Secondhand Bride by Linda Lael Miller

had no choice but to give in.
    He was so caught up in his roiling thoughts that he didn’t hear the horse approaching, didn’t know he wasn’t alone, with the buckboard and team, until a long, familiar shadow fell over him.
    He stopped digging, let the shovel fall to the dirt, and dragged one arm across his forehead.
    “Looks like you drew the shit detail, boy,” Angus observed, swinging himself down from the saddle and hooking his thumbs under his gun belt. “Most likely, you deserve it though.”
    Jeb struggled to hold on to his temper. It wasn’t smart to sass the old man; he might have given Rafe the foreman’s job, with Kade second-in-command, but in reality Angus still ran the Triple M, and he used an iron hand to do it. “Thanks,” Jeb said tersely. “That makes me feel a lot better.”
    Angus laughed, took his canteen from the saddle, and held it out. “Sorry it isn’t whiskey,” he said. “I reckon you could use some right about now.”
    Jeb took the canteen, though grudgingly, screwed off the lid, and drank deeply of the cold well water, tasting faintly of canvas and metal. He poured the rest over his back, chest, and shoulders, and handed the empty vessel back to Angus with a shoving motion. “You’re right about that. Do you have some business with me, Pa, or did you just come out here to make everything worse?”
    Angus looked a little less amused. “I’ve got business, all right,” he drawled. “I want to know why Chloe is staying in town if she’s really your wife.”
    “She isn’t my wife,” Jeb said, and spat. He realized he was standing just as Angus was, with his thumbs under his gun belt, and shifted his position.
    The old man resettled his hat, plainly peevish. “Seems to me you ought to get your story straight, boy, and stick by it,” he said. “For weeks, you’ve been claiming you were married. Then along comes one of the Furies, mad enough to snatch you baldheaded, and telling me she’s your bride. What in the Sam Hill is going on here?”
    Jeb thrust splayed fingers through his dusty, sweatmatted hair. “I wish I knew,” he said, abjectly miserable.
    “Might help if the two of us jaw about it a little,” Angus offered, gruffly magnanimous. “Maybe we can work it through together.”
    “I married her all right,” Jeb admitted. “Damn fool that I was.”
    “Well, then, that settles one question.”
    Jeb shook his head. “Not really,” he said. “Right after the ceremony was over, Chloe and I, well, we were going to start our honeymoon.” He stopped, cleared his throat, looked everywhere but at his father’s face. “I saw her to the room, carried her over the threshold, and all that.” He paused again, gave a bitter laugh. “I decided we ought to have some of that fancy French wine to celebrate with, so I went out to scout some up. I was on my way back when a fella came up to me outside the hotel and said he had something I ought to see. I was in a hurry, but I stopped. He showed me something, all right. It was a picture, framed and fancy—Chloe, all dressed up as a bride, standing right beside the man I was talking to in the street. He said she was his wife, and damned if he didn’t have the proof.”
    Angus waited.
    Jeb muttered a string of curses.
    “Let’s hear the rest,” Angus prompted. His tone was even; Jeb couldn’t tell whether he thought the story was funny or downright sad. Hell, he wasn’t sure of the distinction himself.
    “I felt like I’d been kicked in the belly by a mule,” Jeb said, still avoiding the old man’s gaze, but he could feel it on him, just the same, steady and level. “I made for the nearest saloon, bought my way into a poker game, and drank up half the whiskey in the place.”
    “Some men would have gone right to Chloe and asked her straight out what was going on,” Angus reasoned.
    “I couldn’t face her,” Jeb confessed. “Anyway, she came and found me in a back room at the Broken Stirrup, and we had it out,