare plates first. The youngsters sat at the long table in the kitchen, and the adults were welcome to prepare plates and eat in either the dining hall or the great room.

Mariah settled John James between Paul and Wilhem’s boy August before going back for a plate for herself.

The line had already grown long, so she waited her turn beside Wilhelm and his wife, Mary Violet.

“How old is your grandfather?” Mary Violet asked.

Mariah and Wilhelm exchanged a glance. “Seventy this year?” Wilhelm asked and Mariah nodded.

At last Mariah filled her plate and took a seat in the great room. The room buzzed with conversation and laughter. One of Grandfather’s dogs belched and flopped down beside his master’s chair, raising a round of amused chuckles.

The door chimes rang, and Mariah distractedly noticed Marc rise and leave the room in the direction of the front hall.

A few moments later, the noise level dropped until the only sounds were forks settling on plates and voices from the dining hall.

Marc appeared in the doorway, a stranger beside him.

The few bites Mariah had eaten turned to stones in her belly. She paused with her fork in the air and stared.

The tall broad-shouldered man beside her cousin wore a brown straight-cut wool jacket over a red flannel vest, double-breasted shirt and black wool trousers. The outsider held a felt hat by the brim until Marc took it, along with his jacket and led the man farther into the room.

“She’s right over there, Mr. Burrows.”

Mariah froze in a moment of pure terror. A sound like rushing water filled her ears.

He was here.

Chapter Three

The stranger’s skin was deeply tanned except for feathered lines at the corners of his rich brown eyes, making him look as though he’d squinted against the sun for a lifetime. His russet-colored hair had been neatly cropped and was combed in waves against his scalp. One obstinate curl drooped at his temple.

He searched the faces of the people in the room with surprising intensity.

He wouldn’t know her. The man everyone believed was her husband had never before set eyes on her.

Quickly handing her plate to Mary Violet, Mariah stood. She only wore skirts to church and for special occasions, and while a dress always made her feel naked and awkward, she felt even more vulnerable now. She brushed her damp palms against the fabric.

She’d drawn his attention, and he directed his dark gaze to her.

She took a few steps forward, then halted. Under the starchy skirts and petticoats, her knees shook.

He was taller than most of her brothers, but not as burly. He had a smooth, handsome forehead, a nice nose and well-defined lips. God help her, her gaze was drawn directly to a deep divot in the upper one.

Taking a few hesitant steps closer, she noticed the sweep of his dark brows and the shape of his square jaw. Just because his appearance took her breath away was no reason to weaken her resolve. This was the scoundrel who was up to no good.

His gaze never wavered from hers. “Mariah,” he said.

Her first breath didn’t produce anything, and it was a good thing, because she’d been about to blurt, Mr. Burrows, in front of her entire family. Instead she corrected her thinking and managed, “Hello, Wesley.”

Louis straightened from his chair and made his way to where she and the unfamiliar guest stood gaping at one another.

“Welcome to Colorado, young Wes.” Grandfather extended a hand. “Welcome to our home. It’s a pleasure to meet you at last.”

The stranger averted his gaze to the gentleman and shook his hand. “Thank you, sir.”

Grandfather’s mountain hounds sniffed at the stranger’s boots and pant legs. He leaned forward and lowered a hand with his fingers curled under to let them learn his scent. After careful evaluation, one of the dogs licked him, and Wes turned his palm over to scratch its ear.

A few voices picked up conversations behind her, and others greeted Wesley with curious hellos.

The news had traveled as far as the kitchen, and Mariah knew the moment John James appeared in the great room. The expectant silence was deafening. Of course the irritating man had picked this night and this hour, and now her predicament was destined to play out in front of the entire Spangler clan. Mariah’s heart hammered in apprehension.

All of her fears combined into a wave of dread, and she wanted to grab her boy and run with him until they were far away and safe, someplace where nothing could ever hurt him. But she couldn’t. She was doomed to watch this unfold and deal with the consequences.

John James walked forward to stand beside her and curl his slender fingers into hers in the hidden folds of her skirt. He was afraid, too, but he was trying to be brave and not let on.

