The Rancher Takes A Bride (The Burnett Brides Book 1)

keep the news to herself. Fortunately, with Travis out working the cattle and Eugenia gone to visit a friend, the secret was safe. And soon she would need to leave for town to give her last performance.
    They hadn't discussed her acting last night. She'd only assumed he would want her to give up her position with the troupe. Though she had enjoyed being in the play, it suddenly no longer seemed the important, all-consuming way she wanted to live her life.
    She gazed about the parlor dreamily. She never would have believed it if anyone had told her that Travis was going to ask her to marry him.
    All this time, Travis had accused her of stealing his mother's ring, yet in the end, he had asked her to marry him. Surely he no longer believed she could have taken his mother's jewelry.
    But early this morning, they hadn't discussed the ring, but instead lay there enjoying one another. Not really talking, but expressing with their bodies what their hearts had not said.
    So if she hadn't taken Eugenia's wedding band, then who had? Or could she have lost the ring? Rose thought about searching the house, but if she found the ring, wouldn't it seem convenient and a little suspicious that she had located the ring after Travis had asked her to marry him?
    She felt so anxious, so nervous. The urge to write Travis a note overcame her, and she hurried into the office to search for a blank sheet of paper.
    Rose stopped at Travis's desk. She shuffled through some papers, searching for a blank sheet, when suddenly a bundled group of papers came loose in her hands. She glanced at the name on the page and gasped.
    Written across the top it said: A Report on Rose Severin, by Henry Gates, Pinkerton Agent.
    For a moment she simply stared at the papers in her hand before she sank down into the chair behind Travis's desk. He'd had her investigated! He'd had someone search into her past and find every dirty little detail he could uncover.
    She took a deep breath and flipped the page and began reading about her life. The investigator had really done his work. She read about her mother and father's marriage, her mother's death, and then the life she had lived with her father as a child. How they had traveled from town to town, moving on when the sheriff started pressuring her father to clean up his act.
    How three years ago, when she was eighteen, her father had abandoned her and Isaiah for his new wife, leaving her to find some means of support. What the report didn't say was how she had been forced to put together her own con, the séance, and eventually travel to Fort Worth.
    But the last paragraph of the three-page report was the one that startled her the most. She gasped as she read the lines. George Severin died of heart failure three months after his marriage to the new Mrs. Severin.
    Her father was dead. Had been dead the last three years, while she traveled the Southwest trying to earn enough money to get to New York. She sat staring out the window of Travis's study, stunned at the news that her father was dead. Knowing she was being illogical, but angry just the same that Travis hadn't told her. Yes, she'd told him her father was dead, but she hadn't known the lie she told was really the truth.
    When was Travis going to tell her he had her investigated? Or would he ever have told her?
    A lone tear trickled down her face as she thought about her father and how he had always been searching for that one deal that was going to make him a wealthy man.
    She glanced down at the three handwritten pages and felt the slow burn of anger infuse her body. So, Travis had not trusted or believed her, but had paid some man to dig into her past and find out everything he could, before he'd asked her to marry him.
    Come to think of it, what had Travis brought to this union other than asking her to marry him? Last night, all he'd mentioned was that they should get married. And she'd jumped at the opportunity to spend her days with the man she desired.
    Had he ever said the word love? Or vowed that he cared?
    Nothing. Travis had brought nothing of emotional value. He had merely asked her to marry him.
    Even in the throes of passion, he'd never made any declarations of love or caring. But why would he marry her, if he didn't love her? Was the wedding just another ruse to get her to stay?
    She put her head in her hands as tears trickled slowly down her face. Travis Burnett was a man who would never gush romantic poetry or recite love sonnets. He lived by the