McKenna's Bartered Bride

Shock ran through her, and she drew back, her eyes finally opening. Jake’s fingers were still tangled in her hair, his lips still wet from her kiss, his eyes clouded with passion. Her heart was hammering wildly, foolishly. “Wh-why did you do that?”

He took his time drawing away, letting his fingers comb through her hair. “There are sparks between us.”

“Spaf—Jake,” she said, feeling guilty. “What are you doing here?”

She’d called him Jake. She hadn’t intended to, but it had just slipped out. After that kiss, she didn’t see how she would be able to call him Mr. McKenna again.

While she was trying to regain her equilibrium, his gaze probed hers, then strayed to her mouth. “I didn’t plan this. The kiss, I mean. I wanted to see you, talk to you. May I come in, Josephine?”

She was feeling a little off-kilter and thought about telling him it was late. She was tired. But then she caught sight of his expression, at his lips that seemed so unaccustomed to smiling and the crease in one lean cheek, and she didn’t have the heart to turn him away. Drawing in a shaky breath, she gestured him inside.

It was very gentlemanly of him to remove his hat, but she thought it was at odds with the man, because there was nothing gentle about Jake McKenna. Not the way he looked, not the way he moved, certainly not the way he’d kissed her. He wasn’t like any other man she’d ever met.

“You wanted to talk to me?” she asked, averting her gaze.

“I find myself in a very precarious situation,” he said quietly.

She took a deep breath and let it all out “Precarious situations are best discussed sitting down.” Moving past him, she led the way to the sofa.

He lowered his frame into a threadbare, but cozy, overstuffed chair she’d picked up for a song when she’d first moved to South Dakota. It looked smaller with him in it. Her entire apartment felt smaller with him in it She tried to figure out why. He was tall, yes, but no seven-footer. His shoulders were broad, yet he was lean, his waist narrow, his arms and legs muscular. Her gaze strayed to his hands. Forget faces or physiques. It was a man’s hands she always paid attention to the most. After all, it was a man’s hands that put out fires, swung a hammer, wielded a rope, stroked a woman’s body.

And Jake McKenna had the most amazing hands. They were work roughened, right down to the tips of his long, slightly crooked fingers. There was strength in those hands. She wondered if there was gentleness, too.

Forget it, she told herself. She didn’t need to know why he made her apartment seem smaller. She had to put an end to this breathlessness, this feeling of wonder. She would hear Jake out, and then she would send him on his way.

“Does this have anything to do with the reading of your father’s will?” she asked.

His chin moved only a fraction of an inch. It was enough to alert her to his surprise.

“What do you know about my father’s will?”

There was no getting around the sharp edge in his voice or the ice in his glare. If Josie were able to see auras, she was sure his would have just changed colors. She slipped out of her shoes and drew her legs up, tucking her feet under her dress. “Rory mentioned a certain stipulation.”

“O’Grady talked to you about this?”

“He mentioned that one of his cowhands happened to hear about it.”

Jake sprang to his feet “Happened to hear it, my-eye. That cowboy might as well have bugged my barn.”

“It’s all right, Jake. Rory swore the other man to silence.”

Jake forced himself to take a calming breath. Rory had found out about that stipulation, and he’d told Josie about it. Jake didn’t know what Rory had up his sleeve, but it was up to Jake to salvage what he could. Since there was no use beating around the bush, he sat back down and laid his cards on the table. Steepling his fingers beneath his chin, he looked at Josie. “Did Rory explain that, in order to keep my land, I must be a married man by July?” He held her gaze for several seconds. When she shook her head he said, “I need a wife, Josie, and I need one soon.”

Josie made herself more comfortable in the corner of her sofa. She thought it was too bad there were so few women in Jasper Gulch. It made things difficult for all the men in the area. It made things especially difficult for a man who’d just admitted that he needed a wife, and soon. Aware of the silence filling the room, she glanced sideways at Jake. He was watching her, waiting in silent expectation.

“I wouldn’t expect to get something for nothing,” he said.

She smiled, closed her eyes, relaxing by degrees. “Of course you wouldn’t, Jake.”

He cleared his throat. “I’m willing to make it worth your while.”

“You’re willing to make it worth my—Are you telling me you want me to marry you?”

He nodded.

“Why me?”

“Who else is there?” Jake’s lips thinned, and he nearly blanched. Damn, he hadn’t intended to let that slip.

She lifted her hair away from her nape, letting the loose tendrils topple down her back once again. There was something about the way. she tipped her head back and closed her eyes, something feminine and appealing and arousing. For a moment he forgot why he was there. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded,” he said quietly.

