Sandra Steffen - McKenna's Bartered Bride

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, Buck and Slappy shook their heads from their positions several feet away.

“I kissed her. There. Are you satisfied?”

“The question is,” Sky said, “are you?”

Buck, Slappy and Billy all raised their eyebrows in silent expectation. Jake recalled the way Josie’s voice had risen when she’d told him she wouldn’t spend the day with him if he were the last man on earth. That hadn’t been particularly satisfying. With a scowl hot enough to scorch the rich prairie grass, he turned on his heel.

“Where are you going?” Sky called to his back.

“To Boomer’s to get that lumber. In case you haven’t noticed, we have fences to mend.”

Jake was too far away to hear Sky’s reply, but in his head, a voice whispered, There’s more than one kind of fences in need of mending today, my friend.

That voice. It was driving Jake crazy. What did it mean friend? He’d never considered his conscience his friend.

Cussing under his breath, he climbed into his truck and sped down the lane.

“How long before we get there, Mama?”

Hoping Kelsey didn’t notice how tightly her mother was clutching the steering wheel, Josie answered in the middle of the invocations and supplications she’d been reciting to herself since she’d first noticed the engine light come on a couple of miles back. “Ten more miles, sweet pea, and we’ll be home.”

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