Charlene Sands Read Online Free Page A

the seeds. We’ll get the planting done faster and more efficiently.”
    “A seeder?” He cast her a dubious look. He must think her odd, a woman getting excited about the purchase of farm equipment. She expected most women only got their feathers up if their man bought them a shiny new bauble or two.
    He took hold of her hands then, removing her overly large gloves and lifted up her palms to see calluses developing. She was sure it wasn’t a pretty sight. He twisted his lips. “Move aside, Jenna. And show me what to do with this thing.”
    “No, Blue. It’s too soon for you.” Jenna understood a man’s pride, but he was still recovering from his injuries. And it wasn’t as if he hadn’t been helping. He’d insisted on chopping firewood, rakingout the barn and mending fences around the farm.
    “I’m through standing by, watching everybody else around here get to their chores.” He fit his hands into the gloves.
    “You’ve been helping,” she offered in his defense. She couldn’t bear for him to think of himself as useless. He’d done everything his healing body would allow up until this point. It was all anybody could ask.
    He snorted. “Slopping the hogs ain’t real work, Jenna. Now move aside.” His big body nudged her out of the way gently and he took hold of the handles. He shot her a quick look, his eyes beckoning.
    “Just keep the furrows straight as you can. Mac knows what to do. And plow deep enough to make for a good root bed.”
    He nodded then sent his gaze over the unplowed land. “Don’t wait supper for me.”
    Jenna put a hand to his arm. “You come in before sundown, Blue. Nobody’s ever plowed a whole field in one day.” She said this with amusement and his quick easy smile nearly knocked her off her feet.
    Jenna walked away, stepping carefully over the land already tilled. She turned for a moment, watching Blue struggle with the plow until he mastered it. He’d rolled up his sleeves and she noted thick muscles straining as he held the plow firmly.She’d never tire of looking at him, her Blue, not for the next fifty years or so.
    The memories will come back to him, she thought willfully. He was a farmer from Kansas. Surely, he would remember how to farm the land. But he’d been wealthy at one time and probably hadn’t cultivated the soil himself. Then the war came and he fought for the South, only to come home to find his farm destroyed and his home in ashes. Shortly after, he had lost his parents, but he’d stayed on, trying to rebuild, until the day he decided to come to Twin Oaks to marry her. And although Blue still had no memory, he was here at Twin Oaks, recuperating and working the land, just as they both had planned.
    Jenna whistled a gay tune all the way back to the house, glancing at the perfect sky, imagining tall golden fields of newly-grown wheat…with Blue Montgomery standing proudly by her side.
    He sank down onto the mattress, his body a mass of solid aches. Farming wasn’t woman’s work and he wasn’t at all sure it was man’s work, either. The tedious monotony of plowing the land wasn’t mind-enriching labor. He scratched his head, wondering how a man who was supposed to be a farmer could find disdain in creating a healthy crop with nearly his bare hands. He should be rejoicing, shouldn’t he, at the labor he was born and bred to do?
    He lifted his palms up and noted hard calluses where there had been none before. “Blue Montgomery or whoever you are,” he said aloud, “you don’t know a thing about farming.”
    He wasn’t ready for bed. Fact is, every night he’d started reading one of the letters he’d sent to Jenna, not quite making it halfway through the entire contents. He found it hard reading about himself and what he’d been through, wondering if these events had really occurred to him.
    Stretching out on the bed, he gave a little groan. Hell, he was hurting. His body rebelled against stiff joints, sun-drenched skin and torn-up muscles