Texas Bride: A Bitter Creek Novel by Johnston Joan

Author:Johnston, Joan [Johnston, Joan]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780345527455
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2012-03-27T05:00:00+00:00

“Oh, no!” Miranda cried. “What happened?”

“He fainted,” Jake’s mother said. “We need to hurry and bandage his foot while he’s out.”

“How do you know it’s not broken?” Miranda asked.

“He wouldn’t be able to rotate his foot or move his toes so freely.”

“That ankle’s pretty badly swollen,” Miranda said uncertainly. “Are you sure?”

“I’ve treated sprains and I’ve set broken bones. This looks like a bad sprain.”

Miranda felt her body relax. “He was so afraid it was broken. I’m glad it’s not.”

“Me, too. It was brave of you to go out in this storm to find him,” she said. “I doubt my son has thanked you, so I will.”

Miranda smiled. “No, he hasn’t, but there’s no need. I thank you for bringing Jake’s cattle home. He’d figured out for himself that the cattle must have strayed and what would happen if his stepfather found them before he did.”

“My husband is … a complicated man.”

So is mine, Miranda thought. She watched closely as Cricket wrapped Jake’s ankle snugly in the gauze Miranda had sent Nick to fetch from the kitchen counter, where she’d seen it that morning.

“What happened to him? Is he dead?” Nick asked as he watched Jake’s mother work.

“He’s resting,” Cricket replied.

Miranda had been so focused on what Cricket was doing, she hadn’t realized that the three boys had come into the parlor. “Where are Slim and the little ones?” she asked.

“Slim took Anna Mae and Harry to his room for a nap,” Nick replied.

Jake’s eyes fluttered open, and he straightened in the chair. He winced when he tried to lift his injured foot.

“Hold on there, cowboy,” Cricket said. “Let me finish.”

Jake shot Miranda a worried glance, and she smiled back at him. “You’re doing fine,” she told him. “Your ankle’s only sprained, not broken.”

“Good,” was all he said.

“Did you get those horses put away in the barn?” Cricket asked one of the twins.

“Yes, ma’am,” he answered.

“How do you tell them apart?” Miranda asked Cricket as she looked from one twin to the other. “They look exactly the same to me.”

Nash grinned.

Noah grinned, too.

“Nash has a wider smile,” Cricket said with a laugh.

“What if they aren’t smiling?” Miranda asked.

“Noah has a scar through his right eyebrow.”

Miranda looked, and sure enough, there it was. A thin white line, right through the arch of the brow.

“Before I learned who was who, I kept a red string tied around Nash’s ankle,” Cricket admitted.

“Once we were old enough, me and Noah switched it so often, Mom still didn’t know who was who,” Nash said.

“Until we got old enough to tell her ourselves,” Noah said.

“There were twin girls at the orphanage where we grew up,” Nick said. “They looked so much alike, they could trade places anytime they liked. Miss Birch found out what they were doing, so she cut one’s hair real short and left the other one’s long, so they couldn’t fool her anymore.”

“I don’t think I like this Miss Birch,” Cricket said.

“I hate her,” Nick said vehemently. “Which is why I cut off the other girl’s hair for her, so Miss Birch couldn’t tell them apart anymore.

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