Wife Wanted in Dry Creek. Janet Tronstad

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СКАЧАТЬ couldn’t bring the whole church congregation into this. There’d be advice given and awkward questions and, worst of all, expectations. No, a man needed to find his own wife. His friends couldn’t do it for him.

      “I’ve got to go,” Conrad said in a hurry. “She’s coming back over here.”

      “Now?” his uncle asked. “Hold on—I’ll be there.”

      “No—She’s my customer—I’ll—” Ask her to dance, he almost said, but stopped himself.

      “I’ll bring her some coffee,” his uncle said. “Don’t worry about a thing.”

      “No—” Conrad protested again, but the phone was already dead.

      He wasn’t equipped for this kind of thing. He’d always figured that, if he married, it would be a dignified, orderly thing. If only he’d spoken directly to his uncle instead of making a joke, then he could have told him that he intended to ask Tracy out. He’d always thought that, if he got married, it would be to someone comfortable and safe like her.

      He’d seen how his father had suffered when his mother died so he wasn’t looking for some grand passion that would twist him around and knock him flat when something went wrong. He didn’t expect his wife to be a great beauty or a great talker or to inspire a great feeling in him. She’d just be an average woman who was content to stand beside him in life.

      He only had to look through the windows to see the calendar woman as she now stood waiting for him. There was nothing average about her.

      Even more alarming, when he turned to look out the other window, he saw his uncle coming across the road with a grin on his weathered face and a cup of coffee in his hands. His arthritis certainly wasn’t bothering him now.

      Well, Conrad decided, there was nothing for him to do except to walk into the garage and find out what he was made of. She was waiting for him. It wasn’t a good time for him to recollect that he never had learned to dance, but the thought came anyway. His palms were already starting to sweat.

      Chapter Two

      Katrina shivered as she crossed her arms and stood in place. The windows in here were small and covered with frost from last night. The smoke from the muffler still hung in the air. A large tractor took up half of the garage, but there was plenty of room for her to pace around her sister’s old car.

      “I’m freezing,” she said as he was coming out of his office. She was surprised her nephews were warm enough with just their coats on to keep sleeping, but she’d checked on them and they were.

      “The heat will kick on in a minute,” Conrad said, stopping a few feet away from her. “I don’t usually have customers back here so I don’t keep it heated all the time. But I turned it up before I came through the door.”

      “Well, thanks.” She drew her jacket closer.

      It must be almost nine o’clock now and she’d left Leanne’s place around six this morning. They both had been half-asleep then so she forgot to give Leanne the number for her cell phone. Not that she would have expected to hear from her sister anyway. Walker hadn’t come home until early morning and Leanne said he would sleep late. Katrina had been careful not to comment on Walker’s absence. It didn’t matter how suspicious it looked to her, Leanne needed to be the one to decide if her husband might be unfaithful.

      “There’s a bulletin board over there that has some jobs listed on it.” Conrad pointed to the far wall. “It’s mostly cleaning houses, but you might find something to do until you get a more regular job.”

      Just then a beam of morning light made its way through the frost on the window and settled on Conrad’s head, gradually showing up the sprinkling of golden strands in his brown hair. Now that was the kind of diffused light she’d wanted for her photographs. She didn’t know why she wasn’t rushing to get her camera. The longer she looked at Conrad the more of a glow he had. And his green eyes were filled with the mossy colors found in a backwoods pond. Even his skin was taking on a rosier hue. The faint roughness of whiskers on his cheeks and the set of his jaw made him look rugged and strong.

      It was unusual that sunlight would make that much difference. He was almost handsome.

      “You didn’t get into your wife’s shampoo, did you?” Katrina asked before she thought about it. “Your hair sparkles.”

      “There’s no wife. I got some grease on my head working under that tractor.” He nodded to the piece of equipment standing in his garage. “My aunt Edith made up something with lemon juice and other things to get it out. I smelled like fruit pie for days.”

      So, he was single. “Well, it works. Your hair is great.”

      Then she remembered she shouldn’t be asking any man if he was single. Not until she knew whether or not her cancer was coming back. She didn’t need a repeat of the scene with her boyfriend when he decided being with someone who was sick was not sufficiently entertaining to keep him by her side.

      Conrad’s face eased up a fraction. “Thanks. If you need anything, just let me know.”

      He seemed to mean it which surprised her enough that she considered telling him all her troubles just to see if he was like her ex-boyfriend. It wasn’t easy to tell someone, though.

      She hadn’t even told Leanne about the cancer. At first, she hadn’t wanted to worry her and then, when the surgery was all over, she didn’t know how to say the words. Maybe later, when Leanne wasn’t so worried about her marriage, she’d tell her then. If she waited a few months, she’d know more anyway. By then she hoped to be closer to her sister, too.

      “Is it getting warmer in here?” Conrad asked.

      She nodded.

      He was looking at her again with concern, only this time he didn’t seem to be worried that she was going to fall apart. “My uncle is coming over.”

      “That’s nice.”

      “Well,” he said without much enthusiasm. “He won’t stay long.”

      They were both silent for a minute.

      “He’ll probably ask if you ever had your picture taken for a calendar.”

      Katrina swallowed. “Oh. So you did notice?”

      The director for the ad had kept pressing her to feel the despair of that woman caught in a never-ending drought. Finally, Katrina had let her emotions go.

      Conrad nodded.

      “Well, it was a mistake.” When Katrina saw the final picture, she was appalled. The camera had caught her emotions too well. “I never thought about all those people looking at me. All month long. It’s strange.”

      “I can understand that,” he said.

      He stood and looked over her shoulder at the tractor.

      “I didn’t mean I don’t like people to look at me in person.” She wondered how neurotic he thought she was.

      “Oh.” He looked back at her. This time he smiled. “Good.”

      He СКАЧАТЬ