May I Kiss the Bride?, page 1
Table of Contents
Title Page
May I Kiss the Bride?
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
Epilogue
Sneak Peek
About Heather B. Moore
Copyright © 2025 Mirror Press
E-book edition
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any form whatsoever without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief passages embodied in critical reviews and articles. This novel is a work of fiction. The characters, names, incidents, places, and dialog are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.
Interior Design by Cora Johnson
Edited by Meghan Hoesch and Lorie Humpherys
Cover Illustration: Kara Moore
Cover design: Rachael Anderson & Kennedy Anderson
Published by Mirror Press, LLC
This story was originally published as part of the Timeless Western Collection: A Wyoming Summer
CONTEMPORARY ROMANCES BY HEATHER B. MOORE
EVERLY FALLS SERIES
Just Add Romance
Just Add Mischief
Just Add Friendship
Just Add Mistletoe
PINE VALLEY SERIES
Worth the Risk
Where I Belong
Say You Love Me
Waiting for You
Finding Us
Until We Kissed
Let's Begin Again
All For You
PROSPERITY RANCH SERIES
One Summer Day
Steal My Heart
Not Over You
Seasoned with Love
Take a Chance
HISTORICAL ROMANCES:
Love is Come
An Ocean Away
A Fortunate Exile Season in London
Mail Order Bride
Heart of the Ocean
Power of the Matchmaker
Twelve Months
The Duke's Brother
Viola Delany is not happy about being sent to the middle-of-nowhere, small town Wyoming. Yes, it will be good to let the gossips find something else to talk about other than her failed engagement. And yes, it will be nice to spend the summer with her Aunt Beth. But as Viola sits on the train heading for Wyoming, wondering how she'll ever occupy her time in such a small town, none other than a real life cowboy sits across the way. She can't help but take peeks at him, noting that the condition of his unpolished black boots and scuffed rawhide jacket seem to be authentic . . . All right, so he might be tall, dark-haired, and handsome if a woman doesn't mind green eyes and a dangerous-looking scar, but this man certainly has nothing to do with her. Besides she'll never see him again. What are the chances he's traveling to the same middle-of-nowhere small town?
VIOLA CONSTANCE DELANY GRIPPED THE handle of her hatbox as the train jerked into motion. The shrill whistle of the engine was almost deafening, but Viola’s proper upbringing stopped her from covering her sensitive ears like a four-year-old child.
Steam roared past the window where Viola sat as she watched her beloved San Francisco fade away. Not that she loved the train station or the industrial buildings close to it, but the green hills and weeping willows and scarlet flowers would all be missed. Especially once she arrived at her destination: the desolate, arid, windy, hot, bleak, colorless—did she mention desolate?—Wyoming.
“For the summer,” Father had told her.
Viola had known better than to argue. Her parents had wrung their hands of her. She was frustrated. They were frustrated. And the only solution to this frustration seemed to be sending Viola to work in a small bakery owned by her mother’s sister, Beth Cannon, who, until this past week, had been deemed one of their “unfit relatives.”
Oh, Viola had argued. Begged. Even cried real tears.
Nothing had swayed her father. He was a banker, after all, and oversaw the fortunes of the very wealthy. That took a certain stoicism and a hardy constitution.
So when Viola’s engagement of the year had turned out to be the flop of the year, Father refused to let the high society on Nob Hill have the last word about his daughter. As a result, she was heading on a noble mission of mercy to aid her poor dear aunt who ailed with rheumatism.
All right, so the details were accurate, but the sentiment behind them … None of this would have even been considered if Percy Johnson III hadn’t been discovered visiting a brothel in Chinatown. The papers had been full of the incident. Cartoons had even been drawn.
Mother had written the letter to Percy, signed by Viola, formally breaking off the engagement.
Viola hadn’t cried as much as she thought she might over her broken engagement. Oh, she did cry. But after the first day, she decided she felt relieved. She’d started courting Percy because his father was her father’s boss. They’d been a natural match. Sure, Percy was handsome and charming, dressed at the height of fashion, had impeccable manners … but Viola couldn’t say she was head over heels with him.
“Sir! You cannot go into first class!”
The door at the end of the train car thumped open, and Viola snapped her gaze up to see a man stride into the first-class car. A cowboy.
Viola blinked, then blinked again. Was she seeing a mirage? The man looked like he’d stepped off the Cowboy Wear page of a Sears catalog.
“Sir!”
The cowboy kept walking, his gaze shifting from one bench to another. His eyes skimmed over Viola. She tried to make herself small—invisible if possible. The only problem was, she was the single occupant on her bench, and the bench across from her was empty. Every bench throughout the rest of the car had at least two occupants on them.
The cowboy’s gaze landed on her again.
Despite the shadow of his brim, his hazel eyes seemed to penetrate right through her.
Viola tried not to stare at the cowboy, who was clearly out of place in a refined first-class compartment. Meals would be served on real chinaware, for heaven’s sake.
