He’d known this day might someday come, but he had prayed it wouldn’t almost as fervently as he’d hoped it would.
And now it had.
Meredith Connolly sat in the wagon, her fingers grasped tightly around the handles of the small valise resting in her lap. The boned construction of her corset helped keep her back ramrod straight but her shoulders ached from the strain of holding them back while keeping her chin high.
She’d had no intentions of riding into town the way she had ridden out of it seven years earlier with a crushed spirit, broken dreams and empty bank account. Granted, the riding into town was mostly for show. Her aunt had squirrelled away some money from her business as a seamstress, a business Meredith had learned backward and forward, but it wasn’t substantial. She’d inherited enough to arrive back in Salvation Falls in style and start over. After that, it would be up to her. A fact that suited her just fine. She didn’t put much stock into relying on others. Not anymore.
Pride held her posture in check when her muscles began to ache from the effort. The plumed ostrich feather in her hat bobbed in her peripheral vision, blotting out the image of Hunter Donovan every time the wagon’s wheels hit a new rut in the road. Even from halfway down Main Street she had recognized his likeness, the relaxed posture as he leaned against the post outside the sheriff’s office, every bone in his body a study in ease. He was too far away to see the details of his face, but she didn’t need to. She’d memorized every line, every contour long ago.
She recognized the moment he realized who she was. Though his stance did not alter, the coffee mug in his hand went slack, its contents dribbling out and hitting the toe of his boot. She wouldn’t blame him for not recognizing her straightaway. Coifed and dressed to the nines as she was, it was a far different picture she presented than the one he was familiar with.
She refused to look his way, to give the strange tingling in her belly any credence. It was only nerves, nothing more. She had put away the feelings she’d harbored for Hunter Donovan a long time ago and she had no intentions of hauling them back out now.
Once upon a time, he’d told her she wasn’t good enough to take the Donovan name. Well, she would show him. She would show everyone who’d thought it impossible a Connolly would ever amount to much.
Meredith turned her gaze to the craggy mountains off in the distance. Their panoramic landscape refused to be ignored. It had been too many years since she’d seen the view. Its potency had not lessened since then. If anything, the sun-brightened tips of the mountains looked even more golden against the twilight-streaked sky than she remembered. The wildness of it called to her, penetrating the polish and sophistication Boston had adorned her with.
The wagon jostled to a stop and the driver, a man she didn’t know, hopped down.
“Meredith!”
Bertram Trent’s robust voice cut through the melee of people milling about at the end of the day. He bustled toward her and shooed the driver off, helping her down on his own. He had always struck her as a tangible version of Old St. Nick, and in the seven years she’d been gone time had only solidified the image. Thick white hair with a matching beard framed a round face and apple cheeks. Even his blue eyes sparkled with a merry twinkle that never seemed to dim. She set aside her valise and let him assist her down. Her feet no sooner touched the ground than he enveloped her in a warm embrace.
“Bertram! It is so wonderful to see you.”
“And you, my dear girl.” He pulled away and held her at arms’ length, giving his head a small shake. “As I live and breathe you are a sight for these old eyes. Every bit the vision of loveliness your mama was.”
“Oh, pish.” Meredith smiled at the compliment but shook her head. Vivienne Connolly had been a raven-haired beauty with the warm olive skin of her Irish ancestors. Even illness hadn’t been able to rob her of it. Meredith, on the other hand, was fair-skinned and prone to burning whenever the sun found its way beneath her bonnet. “We both know I favor my father in that regard.”
“I don’t remember your pa being quite so pretty, or dressed in such finery.”
Meredith glanced down at her traveling dress. It had wrinkled somewhat from the trip but had fared better than she expected. Aunt had allowed her a new dress each season once Meredith convinced her it was the best way to advertise their services. Business had picked up afterward, and soon Meredith began designing her own patterns, of which this was one.
“I suppose it’s a far cry from what I wore when I left.”
When she’d left, she’d barely had more than the worn-out clothes on her back, a suitcase full of bad memories and a broken heart. Now she returned a woman of some means, with the knowledge of how to run her own business and succeed in doing so. Never again would she have to rely on the charity of others or worry where her next meal was coming from.