Читать книгу McKenna's Bartered Bride - Sandra Steffen, Sandra Steffen - Страница 10

Chapter Two

Jake stormed past Josie so quickly the hem of her dress ruffled in his wake.

“Won’t you come in, Mr. McKenna?”

He got as far as the middle of her living room before he swung around and glared at her. At least her sarcasm hadn’t been wasted on him. She reached for the doorknob to close the door, glancing down the stairs at the last minute. Rory was looking up at her, a big old smile on his friendly face. Josie couldn’t help smiling right back. That smile slipped a full two notches when she turned her attention back to the angry man in her living room.

She didn’t have a lot of experience dealing with angry men. Her father had died when she was small, and Tom had had an easygoing, pleasant disposition. She folded her arms and stood as tall as her five-foot, three-inch frame would allow. “Would you like to sit down, Mr. McKenna?”

“I asked you to call me Jake.”

Josie met his stare head-on. “You told me to call you Jake.”

His eyebrows rose slightly, then lowered, a muscle working in his jaw. There was inherent determination in the set of his chin, and more than a hint of impatience everywhere else. As one second followed another, his expression changed in the subtlest of ways. He didn’t smile, exactly, but he unclenched his teeth and removed his hat.

“A friend of mine keeps telling me that my people skills need a little work.”

Josie tried to square her shoulders against his allure. It worked, for about five seconds, and then she had the most amazing urge to grin. She didn’t, of course. She’d read somewhere that loss and pain and suffering built character. At least it had been good for something.

“Would you mind telling me what Rory O’Grady was doing here, Josephine?”

His use of her given name was nearly her undoing. “I might, if you can show me what it has to do with you.”

Jake considered several replies, discarding them one after the other. For the first time since setting foot inside the apartment, he took note of his surroundings. Green curtains, the kind that never wore out, hung at the windows. The couch was threadbare, the pictures on the wall were cheap prints. Even the afghan folded over the back of the couch looked as if it had seen better days. The same could have been said for Josie’s dress. Shy, plain Josie Callahan. That was how people described her. She was quiet, he decided, not shy. And it was amazing how that little flare of temper transformed her common face into something so uncommon.

He placed his hat on the table and settled his hands on his hips. If his plan had a snowball’s chance in hell, he was going to have to make amends. It was something the McKennas had never been very good at. “Maybe it isn’t any of my business, but Rory O’Grady is a noted wonanizer, and you wouldn’t be the first woman he took for a ride.”

“I’m a grown-up,” she said, head held high. “Besides, something tells me I’m the first woman he’s asked to marry him.”

Jake blinked as if she’d flung ice water in his face. Outwardly he remained calm. Inside, his stomach roiled. Suddenly the noise he’d thought he’d heard Friday night and the fact that the drifter he’d hired last week hadn’t shown up for work on Saturday and was now working for O‘Grady made sense. The cowhand must have been eavesdropping and had run straight to O’Grady with his information. Damn. Jake had intended to ease into this, maybe take Josie out a few times, get to know her and vice versa before springing his marriage proposal on her. Leave it to that stinking O’Grady to beat him to it.

He hadn’t been aware that he’d paced to the window until he caught sight of his reflection in the glass. “Did you say yes?”

“I don’t even know him.”

He drew in a deep breath and forbade himself to appear too relieved. There wasn’t much he could do about the smug feeling of satisfaction settling in where his agitation had been. He turned slowly and said, “Of course you don’t.”

Josie regarded Jake quizzically for a moment. His voice had been calm, his gaze steady, but his smile made her suspicious. He wasn’t a man prone to smiling. In a strange way, she felt honored to be on the receiving end of such a rare occurrence. It forced her to take a closer look at him. On the outside he was all planes and angles and five o’clock shadow, but there was more to him than appearances. Underneath, he was a man. Not just any man, but a lonely one.

That got to her, because Josie Callahan was on a first-name basis with loneliness. However, it wasn’t loneliness that had her eyelids lowering, her breath catching in the back of her throat, and something she barely recognized shifting low in her belly. She bit her lip and tried to avert her gaze. Strangely, she couldn’t move.

“Would you have dinner with me tomorrow, Josephine?”

Nobody, but nobody, called her Josephine. She’d always hated her full name. And yet when he said it, it sounded sensual, feminine, alluring. “Dinner?” she heard herself asking.

“Yes. You do like to eat, don’t you?”

Her gaze caught on his mouth, and she found it wasn’t easy to speak. “I’ve already made plans to have dinner with Rory tomorrow night.”

The room, all at once, was very quiet.

Jake took a very large, very deliberate step toward her. “I thought you said you didn’t agree to marry him.”

“I said I don’t even know him. I didn’t say I wouldn’t have dinner with him.”

Jake’s face hardened, and suddenly Josie was glad she’d made other plans. Oh, she had a feeling he was right about Rory O’Grady. The man was smooth and attractive and just cocky enough to be a bit of a rogue. She wasn’t worried about handling him. Handling Jake McKenna would have been another story.

“You’re seeing O’Grady now, is that it?”

