His Wild West Wife

Central Kansas, 1883

Chicago lawyer Blake Barlow has tracked his runaway wife all the way to the middle of nowhere. If she wants a divorce, he’ll grant her one—as soon as she tells him why she left.

Clara Johnson is angry. Blake betrayed her mere weeks after exchanging vows—but when he rides up to her family farm, it’s to get her signature, not to beg for forgiveness.

Clara and Blake agree their brief marriage was an impulsive mistake—but that doesn’t stop the passion between them from flaring as hot as ever…

His Wild West Wife

Lauri Robinson

Dedication

To my coffee-mate, and fellow writer, Margie Church.

Happy writing!

Lauri

Dear Reader,

Welcome to Blake and Clara’s story. From the moment he first appeared on paper, getting shot off his horse, my heart went out to Blake. He was so in love with Clara, and was so determined not to be. And Clara…This woman so deserved to be loved, she just had to realize it.

I must admit, I didn’t want this story to end. I was having too much fun with these two. Completely caught up in their journey, half the time I wondered what was going to happen next.

Thanks for downloading the book, and I hope you are as drawn in by Blake and Clara as I was.

With my fondest wishes,

Lauri

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

About the Author

Copyright

Chapter One

Central Kansas

1883

“Geez, mister, I didn’t kill ya, did I?”

Already tired, sore and surly, landing on the hard ground had pitched Blake Barlow into about the worst mood possible. Not to mention getting shot. The high-pitched voice grated on his last nerve, too. With buckshot burning in his thigh and pain still seizing his back from the fall off his horse, he shifted little more than his gaze.

A kid, whose front teeth were bigger than his eyes, dropped to the ground. “Praise the Lord,” he muttered like an old woman who’d just heard the war had ended. “I done thought I killed ya, mister.”

“What were you shooting at?” Blake growled.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“No, sir, I was just shooting.”

“Just shooting?”

The kid nodded. “Yep. I didn’t even see ya. Probably on account I had my eyes closed.”

Blake reached over and snatched up the shotgun the kid had dropped, gritting his teeth as the movement sent his back into another seizure of pain. “How old are you?”

“Eight,” the boy said, scurrying back a bit.

“Eight?” The fire in Blake’s leg was subsiding, but that just gave him more energy to turn into anger. “Who gave you a gun?”

With a mop of brown hair that needed a good cutting and even browner eyes, the boy hung his head. “No one. I just kinda borrowed it.”

“Kind of borrowed it?” Blake tried not to yell. The boy was already quivering and digging his dirty bare toes into the recently tilled ground, but this was about the last straw. He’d been crisscrossing no-man’s-land for the past week and had started wondering why. “Borrowed it from whom?”

“No one really. It’s the gun hidden in the barn.” The boy shot a nervous glance over his shoulder. “I’ll get my hide tanned for this one. Clara don’t like guns. None at all.”

All of Blake’s anger and injuries were forgotten. Well, his injuries were. Scrambling to his feet, barely wincing, he asked, “Clara who?”

“J-J-Johnson.”

The sigh that gushed from his chest left Blake about as empty as a rain barrel in this dry Kansas land. He refueled, though, drew up enough anger to see red. Johnson. She wasn’t even using his last name. That was fine by him. She could call herself anything she wanted to—once she signed the divorce papers.

Leaning heavily on the gun—his leg was back to burning—he asked, “Where is she? Clara Johnson?”

The boy cringed as he turned slightly. Blake lifted his gaze, made out the flying skirts of a woman racing across the barren land.

It was her. His wife. The woman who’d left him four months ago. Six weeks after their wedding day.

The miles, the months, the anger all blurred together, twisting his insides until they were raw, yet one open space remained. Had him remembering their wedding day. Wedding night.

He let the memories flow for a moment, but then, even as an unfathomable desire rose in him, he forced them to fade. The memories that is. Wanting her may never fade. He’d practiced exactly what he’d say when he finally found her, just like he did closing arguments, but she wasn’t close enough to speak to yet, so he just stared. And fought what the sight of her did to him. From the moment he’d seen her long dark honey-colored hair and snapping blue eyes, she’d lit up his world like sunshine, and, ironically, did so again right now.

Damn it.

She was almost within touching distance when she stumbled to a stop, wide-eyed and breathing hard. Silent for a moment, she stared at him as if he was some sort of nightly apparition.