Wesley Burrows hunkered down until he was level with her child. The look in his obsidian eyes confused her even more. The look was almost relieved, almost desperate, almost…loving.

“John James?” he asked.

John James nodded, looked up at Mariah and then back. “Are you my papa?”

Mariah’s throat grew tight with panicky denial. Denial she couldn’t voice. Dozens of eyes were on them. She’d never fainted in her life, and she wasn’t going to start now.

“I’m Wes Burrows,” the man said. “I have all your letters. Every one. I’ve read them a hundred times.”

“A hundred?”

“Maybe more.”

John James’s face lit with pure elation. “I read the book you sent. Mama helped me with the big words. There was lots of ’em.”

The man glanced up at her with a crooked smile, but she averted her gaze to John James. As soon as they picked up their conversation, she studied him again.

His voice was deep and low, with a smoother accent than she was accustomed to hearing. “You’re taller than I expected,” Wes said.

“So are you.”

The stranger smiled.

“Mama says I grow like a weed.”

Mariah looked away so she wouldn’t meet his eyes again.

“Did you cross the ocean?” John James asked with rapt fascination.

“I did. I had a stateroom aboard the White Star and came ashore in Seattle.”

“I studied the ocean in my geography book,” John James said with wide-eyed amazement. “Some ships sink in the water.”

“Tragically, some do,” he agreed.

Mariah had been unaware of her son’s concern about this man’s ship being lost, but putting herself in his place, he’d been without a father his entire life. When he’d learned his was on the way, he’d likely imagined all manner of heartbreaking possibilities. She’d caused him this worry, but she’d had no choice. No choice in any of it.

John James’s face was lit with discovery and pride. He turned to glance at the nearest family members.

For the first time, Mariah noted that Wilhelm and Arlen, along with her two older brothers, Gerd and Dutch, stood in a protective semicircle behind her and John James. Her gaze touched on each of their faces, noting their solemn expressions of concern. No doubt her body language hadn’t alleviated their instincts.

With deliberate purpose, she relaxed her facial muscles and her shoulders, garnering her gumption for what she knew she must do. “Wesley,” she said in the most cordial tone she could muster.

Immediately he stood, giving her his nerve-racking attention. “Yes, ma’am.”

She turned to include her brothers in their circle. “Meet my brothers, Gerd, Dutch, Arlen and Wilhelm.”

Wes shook hands with the fair-haired men one at a time, each man weighing the measure of the other in those brief grasps.

“I brought you something,” Wes said, turning back to John James.

John James’s eyes lit in anticipation. “What is it?”

“Wait right here.” Wes turned and headed back for the front door, giving Mariah her first notice of the way he favored one leg in an awkward gait. John James looked up at her. He’d noticed, too. So had everyone else.

Within moments, the man returned, but now all attention was drawn from his limp to the wooly white-and-gray puppy he carried over his forearm.

John James yipped his own bark of excitement and darted forward.

Grandfather’s mountain hounds were every bit as interested as John James, wagging their tails and sniffing the air.

“You brought me a puppy?” John James asked excitedly. “What’s his name? Did he come on the boat with you? What does he eat?”

This time when Wesley knelt to place the dog on the floor, Mariah noticed the way he grimaced, realizing the position caused him pain. “He’s meant to be your dog, so you’ll do the naming,” he replied. “And yes, he and Yuri were good company on the trip. They’ve eaten a lot of fish. And small animals mostly.”

“This isn’t Jack, the pup you drew for me.”

“No, Jack stayed up north to pull sleds. He wouldn’t have been happy here.”

The puppy was good-sized already, with unusual pale blue eyes and an erect head. It had a broad face and triangular ears, a bulky muzzle and a thick coat. Its facial markings looked like a white mask on his gray fur. Mariah had never seen a breed like it before. She knew from the letters that the puppy had been born to one of his sled dogs.

“Who’s Yuri?” John James asked.

“Yuri’s my dog,” Wesley replied. “I sold all my others, but couldn’t bear to part with him.”

“Where is he?”

“Outdoors.”

The young dog and the hounds sniffed each other with tails wagging.