“Don’t worry, Jake. Acquired a thick skin a long time ago. I heard through the Jasper Gulch grapevine that you paid a little visit to Crystal Galloway. I’m assuming she turned you down?”

It struck him that Josie wasn’t upset by his businesslike proposal. She didn’t even seem to be angry about the woman who was ahead of her on his list. It rankled. A woman, no matter how plain, should expect a man who was proposing to treat her as if she were the only woman in the world.

“Mama,” a small voice called before Jake had answered Josie’s question. “I’m thirsty.”

Josie rose to her feet instantly. “I’ll be right back.”

It was a relief to put a little distance between her and Jake. There was just something about him that left her feeling unsettled. She didn’t know how he did it, but he rattled her. It was more than that kiss. It was...everything. It was Jake.

She made a quick stop in the bathroom for a glass and some water. Slipping into Kelsey’s tiny room, she said, “Here ya go, sweet pea.”

Kelsey barely took a sip from the glass. “What’s that nice Mr. McKenna doing here, Mama?”

Jake McKenna, nice? “He just stopped in to say hello.” Now, to change to subject. “Did you and Savannah eat owl pills?” she asked around a smile. Kelsey was rarely wide-awake this time of night. “Do you want another drink of water?”

Kelsey was so intent upon asking questions, she seemed to have completely forgotten about her ruse to lure Josie into her room. She didn’t even bother shaking her head. Instead, she pushed the glass away and asked, “Do you like him, Mama?”

“I like most everyone,” Josie said, hedging.

Kelsey rolled her eyes expressively. “Do you like Rory butter?”

Josie considered the question. Rory was easier to be with, laugh with, talk with. But easier to like? “Go to sleep now.”

“But Mama, I hafta know.”

Kelsey’s theatrics were amazing. Josie had a feeling she was going to be in big trouble when her daughter hit puberty. “You have to know tonight?” she whispered.

The imp nodded vehemently.

“I like them both, Kelsey, but...”

“Haley says you’ve gotta be in love before I can get a new daddy. Do you think you could love one of them by the last day of school?”

So that was what this was all about. Josie placed the glass of water on the nightstand and smoothed the baby-fine hair away from her daughter’s face. Kelsey had been four years old when Tom had died. Now, two years later, her memories of her father were vague at best In some ways, Josie thought it was a blessing, because her little girl couldn’t miss somebody she couldn’t remember. But then Haley Carson, an older girl Kelsey met at school, had mentioned the annual family fun day that was held the last day of school each year, and how she and her father had won the three-legged race last year. Kelsey had been adamant about finding a new father ever since.

“Couldn’t you just try to love one of them, please?”

It made Josie feel sad, because she couldn’t give her little girl everything she wanted and needed. She tried to tell herself no parent could. “I love you enough for a hundred people, sweet pea”

“I love you, too, Mama.”

Kelsey’s sigh tugged on Josie’s heart strings and made her yearn to be everything to her child. “I’ll go with you on the last day of school.”

The little girl sighed again and quietly closed her eyes. Josie wondered if all mothers felt so inadequate and so full of love at the same time. If only Tom hadn’t died.

But he had, Josie told herself as she returned the glass to the bathroom. She stifled a yawn. Feeling blue, she assured herself she was just tired. She’d received two marriage proposals in one night from two different men, neither of whom so much as pretended to love her. No wonder she felt done in.

Kelsey was happy, most of the time. As long as it was truly what she needed, there wasn’t anything Josie wouldn’t do for her child. But she couldn’t many a man she didn’t love just so Kelsey had two parents to bring to the fun day at school.

Give the man a chance.

She smiled just as she always did when she heard Tom’s voice. Meeting her own gaze in the mirror, she whispered, “Which man, Tom? Rory or Jake?”

Her mind filled only with the sound of silence.

She pushed her hair away from her forehead and did an about-face, grumbling to herself that men who were angels answered questions about as well as husbands who were still human.

“Did you say something?”

Jake’s voice brought her out of her reverie. Pausing in the doorway, she said, “I guess I was talking to myself.”

“Is she okay?”

Josie almost said, “Who?” Luckily she caught herself before she could embarrass herself further. For heaven’s sake, what was wrong with her?

“Kelsey’s fine. She’s just a little wound up after spending the evening with her friend, Savannah Colter.”

Jake glanced from the woman in the photograph he’d been studying to the woman standing across the room. In the picture, Josie was laughing up at a young man who was laughing in return. It was an action shot, slightly out of focus, and had probably been taken with a cheap camera. The playfulness and happiness came through as clear as day. In comparison the woman across the room looked tired and pale.

“Is this your late husband?”

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.

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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