Read Online A Bride for Keeps by Melissa Jagears - Free Book Online

William
     nailed in his last nail. After ruffling William’s sweaty hair, Everett glanced at
     her.
    “Julia?” Axel tapped her shoulder from behind.
    She whirled toward him. “Yes?”
    He wiggled the board under her fingers. “You can let go. I’m done with this one.”
    “Oh.” She took her weight off the board.
    “I’m done with this stack. Maybe I’m working you too hard? I know I’m getting tired
     myself.” He walked up close.
    Julia looked back toward Everett and saw him frown.
    “You still thinking about marrying him?”
    “Why wouldn’t I be?” She narrowed her eyes at Axel.
    “Just seems like a woman of your qualities would go for a man ladies flock to, not
     run from.” His smirk unsettled her stomach. Everett might look like Theodore, but
     Axel’s egregious manners were more like him. His allure was weak in comparison, though,
     and he surely was several years younger than her.
    Axel had more guts than Everett did with all his flirtatious teasing, but he simply
     churned her stomach. “I suppose you have plenty of girls.”
    “Quite. But you, Miss Lockwood, dazzle them out of thesky.” He stepped closer and reached for her arm, but she sidestepped him at the last
     second. His affected charm might have worked on her a year ago, like Theodore’s had,
     but she could now spot bitter poison hidden under spoonfuls of sugar.
    His finger slid down her arm. “Perhaps we should set a spell?”
    “If you’re tired, you ought to sit, but I can’t—lunch preparations.”
    It was Axel’s turn to frown.
    Holding her skirts, she moved as fast as she could toward Everett without running.
     “How’s the barn coming?”
    “Fine,” he said. A smile broke out on his lips, small, undesigned.
    She smiled back. “I saw you won the competition.”
    He nodded. And then he reached for the side of her face.
    She jumped back out of his reach, wrapping her arms about herself. A chill burned
     a pathway where he’d almost touched her and lodged in her chest.
    Frowning, he clamped onto her shoulder. “Hold still. You have sawdust about to fall
     into your eye.” He brushed a thumb along the corner of her right eye, then dropped
     his hand. He crossed his arms and looked askance at the ground.
    She released her grip on her arms and tried to act normal. She couldn’t blame him
     for looking so baffled. She didn’t even understand her own reaction. One second she’d
     been smiling, the next reliving a day with Theodore she never wanted to remember.
     “Sorry. You scared me.” She wanted to forever banish those thoughts, not share them.
     Stuffing them inside would keep them away—from her, from him, from everybody.
    “I apologize . . . for whatever it was. I need to go.” He sidestepped her, but she
     moved with him.
    She couldn’t let him go, not when it’d looked like he was about to open up to her
     before she’d ruined it. “Could you show me around your place before I head in to make
     lunch?” She tried to look exceptionally eager, pretend nothing odd had happened. If
     those feelings resurfaced, she’d have to refuse to react. “Just a quick tour, since
     you’re taking a break?”
    “I don’t have much time.”
    “I understand.” She flashed her sweetest smile.
    He abruptly looked away and moved off to the side of the house. “Here’s the well if
     you ladies need water for lunch.”
    Julia relaxed and walked over to him. Maybe she could draw him back out . . . if she
     could control herself and the troubling flashes of memories.
    Everett pointed toward the construction site. “That, of course, will be the barn for
     the animals that now shelter in the soddy.”
    “What will you use the soddy for?”
    “I’m thinking of using it for tanning and storing furs.”
    “What do you do with the furs?” Furs. Surely he wouldn’t do business with Addison
     Fur Company out here on the plains. But what if Theodore’s family business made rounds
     in this part of Kansas? Would