Wes’s charming grin turned up the corner of his lips. “Your pup’s used to being around a pack of sled dogs and the rest of his litter.”

John James reached for the puppy, and it backed away.

“Let him smell you first,” Wes instructed. “Show him the back of your hand.”

The furry dog sniffed John James’s hand, licked it and then stood with his paws on John James’s shirtfront.

The crowd murmured their appreciation and John James turned his face aside to avoid the dog’s lapping tongue. He giggled with delight.

“You must be hungry.” Henrietta had joined them and now stood just behind Mariah’s shoulder.

Mariah turned and offered her mother her forearm. “This is my mother.” Friederick joined them. “And my father.”

Henrietta released Mariah to walk straight to Wesley. She raised her hand to his chest, then his shoulder. “You’re tall.”

Wes stood silent beneath her appraisal.

Henrietta raised both hands and ran them over his dark wavy hair, loosening another curl in the process, and then trailed her fingers over his forehead and nose. “Isn’t he a handsome one, Mariah?” she asked.

Mariah’s neck warmed and the heat spread to her cheeks. Wes Burrows was definitely a ruggedly handsome man. The last thing she wanted to do was tell him she thought so, but she had to answer her mother. “He’s a handsome one, Mama.”

Chapter Four

Laughter erupted around them.

Henrietta took Wesley’s hand and placed it on her arm. “Come, get a plate and eat. It’s my father’s birthday and we’re celebrating with our traditional dishes. Do you like schweinswurst?”

“I don’t know that I’ve ever had it, ma’am. But the food sure smells good.”

Mariah stood rooted in place as conversation swelled to normal. Her brothers blended back into the gathering, and her mother led Wesley toward the food tables.

Roth poured a mug full from the barrel and handed it to Wesley, who accepted the beer with a nod of thanks.

John James followed with the puppy at his heels and fed the animal bites of sausage without anyone scolding him.

Mariah’s newly married sister, Annika, took Mariah’s hand and led her toward the dining hall. “This is an exciting day.”

Mariah nodded.

“John James looks so happy.”

Now Wes was seated at the long table and Henrietta directed Mariah’s youngest sister Sylvia to fill his mug already. A heaping plate of food befitting a logger sat before him, and in between answering questions from others at the table, he seemed to be enjoying it.

Annika urged Mariah toward the empty chair beside him, and reluctantly, she took it.

“Where did you leave your plate?” Annika asked.

Mariah couldn’t remember, so Sylvia brought her new servings and a fresh mug of beer.

Wesley glanced from the mug placed before Mariah to all the others around the table. The Spanglers drank beer with their meal as though it was water. Even the children had brimming mugs. He’d never seen beer served outside a saloon.

The food was pure heaven on his tongue, rich sauces and savory spices. This was a meal cooked by women who knew their craft and employed it seriously. His meals over a typical season consisted of salmon and small game roasted over an open fire. An occasional stay in a town sometimes garnered him a few vegetables and maybe a dried fruit pie that cost an arm and a leg.

“What is this?” he asked, of a particularly tasty serving on his plate and Mariah politely explained the potato dumpling.

She pushed around the food on her plate with her fork. It was plain she was uncomfortable with his presence, and he didn’t really blame her. John James waited until a chair became available across from them and climbed up.

“Would you like some more to eat?” Mariah asked her son.

The boy shook his head and his gaze fixed on Wes.

The way the child looked at him made Wes sit a little straighter, eat his food a little more slowly. Clearly, the boy was completely enamored with having a father of his own.

A tiny arrow of guilt tried to stab his conscience, but Wes used his determination as a defense. He was giving John James the father he had longed for. He knew firsthand what it was like to see other kids with parents and have none. Of course, John James had his mother, a woman with fire in her eyes when she looked at him, though she avoided that most of the time.

She was spittin’ mad.

Wes finished his meal and polished off another mug of beer. It was fine brew indeed, with a dark full flavor like nothing he’d enjoyed before. “I believe this is the best beer I’ve ever had.”

