Kit McBride Gets a Wife by Amy Barry

Author:Amy Barry [Barry, Amy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2022-08-23T00:00:00+00:00

Twelve

Maddy was relieved when Kit offered to carry her outside. She was heartily sick of being supine on the floor of the stuffy trading post, next to the sooty stove. Kit noted her restlessness; he seemed to notice everything.

“Would you like to sit on the porch for a bit?” he asked shyly. “You’d have to keep your leg propped up, but at least you can look at something other than our dusty rafters.”

Maddy was more than happy to accept his offer, even though every time she moved, her leg blazed with pain. But she was willing to put up with any amount of pain for the change of scenery. She’d stiffened up something terrible from lying on the floor, and she was sick to death of the rafters, and the floorboards, and the landscape of dust that had collected under the shelving.

Kit McBride apologized when she hissed with pain as he gathered her up. He apologized a lot; he even apologized for apologizing. And he apologized more than ever when she tried to snag a blanket to cover her state of undress.

“Hell, I’m sorry, you ain’t clothed. I forgot.” He helped her cover herself.

“I have another dress in my carpetbag,” Maddy said, feeling naked in her undergarments. She held the rug over the tattered bodice of Willabelle’s plaid dress. “It’s not clean but at least it’s not in streamers.”

“I’ll have Junebug clean it for you first,” he promised. “I should have thought of it, I’m sorry. We’ll get you bathed and in fresh clothes before tonight.” He flushed. “I mean, Junebug can help you. I didn’t mean we . . .” He was turning the color of a ripe tomato. “I was just wary of moving you . . .”

“I wasn’t criticizing,” Maddy hurried to assure him. She wished she could simply put another dress on right now. She’d rather be dirty and clothed than sitting out in her undergarments and a blanket. But she was too embarrassed to push it.

He went off apologizing again, his cheeks shining red above his thick beard. “I’ll get it sorted.”

He was such a contradiction. Burly, big and about as masculine as a man could be, but also gentle, shy and courteous. Maddy had never met a man like him. Look at the way he carried her, as though she were as light and fragile as a brittle autumn leaf, careful of her leg as he eased them through the doorway and into a day so bright that it made Maddy squint. His arm was like a beam under her, solid and sure.

He smelled of woodsmoke and sunshine and alpine air. It was a fresh smell. Good. She could see the pulse beating fast in the hollow of his throat as he lowered her into the wooden rocking chair on the porch.

Maddy gritted her teeth against the pain as he pulled a stool over and lifted her foot onto it. She kept tight hold of the blanket, painfully aware that she was only in her bloomers from the waist down.

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