She turned her chin sharply toward the window, but she saw his reflection there anyway. Tall man wearing a cowboy hat, woven shirt fraying at the collar beneath a rawhide jacket that had seen better days—or years—black trousers, and black boots that needed a good polishing.
Viola wrinkled her nose as he plopped down on the bench across from her. She waited for the unpleasant scent of dirt, hay, or cattle, or all three, to reach her. But she only caught the faint whiff of green grass and fresh air. Not so bad. His long legs would have bumped hers if he’d sat directly across, but he’d at least sat at the far end of the bench, closest to the aisle.
“Sir!” The shouting attendant finally came into view, and Viola took a peek at the blustering man with his twitching mustache and strawberry-red face. “You … cannot … sit … here.” His breath heaved. “First-class passengers only, sir.”
The entire car had gone silent; even the sounds of the train’s wheels chugging upon the tracks seemed to dim.
“You’ll thank me later.” The cowboy tugged something silver and metal out of his breast pocket. “Sheriff of Mayfair.”
Viola stopped breathing for two reasons. First, Mayfair was where her aunt’s bakery was, and second, the cowboy took off his hat and looked directly at her.
The man had been imposing with his hat on, striding through first class like he owned the place, but with it off …
The eyes she thought were hazel were, in fact, green. A deep green that reminded her of pine trees on a rainy day. And his dark brown hair fell over his forehead like it had just been waiting to escape. But what caught her attention the most was a scar that traveled from the edge of his eyebrow all the way to his ear.
Instead of a disturbing disfigurement of his face, it only made him look stronger, more dangerous, and if possible, more confident.
“Now,” the cowboy said in his deep, slow tone, “if this fine lady is all right with me sharing her space until we reach Cheyenne, then I’ll stay right here.”
The cowboy’s eyes remained on her, apparently waiting for her answer. Viola wondered if her throat could open enough to speak at all.
“I, u-uh, y-yes, you may sit there.” Her voice stuttered, but at least she got the words out.
The attendant opened his mouth, then closed it again. His gaze locked on the cowboy’s impressive scar. “I need to speak with the conductor.”
The cowboy set his hat upon his head. “You do that, sir.”
The attendant nodded, then took a step back, his throat bobbing up and down. Another step back, then the attendant turned, hands fisted, as he strode off.
People went back to their conversations after the attendant left. Weren’t they bothered that this huge cowboy had sat himself down among them without paying for first-class passage?
A moment passed, then two, and Viola kept her gaze on the passing scenery outside the widow. They were moving through a valley, and the green hills were bright and green in the sunlight beneath the wispy, clouded sky. Oh, how she would miss California. She could only hope that the summer in Wyoming would speed by, and when she returned home,
“Ma’am?”
She turned her head at the cowboy’s low rumble.
“Might I store that hatbox for you? It’s a long ways to Wyoming.”
Viola drew it closer. “No, thank you. I don’t want it jostled or stepped on.”
The cowboy’s expression didn’t change, but something shifted in his eyes. Almost imperceptible. Amusement? If he was laughing at her, or thought she was too protective of her hat, then he was an impertinent man.
She rerouted her gaze. She didn’t need to worry. From the reflection in the window, he’d tugged down the brim of his hat, stretched his long legs forward, folded his arms, and promptly fell asleep.
Viola waited a good five minutes before she looked over at him again. How could he fall asleep like a fly knocked out of the air and instantly dropped? His breathing deepened and he might have even been snoring softly. It was hard to make out above the noise of the train.
She released a sigh and returned to her window-watching. As each mile passed, she wondered if it was possible to die of boredom working at a bakery in middle of nowhere-Mayfair. Starting to bake cakes and pies, and mixing bread dough from before sunup sounded like a slow death. Didn’t her mother, or Aunt Beth, for that matter, know that Viola couldn’t cook, or bake, a lick?
She could, she supposed, do things with a lot of instruction. Hopefully, she and Aunt Beth wouldn’t butt heads too much, although one small spark of interest flickered in her mind. What had taken Aunt Beth to Wyoming in the first place? And why was it such a family secret?
REYNOLD CHRISTENSEN WENT BY REY. Sheriff Rey. Or just Rey. Didn’t matter to him. But never by Mr. Christensen, which now interrupted a rather sweet dream he was having about a certain blonde woman who’d just baked him a pie and presented it to him at the town social. He’d been hungry when he boarded the train to Cheyenne, but now he was ravenous. He was just about to slice himself a piece of the still-warm dream pie when someone blurted in his ear “Mr. Christensen!”
This was no dream.
He shoved his hat back and opened his eyes to see not one, but two men in uniform glaring at him. One of them was probably the conductor. The other was the red-faced attendant he hadn’t the pleasure of formally meeting yet.
Rey gave up on his dream of pie and pulled his legs in, straightening to face his visitors.
“If you’ve paid first-class passage, then you can stay here,” the conductor said, his steely gaze quite impressive. “If not, the attendant will escort you to a different car.”