Mariah nodded in her suspicious way, her wide blue gaze not lifting all the way to his. “Spangler Brewery makes the finest lager in the country.”

“The children drink it, too,” he remarked.

Something more flashed in her gaze when she directed it to him that time. Had he made her feel defensive? He hadn’t meant to. “Some outside our culture find it an outrageous custom,” she replied. “But we don’t know anything different.”

She had lustrous fair hair fastened in a loose knot atop her head, and skin as pale and smooth as the Chinese women who worked the laundries in the gold camps. Each time she looked at him, a rosy-pink hue tinted her complexion.

She was angry. Angry and wary, and he couldn’t blame her. He wasn’t even positive why he needed to make this trip and insert himself as John James’s father, but he’d been pulled.

And after seeing the expression on the boy’s face, after meeting him, he wasn’t sorry. Not a damned bit sorry.

“Can I see Yuri?” the boy asked.

“Sure.” Wes glanced aside at the boy’s mother. “As long as your mama approves, we’ll go outdoors later.”

“How many dogs did you have?”

“Eight fine sled dogs,” he replied. “Plus the occasional pups.”

“Where did they sleep?”

“They camped under the stars with me,” he replied. “Most usually I set up my tent and we all shared it. Keeps the snow from drifting over us during the night.”

“You sleep right out in the snow with no house or nothing?”

“No houses out in the Yukon wilderness between towns and tent camps,” he replied.

Two more children sidled in beside John James to listen. A girl and a smaller boy. “What did you eat?”

“These is my cousins, Emma and Paul,” John James told him. “This here’s my papa.” The pride in his voice tugged at Wes’s heart. “He delivers mail in Alaska.” He turned back to Wes. “What did you eat?”

“Pleased to meet you,” Wes said to the wide-eyed children, then replied to John James’s question. “Sometimes I cut a hole in the ice and caught salmon for our suppers. Ate a lot of dried fish and dried meat during the day. In fair weather I found duck eggs and snared rabbits.”

“Wasn’t you scared of coyotes and mountain lions?” John James asked.

“No mountain lions, but I was always on the lookout for wolves and bears.”

“Did you ever shoot a bear?” Paul asked.

“Yup. One time I had a good shot on an elk. Was looking down the barrel of my rifle when I heard branches snapping behind me. The elk bounded off.” He gestured with a rapid swing of his arm. “I turned around to see a silver-tipped grizzly heading straight for me. That bear must’ve been twice as tall as me. At least he looked it from where I stood.”

“What did you do?” one of the boys asked.

A few more children had joined them and now the adults had turned their attention to his story. One of Mariah’s male cousins leaned against a doorway. Others stood nearby listening as attentively as the youngsters.

“I quick ran behind a tree and kind of circled it to buy some time. The bear followed and swiped at me. I didn’t know how well I’d do shooting at it up close like that, but I fired. First shot didn’t faze him.”

“He didn’t die?” John James asked.

“Nope, he raised up on his hind legs and charged forward. So I shot again. Must’ve hit an artery that time, ’cause blood spurted on the snow. That big fella lowered to all fours and took off running. About twenty yards down the hill, he fell over a log and died.”

“What did your dogs do all that time?” Mariah’s oldest brother Dutch asked from the corner, where he stood with a mug of beer.

“They’re taught to stay quiet and wait for commands,” Wes told him. “Protecting sled dogs can mean your life, and that load was my livelihood.”

“What’d you do with the bear?” John James asked.

“Traded his hide for coffee and milk.”

“You skinned ’im?” Paul asked.

“Ewww.” Emma wrinkled her nose. “Grandfather has a bearskin in his room. It’s icky.”

“In the Yukon people use bearskins for blankets and rugs and even coverings for doorways,” Wes explained. “The grease from their fat is used for all kinds of things.”

“Let Mr. Burrows get comfortable now.” Henrietta shooed away children and instructed her niece to remove his plate. “Come, Wesley. We’ll sit by the fire. “Hildy will bring you some dessert.”

“I’d better wait on the dessert, ma’am. I’m about to pop as it is.”

“We gotta go see the other dog,” John James reminded him.

