Second Chances
By Kristie Leigh Maguire
This book is dedicated to my mother, Mrs. Augustine Kennon, and my late father, Reverend D.B. Kennon.
My sincere thanks go out to Janet Elaine Smith, my editor, and T.C. McMullen at Star Publish LLC.
Chapter 1
Jim Porter closed the barn door behind him, went over to a patch of grass by the side of the barn and scraped the horse dung off his boots. He walked over to the main house and entered through the back door to the kitchen. With the expertise of time, he tossed his old battered straw hat onto one of the hooks on the kitchen wall that had been put there just for the purpose of hanging up hats and coats when coming in from outside.
“That breakfast about ready, Jane? I’m so hungry I could eat a horse.”
“Almost. There’s still some coffee left if you want it. Help yourself.”
Jim poured himself a cup of the strong coffee that had been perked since before dawn, and sat down at the kitchen table. He leaned back in the chair, tipping it backwards so that it rested precariously on two legs.
“You’re going to fall over one of these days if you don’t quit leaning so far back in that chair, Pa.”
Jane expertly flipped the pancake in the old cast iron skillet while the bacon sizzled and popped in another frying pan on the old stove that was seriously outdated but still perfectly functional.
As her father always told her when she complained about the old stove and wanted to buy a new one, “As long as it works ain’t no use in wastin’ the money on buyin’ some newfangled one. It was good enough for your mother and it’s good enough for you.”
Never mind that the stove was many years older now than when her mother had last cooked on it.
She turned to look at her father. He was frowning at her.
“What’s eating you, Pa? I told you breakfast was almost ready. You won’t starve in the next five minutes it takes me to finish it.”
“I been workin’ since sunup. I’m hungry!”
Jane flipped the pancake onto the plate on the counter and poured more batter into the hot skillet. “You sure are the grumpy old man this morning, Pa. What put a burr under your saddle?”
“Jane, do you have somethin’ to tell me?”
“About what, Pa?”
“About you and Mike.”
“Me and Mike? What about me and Mike?”
“Jane, either you’re a better actress than I think you are or you don’t know.”
“Pa, quit talking in riddles. I have no idea what you’re trying to say.”
“Jane, Liz rode over to see me this morning. She told me Mike is marryin’ some gal he met in Casper.”
Jane stared at her father incredulously.
“My Mike? Why, that’s the stupidest thing I ever heard! Why on earth would Liz tell you something like that? You know me and Mike are getting married.”
Jim looked pointedly at Jane’s left hand. “I don’t see no engagement ring on your finger, girl.”
Jane glanced down at her bare ring finger.
“No, there’s no ring on my finger, but Mike and I have an unspoken agreement that we’re going to get married one day.”
She turned back to the stove and flipped the last pancake onto the plate and set it on the table in front of her father.
“Then you better go get that unspoken agreement spoken because Liz said Mike and somebody named Samantha Jo Smith are gonna get married in two weeks.”
“Don’t joke about things like that with me, Pa. You’ll give me a heart attack. Mike Farley is mine! We’re getting married! He’s not marrying anybody but me!”
“I ain’t joking, Jane. I wouldn’t joke about somethin’ like this.”
“Surely there’s some kind of mistake. Are you sure you’re not joking with me?”
“Gal, I told you I ain’t jokin’. Now I want to know what’s goin’ on with you and that boy. I been waitin’ a long time for you two to tie the knot.”
“So have I!”
Jane turned out the flame underneath the bacon, took off her apron and threw it down on the counter. She grabbed her truck keys off the hook hanging by the back door.
“Where you going, Jane? Ain’t you gonna finish fryin’ that bacon? I told you I been workin’ since sunup and I’m hungry.”
“You finish breakfast, Pa. I’m going to see Mike. This can’t be true. It’s got to be some kind of practical joke Mike was trying to play on me, but it’s gone too far. I have to stop this before it spreads across Fremont County like wildfire.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“No, this is something I have to do by myself, Pa.”
Jane slammed the back door behind her with a satisfying thunk. The last thing Jim Porter heard was the sound of Jane’s truck skidding out onto the gravel road that led toward the Double F Ranch.
He went over to the stove and turned the flame back on underneath the bacon.
“Them two kids better work this out. I want Mike and Jane to give me some grandkids before I’m too old to teach them how to ride a horse.”
***
Jane screeched to a halt in front of the old rambling, weathered log house at the Double F Ranch. She jumped out of her truck, leaving the truck door wide open in her haste, and ran up onto the porch.
