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The Wedding Cake War
Lynna Banning
Extra! Extra! Mail-Order Brides Compete To See Who Can Deliver!That should be the headline in the Gazette, Lolly Mayfield swore. Here she'd gotten up the gumption to answer an ad, only to find herself competing for bride status against two other women, with Kellen Macready as the extremely eligible–and very masculine–prize!If it weren't for charity, Kellen Macready would never have agreed to be the grand prize in a public matchmaking contest. But then he'd never have met Lolly Mayfield–sassy, direct, outrageous and the one woman in the competition, or out of it, able to make his slumbering heart wake up and sing!
“I will never set foot in this house again, I promise you.”
Kellen stared at her for a full minute. She was magnificent. A lioness defending her lair. Except that it was his lair. And it was his hand that wanted to touch her trembling chin. His body that hungered to feel her passion. Her fire.
“Goddammit, Lolly.”
“Goddammit what?” She spit the words at him, and all at once he couldn’t stand it one more second. He kissed her.
Big, big tactical error. Her lips under his were like warm velvet. Suddenly he wanted his mouth, and his hands, on every inch of her skin.
“Stop,” she said after a few exquisitely sensual explorations of her neck and throat. “Kellen, you must stop.”
“Why must I?” he murmured against her hair. He kissed her again. He didn’t want to stop. Ever.
Acclaim for Lynna Banning
“Do not read Lynna Banning expecting some trite,
clichéd western romance. This author
breathes fresh air into the West.”
—Romance Reviews
The Scout
“Though a romance through and through,
The Scout is also a story with powerful undertones
of sacrifice and longing.”
—Romantic Times
The Angel of Devil’s Camp
“This sweet charmer of an Americana romance
has just the right amount of humor, poignancy
and a cast of quirky characters.”
—Romantic Times
The Law and Miss Hardisson
“…fresh and charming
…a sweet and funny yet poignant story.”
—Romantic Times
The Wedding Cake War
Lynna Banning
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
In memory of my mother,
Mary Elizabeth (Banning) Yarnes
With grateful thanks to Suzanne Barrett, Tricia Adams,
Debbie Parcel, Brenda Preston, Susan Renison,
David Woolston and Andrew Yarnes.
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
Epilogue
Chapter One
Oregon, 1879
If she’d thought about it for one single minute, Lolly would never have boarded the train in Kansas City. That was a character failing, she supposed—jumping headlong from the saucepan into the cook-fire. She’d inherited the tendency from her father.
Which was exactly why he was dead and she was breathing the cigar-smoky air of this railway coach. In all his forty years on this earth, Papa had never backed down, changed his opinion or avoided a fight.
And neither would she. With a bit of luck and some…well…acting ability, she would triumph over any adversity. Even marriage to a man she’d never laid eyes on.
The train slowed, then chuffed to a stop. “Maple Falls,” the conductor shouted from the back of the car. “Home of sawmills, grist mills, gin mills, wild women and the Methodist church.”
Lolly choked down a bubble of laughter. If only half those things were true, Maple Falls would prove intriguing. In a town with both Shady Ladies, as Pa had termed them, and Our Heavenly Father’s Second-Best Parlor, as her Presbyterian mother dubbed the Methodist church, there was the promise of happenings that might prove interesting. She most fervently hoped so. After her impulsive flight from Baxter Springs, she badly needed some cheering up.
Lolly bit the inside of her lip. She needed more than cheering up. She needed a new life. A new place, as far from Kansas as she could get. She only hoped it wasn’t too late.
At the thought, her entire body turned to petrified whalebone. She was too outspoken, too set in her ways. Too plump.
Too…old.
Maybe it was too late.
Get off the train, a voice commanded. Just put one foot in front of the other and walk out into Oregon.
It was harder than she anticipated. For one thing, her fancy new jab-toed shoes, ordered from Bloomingdale’s, pinched her feet. And for another, all at once she felt as if her bottom half was glued to the seat; every bone in her body resisted moving a single step toward the momentous event that awaited her. She could scarcely breathe she was so frightened.
The coach emptied, and still Lolly sat stiff as chicken wire on the hard leather seat until a head poked into the far end of the car.
“Miz Mayfield?”
She sucked a gulp of smoky air into her lungs. “Yes?”
“Better hurry up, ma’am. Train’s about to pull out.”
As the boy spoke, the railcar jerked and began to glide forward.
Good gracious! Which was worse, being inadvertently kidnapped by a train, or facing a town full of hungry lions? Well, maybe not lions, exactly. But she knew exactly how the Christian martyrs in Roman arenas must have felt. Trapped.
Lolly stood up, grasped her leather satchel and made her way unsteadily up the aisle, clinging to the backs of the seats until she reached the iron debarking step.
The train engine tooted twice and began to accelerate.
“Jump, ma’am! Hurry, it’s rollin’.”
Jump? Was he crazy? She’d break both her ankles in these shoes.
She heaved the satchel into the young man’s arms and hurriedly unsnapped one French kid boot, then the other, tossing them out the train door just as the coach began to pick up speed. Wrapping her knitted wool shawl about her head, she folded her arms over her chest, whispered a quick prayer and stepped off the platform.
She toppled into the youth clasping her satchel, knocking him flat onto the wood platform. His wide-brimmed hat rolled away under the spinning train wheels.
“Godalmighty, ma’am, whadja do that for?”
Lolly sat up, straightened her black straw bonnet and scooted her knees off the young man’s chest. “To get off the train, of course. You said to jump.”
“Sufferin’ scorpions, ma’am, I didn’t mean on top of me!”
Lolly rose to a standing position, her legs shaking like twin columns of jelly. Her stocking-covered toes curled against the uneven boards beneath her feet, telling her where every splinter lurked in the rough wood. What a way to begin her new life, making a spectacle of herself in public.
She scanned the onlookers. Was he here? Watching her stumble about like a tipsy Presbyterian? Would he change his mind when he saw her?
She bent over the boy. “I am extremely sorry. Are you hurt?”
“Heck, no, I ain’t hurt.” He assessed her generous figure. “I guess I’ve been hit by hay bales bigger’n—” His voice trailed off.
“Beg pardon, Miz Mayfield. You ain’t shaped like no bale of hay, no matter how—” His thin face flushed the color of cooked beets.
Lolly took pity on him. “Have you a name, young man?”
“Huh? Oh, sure. But at the moment I can’t exactly recall— Oh yeah, it’s Henry Morehouse, ma’am. At your service.”
Lolly suppressed a burst of laughter. “Well, Henry Morehouse, I am Leora Mayfield.” She extended her hand. “I have been in correspondence with the ladies here in town, and I have come out from Kansas to marry—”
“Oh, we know all about that, Miz Mayfield.” He hoisted her travel satchel in one hand and offered his arm. “I’ll escort you over to the schoolhouse to get registered.”
“Schoolhouse? Isn’t there a hotel?”
“Why, sure, ma’am. We’ll get you registered there, too.”
She peered at him. He was a nice-looking, lanky boy of about fifteen, she guessed. Clear-blue eyes and floppy wheat-colored hair.
“Why must I register at the schoolhouse?”
As her question sank in, his cheeks colored. “Well, you see, ma’am, the colonel, he figured…well, he figured—”
“Colonel! Mr. Macready is a colonel? In what army, may I ask?”
