Sandra Steffen - McKenna's Bartered Bride

She strolled to him, turning his hand so she could see the photograph in the frame. “That’s him. Thomas Callahan. The big lug.”

Jake followed the course of her gaze to the ceiling. Other than a yellow water spot where the roof had leaked at one time or another, there was nothing to see.

She turned her attention to the photograph and so did Jake. “He was twenty when we got married. I was nineteen. His parents had big plans for their only child. I was poor. Trailer trash, they called me. Tom happened to overhear. His mother tried to cover up, but his father came right out and told Tom he was making the mistake of a lifetime. ‘Go ahead and bed her,’ he said. ‘But for God’s sake, don’t marry her.’ Tom told his father he loved me, and if they couldn’t accept that, they no longer had a son. It was the only time I ever heard him raise his voice.”

Jake studied Josie’s face. She was staring at the collar on his shirt, but he doubted it was what she was seeing. Her innermost feelings played across her features. Pride, fatigue, sadness. She’d loved the man in the picture. Jake wondered what it would feel like to be loved like that. Longing stretched over him, until it became all but impossible to fight his growing need to touch her. He almost reached for her hand, and Jake McKenna never reached for anyone.

“How did he die?” he asked quietly.

Her throat convulsed on a swallow, her eyes coming into focus. “We thought he had the flu. It was going around, but then, isn’t it always? Looking back, I should have known. But at the time I just never imagined he might be seriously, gravely ill. He had a headache, and he was weak. When he got worse instead of better, we went to the doctor. By then a week had gone by, and Tom was starting to babble, and it was hard for him to walk. The doctor took one look at him and put him right in the hospital for tests. Tom went into a coma later that night. He had brain cancer. People told us at the time it was a blessing that we hadn’t known, because it was incurable, fast 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.