Shotgun Bride Read Online Free Page A

thought things were going to hell between him and Emmeline. Fact was, he had written a letter to the matrimonial people himself, and paid a fee, and he suspected that Jeb had, too, though the sneak probably wouldn’t admit it. Jeb didn’t appear to be worried about landing a wife, come to think of it, and he’d probably enjoy watching Kade roast like a pig at a picnic.
    Kade’s deepest instinct was to turn on one heel and bolt out the back.
    “Hell,” he muttered. He’d been on the road for weeks, looking for Jeb and then making the long journey home, so the old man wouldn’t burst a blood vessel fretting about the little jackass, and he looked and felt about as appealing as an old bear just rousing himself from a long hibernation. He’d have given almost anything right then for some time to marshal his thoughts into some kind of order, but it didn’t look as though he was going to have the luxury.
    When he finally worked up the nerve to walk back into the dining hall, the place was bristling with cowboy talk, the clinking sound of spoons in coffee mugs, and tittering women.
    A moment went by before anyone took notice of his arrival, but a telling silence fell when they did, and he could have sworn every eye in the room was on him. He saw amusement in Rafe’s gaze, along with a certain wry speculation, and Jeb was out-and-out grinning, his chair tipped back and his arms folded. Sister Mandy wouldn’t look at him at all, but her cheeks glowed as if she’d been standing too close to the stove.
    The gaggle of women at the corner table did enough looking for everybody, taking in his unkempt hair, his beard, his grubby clothes and battered, dirt-caked boots. He made himself look right back as a point of pride, but he couldn’t have described a single one of the brides as an individual to save his life—they looked like a flock of fitful birds to him, colorful and beruffled and fixing to go on the peck directly.
    One of the ladies rose from her chair, and then all the others got up, too, as if they were all rigged together somehow, like a team of mules hitched to the same harness.
    Kade swallowed hard.
    The boldest of the brides approached, a brittle smile fixed to her mouth, and Kade called upon all the restraint he possessed not to take a step backward. Try though he might, he couldn’t work up any facial expression at all.
    “Mr. McKettrick,” the woman said, putting out a gloved hand, and the slight shrillness in her voice scraped at the underside of his spine, which brought on a shudder. He prayed Rafe and Jeb hadn’t noticed the response, because they’d rib him until the day he died if they had. “My name is Sue Ellen Carruthers, and I am here to marry you.”
    Kade’s tongue felt like a scared critter, trying to burrow into his throat. “H-howdy,” he choked out.
    Miss Carruthers, he decided, was a forthright type, and probably fertile, which meant she’d do for his purposes, but she was three days of hard riding from pretty. Since he reckoned he’d be spending upward of forty years looking at the woman he took as his wife, from across the table and his side of the bed, he was reluctant to propose.
    Another woman elbowed Sue Ellen to the side and beamed at him. He caught a flash of bright yellow hair and cornflower blue eyes, but not much else. “Marvella Denhome,” she told him, “and I was here before Sue Ellen by a good week.”
    Contentious, he thought. What was it the good book said about living with a contentious woman? Better to die in the desert?
    “Abigail Bergen,” said a third woman. She was nice to look at, and soft-spoken, too, but the mean glint in her eye gave Kade pause. She wanted either a husband or blood vengeance, and it seemed to him that one would do her as well as the other.
    The next three candidates were a shifting blur of textures and colors, and by the time they got through prattling out their introductions, all Kade could think about was heading for the Bloody Basin