Love by the Letter Read Online Free PDF

you?”
    She stopped rubbing her hands together. “Yes, and research is awfully fun too.”
    “You’re too smart for this town.” He frowned. “Too smart.”
    He picked up the book as if she’d asked him to eat a cow patty, then abruptly put it down. “I should save us the time and call this what it is: a dumb plan. I haven’t even finished one page.”
    “No, don’t give up.” Maybe it was a dumb plan. It was certainly dumb for her heart to pine . . . but he needed her. “I’ll help as much as I can.”

    Hours later, Dex tugged on his sleeves as he stepped onto the church lawn where tables of food and a small dance floor were set up for the wedding’s reception. He’d looked all over the sanctuary for Rachel’s family while the mayor’s daughter married a friend of his, but he hadn’t seen any of them. Surely they’d attend since Mr. Oliver supported Mayor Isaacs’s reelection campaign.
    He jammed his hands in his pockets, scrunching the sleeves to the middle of his forearms where they always crept up anyway. He needed a suit with longer sleeves, but what was the point? Soon he’d be more worried about his shirts holding together until his crops turned a profit than whether his sleeves fit.
    A fiddle sounded and another out-of-tune one joined in. The fiddlers were huddled together, tuning and checking the sound against Everett’s guitar.
    Everett. His eyes were always glued to Patricia, and Rachel couldn’t be far behind her sister.
    What would he say to her if he found her anyway? Would she turn pretty pink like she had this afternoon? She’d blushed a lot even after the open window had sucked out all the warm air and he’d butchered two paragraphs of Robinson Crusoe . Or had she really been overheated?
    Dex stopped next to his friend and turned to scan the crowd. “Where’s your girl?”
    Everett had won Patricia with very little effort. And they made a pretty pair—the two blond, blue-eyed angels belonged together. Whereas a girl genius like Rachel needed someone who could read more than seed catalogs that had pictures and do fancier math than count the skimmed gallons of milk every day.
    Everett adjusted his guitar to match the fiddles. “Haven’t seen her yet.”
    “I know this is a strange question, but how long did it take you to win over Patricia?” Dex kept his eyes pinned on the people spilling out of the church.
    The silence grew so long, he looked down at Everett, whose foot was hooked on his knee as he rested his arms atop his guitar. “I’ll tell you when you tell me why you’re bothering with a mail-order bride service.”
    He dropped his hands from his hips. “Who told you that?”
    “You’re avoiding my question.”
    Grant. He’d have to strangle his thick-necked brother when he got home. “I’m twenty-four. You no more than turn eighteen and Patricia is ready to follow you to the middle of nowhere on nothing but a promise.”
    “I can’t give her anything until I have something.” He turned a peg on the head of his guitar and strummed.
    He didn’t have much either, and yet Rachel hadn’t snubbed him even after listening to him trip over every other word on an entire page. Maybe she might consider a man who couldn’t pass a test to get into college—not even a ladies’ college. He touched the back of his hand where hers had landed not twice but almost three times.
    He was letting a little hand touching get the best of him. A girl as smart as Rachel wouldn’t throw away school to turn over Kansas dirt even if she did like him a little. But maybe after she had her degree, and he’d built a home . . .
    “I don’t get why you’d try to write for a girl though. Any woman agreeing to marry through the post has something wrong with her.” Everett’s eyes wandered to the left of the dance floor.
    Dex followed his gaze and found Patricia, swathed in flounces of white with pink ribbons strung along every conceivable edge. Flushed with youth, she waved