He might have chosen the most beautiful woman on earth to marry, but Clara was just like all the others. Selfish. Deceitful. Devious. He’d be glad to be rid of her once and for all.

“How’d you find me?” she snapped, her blue eyes as cold as December.

“It wasn’t easy, I’ll give you that,” he growled.

“It wasn’t meant to be easy.”

His foul mood exploded, spewed throughout his system. “Damn—”

“Watch your language,” Clara interrupted, amazed at the fortitude she had. The shot had sent her across the field, instinctively knowing Nathan had snitched the old shotgun out of the barn and fired it. The boy’s fascination with guns just didn’t end.

About like hers when it came to Blake Barlow.

Every emotion she’d ever felt—from depressed bitterness to the sweetest love imaginable—erupted like fierce thunderheads. She’d thought the storm inside her had played itself out when it came to him. Her husband. The man who’d betrayed her mere weeks after vowing to remain faithful to her for the rest of their lives.

She drew that forward—his betrayal. Pain, though, wasn’t what overcame her. Even after four months of telling herself she hated him, the joy of seeing him flooded her bloodstream.

Forcing her toes deep in the ground before she lost all control and jumped into his arms—as she had done when he’d return home from work each night—she balled her hands into fists. They were tingling, remembering what it was like to bury themselves in his dark hair, too brown to be called black and too black to be called brown. His eyes were a unique shade, too, not quite green or brown, but a combination of the two, and parts of her melted when he looked at her just right.

“I didn’t mean to shoot him, Clara. It was an accident, I swear.”

Catching Nathan’s words moments before the wind carried them off, she asked, “Shoot who?”

“Me.”

Though Blake’s tone was sharp, she had to blink a couple times, trying to calm the way the sound of his voice had other things leaping to life inside her. It had been that way the first time he’d spoken to her in the park in Chicago, where she’d been feeding the pigeons, waiting on the lawyer to deliver the papers she had to sign. She hadn’t known he was the lawyer. Not at first anyway. They’d talked of other things—the weather, the birds, the lake—before he’d asked her name and then started laughing and explained he was who she was waiting for.

He’d pulled out the paperwork then, and they’d both laughed again, as they did so many times in the weeks following.

He wasn’t smiling now.

Neither was she.

Pulling her gaze from his face, air lodged in her lungs at the splotches of red covering his brown pants. Her first instinct was to reach out for him, but she stopped herself in time. She couldn’t react to him—not even to his injuries—not if she hoped to save herself.

“Your little friend shot me right off my horse.”

Bracing for all she was worth, she forced herself to remain still. Didn’t let even an eye wander, though both eyes wanted to, from the toes of his boots to that thick hair. He was too tall and broad to be a lawyer, that’s what she’d thought the first time she’d seen him, and of course before she’d come to know every flawless curve, every muscle and dimple of his hard, perfect body.

Clara lifted her chin, rallying her courage to remain intact. “It doesn’t look too bad to me.”

“What?” Blake barked.

It would take more than a little buckshot to bring him down. She’d known that from the first time they’d met—how strong and potent he was—and all of a sudden she understood what it meant—for her that is. “Get the gun, Nathan. We have chores to do.”

The grasp that snagged her elbow was firm, but not hurtful, other than the way it made her skin heat up. It, too, remembered him. His touch. How it had made her feel special and loved. A person didn’t forget that. No matter how hard they tried.

“Clara,” he said in that smooth way he had.

She told herself his voice was no different from any other man’s. That it didn’t affect her. She wouldn’t remember how it had sounded when he whispered in her ear late at night, especially on their wedding night when he’d made promises. He’d kept those ones, that night and many nights afterward. Many wonderful promises. It wasn’t until—

“Uh, Clara?” Nathan interrupted her thoughts and whatever Blake had been about to say. “Shouldn’t I chase down his horse first? It seems only right after shooting him and all.”

“I’d appreciate that,” Blake said, though his eyes—full of ire—never left her.

Clara bit her lips against the fire in her throat, and all the other things going on inside her. Even with his anger, she wanted to wrap her arms around him, be held close, just one more time.

“It only ran as far as the creek,” Nathan assured. “I’m sure I can catch it.”

Breathing past the sting, knowing touching Blake could never happen, Clara nodded at Nathan.

The boy uttered a response before he took off in a dead run, while Clara closed her eyes and dug into the last dredges of salvation. “What are you doing here, Blake?”

“I’d think that would be obvious.”

