Shotgun Bride Read Online Free PDF

telegraph?”
    Kade shoved a hand through his hair. “We’re both too mean to die, Pa,” he said. “Just like you. And I figured if I sent a wire, you’d moan and holler about the extravagance.”
    Jeb offered no comment for once, but he was smirking a bit, always a bad sign, as he strolled past his father and brother and headed for the kitchen, where Concepcion was surely setting up her own barbershop.
    When they were alone, Angus slapped Kade on the shoulder. “Thanks for finding Jeb,” he said, low and confidential.
    “I had to look under a lot of rocks to do it,” Kade replied lightly. “I figured he’d turn up sooner or later, though, and sure enough, he did.” In point of fact, he’d found his kid brother playing poker in the back room of a Tombstone whorehouse, drunker then hell, but he didn’t see any benefit in elaborating. Not then, at least. The knowledge might come in handy later, though.
    A blast of stove heat and the smells of good home-cooking struck Kade as he entered the kitchen a few moments later, and he began to think he might be able to round up his stray wits after all, make some sense of things, once he’d assuaged his empty stomach.
    Concepcion already had Jeb plunked down in a chair in the middle of the room, with a checkered tablecloth wrapped around his shoulders, and the scissors snipped busily in her hand as she tried to make up her mind where to start. Kade ignored his brother and fetched the basin from the back porch, ladled in some hot water from the reservoir on the side of the stove, and sharpened a razor against a strop.
    Locks of Jeb’s dirt-blond hair lay on the floor by the time Kade had finished shaving, and the two of them switched places.
    Jeb got through grooming first, making quick work of his own beard, and poured himself a cup of strong coffee, leaning against the sink as he watched Kade getting sheared. “I’m surprised you’ve been able to hold in the big news all this time, Brother,” he said, with a glint of merry devilment in his eyes.
    “What big news is this?” Concepcion wanted to know, but she didn’t pause in her combing and whacking.
    Kade darted a warning look in Jeb’s direction, but he knew beforehand that it wouldn’t do any good. Once Jeb opened his yap, the words just stampeded right out, and it was get out of the way or be trampled.
    Jeb saluted him with the coffee mug. “My big brother is about to be married. Soon as he figures out which of his many admirers to take up with, that is.”
    Concepcion stopped cutting, and Angus, who had stationed himself in his customary chair at the head of the table with coffee of his own, perked up like a mossy-antlered old buck catching something on the wind.
    “That so?” he said. The idleness in his tone didn’t fool Kade; Angus wanted his boys married, and he wanted them to be fathers, just barely in that order, probably. Rafe was out front in the race to win the ranch, since he had the wife, if not the child, but win or lose, it would take an act of Congress to get himself and Jeb off the hook. Yes, sir. The old man would see them settled down, right and proper, in their turns, or there would be hell to pay.
    “There’re six of them,” Jeb marveled, with that mocking grin still plastered across his face. Kade would have liked to knock it off, but Concepcion had him pretty well hog-tied with two corners of the tablecloth tied behind his neck, and besides, she was armed with scissors. “And then there’s the job offer.”
    “Six of them?” Angus asked, still snagged on the plentitude of brides, and he looked so thunderstruck that Kade couldn’t tell whether he was pleased or aghast. “What the deuce would one man want with six women?”
    Jeb’s grin turned engaging. He’d saved himself many a trouncing with that grin—and brought on a lot more. “You are getting old, Pa.”
    Angus frowned at that, but then a look passed between the old man and Concepcion, like quicksilver, that made