Wes glanced at Mariah. “With your mother’s permission.”

She nodded her approval.

Henrietta rolled up a newspaper the women had scraped plates into, and handed it to him. Wes thanked her.

John James patted his leg to get the pup’s attention, and the three of them headed out of doors.

Yuri met them with his tail wagging, but he didn’t jump up or sniff at John James or the food until Wes gave him permission with a clicking sound.

“What did that noise mean?” John James asked.

“I told him he could come close and sniff. He won’t jump on you. It’s important for a work dog to be obedient, and it’s especially important for a dog that’s so strong.”

It was obvious that the furry animal intimidated John James, and Wes understood that dogs of this breed were uncommon outside the far northern territories.

“Where is he gonna sleep?” the boy asked.

“He’s used to being out-of-doors in all kinds of weather,” Wes replied. “This is the fairest night he’s ever seen. He’ll sleep out here.”

“Where is my puppy gonna sleep?”

“He’s used to being outdoors, too. Pack dogs sleep close together to keep each other warm, and they get used to the company.” Yuri had sniffed out the food, so Wes opened the paper on the ground for him. “But honestly, that pup was a good bunkmate on the ship. So it’s up to you to teach him where you want him to sleep.”

“I’m gonna ask Mama if he can sleep with me. Grandfather’s hounds sleep in his rooms with him.”

Wes nodded. “All right.”

John James looked at Yuri’s harness. “Are you gonna tie him up?”

“Safer for him if he’s loose.”

“He won’t run away?”

“He’ll likely discover the woods yonder, but he’ll come back.”

Back inside, the blind woman greeted them and led Wes to the great room where, with a few words, she made seating space, then pointed for Mariah to sit on his other side.

John James settled on the rug with the puppy gnawing on a rubber ball beside him.

“Mama, can my dog sleep with me?”

Mariah observed the way her son stroked the animal’s fur. “We’ll give it a test to see if he does all right. You will have to learn to take him out before bedtime and again first thing in the morning. If there are any messes on your floor, he can’t be your roommate.”

“I promise,” he said with all seriousness and gave Wes a pleased grin.

“Tell us of the women in Alaska,” Henrietta prompted.

“Well, ma’am, the females are mostly from native tribes, the Tlingits, Haidas, and Tsimshians…and near the coasts the Eskimos.”

Little Emma had wedged her way into the gathering of children that had once again formed. “What do the Eskimos wear?”

“Sealskin leggings and coats, rabbit skin boots mostly,” he replied.

“It sounds like a fascinating place,” Henrietta commented.

“And beautiful in its own way. The cities are filled with sightseers,” he told her. “They are the ones who pay the highest prices for food and mail delivery.”

His gaze fell upon Mariah, seated quietly beside him, her slender fingers linked in her lap. She asked no questions, didn’t even appear to be interested in the conversation, though she paid close attention to her son’s animated face as well as those of her family members.

Faye brought Wes a cup of rich black coffee that smelled wonderful and tasted even better.

“Be off now,” Henrietta told the children. “Give our guest air.”

They obediently scrambled away.

He searched the faces of the family members, watched them interact with each other.

The children divided into groups to play games, and the adults picked up their own conversations.

Wes found it hard to imagine that John James and Mariah were related to every person in this room. Mariah had four brothers and two sisters he’d met so far, as well as an army of cousins, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews.

He didn’t know what it felt like to belong to a family. Or what it was like to look into a mother’s face or see a father’s hands and recognize where some part of him originated. What did it feel like to know the love and secure acceptance of people with the same name or the same eyes and a shared history?

He glanced around to make sure no one was listening and asked quietly, “You work at the brewery?”

Seeming startled that he’d addressed her directly, she nodded.

“What do you do?”

She, too, checked to see that no one overheard. “I oversee production and handle promotional events. Right now we’re getting ready for the Exposition that opens in Denver July 17.”

“I’ve heard talk of it. I read in the New York Times about the mining companies creating exhibits. Railroads and artists will have displays, too. They’re going to start a two hundred and fifty horsepower Corliss engine on opening day. I read that the Denver hotels are booked already.”