Hostility laced his voice. It should increase the opposition inside her, but everything about her was dissolving. She had to stay strong. Had to. “I told you I never want to see you again.”

“No you didn’t,” he insisted. “I went to Springfield for a trial and you left while I was gone. I came home to an empty house. No wife. No explanation.”

“I left a note.”

“That didn’t explain anything.”

It was strange, how calm and, well, dead, she suddenly felt inside, as if none of it mattered anymore. Perhaps because nothing did matter anymore. “It said I granted you a divorce.”

He spun her around then, tightening his hold when her knees threatened to give out, and stared down with clear, bitter eyes. “That’s not how divorces work.”

Her animosity was back, too. As was an image, burning all over again. Him and the blonde. Hugging. It hadn’t been the first time she’d seen that scene, but that day, decided it would be the last.

“The divorce papers you need to sign are in my saddlebag,” he said.

An intense chill slowly encompassed her from her toes upward. Little shivers joined the icy sensation until her entire being frosted over, dowsing the little flicker of hope she’d harbored these past months—that tiny part of her that had refused to believe Blake didn’t love her.

“Clara!”

The far-off shout caused a different kind of dread to rise up inside her. A groan formed and rolled around in her throat, not quite escaping and burning as if it held shards of glass.

“What happened?” William asked moments later, arriving at their sides. “I heard a gunshot. Was anyone injured?”

Running came to Clara’s mind. Fast and far, but the hold on her arm prevented her from taking a step.

“Me,” Blake snarled. “Clara’s husband.”

“Husband?” William’s tone and glance held much more than disbelief.

The groan in her throat escaped.

Chapter Two

Blake fought a mighty battle against the pain of the older woman digging into his flesh with her scissors. He wouldn’t let it show, not how much it hurt, nor would he let it overpower him. If he blacked out, Clara might be gone when he awoke and he wouldn’t let that happen. He’d looked too hard and long to find her.

The woman—Mrs. Sinclair—kept giving him swigs off a bottle of whiskey, which blistered his throat almost as bad as it did his leg when she poured it over another hole. He’d never been shot before, so didn’t have anything to compare it to, but knew one thing. Getting hit with the buckshot hadn’t hurt as much as having it dug out. His only iota of comfort came from Clara, when she dabbed a wound dry and covered it with a bandage before moving on to the next, and that was grating his nerves. He didn’t want anything from her, except her signature—a clearly defined end that would prevent her from ever entering his life again.

“There we are,” Mrs. Sinclair said, dropping another pebble into the basin. “That’s the last of it.” A clang was still resounding against the metal as she lifted the whiskey bottle again. “Here now, a little more of this and then you can rest.”

Blake was already flat on his back with his head propped just high enough that the whiskey she poured into his mouth flowed down his gullet. He closed his lips, gulped down the bitter brew and shook his head when she came at him with the bottle again. Nothing should taste that bad.

“All right,” she said. “I have to put it up high with the children in the house, but Clara knows where it’s at. Let her know if you need more.” Additional wrinkles appeared on the woman’s aged face as she drew her lips into a serious grimace. “Just for medicinal purposes.”

Blake nodded. “Thank you, Mrs. Sinclair. I’ll remember that.” There was no other reason to gag that stuff down. “And thank you for your doctoring abilities. I’m sure the finest surgeon in Chicago couldn’t have done as well.” Yes, he was lying, but the woman had dug out every last bit pellet, and he was grateful for that. The shot hadn’t been life threatening, but blood poisoning could be. He knew that much.

“I’ve had my share of practice, that’s for sure.” She dropped the bottle into one of the wide pockets on the front of her apron before shouldering past Clara. “Bandage that last one and help him get the rest of his clothes off. He’ll be more comfortable and can rest for a bit. Be good as new in no time.”

That had been something Clara had helped him do several times during their few weeks together, undress, and he’d been more than delighted by the act. Truth be, even with his thigh throbbing and knowing she’d left him, wanted a divorce—which he did, too—his body tingled, thrilled at the thought of her assistance.

She wasn’t excited. Obviously. Then again, she wasn’t happy about having to tend to him, or about how he’d found her. That had been evident by the argument she’d had with William—who, as it turned out was her brother—in the hallway while the older woman wrenched off his britches after William had helped him into the house and onto the bed.

Clara’s bed. She’d proclaimed that in the hallway argument, as well. Blake hadn’t known she had a brother. Not a surprise. Turns out he’d known very little about her.

