An Old Fashioned Romance

From Divine Deception by Marcia Lynn McClure

“Well, well, well. Looky what we have here.”  The intrusive words echoed somewhat painfully through Fallon’s barely conscious mind as she tried to wake from her deep and contented slumber. “My, oh my. How folks would talk if’n they could see what I’m a seein’,” her uncle’s loathsome voice chuckled.

Fallon felt almost intoxicated with warmth. She was warmer than she had been in a long time. It wasn’t a crackling-fire kind of warmth. It was a snuggled-up-in-a-warm-quilt kind of warmth, and she fought full consciousness, afraid the bitter cold of complete awareness would dispel the comfort of it.

“Wake up, girl! And I’ll give ya credit for being smarter than ya look,” Charles chuckled.

For a moment, Fallon’s eyes resisted her mental commands to open.  Her uncle was crouched down staring into her face with his wicked smile revealing the all too familiar rotting teeth. The man was chuckling low in his throat, the sound of triumph somehow, and she had an aching urge to slap him soundly.

“And you,” he continued, looking past Fallon. “You think just ’cause ya have money and own half of this state, ya can waltz in here and dirty up my niece?”

Fallon looked down, realizing only then that the comfortable warmth enveloping her were large, strong arms—arms shrouded in black; hands covered in black gloves. As she looked upward, she felt the hem of Trader Donavon’s black hood brush against her hair.

“What in the…?” Trader Donavon mumbled as he, too, struggled from a deep sleep. “What’s going on here?” he demanded as he pushed Fallon out of his arms and off his lap. He stood immediately. “What’s the meaning of this?” he shouted as he looked first from Fallon and then to her uncle and back again.

Fallon watched as her Uncle Charles broke into hateful laughter. “The meanin’, sir, is this—either you make an honest woman of my niece and let me stay on this here farm—free of charge, I might add—or I let everyone know what kind of man ya really are! Takin’ advantage of young innocents and the like. Otherwise, I’m afraid the only work left that Fallon will be fit for is over at the saloon in town.”

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