“Does that bother you?”

Bother him? He’d passed bothered the instant he’d met O’Grady on the stairs. Hell, Jake was well on his way to full-scale frustration.

“Now why on earth would that bother me?” He reached the table in three strides, cramming his hat on his head while he headed for the door. “Like you said, you’re a grown woman.”

And O’Grady was a grown man. Jake swore under his breath. At this rate, Rory was going to end up with Jake’s hundred acres and one of the few single women left in Jasper Gulch. Anger crashed through Jake, straight as a shot of whisky right out of the bottle. He supposed he could put up a fight, but he’d be damned if he would be second.

Josie watched him go, flinching when the door closed just short of a slam. Whew. She was lucky to have escaped without having her ears singed. She locked the door, then stood leaning against it, thinking. Jake McKenna was a very formidable, intimidating man. His face was too hard, and he smiled too little.

And he’d left without saying goodbye.

The crowd at the Crazy Horse Saloon was typical for a Tuesday night. It consisted of a dozen men who moved slow, drank slow, and were slowly driving Jake nuts. Their outlook was gloomy, their small talk annoying. Which was why he normally preferred to drink alone. He might have done that, too, if Sky hadn’t given him a lecture about the dangers of that kind of drinking and that kind of thinking

Sky Buchanan would make a good old woman. Unfortunately, or was it fortunately, Jake wondered, staring into his untouched beer, Sky was also the best cowhand he’d ever had, not to mention the closest thing to a brother Jake had had in a long, long time.

Jake had listened to Sky. As a result he’d wound up at a table for one in the Crazy Horse Saloon, nursing a beer and trying not to pay attention to the only topic of conversation the local boys seemed interested in. Josie Callahan and Rory O’Grady.

“I hear tell Rory sweet-talked her into having dinner with him in Pierre.”

“I know. And she agreed. Shoot. I shouldn’t have waited so long.”

“That Rory sure has a way with women.”

“That’s true, but I can’t quite picture him and Josie, eh, you know what I mean.”

Jake tipped his head back and let the beer drizzle down his throat, trying not to listen.

“You holler when you’re ready for another, okay sugar?” DoraLee Brown asked the instant he lowered the half-empty bottle to the table. He nodded, and she winked. Jake felt a little better. Leave it to DoraLee to know what he needed.

He’d always liked DoraLee. All the men in Jasper Gulch did. Most of them had had a crush on her at one time or another. Forget the fact that she was twenty years older than half the men in the room. There was just something about a voluptuous, bleached blonde serving up beer and whisky with a smile that instilled romance in the hearts of men of all ages. A couple of years back, one of those men, Boomer Brown, had finally talked her into romancing him. Boomer and DoraLee had eloped soon after, which was good for Boomer, and DoraLee had never looked happier. Now there was one less single woman in town.

“I don’t know,” Forest Wilkie complained from a table up front “Josie doesn’t seem like Rory’s type to me.”

Great. They hadn’t gone on to another topic.

“Every female is Rory’s type.”

DoraLee clucked her tongue. “Can’t you boys think about anything else?”

Yes, Jake thought, reaching for the ice-cold bottle of beer in front of him. That DoraLee was all right.

“What else is there?” Neil Anderson grumbled.

A few other men mumbled in agreement, and Forest continued in the same vein. “It’s just that Rory and Josie are complete opposites. I mean, nobody was surprised when our very own Melody McCully married Clayt Carson. ’Cepting maybe Clayt. And do you know why? Because they’re two peas in a pod.”

“Sometimes opposites attract,” Cletus McCully, Melody’s grandfather said, his thumbs hooked around his navy blue suspenders.

“That’s true,” Forest agreed. “Look at Lisa and Wyatt. He’s one of the leaders of our fine community, and he up and married a girl who had a reputation.”

“A reputation Lisa didn’t earn,” DoraLee admonished.

“Yes,” Forest said, “but Rory’s earned his. That man’s a hound dog if there ever was one.”

“Anybody hear a weather report lately?” Jake asked.

Forest looked at him in an abstract, absent sort of way. “There’s a chance of rain all week. The point I’m tryin’ to make is this.”

Jake scowled into his beer. Nobody took longer to make a point than Forest Wilkie.

“I can’t see Rory settling down with sweet, shy Josie Callahan. He’s sown some pretty wild oats, and—”

“He’s probably sowing a few more tonight,” Neil cut in.

Jake rose to his feet so fast his chair shot out behind him. He was aware of the gazes following him as he dropped a few bills on the counter and headed for the door. He’d reached the sidewalk out front when one of the other Anderson brothers’ voices carried through the open door.

“Guess we scraped a raw nerve.”

“It ain’t hard to do. Jake’s got more raw nerves than an open wound.”

Jake scowled as he opened the door on his truck. Hiking one boot on the dusty running board, he happened to glance up at the window over the dime store next door. The upstairs apartment was dark. Must be Rory and Josie weren’t back yet. Unless they were back and hadn’t bothered turning on the lights.

