McKenna's Bartered Bride

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.”