He’d been reading newspapers for the past couple of months, first while recuperating and then aboard the ship. Her surprised expression said she hadn’t expected him to know so much about it.

“Over a year ago, I reserved an entire floor of rooms at a hotel. We’ve constructed a building inside the grounds where we’ll cook, store lager and have displays of the brewery’s history. An outdoor beer garden will be set up for entertaining.”

“Sounds like an enormous undertaking.”

“We’ll be giving away beer the whole time. We have special bottles and labels. Handling the advance production has been a yearlong project. Some of us will be on site at all times, soliciting contracts. Now that we’re bottling, this is an opportunity to spread our product and our name across the country.”

It was more than she’d said since he’d arrived, and her enthusiasm for her subject was apparent. “Making beer is an unusual occupation for a woman.”

“Not for a Spangler woman,” she replied. “My mother and grandmother worked at the brewery. It’s a family business.”

He tilted his head. “I admire that.”

She lifted her bright gaze and searched his face as though seeking his sincerity. She was lovely, this prickly woman, but her blue eyes sparked fire.

Her resentment was understandable. He was butting into her family. And because she had a secret she didn’t want revealed, she wasn’t calling him on his deceit. He wouldn’t let himself feel bad about that. He was giving her son more than he was taking from her.

John James giggled and pulled his pant leg away from the puppy’s nipping teeth, and Mariah turned her attention. Her entire expression softened when she looked at him.

Louis spoke to Wes about his friend Otto, whom Wes had known over the years he delivered mail from the Juneau City station, so they shared the loss of a friend.

Eventually the children grew tired and sought out their parents, and a trio of women came to stand before Wes and Mariah.

“We prepared your room,” the one named Annika said. She was the same height as Mariah, but with much paler hair and a sprinkling of freckles. “Would you like me to help John James get ready for bed?”

Mariah stood quickly. “No, I can do it.”

John James looked up at Wes with a hopeful expression. “Will you tuck me in?”

Wes glanced from his cherubic face to Mariah’s barely disguised scowl. She gave a stiff nod that must have pained her.

“I will,” he replied.

“Give us ten minutes,” she said and took the boy’s hand. “Annika, please show Wesley the way.”

Her sister perched in the spot Mariah had vacated. “We’ve all been eager to meet Mariah’s husband. John James has been talking about your arrival for weeks.”

Wes smiled politely. “Pleasure to meet you, too, ma’am.”

“Did you find any gold?”

“A little here and there. I settled on a job that was as good as gold, and a sure thing.”

“As long as you survived the bears,” Dutch added from across the room.

“There was that,” Wes answered, and several of them laughed.

“Don’t crowd the man,” Louis said good-naturedly.

Eventually Annika got up to lead Wes through the foyer and up a wide set of curved stairs that opened into a comfortable open area with sofas, desks and shelves full of games and books.

“This is where the youngsters who live in the big house play and do their schoolwork,” she explained. “John James’s room is on the left down this hall.” She stopped and indicated an open door.

Wes thanked her with a nod and entered.

John James lay in a narrow bed with a thick flannel quilt folded down to the bottom. On the other side of the room, a sleepy-eyed Paul watched them from a similar bed.

Mariah, who’d been sitting beside her boy, stood and backed away from John James’s side, so Wes could approach.

“Hey, big fella,” Wes said to her son.

“Hey. How come you walk like that anyway?”

“Got my leg stuck in a bear trap last winter,” Wes told him. “It’s all but healed now.”

“I’m glad you’re here,” John James told him, his eyes solemn.

Wes’s chest got tight. “I’m glad, too.”

“I dreamed about you a hundred times.”

“You did?”

“Uh-huh. An’ you look just like I dreamed.”

“Did I walk like this in your dreams?”

“Don’t matter none to me.”

Uncertainty overcame Wes in a torrent. This was why he was here. This boy needed a father. But how would he know what to do? How would he show John James love and teach him all he needed to know to grow up to be confident and proud? He didn’t even know how to tell a child good-night. “Sleep well,” he said.

A moment of silence passed.

“Papa?”

