Wild Texas Rose by Jodi Thomas Read Free Book Online

be starting back soon; the holidays would be officially over and his place could get back to normal.
    Lightning flashed across his front windows. Every mother in town had been shopping today despite the weather and every kid had tracked mud across his floor. They’d bothered, fingered, and messed up all areas.
    As he worked, he thought of the crazy advice that Killian’s ghost brother had given him. Maybe he should make a New Year’s resolution to just grab the first available single girl and kiss her. At least he’d have something to remember about this year besides just its passing.
    “One more hour.” He nodded toward Henry at the counter. His one employee was already antsy wanting to get home to his ever-growing family. “If this rain keeps up, we might think about closing early. No one would come in anyway.”
    “I don’t mind staying and helping you clean up,” Henry offered.
    Abe shook his head. He’d be up till midnight getting the place back in order, but unlike Henry, he had nowhere to go. A bowl of soup and three-day-old bread was all that waited for him upstairs.
And the nightmares
, he added to himself.
    He’d been seventeen when a Yankee bullet exploded into his leg a dozen years ago. If his mother hadn’t gotten to him in time, he would have died in the hell they’d called a hospital prison. She’d argued with half the Union army officers that her dying son needed to go home. Abe wasn’t sure if they gave in because he looked so bad or they couldn’t stand against one southern widow about to lose her only child, but she brought him home more dead than alive. Then, more on a mission than out of love, he thought, she nursed him back as she ran the store all by herself.
    He’d recovered, a skeleton of the boy who’d left to fight a war he thought would bring him glory. The town claimed he was a hero, but Abe Henderson felt more like a coward. He seldom left his family store since his return. Here, behind the stacks and counters, he could pretend he was whole. Here he could move so that the limp wasn’t so noticeable. Here he could pretend he was normal.
    His mother had lost her husband the same year he’d been wounded, and he’d wondered a thousand times whether she would have come after him if she could have found anyone else to help out in the store.
Love
wasn’t a word he’d ever heard her use.
    Abe sometimes reminded himself he was barely out of his twenties, but inside he felt old. Too old for dances or courting or even church suppers. He’d never attended a party or even walked down the street to a saloon for a drink. This was his prison. The store was his world.
    He’d done well, enlarging his store in both directions when other businesses closed, but he’d only increased the prison. He planned to use the abandoned bakery next door, his newest acquisition, to enlarge his hardware space. He’d keep the door between his place and the new space so men could go in and look at tools while the women shopped. The men could smoke, maybe even pass around a bottle on cold days. It made sense that if both the man and wife came in, the shopping would increase.
    So far the plan was only in his head, but once winter settled into spring there would be enough men looking for work that he could enlarge quickly.
    “Here come the Donnely dozen,” Henry announced as a batch of children hit the door. “The old man probably made them work all day in the rain before letting them come do their shopping.”
    Mrs. Donnely, as wide as the door, wiggled her way in. “Mr. Henderson!” she yelled. “Every other kid needs new shoes, and the boys get two pair of trousers, one new shirt, and three pairs of socks. The girls have their lists. I didn’t have time to shop for Christmas this year so I gave them all promises.” She pointed at one boy a few inches taller than her but still short of being a man. “Only my oldest needs a new coat. Any one will do as long as it’s warm. I know it’s a lot to