Western Weddings is an anthology coming from Harlequin Historical in May. It features Rocky Mountain Bride by Jillian Hart, Shotgun Vows by Kate Bridges, and Springville Wife by Charlene Sands, from which we have the following sneak peek. Read on!

Springville Wife by Charlene Sands

Grace Lander returns to Springville to pick up the pieces of her life and become the town’s schoolmarm. Single father Caleb’s Matlock’s kiss may be just what Grace needs to mend her heart and make a home.

Springville, Texas

1888

CHAPTER ONE

Grace Lander dusted off her sapphire blue traveling suit as she stepped down from the stagecoach. She hadn’t journeyed by stage since the horrendous robbery that claimed her husband’s life one year ago. Shivers of the fear she’d lived with during her stage ride from the rail station in Fort Worth, slowly ebbed and she found herself taking her first easy breath. Yet, the painful memory and the guilt she felt over Harrison’s untimely death were always with her.

But she was here in Springville now, her childhood home and hoping to carve out a new life as a schoolmarm to a full brood of eager children.

“You made it, deary!” Her spry rosy-cheeked aunt came rushing forth, a silly violet-feathered hat bobbing on her head.

“Aunt Enid, it’s good to see you.” She embraced the aunt she hadn’t seen since her visit to Boston some six years ago — her favorite aunt, if Grace were being truly honest.

“It’s about time you came back to your only livin’ kin.”

“Only kin? Aunt Enid, you know darn well, Aunt Flo and Auntie Roberta are still alive.”

“Alive, deary, but not livin’.”

Grace chuckled and relief washed over her. She put aside any doubts she’d had about her return to Springville. Her Aunt Enid, who ran the Springville Boardinghouse, would be sure to keep Grace on her toes.

With somber eyes, Aunt Enid grasped her hands and squeezed gently. “Are you ready to start your living again, honey?”

The connection and the love flowing between them warmed her through and through. She gazed down the street to see familiar shops: McKenzie’s Dry Goods, Springville Bank and Trust, Shorty’s Longhorn Saloon, the marshal’s office and Spring’s Diner. Not too much had changed in thirteen years. Grace found great comfort in the small thriving town where she’d grown up. Springville was different than Boston, in ways too abundant to name. Even the May sky seemed clearer, the air crisper and the sunshine brighter.

Was she ready to start living again?

On a shaky breath, Grace nodded. “I think so, Aunt Enid. I’m ready.”

“Good.” She released her hands and looked over at the young depot operator. “Chuckie, send over Miss Lander’s bags to the boardinghouse, as soon as you can, boy. There’ll be a warmed slice of cherry pie waiting for you.

“Yes, ma’am!”

Aunt Enid’s wide smile took twenty years off her aged face. “Ready to settle in?”

“I am, but I’m eager to visit the schoolhouse. To see if it’s how I remembered it. It’s all that’s kept me sane these past few months.”

Her aunt nodded in understanding. “Then go on.” She winked. “You know where it is.”

“Won’t you come along?”

“No, deary. You go revisit those memories by yourself. I think you’ll like what you see.”

Grace kissed her aunt’s cheek. “Thank you, Aunt Enid. I’ll be along soon.”

Grace picked up her silk skirt and walked briskly toward the opposite end of town where the schoolhouse stood, the light brown paint appearing fresh and new, though the white of the window frames were slightly faded. She approached the school slowly, as good memories flooded in. She’d gone to school here until her family moved away when she was twelve, her father’s venture into ranching proved unsuccessful and they’d left town to move in with their family to the east.

But Grace always believed herself a small town girl. And she’d loved learning. School meant getting away from grueling chores at the failing ranch. It meant being acknowledged and encouraged by schoolmaster Mobley for her thirst for knowledge. And presently, she hoped it meant a way to forget the heartache that plagued her daily.

“Oh, Harrison,” she uttered, standing just outside the school gate. “I’m so sorry.”

She entered the schoolyard and closed the gate behind her. Stepping on overgrown bluebonnets lacing the path to the schoolhouse, she made a mental list of work she’d have to do on the grounds. But most importantly, she’d start the school up again. Mr. Mobley’s sudden death had left the town unprepared and the children hadn’t had instruction in over three months.

When she reached the front door, she tried the latch. The door didn’t budge. She walked over to the side window and peered inside, glad to find the desks in order, set up in rows of four just like when she attended school. A side bookshelf contained McGuffey Readers and the potbelly stove that billowed smoke on cold winter days, still claimed the back corner of the room. The black chalkboard centered the front wall and Grace’s mind flooded with all those days she’d stay after class to help Mr. Mobley wipe it clean. One impudent classmate had labeled her “teacher’s pet”, but she’d only held her head up high, proud of the title.

A deep voice from behind the schoolhouse broke into her thoughts. “Tarnation! Damn it! Get away from me, you dang little pests!”

Curious, Grace raced around to the back of the building toward the commotion. She bumped a ladder and brown paint rained down in big clumpy droplets, just missing her head. “Oh!”