Rey should have known it would come to this; he was just hoping to get a nap in first. He reached into his shirt pocket and drew out a folded and partially crumpled telegram from the governor of Wyoming, then handed it over. Rey had only had to read it once to know that he must answer the call, even though it meant cutting his visit short with his mother. He didn’t love leaving his eight-year-old daughter behind in San Francisco, but she’d never forgive him if he ended their vacation so soon.
So, here he was, hopping on this train at the request of the governor.
The conductor’s face had gone chalk white at reading the telegram. “Is this true? And how does the governor know?”
Rey lifted a shoulder. “Received threats, I guess. Might not be this exact train though. Other lawmen are jumping on all trains headed to Cheyenne this week. Your luck is getting me.” He took the paper back, folded it, and tucked it into his pocket. “Now, if you don’t mind, I have sleep to catch up on.”
He thought that tugging down the brim of his hat and closing his eyes would be hint enough, but apparently, the conductor had more questions.
“There’s only one of you?” the conductor said in a near whisper. “If what’s in that telegram is true, we need more than just one lawman to defend—”
Rey snapped his eyes open. “Hush. You want panic from your passengers? Believe me, I can get the job done. Now, you do your job, and if—if the time comes, I’ll do mine.”
Still, the conductor and the attendant didn’t move.
“Off with you,” Rey muttered. “There’s nothing to worry about until we cross into Wyoming territory. I’ll be wide awake and keeping watch by then.” He motioned toward the windows. “First class has the best view. We might not even have to stop the train.”
Rey kept his voice low so the other passengers wouldn’t overhear—but he knew the woman on the bench across from him clutching that infernal hatbox could hear every word. To her credit, she kept her gaze averted, focused on the passing landscape.
The conductor’s eyes were wide, but the attendant’s eyes were even wider.
Rey again tugged his brim down and closed his eyes. After a hushed debate, the men left. The sound of their retreating footsteps was a welcome sound—almost like a lullaby melody.
Now, back to his pie dream. But his mind wouldn’t settle. He could truly smell food somewhere—likely in the adjacent dining car—so mealtime must be close. He wasn’t exactly interested in mingling with any other passengers and engaging in small talk over a meal, so he’d wait until the last possible moment before entering the dining car. Sure enough, a bell jangled and the passengers in the first-class car began to file into the dining car.
If Rey’s stomach would just be quiet, he could get a decent nap in, but it wasn’t to be.
Because it seemed that everyone in the first-class car, except for the woman with the hatbox, had left. Rey’s eyes might have been closed, but it wasn’t hard to sense these things. First of all, she’d have to move past his legs and possibly step over them. She did neither.
In fact, she cleared her throat and spoke.
“Mr. Christensen?”
He opened his eyes. He might try to ignore a conductor and an attendant, but he’d never ignore a woman. “Rey.”
“Rey?”
“Short for Reynold. I don’t stand on ceremony, ma’am, and I don’t expect others to.”
She blinked. Slow. Her gray eyes reminded him of the stormy Pacific. Bits of her blonde hair had escaped the confines of the hat she wore atop her head, and he wondered what she’d look like with those locks unpinned.
“My name is Viola Delany.” She extended her gloved hand across the space between them.
Rey could have been knocked over by a gust of wind. This was no wilting flower of a woman. He shook her hand. Her fingers were delicate, but her grip was firm—something the hatbox was a witness to.
When they released hands, Viola continued, “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but it was quite impossible not to overhear your conversation with the conductor.” She drew in a breath that fluttered the ruffles of her blouse about her neck. “I couldn’t help overhearing you mention that something is going to happen when our train crosses into Wyoming territory?”
Her accent was prim. Her voice soft yet forceful as if she were a woman who was used to giving orders and having them carried out. She had to be in her mid-twenties, he guessed, yet she had the directness of a matron much older.
“You heard right, ma’am.”
Viola folded her gloved hands atop her hatbox, her gray eyes not leaving his. “What is going to happen?”
Well, her question was direct, he’d give her that. But the question he had was whether he’d answer it as directly. He didn’t take this woman for someone who’d get hysterical—but no one really knew until one was put into a dire situation. Was her backbone as strong as she acted it was?
“I can’t predict the future, ma’am, I’m only here at the request of someone, just in case there is an incident.”
Viola’s dark brow raised. It was a bit of juxtaposition with her face—to have such light-colored hair along with dark eyebrows. He found it quite pleasing, he decided. She was pretty, yes, but not in the conventional sense.
“I’m not asking you to predict the future,” she said in her prim voice. “If that someone is the governor of Wyoming, like you indicated to the conductor, then I’d like to know the contents of your telegram.”
Something stuck in Rey’s throat, and he coughed. “It’s confidential.”
Viola’s eyes widened slightly, but she said in a completely calm voice, “It wasn’t confidential when you handed it to the conductor.”
“He’s …” Rey paused.
“A man?”
“A man in authority,” Rey corrected quickly.
