Debra Ullrick - Groom Wanted

Mail-Order Matches

It’s a perfect plan—best friends Leah Bowen and Jake Lure will each advertise for mail-order spouses in the papers, and then Jake will help select Leah’s future husband, while Leah picks Jake’s bride-to-be! Surely the ads will find them what they seek: a wife who’ll appreciate Jake’s shy charm and a groom who’ll take Leah away from the Idaho Territory she detests. When the responses to the postings pour in, it seems all Leah’s and Jake’s dreams will soon come true. But the closer they each get to the altar, the less appealing marrying a stranger becomes. Is it too late to turn back—or to turn around and find the happiness they truly seek together, at last?

“We obviously posted ads for a spouse at the same time.”

“Please don’t say anything to my family, Jake. Promise me,” Leah said.

“Okay...but on one condition.” His gunmetal-gray eyes snagged hers.

“What’s that?”

“That you’ll help me pick out a wife.” He held up his own package of letters with a crooked grin.

“Why do you need my help?”

“You’re a great judge of character, and you know me better than anyone else. Do we have ourselves an agreement or not?”

“Agreed.” Leah smiled up at Jake and the dimples on each side of her pink lips winked. How he would love to— Jake stopped his mind from taking him down that well-worn path to nowhere. Soon Leah would be another man’s wife.

“Well, let’s get this over with,” Leah said, her smile looking forced now.

“Have to put it that way?”

“No, no. I just meant...”

Jake placed his fingertips on Leah’s soft lips. “It’s okay—I know what you meant.”

DEBRA ULLRICK

is an award-winning Christian romance author. In addition to multiple full-length novels, her stories have been featured in several novella collections, one of which made the New York Times bestseller list. Debra is happily married to her husband of thirty-eight years and has one daughter. For more than twenty-five years, they lived and worked on cattle ranches in the Colorado Mountains. She now lives in the Colorado flatlands. Debra loves animals, classic cars, mud-bog racing and monster trucks. When she’s not writing, she’s reading, drawing Western art, feeding wild birds and watching Jane Austen movies, COPS, or Castle.

Debra loves hearing from her readers. You can contact her through her website at www.DebraUllrick.com.

Groom Wanted

Debra Ullwick

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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A man’s heart deviseth his way,

but the Lord directeth his steps.

—Proverbs 16:9

To my daughter, Sharmane Wikberg.

Remember, kiddo, when you brought home

those Christian romance books from the library eons ago, and how you had to beg me to read them? Look what happened when I finally did. Who would have ever thought it, huh? Thank you, Sharmy. And thanks for being such a loving daughter. God sure blessed me when He gave me you. I love you, girl.

((MEGA HUGS))

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Epilogue

Dear Reader

Questions for Discussion

Excerpt

Chapter One

Paradise Haven

Idaho Territory, 1886

Nine men had replied to her “Groom Wanted” ad.

Leah Bowen couldn’t believe she’d received so many that quickly. Her heart skipped as she fingered the envelopes that might very well hold her future and her only avenue of escape from the nightmares that plagued her.

“You, too, huh?”

“Twinkling stars above!” Leah gasped and whirled toward the sound of Jake Lure’s deep voice. Her nose came within an inch of jamming into the napped wool shirt covering her friend’s massive chest. Pleasant scents of springtime and sunshine floated from him.

Near the front door of Paradise Haven’s post office Jake stood, looking over her shoulder at the posts in her hand. Most people were intimidated by his massive size, but she wasn’t. Underneath that outdoorsy, muscular exterior was a gentle giant.

“What—what do you mean, ‘you, too’?” Leah glanced at the top envelope with the very noticeable masculine script and tucked them into her reticule. She tossed the end of her purple knit scarf over her shoulder and gathered the edges of the collar of her wool coat closer together.

Jake held up a packet of letters. “Got these in the mail today.”

“Oh? What are they?” she asked with all the innocence she could muster.

“Same thing as that stack you just put in your purse.”

“What? You mean letters?”

“Those envelopes you have aren’t just any ole letters.” One of Jake’s eyebrows rose. “They’re answers to your advertisement.”

Advertisement? She swallowed hard. Did he know she’d placed an ad for a husband? “What are you talking about?” Leah hated playacting, but she had no choice. She refused to offer Jake any information concerning her personal ad. Just because he had mentioned how he wanted to place an advertisement for a wife during one of the many times she and Abby had visited him over the past eleven months didn’t mean she had to confide in him that she, too, had wanted to do that very same thing. So how did he know? Or was he only speculating?

Jake cupped her elbow.

Her gaze flew to the spot where his large calloused hand rested, then back onto his face. “What are you doing?”

“Taking you someplace where we can talk without being overheard.” Even through a whisper, his voice sounded deep.

Their footsteps echoed on the plank-covered boardwalk as he led her away from prying eyes to a more secluded place to protect her reputation, no doubt, for which she was extremely grateful though she still tried to look annoyed. Truth was she didn’t want people getting the wrong idea about the two of them. They were friends and nothing more.

They’d become good friends after he’d slipped on some shale at the top of a hill on his place almost a year ago. He’d tumbled down and hit his head, leaving him with a bleeding gash on his forehead and rendering him unconscious. If Leah’s brother Michael and his wife, Selina, hadn’t found Jake that day, he may have died. Selina’s kindness in doctoring him and making sure he had food and his needs were met changed Jake. He realized how wrong he had been for judging her for her lack of social graces and regretted his heckling. After that, he changed, and he had become the person to everyone else that he had always been to her.

Through it all, Leah had always believed that Jake was a nice man, a good man, even when he was heckling people. Years before, she’d learned that most people who teased others were either jealous or insecure or did it to protect themselves. Leah wasn’t sure just why Jake had. But her friend Dottie Aimsley had once told her that she’d heard the reason Jake acted like that was because when he was growing up he himself had been ridiculed because he had a fear of crowds. Although Leah didn’t know all the particulars of his phobia, hearing that had secured her compassion toward him, and the two had quickly become the best of friends.