Where The Heart Is (Choices of the Heart, book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

for her purchase, a girl of about her age walked in, followed by a young man. Both were strangers to Chelle. The man might be considered handsome if you liked dark hair and eyes and an arrogant swagger. The girl was obviously pregnant. Mrs. Bingham leaned on the counter, pursed her lips and glared at her. “Yes?”
    “Mam wants a dozen eggs, please, Mrs. Bingham.”
    When the girl handed over her money, Chelle noticed that she wore no wedding ring. She took her eggs, glanced sideways at the young man and hurried out, forgetting her change. With a smirk on his face, he reached to pick it up. Chelle covered it with her hand. “Don’t trouble yourself. I’ll return it to her.”
    His gaze travelled slowly up and down her body before he replied. Chelle’s fingers itched to slap him. Then he touched his cap and stepped back. “As you wish, miss.”
    He put as much insolence as he could into the words. Chelle threw him a scornful look, picked up the coins and her sugar and walked out. She overtook the girl a short way down the street and tapped her shoulder.
    She turned around, cheeks flushed, an angry sparkle in her gray-blue eyes. Had she expected to see that young man from the store? Chelle smiled and held out the money. “You forgot your change.”
    The flush on the girl’s cheeks deepened with embarrassment. With her vivid coloring, fine features and head of rebellious golden-brown curls, she had a kind of natural, windblown prettiness that reminded Chelle of the local countryside.
    “Oh… thank you.” She slipped the coins in her skirt pocket and looked Chelle over with a mixture of curiosity and wariness. “I don’t know you.”
    “Rochelle McShannon, Jack’s niece. I’ve only been here three weeks, so I haven’t met everyone in Mallonby yet.”
    “I’m Kendra Fulton. I must be going. Thank you again.”
    Kendra hurried off down the street.
    Chelle headed home and found Jean in the kitchen, stirring a pot of bubbling strawberries. “Put the sugar in the pantry, Chelle, and thanks. I used the last of what we had in this jam.”
    Chelle put on an apron and joined Jean at the stove. “That looks almost done.”
    “It is, and just in time. The babies will be waking up any minute. Did you hear any news at Bingham’s?”
    While they bottled the jam, Chelle told Jean about Kendra Fulton and the rude young man in the store. Jean rolled her eyes. “That sounds like Drew Markham. Drew is a clerk in the mill office. He thinks that makes him a catch, but the truth is no decent girl in Mallonby wants aught to do with him, in spite of his father’s farm.”
    Chelle dropped a sealer lid on the counter in surprise. “If his father has a farm, what is Drew doing in the mill?”
    “You’d have to know the family.” Jean spoke without looking up as she filled jars. “Drew is Caleb Markham’s son by his second wife. He has an older son, Richard, by his first. She died when Richard was seven. From what I’ve heard, Caleb didn’t get on well with Drew’s mother—she’s been gone about eight years now—and he’s never gotten on well with Drew, either. Nor has Richard. So, once Drew finished school, he got himself hired on at the mill. He started out on the floor, showed himself clever and willing to work, and caught the foreman’s eye. A year or so ago, he got promoted to the office. He lives on his own in one of the mill houses now. He’s clever and ambitious, but he’s a regular cad.”
    Chelle’s skin crawled at the memory of how Drew had looked at her. “He isn’t the father of Kendra’s child, is he?”
    “No. Drew was still on the mill floor when Kendra started there, and he took a bit of a fancy to her, I think, though he did naught about it then. Then, after she was fired, he started “courting” her, if that’s what you call it when a man pesters a girl and she tells him to go hang. Not that he had any notion of marriage, I’ll warrant. He wouldn’t saddle himself with someone else’s