She looked up and another “oh” fell silently from her lips. A man stood on the ladder she’d just bumped, his chest bare, broad and bronzed, a black Stetson covering his head as a swarm of bees circled around him. His denims hugged his body below a very trim waist and a narrow line of dark hairs arrowed down beyond his thick leather belt.

Grace squeezed her eyes shut and turned her back on him, but the image remained in her head. Lordy, he was a fine looking man. Her heart pumped hard against her chest at the sight.

Immediate remorse set in. She’d been a widow for a year now, and blamed herself for Harrison’s death. She had no business bearing such lusty thoughts.

“Sorry for the intrusion,” she said softly, opening her eyes. She was the new schoolmarm. She shouldn’t behave like a foolish smitten girl of fifteen.

The man stepped down from the ladder, setting the paint can and brush onto the ground. When he lifted up, she caught another glimpse of his muscled chest. “Suppose I should thank you. I was about to be eaten up by them bees.”

“Those bees,” she corrected automatically. Her face flamed with heat, not so much from the ill-timed correction but by the vision he made.

He studied her for a long moment, his gaze raking her over from head to toe without apology. “By God. You’re Gracie. Little Gracie Greene. Would’ve never guessed except for that uppity tone you take.”

Grace eyed him with caution now. She was certain she’d just been insulted. “Yes, I’m Gracie. I go by Grace Lander now. And you are?”

His quick smirk rekindled a vivid childhood memory. One she’d rather forget. Grace suppressed the urge to crinkle her nose when she recalled her own personal school tormenter. He’d bully her every single day while in class or outside for recess.

They chorused both at the same time.

“Caleb Matlock.”

Caleb cocked a grin her way.

Gracie Greene.

He’d known she’d been hired on in Springville as the new schoolteacher, but he surely hadn’t expected her to look so dang blasted inspiring. The gangly awkward girl he’d teased and tormented in school had grown into a beautiful auburn-haired, amber-eyed woman with pale skin and tiny nose freckles. He assessed her female form and liked what he saw as well. “Gracie, Gracie, green like a frog and just as jumpy.”

She rolled her eyes without granting a smile. Caleb smiled enough for them both recalling his daily taunt.

“I haven’t thought about your silly prose in years.”

Caleb suspected different. She’d been easy to goad and he’d been unmerciful back then. “You never called them prose back then, Gracie.” Caleb reached for his shirt sitting on the fence. He put his arms through the sleeves and began buttoning. “Truth is, you retaliated pretty darn good. Let’s see,” he said, staring deep into her pretty eyes. “As I recall, you called me a big oaf, ugly as a longhorn, smelly as a skunk, stupid as–”

“I don’t recall any such thing,” she hurried out her eyes flitting to his bare chest for a second, before she turned five shades of red when he noticed.

His groin twitched. He hadn’t been so instantly taken by a woman since courting Felicia Holmes eight years back. He’d asked Felicia to marry him and she’d agreed, then she ran away with a traveling tinker the day of their nuptials. Since then, Caleb didn’t have much use for Springville females, Opal, being the exception.

Caleb shrugged off Grace’s denials. “No matter. Just glad you’re here.”

“You are?”

“The school’s been closed for months. Me and some of the others took up getting it ready again.”

She glanced at the work he’d done. The back of the building he’d painted was almost finished. “Thank you for that. Except for cleaning up the yard, it doesn’t look like you’ve left much for me to do.”

“That was the intent,” he said, staring at her. Damn, there wasn’t any one thing about her he didn’t enjoy looking at. Nothing had surprised him more. Little Gracie Greene had developed into a striking woman.

“What?” she asked, her expression filled with question.

“It’s you, Gracie. You’re all grown-up.”

She smiled a little, just enough to shape her mouth prettily. “That’s what happens with time.”

He shook his head. “Usually time only wears on a person. But you, you’ve become a beautiful woman.”

Grace turned away from him. Stark memories of the horrid stagecoach hold-up brought tears to her eyes.

“She’s too beautiful to leave behind, Pa. I’m taking her for myself. And no one’s gonna stop me.”

Grace would never forget her desperate panic that day or the clawing way Gray Bullock held her and groped at her body. She fought him off the best she could, crying for Harrison’s help.

“Get your hands off my wife!”

Her husband rushed toward her armed with only righteous fury and had been gunned down right before her eyes, trying to protect her.

There’d been three other women on that stagecoach, but she’d been the one singled out. She’d been the one widowed that day. The passengers had been saved when a band of gypsy wagons came down the road, scaring off the bandits who’d left her behind and Harrison dead on the ground at her feet.

And since then, there were times when she looked at her image in the mirror and hated the reflection staring back at her. She wasn’t one who wanted undue attention cast upon her, yet since her husband’s death, she’d had three proposals of marriage. All nice men who had promised to care for her, yet she’d seen that same lust in their eyes as that bandit and she knew she wouldn’t marry again. She’d lost her beloved husband that day, but she’d also lost the unborn baby she carried and any chance to be with child every again. So Caleb’s compliment to her beauty meant little to her. It was only a painful reminder of the saddest day in her life.

“Grace?”