He half expected Clara to refuse Mrs. Sinclair’s request, and was a bit surprised when she approached the bed as the older woman, after gathering up the basin and other items, left the room.

Not wanting to reveal the anticipation flashing inside him, Blake closed his eyes, pretended the pain was more than he could take right now. The act wasn’t too hard to pull off. The pain in his thigh had dulled into nothing more than an ache. However, that wasn’t what he was trying to hide, which infuriated him. She’d left him, and he shouldn’t want her to touch him. Didn’t want her to touch him. Now or ever. He dug up her deceit to combat all that was going on inside him. “Was Oscar Wells even your grandfather?”

Without looking up, she snapped, “Of course he was.”

Blake had his doubts, despite her answer, but she’d started pulling off his socks, and the blood in his legs was pulsing. Mrs. Sinclair had tugged off his boots, right before relieving him of his britches. The older woman had left his drawers intact, just sliced the material covering his injured leg up to his hip with a single snip of her foot-long scissors. The older woman’s touch hadn’t affected him whatsoever, but Clara’s...If a single touch could make blood dance, hers made his.

He damned his reaction to her all over again.

His shirt came next, and Blake could have groaned, may have, at the way her scent filled him. It was like walking past a flower garden—how she smelled—and he was as amazed by it now as much as he had been the first time he’d met her. He breathed deeply, lying perfectly still as she undid the buttons and slipped the shirt off his shoulders. Barely moving—on the outside that is—he offered little assistance as she eased his arms out of the sleeves.

“We need to take these off, too,” she said, once the shirt was draped over a chair. Her hands had slipped beneath the sheet covering his hips, and he held his breath, hoped she wouldn’t notice how her nearness had his full attention. She was acting so aloof, he had to, too. He couldn’t let her know how badly he wanted to pull her close, kiss her until they were both breathless and clinging to each other as they had so many times in the past.

That wasn’t why he was here, and therefore it wouldn’t happen. Still feigning to be overcome with pain, he wiggled slightly, aiding a small amount as she pulled his drawers off his hips, down his thighs, being extremely careful of the injured one. The gentleness of her touch was pure torture. Had every nerve humming and his pulse throbbing.

“There.”

She was standing beside him again, and he fought his entire length, willing not so much as a muscle to twitch.

“Blake?” A hand, soft and tender, settled on his forehead, stayed there as he kept his breathing steady and his eyes closed. Her fingers combed into his hair, making him want to groan again as visions—no, memories—spun in his head. There’d been days, when they’d missed each other so much, they’d never made it as far as the bedroom when he got home. She’d met him at the door, whether it was noon or evening, and her eyes had sparked, telling him exactly what she’d wanted. He’d wanted the same thing. Their love had been so new and fresh they couldn’t get enough of each other.

Blake’s throat thickened and he steadied himself. Love didn’t have anything to do with it. Not on her part. It was no longer within him, either. His restraint, however, was vanishing. One kiss wouldn’t matter. It might remind her of what she’d given up by running away.

Grabbing her waist, and not caring an iota what the movement might do to his freshly doctored wounds, he lifted her off the floor and flipped her over him to land on the bed beside him.

Shocked, surprised, stunned—he didn’t take the time to notice her expression. Instead he took her face between his palms and kissed her like he had on their wedding night.

If she struggled, he didn’t notice, not with the way her lips parted, opening for him like the petals of a flower. The passion between them flared into life, like it always had, and overcame him instantly. It gave him satisfaction, too, how she responded.

His lungs were on fire, needing air, but he didn’t stop, just drew in small snippets through his nose and went right on kissing her. Devouring her mouth and lips, and making her kiss him in return.

She was the one to pull away, gasping for air. “You— Stop it.”

“Why? We are still married.”

As frustrated with himself as he was with her, he let her go and watched as she scrambled off the bed. The temperature of his blood dropped instantly, as if he’d just been overcome by a cold wind blowing off the lake in December.

“You’re—you could have made your injuries worse,” she said, smoothing the material of her blue dress along the slender swell of her hips with shaking hands.

“What difference would that make to you?”

“They’ll never heal with that kind of behavior,” she said, walking around the foot of the bed, tugging the sheet to cover him once again.

“Wounds heal, Clara,” he said coldly.

“Not all wounds, Blake,” she answered without looking at him. “Some get infected.”

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