Read Online Jodi Thomas by A Husband for Holly - Free Book Online Page B

“I’m honored, Miss McCarter.” His bruised eye was barely open, but he’d never looked more handsome to her.
    “If I may have the pleasure, I’d like to ask for your hand in marriage? I wish to marry only you and if you turn me down, I plan to ride with these men to the frontier, for I swear on my honor I’ll marry no other.”
    An older man stepped to Zach’s side. “Well, young lady, you’d best make up your mind. We ride out tomorrow at first light. I’m authorized to marry you now, if it’s what you want.”
    “It’s what I want,” Holly whispered.
    Zach pulled her into his arms before she could say more.
    Sam and Luther watched the wedding from the bunkhouse.
    “I knew he was just what she wanted for Christmas.” Luther grinned as he shifted tobacco from one side of his mouth to the other. “’Course, he might be safer in Indian territory than being married to Holly.”
    Sam didn’t laugh at Luther’s joke. “What are we going to do now with her birthday, Christmas, and their anniversary on the same day? We’ll have to get her one whale of a gift next year.”
    “Nope,” Luther laughed. “I think we got her just what she wants for a lifetime. We’d best stop while we’re ahead.”
    Sam shook his head. “The way they looked at each other, there’ll probably be a baby to get somethin’ for next year. And another one the next year. And so on. Look what you started, Luther.”
    Luther smiled as he watched Zach carry Holly into the house. “I knew he was the perfect present for her the minute I laid eyes on him. Yep. There ain’t a man in a million who can make Holly happy, but I could tell by the cut of him the first time I saw him, Captain Hamilton was our man.”
    For the first time in fifty years, Sam was speechless as he followed Luther back into the bunkhouse. Just before Luther closed the door, Sam asked with a wink, “By the way, ain’t it your birthday next month?”
    Luther swallowed when he should have spit.

Read on for a preview of the next novel in Jodi’s heartwarming Harmony series
    JUST DOWN THE ROAD
    Available April 2012 from Berkley!

Chapter 1
    Saturday night
    September 2011
    Harmony County Hospital
    Dr. Addison Spencer stood between the emergency room doors of Harmony’s only hospital and waited for the next wave of trouble to storm the entrance. The reflection of her tall, slim body dressed in white appeared more ghost than human in the smoky glass. For a blink, Addison feared she might be fading away like an old photograph facing the sun. When she’d been a child with light blond hair, her father had called her his sunshine; now there seemed little sunshine left. If it weren’t for her work, she’d have no anchor to hang on to in life.
    Saturday night always promised a full house in the ER, yet the howling wind just beyond the glass whispered change. She’d already been up since four A.M. delivering twins to a teen mother who yelled all the way through the birthing, but Addison’s shift wouldn’t be over tonight until the bars closed. If a fight didn’t break out in the parking lot of the Buffalo Bar and Grill, maybe, just maybe, she could be in bed by two.
    She thought of the silence at the little place she’d rented ten miles from town. An old four-room house with hand-me-down furniture from decades past. Nothing special. Nothing grand. Only the porch wrapped all the way around, and in every direction she saw peace. A single neighbor’s place spotted the landscape to the south. Cornfields were to the east and rocky untamed land to the north and west. Closing her eyes, she wished she were already there.
    “Dr. Spencer?” Nurse Georgia Veasey’s voice echoed behind her.
    “Yes?” Addison turned, trying hard not to show any hint of the exhaustion she felt. One of her med school professors had drummed into everyone he taught that a professional gives her best until she drops and can give nothing at all. He often ranted that a career in medicine left