McKenna's Bartered Bride

Sky looked relieved. “There is one other single woman.”

“Who?” Jake downed another good portion of the spiced rum in his glass.

“Josie Callahan.”

“Jo—” Jake sputtered, choked and sputtered some more.

“Well looky there. You’re already out of breath just hearing her name.”

Jake wheezed. He coughed. “Josephine Callahan? That’s the best you can do?”

“What’s wrong with Josie Callahan?”

“She’s as shy as a church mouse and about as appealing. Besides, she’s been in Jasper Gulch for more than a year. If she wanted to be married, she would be by now.”

“Do you have a better idea?”

Jake thought about the pale little redhead who would sooner study her shoe than look at him. “Yeah,” he said, shoving his glass toward Sky. “As a matter of fact I do. Fill ’er up.”

Josie Callahan, indeed.

“Please let there be a mistake. Please.” Josie Callahan added the column of numbers in her ledger a second time. A third time. Figuring had always been her strong suit, and today was no exception. There was no mistake. Her income didn’t add up to her expenses. It was as plain as the freckles on her nose.

Shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot.

She squeezed the pencil and tried not to panic. There wasn’t going to be enough money to buy much food this month, let alone enough money to pay her rent and the rest of her bills. Josie could have gone hungry, but her little girl needed to eat. Kelsey also needed a roof over her head and security, something Josie had strived to give her daughter since she’d laid big, robust Tom Callahan to rest two years ago.

Think, Josie, think.

She was good at adding and subtracting. Planning was something else again. Tom used to tell her she planned with her heart, not her mind. That’s what had landed her at the altar when she was barely nineteen. It had brought her to this quaint little town in South Dakota a year ago, too.

She wasn’t sorry about either of those things. No sir, she wasn’t. Marrying Tom had been the best thing she’d ever done, unless she counted having Kelsey nine months to the day later. And moving to Jasper Gulch hadn’t been a mistake. It couldn’t have been.

“Isn’t that right, Tom?” she whispered.

That’s right, Josie.

She smiled the whole time she was wrapping up the loaves of homemade bread she’d baked earlier. She just couldn’t help it, Unlike other widows who grew sad because they couldn’t remember the sound of their husbands’ voices, Josie knew exactly how Tom’s voice sounded. She heard it all the time. Sometimes he only mumbled a word or two, but just the other day he’d gone on and on about how it was time for her to find another husband. He’d even told her he was going to help. She’d rolled her eyes toward the ceiling and told him she would prefer it if he would help her choose the winning lottery numbers. His laughter had carried to her ears all the way from heaven.

She was still smiling when she set the cellophane-wrapped loaves of bread in the window. Oh, she wasn’t sure it was possible for a man to help a woman find a new husband, especially from the other side. She didn’t want another husband, anyway. But darned if she hadn’t been watching the door to her little shop on Main Street more than usual these past two days.

Several people had stopped in. Unfortunately it seemed that most of the fine folks in Jasper Gulch only wandered into the combination dime store, bakery and flower shop to hear the floor creak. If only she could come up with a way to charge for that, she wouldn’t be in so much trouble right now. She’d waited on the fine folks, listened to the town gossip and tried not to worry about the future. She had to admit she’d rather enjoyed trying to figure out who Tom might pick out for her. Some of the people she’d waited on had been men. A few were even single men. But so far, not one of them was anybody she would want to marry—not that she wanted to marry anybody ever again.

The bell over the door jingled, and a broad-shouldered, muscularly built man paused just inside the door. Josie swallowed and quickly averted her gaze. She especially wouldn’t want to marry him.

Jake McKenna. His name was as hard as the rest of him; his eyes were dark brown, his hair darker still. Although he wore it a little longer than the other men in the area, it did nothing to soften his angular face. It did nothing to alleviate the nerves that crawled up her spine every time she came face-to-face with him, either.

“Afrernoon,” he said, tugging once on the brim of his black Stetson.

“Hello. Can I—” She cleared her throat quietly. “That is, can I help you?” she asked, sliding her accounting underneath the counter.

“As a matter of fact, I’m hoping you can.”

She didn’t know what made her more nervous: his answer or the fact that he was staring at her in a very deliberate, very assessing sort of way.

“What would you like?” she asked, striving for a cheery tone. “Something baked? A bouquet of flowers? Or something from the five-and-dime end of the store?”

What did he want? Jake thought, glancing around. Now there was a question. Stalling, he peered at the glass-fronted cooler where a few scraggly bouquets of flowers sat in glass pitchers. Next he cast a glance at the bread in the window, and finally at a bin at the end of the counter containing kites and rubber balls.

“Mr. McKenna?”

He eased closer and was about to try on the smile he’d been practicing when a young voice called, “I’m all done with my painting, Mama, what can I...”

A little scrap of a girl slipped around a curtain separating the back room from the rest of the store, her question trailing away the instant she noticed Jake. “Hello,” she said, smiling sweetly.

The girl looked about five or six. She wasn’t pretty, exactly, but she was female all the way down to the holes in her shabby tennis shoes.

“Mama,” she said without taking her eyes off Jake. “I have a joke.”

“I have a customer, sweet pea.”

The little girl all but batted her eyelashes. Jake knew women who could have taken lessons. One of them was in this very room.

“Wanna hear my joke, mister?”

Jake shrugged, and the little femme fatale sashayed closer. “What’s Irish and stays out all summer?”

“Kelsey, honey,” Josie admonished gently. “I don’t think Mr. McKenna has time for jokes.”

“Do you have time?” Kelsey asked.

“How long is your joke?” he asked.

“Not long.”

“Okay. What’s Irish and stays out all summer?”

“Patti O’Furniture.”

Kelsey raised her eyebrows in silent expectation. Jake felt a strange compulsion to laugh. He would have, too, if a deep, sultry chuckle hadn’t drawn his attention. Josie was bent at the waist, her face angled down toward her daughter, a shock of unruly red hair skimming her cheek. He’d thought she was shy and plain. Her laughter was neither of those things. It was uninhibited, and it filled the quiet store like a song, undiluted, marvelous, catching. A woman who could laugh like that could probably curl a man’s toes in bed.

He felt a tightening in his throat and a chugging in his chest Neither were particularly pleasurable sensations, but the strumming, thickening surge taking place slightly lower felt pretty damn good, so good in fact that he took a second look at Josephine Callahan. He still thought she was on the plain side, but now he wondered if it was the result of a lack of adornment. She wore no makeup, no jewelry, nothing that might call attention to the features of the woman inside the loose-fitting, faded dress. Her eyes were green and pretty enough, he decided, her hair a shade of red he’d never seen before. It was unusual, yes, but he’d be willing to stake his ranch that it was natural.

The ranch. That was why he was here. That, and the harebrained idea Sky had come up with to keep all of it in one piece. Suddenly it didn’t seem like such a harebrained idea after all.

Josie wasn’t sure why she was laughing. The joke had been silly, and yet it had struck her funny bone. Kelsey thought so, too, and was giggling for all she was worth. Her brown eyes were crinkled, her shoulders hunched forward, her head tipped back. Why, it was as if she believed the change in the atmosphere was all her doing.

The change in atmosphere? Josie straightened. The atmosphere in the tiny store had changed. She raised her eyes to Jaloe’s and caught him looking. She averted her gaze hurriedly, but it seemed her traitorous eyes had minds of their own. She found herself staring up at him. She swallowed and had to force herself not to take a backward step. He was looking at her as only a man could look at a woman. And she was responding to that look.