She pounded on the front door so hard the dogs lying in the yard jumped up and started barking.
“Mike!” she yelled. “Are you in there? You better get yourself out here right now! I have to talk to you. Mike! Don’t make me come in there after you!”
Mike opened the screen door and cautiously stepped out onto the porch.
Jane put her hands on her hips and glared at him.
“What’s this I hear about you marrying some gal you met in Casper, Mike? Is it true?”
“It’s true, Jane. I am.”
Jane looked at Mike as though he had suddenly sprouted devil’s horns.
“You bastard!”
Jane slapped Mike so hard it rocked him backwards, leaving an angry red welt in the shape of a handprint across his handsome face. Mike threw his hands up to ward off Jane’s angry blows, but it didn’t do a thing to stop her from hitting him.
He knew he had it coming.
“Why am I the last to know you’re going to get married to somebody else? You could have at least had the decency and enough respect for me to tell me first before everybody on God’s green earth knew about it!”
“I was going to come over and tell you today, Jane.”
“You’ve never even gone out with anybody but me. Who is it? Who are you marrying?”
“Her name is Samantha Jo Smith. I met her when I was at the Wild Horse Saloon a few weeks ago when I went to Casper to stock up on supplies.”
“You’re going to marry some floozy you met in a bar a few weeks ago when for years you’ve led me to believe we’d get married? Have you been lying to me all these years? Did you ever have any intentions of marrying me?”
“Jane, I haven’t been lying to you all these years. I did intend for us to get married one day, but I never counted on meeting Sammy Jo. She came into my life like a devil’s twister and turned it upside down.”
Jane’s beautiful brown eyes filled with tears as she looked at the man she loved, had loved all her life, trying to understand what he was saying. It was as though he was suddenly spouting Greek. Nothing he was saying made any sense to her.
“I never wanted to hurt you, Jane. You’ve got to believe me.”
“You can’t marry her, Mike. You love me! You know you do. We’ve been boyfriend and girlfriend since I was twelve and you were thirteen. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
“I don’t really know how all this came about. Me and Sammy Jo getting married I mean. I don’t remember saying the words ‘Will you marry me?’ but she must have thought I did because the first thing I knew she threw her arms around me and said she’d marry me. Now the date is set. She’s already bought her wedding dress.”
Jane gasped, her face going pale. She sank down onto the steps and put her head in her hands. Even though she had never fainted in her life, she felt as though she were going to now.
Mike sat down on the steps beside her and gently stroked her back.
“Look at me, Jane. Please.”
Jane raised her head but she couldn’t look at Mike.
Mike turned her face towards him, his black eyes looking into her teary brown ones.
“I’m a man of honor, Jane. If Sammy Jo thinks I asked her to marry me, I guess I did, even though I don’t remember saying the words. I have to stick by it. Can’t you try to understand?”
“You say you’re a man of honor, but if you’re such a man of honor what about what you’re doing to me?” Jane moaned. “It’s true I don’t have your engagement ring on my finger but you’ve led me to believe for years that we would get married one day.”
Jane sniffed back the tears that threatened to clog her throat and spill down her face.
“Mike, I’m begging you not to do this to us. To me! Don’t throw away our future like this. We’ve never dated anyone else but each other since we were old enough to know there was a difference between boys and girls. My whole life has been wrapped around you. What am I supposed to do if you marry someone else?”
“I don’t know, but I am going to marry Sammy Jo. I have to, Jane.”
“But you don’t know anything about her, Mike. She’s a complete stranger.”
“It’s true we’ve known each other only for three weeks but she’s not a stranger to me. Being with her is the most exciting thing I’ve ever experienced in my life.”
The tears in Jane’s eyes disappeared, burned away by white-hot fury. She jumped up, tossing her single heavy brown braid that almost reached her butt over her shoulder, and glared at Mike.
“Are you talking about having sex with her?” She hit him. “Damn you, Mike Farley! If you don’t think having sex with me was exciting enough for you, then whose fault is that, I’d like to know! All I know about sex is what you and I learned together. I was a virgin when we first made love down on the banks of Badwater Creek. I was only fifteen! I’d never been with anyone else but you and didn’t know a thing about how to do what we were doing except what you showed me how to do. Now you have the nerve to tell me that our lovemaking wasn’t exciting enough for you? If you didn’t like what we were doing, then you could have showed me how to do something different. I’m not such a prude that I wouldn’t have experimented.”
She hit him again.
“You lousy son-of-a-bitch!”
Mike caught her hands and held them.
“Jane, I never meant for this to happen. It just happened.”
