Sandra Steffen - McKenna's Bartered Bride

Chapter One

Jake McKenna felt a vibration beneath the soles of his worn cowboy boots. He lowered the tip of the pitchfork to the floor and held very still, his ears straining, his gaze trained on the patch of McKenna land visible through the wide barn door. The vibration increased. It was either a tornado, a stampede, or...

Aw, hell. He threw down the pitchfork and tore out of the barn. It was a storm, all right. A human cyclone. Sky Buchanan was racing up the lane on his horse, shoulders and head hunkered down, his hat whipping behind him, held to his body only by the cord around his neck.

Swearing under his breath, Jake rushed to the gate and swung it open five seconds before Sky rode through at breakneck speed. “Dammit all, Buchanan!” he growled as Sky pulled to a stop a few feet short of the broad side of the barn. “One of these days I’m not going to get here fast enough and I’ll end up scraping you off that wood with a chisel.”

Skyler Buchanan dismounted neatly, then turned on his heels in one fluid movement. Jake narrowed his eyes and sneered. “You ever decide to turn in your cowboy boots for ballet slippers, you got the turns down pat.”

Sky’s smile grated on Jake’s already frayed nerves. Leading his horse by the reins, Sky said, “You’re trying to pick a fight That means it’s either a day that ends in y, or the reading of your old man’s will didn’t go so well.”

Inside the barn Jake swiped his black Stetson off his head and kept the string of four-letter words running through his head to himself. Cramming his hat back on again, he retrieved the pitchfork and picked up where he’d left off.

“Jake?”

Jake’s reply had a lot in common with a snort.

“What did the will say?”

The barn was quiet except for the creak of leather, the scuffle of hooves and the scrape and rustle of straw.

“Well?” Sky prodded. “Did Isaac leave the ranch to you or didn’t he?”

Jake scooped up another forkful of straw and sent it sailing into one of the stalls. “More or less.”

A horse whinnied; a saddle creaked. Jake knew Sky was watching him, just as he knew his best friend wouldn’t ask any more questions until Jake was ready to answer. Where Sky had patiepce, Jake had purpose. Both would trust the other with his life.

When he’d worked the edge off his temper, Jake stuck the pitchfork into the pile of straw and looped his hands over the top of the handle. “It’s pretty much black-and-white.”

“Then why do you look as if you’re seeing red?”

Jake shrugged, scowled. “Got me. With the exception of the hundred acres that spans Sugar Creek, my father left everything to me.”

“What the hell do you—”

Finally Jake turned to face his friend. “The hundred acres that spans Sugar Creek will be mine. Providing I’m a married man by my next birthday.”

“And if you’re not a married man come July?”

Jake’s eyes darkened. “Then the most fertile soil on McKenna land will go to the O’Gradys.”

Sky rarely used four-letter words. He claimed he rarely needed to. He uttered one now. Jake thought it pretty much said it all. “Should have known the old cowpoke would find a way to run your life from the grave,” Sky insisted.

Jake squeezed his fingers so hard into fists his square fingernails dug into the calluses on his palms. The O‘Gradys owned the biggest spread in a two-hundred-mile radius and never missed an opportunity to remind the McKennas that theirs was second. Jake hated being second. In anything. But he hated being second to the O’Oradys most of all.

Jake looked over his shoulder. “Did you hear something?” he asked.

Sky made a show of listening intently. The ranch hands had all gone into Pierre to raise a little Friday night hell. A horse nickered, and the wind was picking up. The wind was always picking up in South Dakota. With a shake of his head, he primed the hand pump and said, “Are you trying to change the subject?”

Jake grunted.

“Relax. You’ve got some time here. It’s only the first of May. You take everything so seriously.”

“This is serious, dammit. Maybe you could try it yourself for ten seconds.”

“I’m plenty serious. About my horse. About that calf I just helped into the world. And I’m seriously glad Isaac McKenna wasn’t my rather.”

With the grace Skyler Buchanan had been born with and had learned to use to his best advantage years ago, he turned on his heel and headed for the door. Watching him saunter away, Jake called, “Where are you going?”

“Thought I’d mosey on up to the house and bring back some of your old man’s favorite rum While we polish off the bottle, we can come up with a plan.”

“Getting blind drunk isn’t going to make me a happily married man.”

“You didn’t say the will stipulated that you had to be happy. I’ll be right back with that bottle. I’d say you’ve earned it, wouldn’t you?”

Jake strode as far as the door. He could see the big house from here. Isaac McKenna had purchased it and the surrounding land right after he’d gotten married almost forty years ago. He’d added a wing and the porch ten years later, just before Jake’s mother had decided to run away with a man she liked better. Isaac had bought more land, but the house had remained the same as it had been for thirty years. There were no welcome mats by the doors, no flowers by the steps, no flowering bushes, nothing that added warmth or that said home.

It was Jake’s now, the house, the land, the animals. He would have to do something about the stipulation in his father’s will, but not tonight. Tonight, he and Sky would tie one on and try to forget about the rest

He walked around to one side of the barn. Hitching a boot on the lowest rung of the fence, he stared at the land he’d inherited. On the horizon a herd of some of the best cattle in the West moved toward the watering hole just over the hill where they would settle down for the night. The cows whose calves were old enough to wander lowed, their offspring bawling frantically until they were reunited with their mothers. In late summer when the clouds forgot how to rain, the herds would settle on the hundred acres that spanned Sugar Creek. The hundred acres that would belong to the O’Gradys unless Jake found a wife by July.

He hoped Sky got back with that bottle soon.

Swiping bis hat off his head, he let the wind blow through his hair. There were always fences to mend, machinery to fix, crops to tend. Branding was just around the corner. Except for fall, winter and summer, spring was the busiest time of the year out here. How in the hell was he supposed to free up enough time to find a wife?

Even if he had the time, Jasper Gulch had no single women. Or almost none. It wasn’t a new problem for the area. Women had started leaving Jasper Gulch fifty years ago. They’d been leaving in droves the past twenty. No one could blame them. Ranch life just couldn’t compete with the lure of the city and better job prospects. A few years back the town council had taken it upon themselves to advertise for women. Small newspapers had run the story. Larger papers had picked it up. Before long, Jasper Gulch had been dubbed Bachelor Gulch, and busloads of women had flocked here to check out the shy but willing men of Jasper Gulch. Most of those women had taken one look at the meager stores, the dusty roads and the even dustier ranchers and cowboys and had kept right on going. A few had stayed. Most of those had bit the dust in another way and were now married to a few of those former so-called eligible bachelors, the Jasper Gents.

Who was left?

Gravel crunched beneath Sky’s boots. Choosing a section of fence a foot from Jake’s elbow. Sky uncapped the rum and handed Jake a glass. “To Captain Morgan.”