McKenna's Bartered Bride. Sandra Steffen
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growing and inoperable. At least Tom never had to deal with knowing he was going to die. But he never made amends with his parents, either. He died two days later. He was twenty-five.”
Her voice had dipped so low Jake could practically feel it brushing across the toes of his boots. Her husband had been young. Too young to die. She’d been young, too. She’d already had her fill of bad luck and bad news, of heartache and difficult decisions. No wonder she hadn’t jumped at the chance to many him. No matter how badly he needed to find a wife, she would be better off without his problems.
He took a backward step. “It’s time I was going.” He didn’t wait for her to say anything. Retrieving his hat on his way past the table, he crammed it on his head, opened the door, and walked through.
“What will you do?” she asked.
He was halfway down the stairs when he glanced up at her, longing stretching over him again. “Do?” he asked.
“About your land.”
He gave himself a mental shake and a mental kick. He really had been too long without a woman. “I honestly don’t know. But it’s not your concern.”
“I, er, that is, I’ve been wanting to see the countryside. I hear the pasqueflower is in bloom.”
They stood watching each other, neither speaking. Jake hadn’t noticed any flowers in bloom. But then, he rarely did. He knew a hint when he heard one, though. If he hadn’t seen the photograph of Josie and her husband, he would have seized the opportunity she was offering him. But he’d seen the love shining in her eyes for her dead husband, heard it in her voice.
He had to get out of there.
“If you leak that to the Jasper Gulch grapevine,” he said, “there’ll be fifty single men who are willing to show you the countryside lining up at your doorstep in no time at all. You’ll have to let me know how it turns out. Good night, Josephine.”
“I...you...” Her voice trailed away, only to resume with renewed vehemence. “Why, of all the nerve! I’ll have you know I’m not a charity case. I don’t want fifty men lining up on my doorstep, and I wouldn’t spend the day with you, Jake McKenna, if you were the last man on earth.”
It occurred to him as he stared at the color on her cheeks and the anger in her eyes, that she hadn’t answered his question regarding his marriage proposal. All in all he thought the loud slam of the door was a pretty good indication that the conversation had ended.
That, he thought to himself as he made his way to his truck, was why he didn’t make a habit of being kind. Chivalry was dead, they said. There was a good reason for that. A very good reason, indeed.
Chapter Three
“You went and made her mad?” Slappy Purvis griped. “Why on earth would you go and do a fool thing like that?”
“Yeah, Jake,” Buck Matthews grumbled around the cigarette he’d just lit. “I could’a given you a few pointers. All you had to do was ask.”
Teeth clenched, Jake surveyed a section of fence the herd had taken out the night before and did his best to ignore his hired hands. They didn’t seem to notice.
Slappy was close to sixty, but Buck and Billy were both in their early twenties. All three were single, got along better with horses than with people and had manners that needed work. If they had given him advice, Jake would have been hard-pressed to take it
Buck scratched at his three-day beard. “The moon was full last night It would’a been easy for a coyote or a wolf to see. Could be that’s what spooked the heid. Still, I always figured a full moon was a good time to kiss a gal, not make her mad.”
“Me, too,” Billy Schmidt, the youngest of the hired hands declared. “Kissin” em is a lot more fun than fightin’ with ’em.”
“Maybe Jake here don’t see it that way,” Slappy grumbled. “Either that or he kissed her first and made her mad second.”
Three pairs of eyes were suddenly on Jake. “Did you?” Billy asked. “Did you kiss her first?”
Jake clenched his teeth a little tighter. Somebody from the Crazy Horse had seen him leaving Josie’s place last night, but as far as he knew, his ranch hands weren’t aware of the stipulation in his father’s will. Which meant that their curiosity was coming from a male perspective, not worry about McKenna land.
Holding a board in place with his shoulder, he eyed his men. “Were you boys planning to earn your pay today?”
Slappy let out a snort that rivaled his horse’s. “We earn our pay every day. Oh, oh. You’re gettin’ that look on your face. You know, the one old Isaac wore most of the time. Now, before you go gettin’ all riled, I know how much you balk at the idea that you’re anything like your old man. If you ain’t careful, you’re gonna end up just like him. I’m afraid it takes a woman to bring out the best in most men. Which is why me and the boys are so interested in knowin’ what was all said betweenst you and the widow Callahan.”
Jake wrapped new wire around the board he’d replaced, but he didn’t reply. His expression must have been telling, because Billy grinned. “I knew it. He kissed her. Hey, Sky, get over here. Jake’s gonna tell us how he kissed Josie Callahan.”
Sky dropped an armful of lumber before sauntering toward them. “Come on boys,” he said, his lope easy, his expression friendly. “Leave the boss alone and get to work.”
That, Jake thought, as Buck, Slappy and Billy tramped over to a nearby section of fence, sputtering all the while, was why Skyler Buchanan was his right-hand man. The two of them went back a long way. Sky might have taken chances Jake didn’t approve of, and he offered advice when Jake didn’t want any, but he never so much as implied that Jake was anything like his old man. Jake was nothing like his mother, either. He was thankful for small favors. Nadine McKenna had left Isaac and her only two sons for a man who’d made it big in the oil fields down in Texas. She’d sent presents at Christmas and had visited him and his brother a few times at first The last time she’d come home had been after Cole had died. Her tears had seemed real enough, but Jake hadn’t been fooled.
She’d begged him not to hate her. Jake didn’t hate her. He wasn’t sure if he’d loved her by then, though. She was his mother. She was supposed to love him. She sure as hell wasn’t supposed to bustle right back to her rich Texan and leave her only surviving son with a man like Isaac McKenna. A man who pushed and pushed for the best and who never gave credit where credit was due. A man who didn’t like many people, not even his second son. Jake had tried at first After a while he’d figured out that it didn’t matter how hard he tried. He would never be able to take the place of Isaac’s firstborn.
Jake had never blamed Isaac for loving Cole. Jake had loved his older brother, too. The thing he remembered the most about his mother’s leaving was how quiet the house was after she was gone. It was nothing compared to how quiet it got after Cole died. Looking back, Jake wondered how he’d survived the rest of his childhood. The days had been lifeless and silent, the nights worse. And then one afternoon, the summer he turned seventeen, Skyler Buchanan drove up the driveway in a noisy, rusty pickup truck. He needed work, he’d said, and a roof over his head. Isaac had hired him on the spot, and the ranch hadn’t been quiet since.
“I talked to Boomer Brown a little while ago,” Jake told Sky. “He says he has some lumber he can spare. How’s the fence look down that way?”
Sky moved a blade of prairie grass from one side of his mouth to the other. “Not as bad as this section, but it’s still gonna have to be reinforced. So, was she a good kisser?”
Jake shot Sky a silencing look. Sky’s grin broadened. “Well?”
“I suppose.”
“If you tried really hard, McKenna, you might be able to work your way up to vague. I suppose doesn’t tell us a whole helluva lot, does it, boys?”
Billy,