ROMANCE: Mail Order Bride: A Sheriff's Bride (A Clean Christian Inspirational Historical Western Romance) (New Adult Short Stories) Read Free

chest, dampening the
    sheet that covered his body. He let the water soak him. It was purifying after a night of drinking and carousing and who knew what else. His head still hurt like hell, but he was starting to feel like a man again.  He bent his head down again for another dousing.
    “Well, well, well, what do I see, but Sheriff Reilley, dressed for all the world like a debauched Caesar,” drawled a familiar voice, mocking and sultry and, although she’d been up as late as he had the night before, sounding as alert as if she’d slept the slumber of the just. Which she most assuredly had not.
    Reilley shot up from his bent position, banging his head on the pump. When the sheet began to slide from his body, he hastily grabbed the cloth and secured it around him. “Damn it, Josephine, what are you about so early in the morning?
    “It’s not early, Sheriff, except to drunken layabouts. I thought you might need these.” She tossed saddlebags—his saddlebags, he noticed—from the wagon. She was dressed in style; he’d say that for her. Josephine never appeared in public with a hair out of place or a garment out of fashion. She said that as the town’s resident scarlet letter woman, she had a reputation to uphold.
    “Where’d you find these?” he demanded.
    “Oh, let’s see . . . found your britches on the hitching post outside the general store. That red plaid shirt you like to wear to the dances was dressing up the school bell. Those –“
    “Never mind,” he mumbled. Josephine would have no qualms at listing every item of his wardrobe, no matter how private, and telling him where she had found it. He ought to be grateful to her for fetching his duds and bringing them to him, but he knew he’d pay for the prank that had been played on him. Josephine knew too much about men to be reticent. To the town of Liberty Bell, he was the sheriff, but his relationship with the woman who ran the girls at the Liberty Bell Saloon went well beyond his profession or hers. “Thank you,” he said.
    “Don’t say it if you don’t mean it,” she advised.
    “I mean it.”
    “Those young bucks of yours had a good time last night. You’re too old for that kind of rowdy living, Sheriff.”
    “I know it.”
    “So what are you going to do about it? Going to turn respectable now?”
    Maybe it was her voice, amused and taunting. Maybe it was the fact that Luther the goat emerged from the house onto the porch after butting the door open with his head, and Reilley knew that he looked a fool in front of Josephine for having a goat in the house. He didn’t let Luther into the house, but somehow, Luther always seemed to find his way in. Maybe it was the fact that he was 30 years old and he couldn’t hold his liquor any more the way he had when he was young.
    “I’m going to get married.” The words surprised him; he didn’t know where they’d come from. Judging from the shocked look on Josephine’s face, he’d shocked her too.
    “Married? Why Sheriff, what brings this on?”
    “Reckon it’s time.”
    “Past time. You’re not getting any younger.”
    “Neither are you,” he retorted and wished he hadn’t. For a second, the knowing, mocking expression vanished and he saw something fragile and vulnerable exposed in her pretty face. “Josephine, I’m sorry—“
    “For what? For saying the truth? I am getting older. I suppose the day is coming when young cowboys with money and manhood bursting in their pockets won’t be coming up to my room. You find yourself a bride, Sheriff. Find her fast before time passes.”
    “Josephine—“
    But she had pulled the reins and wheeled the wagon around; Calypso, her horse, trotting away at a fast pace.
    He cursed again. He hadn’t meant to insult Josephine. For all that she was what she was, she knew him better than anyone else in town. They’d shared a lot; and there were secrets between them that no one would ever know. If he did marry, his wife and Josephine wouldn’t