Big Sky Bride, Be Mine!. Victoria Pade

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СКАЧАТЬ of old sweaters from the floor.

      “These are Mom’s—they should all go to charity,” Jenna said as she shifted from her knees to sit cross-legged so she could help Meg fold the very large, very bulky sweaters that her sturdily built mother had worn. Sweaters that Jenna—at five feet four inches, a hundred and ten pounds—would be lost in.

      “Abby looks just like J.J. did as a baby, doesn’t she?” Meg said then.

      “Just like her,” Jenna agreed, thinking about her late sister.

      The initials stood for Joanna Janeane. An early-menopausal surprise for Jenna’s parents, her sister had been named to appease both grandmothers after neither of them had been satisfied with the combination of their names that had produced Jenna’s. Abby was the late J.J.’s fifteen-month-old daughter.

      And at that moment the baby was napping in Jenna’s room on the upper level of the old farmhouse that had now sheltered four generations of Bowens. Her grandfather had built the house and passed it down to her father, along with the small farm that had sustained the family until recent years.

      Having both been twelve when J.J. was born, Jenna and Meg had done more than their fair share of babysitting for Jenna’s much younger sibling, so it was easy to recall what she’d looked like and to see the resemblance now in her daughter.

      “J.J. was a beautiful baby,” Jenna added, fighting the grief that still rose at the memory of her sister.

      “She was,” Meg said in a commiserating tone.

      “But so far, Abby doesn’t seem quite as headstrong, and I’m grateful for that.”

      “Mmm,” Meg agreed. “Although she might pick up a little of it from Tia because Tia has enough to share,” Meg said with a laugh.

      “Still, it’ll be nice, raising little girls together,” Jenna said. “I never thought we’d get to.”

      Certainly, unusual circumstances had made that come about. Marriage had made Meg stepmother to three-year-old Tia McKendrick. For Jenna, it was divorce and the loss of her younger sister, and then both of their parents, that had brought her back to her small Montana hometown of Northbridge, where she had just adopted her niece. In spite of the sadness and loss that had brought Jenna to that point, she was happy to be home again, to have Abby and to be in close proximity to Meg.

      “Have you decided yet whether you’re going to rent an apartment on Main Street or take old Mrs. Wilkes’s guesthouse—if we can’t save this place?” Meg asked.

      “It’ll be the guesthouse,” Jenna said. “It’s tiny, but it has two bedrooms and a little bit of yard that Abby can go out into. And Mrs. Wilkes will give it to me dirt cheap in trade for some nursing—I’ll look in on her every day, take her blood pressure, oversee her meds—”

      “You’ll work as a full-time nurse at the hospital and then go home to do more nursing?”

      “I don’t mind. Low rent will give me the chance to pay off some debt and save for a place of our own. Besides, Mrs. Wilkes loves Abby, and Abby loves her—I think maybe Mrs. Wilkes reminds Abby of Mom. It’ll work out for everybody,” Jenna finished, trying to sound upbeat.

      But Meg knew her—and her situation—well enough to know how she really felt. “The fund could still get high enough for you to pay off the taxes or, at least, to put in a bid at the auction,” Meg said, clearly attempting to inject some hope.

      “It could,” Jenna said without any more confidence than Meg had shown, smiling at her friend’s weak optimism when they both knew neither of those possibilities was likely. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be packing up.

      The Bowen Farm Fund was an account initiated by an old friend of her father’s. People could make donations to save the farm. There were several thousand dollars in it, but it was nowhere near forty thousand, and unless it reached the full amount of the tax debt, that money would be returned to the donors.

      “Orrr …” Meg said.

      “Nope,” Jenna shot down what she knew her friend was going to say.

      Meg said it anyway. “You could sell to the Kincaid Corporation and make enough money, even after paying off the back taxes, to buy a three-bedroom house right now.”

      Jenna shook her head. “I have enough to feel guilty about. I won’t add not honoring my father’s last wish to the list.”

      Meg didn’t respond to that. Instead, glancing over Jenna’s head in the direction of the living room as if something had caught her eye, she said, “Speak of the devil … Well, not that Ian Kincaid is the devil—he’s actually really great.”

      Jenna swiveled on her rump until she had the same view Meg had.

      Across the living room, through the nearly floor-to-ceiling picture window that looked out at the front porch, Jenna saw the local Realtor, Marsha Pinkell. And a man.

      Oddly enough, it was the first time Jenna had seen Ian Kincaid.

      Though he and his twin brother had been born in Northbridge, his connection to the small town was complicated. Ian was the biological brother of Chase Mackey, Meg’s husband’s business partner in Mackey and McKendrick Furniture Designs.

      Over thirty years earlier, a car accident just outside of Northbridge had orphaned Chase, Shannon, twins Ian and Hutch, and a half sister. The half sister had gone to live with her birth father, Chase had ended up in the foster-care system, while Shannon had been adopted by one local couple, and the twin boys had been adopted by another, only to have both couples leave Northbridge almost immediately.

      Only the half sister was old enough to remember she had brothers and a sister. Her desire to find a blood relative to raise her own child had prompted a search for the lost siblings and led her to Chase. Then, after Chase had located Shannon, together they’d discovered the whereabouts of Hutch and Ian.

      Hutch had yet to appear, but Jenna had heard through Meg that Ian had been coming in and out of town since just after the first of the year to get to know Chase and Shannon.

      Which was right about when Jenna’s father had died and she’d had to put the farm up for sale, hoping to sell it before it was auctioned off by the IRS.

      Since January, Ian Kincaid had also been to her farm several times with the Realtor to look at the place with an eye toward buying it. But Jenna had not been at home during any of his visits. Nor had her path crossed that of Ian Kincaid’s in town.

      Jenna had been swamped working long hours and caring for her father, then dealing with her father’s death and the financial mess left in his wake. She’d also taken custody of Abby and was sorting through the legal issues of adopting her. Jenna had barely had time to come up for air.

      Still, it seemed odd that Jenna had yet to encounter the man who had set all of Northbridge to talking—and arguing. The man who was interested in buying her farm. The man she wasn’t interested in selling it to.

      The man who now stood on her porch, six feet three inches of athletic masculinity resembling Chase Mackey but taking Chase Mackey’s size and increasing it slightly and improving upon Chase’s noteworthy good looks while he was at it.

      “Wow …” СКАЧАТЬ