She inhaled deep in her chest and blinking tears away, she turned back to him. “I plan on starting classes the first of next week,” she said, straightening her spine. “That’ll give me the rest of the week to work on the weeds.”

“If you need help with that–”

“No,” she cut him off quickly. “I want to do it myself.”

“Okay, I’ll tell Opal.”

“Opal?”

“My niece. She’s my brother’s child. I’ve raised her since she was a babe. Just so you’re not confused, she calls me her Pa.”

“Oh, I see. And Opal wanted to help?”

He grinned. “She’s excited to start school again.”

“I’m glad of that. And you can be sure I’ll give her plenty of chores to do once school commences.”

Caleb nodded. “If you need anything else,” he began, fastening up the last of his shirt buttons “for the school, I mean,” he said with a grin. “I’m three miles out, at the Bar M Ranch.”

“Thank you, but I’ll be just fine on my own.” She tilted her chin up, while she admonished herself for taking that one last glimpse of his chest. “Are you through here?”

Caleb hesitated a moment. Then he closed the paint can and wiped the brush clean. He set them inside a small shed and laid the ladder down next to it. “Seems I am. For today. But, I’ll be back.” He tipped his hat and smiled. His expression brightened in much the same way it had when he spoke of his niece, Opal. “To finish what I started.”

Grace ignored that chest-thumping feeling she got watching Caleb Matlock saunter away in long confident strides.

He was halfway off the grounds when he turned clear around. “You need the key to open the school, you’ll find that at the marshal’s office.”

He kept walking backwards until she acknowledged him. “All … right. Thank … you.”

Then on a nod, he hopped the school fence and was gone.

“Oh my.” Grace put her hand to her chest and leaned her shoulder against the newly painted wall. She shoved away the moment she realized what she’d done.

“Darn you, Caleb Matlock!”

Caleb always managed to get her all jumbled up and now she’d spend her first day home, washing paint stains out of her blue satin riding suit!

“Did you see anything interesting at the school, deary?” Aunt Enid unfolded clothes from Grace’s trunk in the pretty yellow-curtained, nicely furnished room that would now become her new home. Grace worked with her as they put some clothes up in a smooth burl wood armoire and arranged her perfumes and soaps and other such essentials on the dresser before a tall, framed mirror.

“You knew Caleb Matlock would be there, didn’t you?”

Aunt Enid’s eyes crinkled and she smiled. “He’s been working at the school, getting it ready. That man’s been on his own for some years now. Raising little Opal all by himself.”

“That’s commendable.” She offered no other compliment. No need to give Aunt Enid false impressions. Grace had her chance at happiness with a wonderful man. She wasn’t interested in involving herself with anything but her students and their needs. “I’ll look forward to meeting his niece.”

“Caleb’s a good man, Grace.”

Grace scoffed. She had no such thoughts. Why even today, he’d managed to get her flustered enough to nearly destroy her traveling suit.

Aunt Enid hadn’t asked any questions when Grace walked in minutes ago, paint-stained. But she’d insisted Grace change her clothes immediately and her aunt worked on that garment until she got every lick of paint out.

“When I knew him, he was a bully and tormented me no end.” Grace set the silver-handled hairbrush and comb Harrison had given her down onto her small night table, next to a blue-bubbled glass lamp.

“Did he kiss you?”

“Aunt Enid! Of course not! Why would you ask me a thing like that?”

“Paint stains.”

Goodness, her aunt surely was astute. The older woman had an uncanny ability to see far too much. Even though Grace was ashamed of her momentary weakness with Caleb Matlock, she had no intention of ever letting that man close enough to kiss her.

“I just lost my balance, Aunt Enid. And knocked into the painted wall, is all.”

“Pity.” Her aunt’s eyes lit with a faraway look. “If only I was a younger woman.”

“I surely don’t intend to have Caleb or any man, for that matter, ever kiss me. You know where my heart lies.”

“I know how a heart can lie to you. Fool you into thinking you’re through and washed up as a woman.”

“I’ll have a full life in Springville, teaching my students. That’s what I came here for. If I’d wanted a man, I could have remarried back east. But that’s not what I want anymore,” she said softly.

Aunt Enid helped her put the last of her clothes into the armoire then turned to give her a warm smile. Taking her hands in a firm loving grasp, she said with utmost sincerity, “Deary, let me give you a bit of advice. If Caleb Matlock ever wanted to kiss me, I wouldn’t give him my cheek, if you know what I mean.”

Grace tossed her head back and laughed heartily. “Oh, Aunt Enid, I’m so glad I’m here.”

Aunt Enid patted her hands. “I’m glad of it too. Now, you rest up a bit. Dinner is at five every night.”

“I’ll come down to help you.”

“No, not today. You lay your head down and get some sleep. Dream good dreams, Grace.”

And minutes later, Grace laid her head down on the soft goose-down bed and closed her eyes, but instead of her beloved Harrison’s face appearing, as it always had in the past, another face came to mind.

Caleb Matlock.

Grace squeezed her eyes shut even tighter and fought off the image of him, up on that ladder, fighting off bees and looking tastier than honey.

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