Mail Order Bride: Accident Prone & Headed For Her Tall Cowboy

By Beth Overton

An overweight and accident-prone woman from Boston decides to make her way to Oklahoma, and to a tall cowboy with a checkered past. She doesn’t know that, and when she finds out, has almost decided to return to Boston when a few odd incidents drive any thought of returning home right out of her mind.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Beth Overton
• Release date: Feb 6, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311875112

Beth Overton

Beth Overton lives in Northern California with her husband and three cats. Besides writing romances, she loves to read everything she can get her hands on, as well as cooking up gourmet delights for her entire family.

Book preview

Mail Order Bride: Accident Prone & Headed For Her Tall Cowboy

By

Beth Overton

Copyright 2016 Quietly Blessed & Loved Press

Synopsis: An overweight and accident-prone woman from Boston decides to make her way to Oklahoma, and to a tall cowboy with a checkered past. She doesn’t know that, and when she finds out, has almost decided to return to Boston when a few odd incidents drive any thought of returning home right out of her mind.

Mattie Voss sat at her mother’s kitchen table, head in one hand, cheeks crimson with embarrassment. Her other hand was splayed palm down on the polished wood. The thumb on this hand was red and had begun to swell considerably. Ten minutes earlier, Mattie had closed the lid of a cedar trunk after removing a blanket from it, but had forgotten to remove her thumb as well.

The lid of the chest was of solid, lacquered cedar, engraved with delicate roses and had come down quite hard on Mattie’s poor thumb. It was itself now the exact shade of red those roses would have been had they not been mere representations of those thorny plants.

Her cheeks burned and would have matched this color if the paleness of her face didn’t stop it from only reaching a bright pink. It was not for the injury that they burned, but because the injury had been witnessed by Mr. Bergeron, who had called on her that late morning to take her on a picnic in the Boston Common.

This was an engagement her mother had planned for her, but Mattie did think Mr. Bergeron was handsome, even if he was almost fifteen years her senior. She had turned twenty-three the previous spring and it seemed she was the last of her friends left unmarried. Her friend Mary Layton had two children, even, a beautiful girl of two years and a pudgy infant son who was already the apple of his father’s eye. The thought of Mary Layton’s family threatened to push more blood into Mattie cheeks and she felt faint.

Perhaps I should…well, I mean, perhaps I should fetch a doctor, Mr. Bergeron said. He had gotten much nearer to the kitchen door, Mattie saw as she looked up from her palm.

No, she said, her voice a little too high. At this time of day Dr. Hanley would be out on his rounds, leaving only his young assistant, Perry Hyatt, at the office. Perry too had come calling upon Mattie, at Mrs. Voss’s bequest, and that engagement had met a similar end.

Only that time, it had been Perry with an embarrassing injury to both body and pride. Mattie could barely stand to meet the doctor’s assistant on the street. There was no way she could face him at home with a wounded thumb and another awkward suitor standing nearby.

Mother has nursed me back from every other injury I’ve caused myself, Mattie said, smiling what she hoped looked like a real smile. With her uninjured hand she indicated a thin, faded scar on her chin. I received this lovely mark after falling off a chair when I was ten. One of the legs broke…and I had been rocking it a little too enthusiastically.

She tried another smile and though she couldn’t see it, she knew it was failing.

Mr. Bergeron coughed into his hand. Where is your mother now? he asked.

Mattie stared at her thumb. It hurt, but only when her heart beat. Maybe if she could slow its pace, her thumb would hurt less. Where was her mother? She squinted, thinking aloud, She saw us on our way out, but we came back because I forgot the blanket, so she must have gone out visiting. Oh no. She’s with Mrs. Sylvester. Mattie groaned loudly.

Is your thumb getting worse?

Had Mr. Bergeron gotten closer to the kitchen door? Mattie wasn’t sure. She shook her head, sighed, and stood up. The floorboards creaked under her steps. She pulled a towel off a stool placed in the corner of the room, but startled herself when a pair of hooks and a ball of yarn clattered to the floor. The bottom edge of the towel unraveled before catching on a knot.

Oh no! Oh, mother is going to—oh, it doesn’t matter! Mattie said this last bit louder than she’d intended. She had been embarrassed before, but didn’t care anymore. She put her heel on the string connecting the unfinished towel to the ball of yarn, gave a pull until the connection snapped, then wound the material around her