The Rascal Read Online Free

lager, its yeasty aroma teasing his nose. “I’ve run across a few…difficulties.”
    Thinking of those difficulties, he shot a beleaguered look toward the top floor of his leased space. For the umpteenth time, he wished he’d had the necessary funds to secure the entire building for his own use. Unfortunately, when he’d arrived, his meager savings hadn’t spread that far.
    Because of that, Jack was stuck with a neighboring tenant directly above him. And unless he convinced his fellow leaseholder to surrender the space to him on payments he could afford—now that his saloon was doing moderate business— his plans for expansion would have to wait.
    “You let me know whenever you’re ready to get those boardinghouse rooms started, Murphy,” Marcus Copeland said. The local lumber mill owner had joined McCabe whileJack had been slinging mescal to the cowboy, and now sat with his ledger books spread, as usual, directly in front of him. “I’ll give you the lumber you need to finish those rooms for a good price.”
    “Hey!” the blacksmith protested, elbowing him. “That ain’t what you told me when I wanted to buy supplies for Lillian and Lyman’s new house, out near the general store. You didn’t say a blasted thing about ‘a good price.’”
    “That’s because your sister and her husband can afford to pay full cost,” Copeland pointed out reasonably, his voice tinged with humor. It wasn’t for nothing he was known as the most frugal-minded man in the territory. “They don’t need a good price. But Murphy here…he does, and we both know it.”
    McCabe tilted his head. “Yep. I guess so. On account of the ‘Grace factor,’ I reckon. He surely does.”
    Blandly, he gave Jack a mournful look.
    His supposed pity was a shameless sham—underlain through and through with a born joker’s appreciation for good humor—and Jack knew it. Everyone in town considered his ongoing feud with Grace Crabtree to be a riotous joke.
    Today Jack was having none of it.
    “Quit jawing, the both of you,” he commanded. “Else I might decide to charge you both full price for your liquor from here on out. To make up for the ‘nag factor.’”
    He raised his brows, challenging his friends to disagree.
    Both men chortled, not the least intimidated.
    “You wouldn’t dare.” Lazily, McCabe dropped his flat-brimmed hat to the bar. “You’d lose your two best customers.”
    Copeland merely examined him, a knowing gleam in his eye. “You’ll have to own up to it sooner or later, Murphy. Grace wants something from you, and it’s useless fighting aCrabtree woman when she’s got her mind set on something. I ought to know.” He cast his eyes heavenward, probably thinking of his wife, Molly, a celebrated baker and a Crabtree woman herself. “And Grace is the most set-minded Crabtree of them all.”
    “Amen to that.” McCabe lifted his ale and quaffed.
    Jack frowned, not wanting to discuss the “Grace factor” with them. Or anyone. Grace Crabtree—his aforementioned upstairs neighbor—had proved problematic nearly from his first day in town. He didn’t need her two brothers-in-law, both of them idiotically surrendered to marriage already, to remind him of that. As far as Jack was concerned, their marriages alone proved their lack of appropriate mental faculties.
    Not that he intended to explain as much. Coming out with a phrase like appropriate mental faculties would peg him as a man who was more than he seemed, for certain.
    “It’s not my fault you’re both shackled with wives,” he said instead, deepening his brogue for effect. “Just because you two have to kowtow to females doesn’t mean I should start humoring Grace Crabtree. Now does it?”
    Mouths quirked, his friends exchanged knowing looks.
    “She’ll picket your saloon if you don’t,” Copeland warned.
    “Or lead her ladies’ auxiliary members in an organized protest,” McCabe added cheerfully. “Remember what happened to Nickerson’s