The Wedding of the Century & Other Stories by Mary Jo Putney & Kristin James & Charlotte Featherstone

Author:Mary Jo Putney & Kristin James & Charlotte Featherstone [Putney, Mary Jo & James, Kristin & Featherstone, Charlotte]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Romance, General, Historical, Short Stories
ISBN: 9780373775507
Publisher: HQN Books
Published: 2011-05-23T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

JESSE PAUSED, WIPING the sweat from his brow, and looked over his shoulder at the western horizon. The sun was sinking fast, and soon the light would fade too much for him to see. It was time to quit.

Amy would have supper ready soon, anyway, and he couldn’t deny his eagerness to get back inside and see her. His stomach rumbled, and he grinned to himself. It wasn’t desire for food that was calling him home. If he was lucky, enough of the meal would be salvageable to fill his stomach, but with Amy’s cooking, even that wasn’t always a possibility.

They had been married for a little over a week now, and in that time decent meals had been few and far between. The first meal Amy had cooked, breakfast the day after their wedding, had been an unmitigated disaster, with blackened bacon, fried eggs that were raw on top and scorched on the bottom, and toast that was the color and consistency of charcoal. Even Jesse, despite a valiant effort, had been unable to eat it. They had wound up eating the leftovers from their packed supper of the night before.

Amy had finally gotten the knack of cooking eggs and bacon over the fire, and her toast now was only a little burned around the edges, making breakfast the best meal of the day. A rump roast the other evening had been charred on the outside and still raw in the center, and her vegetables usually wound up a big, gluey blob that was almost unrecognizable. Jesse still wasn’t sure what the thick green mass the other night had been, though he suspected beans or peas. Her corn bread was passable, as long as he left the bottom crust stuck to the pan and ate only the top portion.

Jesse drove in a final nail, hung the hammer through his belt and climbed lithely down from his perch on the crosstimber of the barn. He strode toward the house, stretching out his tired muscles. He was working harder than he ever had, but he didn’t mind it. Everything he did was for him and Amy, and that made it a joy. Once he finished getting this barn built for the protection of their horses and the hay, he would be able to start doing the work he really loved: hunting, capturing and training the wild mustangs that still roamed the range. His life, he thought, was almost perfect. He was married to the woman he loved, they had their own cozy little home, and he was doing the work he loved, the work he excelled at. It couldn’t have been better—except for the fact that he couldn’t sleep with his wife.

The frustration was eating him alive. He had sworn not to make love to his wife, thinking that he could live like that. After all, he had loved Amy for years, had seen her often at the ranch, and he had managed to keep his desire and love for her in check, hiding it from everyone.

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