Fired Up by Mary Connealy

Author:Mary Connealy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC042030, FIC042040, FIC027050, Physicians—Fiction, Texas—Fiction
ISBN: 9781441262776
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2013-08-23T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

Tina Cahill blew into Broken Wheel tired, filthy, and scared. What if Jonas didn’t want her?

Fighting down all her fears, she jumped off the back of the bumpy wagon just as a tumbleweed rolled across the street right in front of her. For days she’d ridden through the most barren wilderness, riding in a full wagon with the couple up on the bench seat mostly ignoring her.

She missed the lush green of Ohio. She missed the only home she’d ever known. She even missed stern Aunt Iphigenia . . . a little.

She missed her church work and even managing her home to Aunt Iphigenia’s exacting standards. The woman had taken cleanliness being next to godliness to the Commandment level.

Then, after all her years of hard work and dedication, she’d been cast out as surely as if she’d been Satan leading a rebellion in heaven. The man Aunt Iphigenia had married was nearly sixty years old, overly fat, and none too fond of bathing. None of that was the problem. It was the loathsome way her brand-new uncle Auggie had looked at her with hungry, wet, pink-as-a-pig eyes.

He liked to touch her when he walked past, lay a hand on her back—low on her back—and brush his body against hers when there was plenty of room to avoid it. The touches had grown bolder, the eyes hungrier. Aunt Iphigenia had noticed and accused Tina of flaunting herself. Then she’d cast her out.

Her aunt’s betrayal, picking the wretched new husband over Tina, was disgusting, but Tina had been only too happy to leave. She’d had a letter from Jonas, so she knew he was here in Broken Wheel, Texas. She’d written him a letter and left before Jonas could get it and tell her not to come—a plan Aunt Iphigenia had wholeheartedly endorsed. Both of them were worried he’d tell her to stay away. Now here she was, unwanted and uninvited, to make her home with her brother, whom she hadn’t seen in years.

At last.

Squaring her shoulders, she turned to instruct the driver and his wife how to best handle her trunks.

Motion drew her attention to a dark-haired man wearing a tidy black vest, walking across the street. She could see him over the backs of the horses, but he only had eyes for the wagon and its eight Missouri mules.

“Tina?”

She turned and saw a man coming down the board-walk toward her. “Jonas?” From the red hair she knew this had to be her big brother. He was nearly ten years older than her, and she hadn’t seen him since she was a child. She wouldn’t have recognized the broad-shouldered man as her scrawny brother if not for his hair.

Aunt Iphigenia hadn’t approved of Jonas back then, and she’d run him off quickly when he’d stop by for a visit. But Tina had always loved him.

Uncertain of her welcome, she managed a wobbly smile. “The red hair is a dead giveaway that you’re Jonas.”

During the war, Jonas had turned to the good Lord and begun writing letters home.

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