The 12 Brides of Summer Collection by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-63409-030-8
Publisher: Barbour Publishing, Inc.
Published: 2015-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

The Lumberjack’s Bride

by Pam Hillman

Chapter 1

The piney woods along Sipsey Creek, Mississippi, June 1889

Lucy Denson wove her way among the towering pines, her attention focused on the steady buzz of a crosscut saw up ahead.

She hefted the basket, filled with lunch for the lumberjacks, and huffed out a breath, blowing a wispy strand of hair off her face. Why Papa had insisted on returning to Mississippi was beyond her. Of course when her cousin Jack’s logging business had taken off and he’d asked for help, Papa had felt obliged to leave Chicago and use his bookkeeping skills to manage the books for Jack and his partner. She wrinkled her brow as the tip of her boot scattered the remains of a rotten log and black beetles scampered out. Seemed like Jack could have found someone else to keep the books.

His own sister, Annabelle, had been a schoolteacher. She was perfectly capable of tallying a column of numbers. But no, tradition dictated the books had to be managed by a man, so her father had packed up the entire family and moved them all back to Mississippi, and no amount of begging could induce him to let her stay in Chicago.

Tears smarted her eyes.

And just when Deotis Reichart had started to take notice of her. Her father’s impetuous midlife crisis had ruined the chance for the life she dreamed of. She pushed thoughts of what she’d left behind in Chicago to the back of her mind, hiked her skirt, and navigated a steep incline. Right now she’d promised her cousin Annabelle she’d deliver thick slabs of roast beef sandwiches and roasted potatoes to the men working on the ridge up ahead. She might not be able to cook, but she was willing to help out in any way she could. She paused and cocked her head, listening for the saws.

And that’s when she spotted the spiderweb stretched between two trees. She stopped and stared, the intricate design eye-catching in its simplicity. She stood transfixed, trying to memorize the pattern so she could repeat it with her crochet needles. She regretted not having anything to sketch the web. After all, she hadn’t expected to run into such beauty when she’d ventured into the woods.

The web quivered, and her gaze snapped upward where she spotted a large yellow-and-black spider. She shuddered and stepped back. The web design was fascinating, but she could do without the spider. The spell broken, she veered around the web, left the spider to its business, and started off again. The sooner she delivered the men’s lunch, the sooner she could head back to the cook shack, where the smoke from the stove kept the spiders, mosquitoes, and bugs at bay.

And maybe there she could scrounge up a scrap of paper to sketch the web.

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