“Just happened? Things like that don’t just happen!” she shrieked. “You could have kept your damned pants zipped! Even if you didn’t have enough self-control to keep from poking it to her, you sure as hell didn’t have to ask her to marry you!”
Jane struggled to get loose from Mike’s iron grip, to no avail.
“We were supposed to get married, Mike. We were going to live the rest of our lives together. Me and you! Not you and some floozy you met in a bar, for crying out loud.”
“Jane, I know you’re hurting, but what’s done is done. It’s too late for me to back out now. Besides I don’t want to. I want to marry Sammy Jo.”
“Let me go, damn it!”
Mike let go of her hands and she turned to go.
“Can we still be friends, Jane?”
Jane turned around and looked at Mike as though he had lost his mind.
“Friends? I don’t want to be just your friend, Mike! If I’m not going to be your wife, I don’t want to be anything to you. You can go to hell. I never want to see you again.”
“Come on, Jane. Don’t be this way, please.”
“I’m leaving the Double F Ranch and I’ll never set foot on it again, not even to see Liz. If she wants to see me, she can come over to my house. And don’t you ever come over to the Double P Ranch again either. I don’t want anything more to do with you.”
“Jane, we live on adjoining ranches. Our families are tied too closely together for us to avoid each other forever. Your pa is like a father to me and my ma is like a mother to you.”
Jane laughed bitterly.
“You should have remembered that before you asked Ms. Floozy to marry you. If I catch you ever stepping foot on my ranch again I’ll take the shotgun and fill your ass with buckshot!”
“Jane…”
“You are a bastard and a poor excuse for a man, Mike Farley! I hope you catch some kind of venereal disease from Samantha Jo Smith.”
Jane ran to her truck, jumped in and fled before she dissolved into tears in front of Mike. She got a mile down the gravel road leading back to the Double P Ranch before the tears hit her like a freight train.
She pulled over to the side of the road, laid her head down on the steering wheel and sobbed like her world had come to an end.
What a fool she had been to turn down all the other guys in high school who had asked her out. How stupid she had been to patiently wait all these years for Mike Farley to get around to marrying her.
Now, at the tender age of twenty-three, her life was in ruins.
Her dream of becoming Mike’s wife and partner in life was over.
Jane had known Mike ever since she was old enough to remember anything. She and Mike had been thrown together ever since they were babies in diapers, playing in the same play pen while their parents visited with each other.
Mike had seemed almost like a brother to Jane until she got old enough to notice that he was attractive to her in a way that no brother should ever be. One hot summer day they had gone swimming down at Badwater Creek where old John Okie used to run sheep underneath the cottonwood trees in the olden days.
Much to her surprise, Mike kissed her when they were lying on the sweet-smelling grass, letting the sun dry them off before they headed in separate directions back to their respective homes and the never-ending chores of ranching life.
Even more surprisingly, she kissed him back…and she liked it!
At the tender age of twelve and thirteen, Jane Porter and Mike Farley declared that they were boyfriend and girlfriend, and they had been a couple ever since, going steady all through high school. Neither of them had ever even wanted to date anyone else.
Mike had never placed an engagement ring on Jane’s finger but there was an unspoken agreement between them that marriage was the next step in their relationship. Everyone in Fremont County expected Jane and Mike to get married any day, now that they were out of high school and all grown up.
Lord knows, Jane had been expecting to wear Mike’s wedding ring on her finger for years. She should have had his ring on her finger long ago. Supposedly, Mike was waiting until the Double F Ranch got back on solid ground financially before taking a bride.
Whatever the reason, the timing had never seemed right for Jane and Mike to stand before the preacher man.
Now the timing would never be right for Jane and Mike to get married. Not since Samantha Jo Smith had entered the picture.
“Solid ground” must mean something different when it came to Samantha because Mike hadn’t let such a little thing as a ranch not being on solid ground keep him from hitching up with her.
At one time Jane thought she knew Mike better than anyone else did. She knew what he was thinking without him having to say a word. She could read his moods just by looking at his face. They had shared their hopes and dreams, told each other secrets that they would never share with anyone else.
But now it was like she had never really known Mike Farley, even though she had known him all her life.
No matter that Mike’s dark good looks still made her heart flutter like it had been doing since she was a scrawny kid. No matter that she was still so in love with Mike that she couldn’t see straight.
Mike had taken her heart and stomped it into the ground, along with her dreams of ever being Mrs. Mike Farley, but even if Jane had lost the love of her life, she still had her pride although pride was a mighty poor substitute for love on a cold winter’s night.