He wouldn’t feel bad. He wouldn’t. “Yes?”

“Mama says I’m not too big for hugs.”

Wes’s throat constricted. This impressionable, fragile little person believed Wes was the father he’d been yearning for. Wes had set himself up for an unbelievably huge responsibility. It didn’t matter he’d never been on either end of a night like this. It didn’t matter he couldn’t find words. It didn’t matter where he’d come from or that he had no previous examples of fatherhood or family. All that mattered was making a difference in this child’s life…a difference for the better.

He perched on the edge of the bed. The instant he leaned forward, John James’s skinny arms shot out and closed around his neck.

The little boy smelled like clean sheets and castile soap. His hair was cool and soft against Wes’s cheek.

A hundred nights gazing at the aurora borealis couldn’t compare to the wonder of a child in his arms.

Wes had come home.

Behind her, her sisters and cousin sniffled, and Mariah turned to see them dabbing tears from their cheeks. She had tears in her eyes, too, but they were from biting her tongue so she wouldn’t scream at the intruder to clear the hell out of her son’s room and leave their home.

“Go to sleep now,” she said to John James.

“Papa, can you ride with me to school in the morning?”

Wesley tucked the covers around the boy’s shoulders. “I suppose that’d be okay.”

Mariah turned and headed out. Tucking in her son, walking him to school, letting her boy call him Papa! What was next?

Her sisters and Faye joined a row forming in the hallway. As she stepped into the hall, Mariah came face-to-face with the half dozen young women, all wearing expectant grins.

They appeared suspiciously happy about something, and she didn’t like it one bit.

“Your room is ready,” Faye said and took Wes’s arm to lead him forward to the opposite door.

Hold on, you’re taking him to my room! Mariah thought in a panic.

Sylvia caught her hand and smiled into her face. “Mariah’s coming with us for a few minutes, Wes.”

As the youngest and still unmarried sister, Sylvia had a room of her own at the end of the hall near their parents. She and Annika swept Mariah into the confines of that room and guided her behind the dressing screen where a pitcher of warm water, towels and fragrant soap awaited.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Mariah asked.

“Quickly now,” Annika said. “Don’t keep him waiting.”

“What is this all about?” she asked.

Annika didn’t wait, but came right behind the screen and turned Mariah away to unbutton her dress and push it to her hips. “We didn’t get to do all this when you were first married because you were in Chicago. So we’re doing it now.”

Faye spoke from the other side of the screen. “It’s easy enough to see that things are a little awkward between you two. We just want to give you a nudge in the right direction.”

“It’s natural to be nervous,” Annika told her. “Your husband’s been gone so long. But this is an exciting time, Mariah. Try to relax and enjoy his return.”

Annika wet a cloth and soaped it. Mariah took it from her and shooed both of her sisters to the other side of the screen. “None of this is necessary.”

They weren’t listening to her. Even her cousins had filed into the room, and now stood giggling and teasing. Trapped in her web of deception, Mariah washed and dried, then yelped when Sylvia spritzed her with cologne. Both her sisters dropped a voluminous silky sheer nightdress over her head and tied the ribbons.

Mariah looked down in mortification. “You can see right through this!”

Faye laughed. “That’s the idea!”

“Where did this come from?” Mariah asked.

“It’s a gift from us.” Annika tugged her forward and urged her to sit at Sylvia’s dressing table. Mariah crossed her hands over her breasts in embarrassment. “I need my wrapper.”

“You can’t wear that old thing tonight,” Annika told her.

In minutes, her hair was brushed, her cheeks powdered and Annika applied glycerin to her lips. Faye dropped a floral-patterned satin robe around her shoulders and Mariah gladly grabbed it and closed it around her.

They guided her along the hallway with the utmost giggling and shushing, finally pausing before her closed door.

“We’re so happy for you, Mariah,” Annika said in a throaty whisper. “Now get reacquainted with your husband.”

One of them rapped and opened the door. Several pairs of hands urged Mariah through the opening. At the very last second, the robe was lifted away and out.

Mariah stood inside her closed door wearing only the sheer nightdress and a look of horror.

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