He hauled himself into his seat, slammed the door and started the engine. The patch of rubber he laid squealing away from the curb didn’t curtain his frustration in the least. He rounded the corner, opened his window and cranked up the volume on the radio. The village limit sign was up ahead. Beyond it stretched miles and miles of empty highway. He pressed his foot to the accelerator and headed for the open road where he could drive until he’d taken the edge off his agitation. He figured a hundred miles might do it.

The wind was warm, the music was loud, his truck was running like a well-tuned machine. Ah. This was more like it. Those rough edges were already starting to dissolve.

His mind wandered to the ranch, the herd, his horse, the conversation he’d overheard in the Crazy Horse. That man’s a hound dog if there ever was one. Jake imagined O’Grady putting the moves on Josie. Rory had always been a smooth talker. He’d been known to brag that he could get a woman out of her clothes in fifteen seconds or less. Jake imagined Rory trying to get Josie out of hers. He slammed on the brakes and made a U-turn before he could wipe the image from his brain.

He killed the radio and drove back into town in silence, his agitation mom prickly than ever. The first thing he noticed when he pulled into the alley that ran behind the buildings on the east side of Main Street was the shiny red truck parked near Josie’s back stairs. The second thing he noticed was the light in the window overlooking the alley. Had they just gotten back? Or had they just turned on the light?

Jake pulled into the shadows behind the Crazy Horse Saloon. Strumming his fingers on the steering wheel, he told himself he was only there to make sure O’Grady brought Josie home safe and sound.

He turned off the engine and heaved a deep sigh. He was no better at lying to himself than he was at lying to anybody else.

He and Rory had always been rivals. Jake didn’t know how it had started, but he distinctly remembered the day it had come to a head. He and Rory had both been twelve. They’d buried Jake’s brother a few weeks earlier, and Jake was feeling surly. Mrs. Fergusson had just announced that parents’ night was coming up. Rory had leaned over and whispered, “Guess your mother won’t wanna leave her rich boyfriend down in Texas to come. My father says a woman who takes money for sex is a whore whether she’s on a street corner or in a penthouse.”

Jake had gotten a week’s detention for breaking Rory’s nose. Neither of them had ever apologized, and they’d never been friends since.

Rory O‘Grady had always been cocky and arrogant and conceited. But he wasn’t an ax murderer or a rapist. The O’Gradys were braggarts, not bad people, annoying, but not evil. Jake peered at the lit window, uncomfortable, because that meant he couldn’t pretend that he was hiding in the shadows out of some noble responsibility to make sure Josie was safe. He couldn’t even blame it on his aversion to coming in second. Okay, part of it might have been jealousy. Most of it was Josie. That was where it got complicated. He hadn’t been able to get her out of his head ever since he’d heard her laugh. For crying out loud, he’d found himself saying her name every time he thought about those hundred acres over by Sugar Creek. It was almost as if someone was tampering with his thoughts.

Catching a movement out of the corner of his eye, he turned his head just as Rory ambled down the steps. He was whistling, but his steps didn’t appear any more jaunty than usual. Jake took that as a good sign.

While Rory got in his truck and drove away, Jake tried to decide what to do. There wouldn’t be any harm in sauntering on up to her place and saying hello. Jake peered around. The voice had been in his head, but it hadn’t sounded like his conscience. It was the damnedest thing. But it wasn’t a bad idea.

Maybe he and Josie could talk awhile. Maybe she would laugh again.

He eased out of the truck, looked all around and set off for the stairs. His tread was light, and a pleasant breeze wafted through his shirt as he raised his fist and knocked softly on the glass.

Josie was smiling when she opened the door. He could hardly blame her smile for slipping away. His arrival was a surprise.

“Evening, Josephine.”

“Jake!”

He noticed how nice she looked in her light green dress. “Nice night,” he said.

“Yes, I guess it is.” Her eyes were shining and her lips formed another smile, this one for him. It was amazing, the way she made smiling look so easy. She appeared to have had a good time with Rory. She didn’t, however, appear to have been kissed. It was a shame, too, because she had such a kissable mouth.

He would never know what made him swoop down, covering her mouth with his. Her lips parted on a gasp. He brought his hand to her face, threading his fingers through her hair. His mouth moved over hers even as he tipped her head back, deepening the kiss, her surprise slowly turning into pleasure. A soft groan sounded in her throat, and her lips opened beneath his. Lord, she tasted sweet, her lips moist and warm and giving.

Her fingertips fluttered to the back of his hand, brushing his knuckles. Her hand was small, her touch soft, her kiss so heady it was as if something that had been tightly coiled deep inside him was starting to unravel. Ah, Jake thought. He’d been too long without a woman.

Josie knew she should open her eyes, but she lacked the strength. All she could do was strain toward Jake’s warmth. One second his kiss was as tender and light as the summer breeze. The next it was deep and searing, lingering, savoring, devouring. She’d been kissed a thousand times, but she’d never been kissed quite like this.

Tom’s mouth had always become softer as he’d kissed her. There was nothing soft in this kiss. It was possessive, demanding, the tiniest bit savage. It made her feel naughty, and nice, and young, and free. And very, very single.

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.