The Kidnapped Christmas Bride (Taming of the Sheenans Book 3) Read online

  The Kidnapped Christmas Bride

  A Taming of the Sheenans Novella

  Jane Porter

  The Kidnapped Christmas Bride

  Copyright © 2014 Jane Porter

  Kindle Edition

  The Tule Publishing Group, LLC

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN: 978-1-942240-25-9

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Epilogue

  Taming of the Sheenans

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  ‡

  It was quiet in the truck.

  The kind of quiet that made Trey know trouble was brewing. And if anyone knew trouble, it was he, Trey Sheenan, voted least likely to succeed (at anything legal, moral, or responsible) his senior year at Marietta High.

  At eighteen, he’d been proud of his reputation. It’d been hard earned, with rides in the back of sheriffs’ cars, visits to court, trips to juvenile hall, and later, extended stays at Montana’s delightful Pine Hills, where bad boys were sent to be sorted out. Reformed.

  It hadn’t worked.

  Trey Sheenan was so bad there was no sorting him out. Maybe back then he hadn’t wanted to be sorted out, and so he’d continued his wild ways, elevating trouble to an art form, growing from a hot-headed teenager with zero self-control, to a hot-headed man with questionable self-control.

  Now at thirty-six, after four years in Montana’s correctional system, he was tired of trouble and sick of his reputation.

  Just hours ago he’d been paroled, a whole year early. It’d come as a shock when the warden came to him early this morning, letting him know that he was being released today. Trey knew his brothers had been working on getting him released early for good behavior, as Trey had become a model inmate (at least after the first year), and the back bone of the prison system’s successful MCE Ranch, but he’d never imagined he’d be out now. In time for Christmas.

  It gave him pause. Made him hope. Fueled his resolve to sort things out with McKenna.

  He missed her and his boy TJ so much that he felt dead inside. But now he was out, coming home. Finally he had the opportunity to make things right.

  “It was sure good to see you step outside those gates,” Troy said, breaking the silence.

  Trey nodded, remembering the moment he’d spotted Troy standing outside the prison entrance in front of his big black SUV. He’d nearly smiled. And then when Troy clapped him in a big hard bear hug, Trey’s eyes had stung.

  It’d been a long time since he’d been hugged by anyone. A long time since he’d felt like anything, or anyone.

  Prison had done the trick, breaking him down, hollowing him out, teaching him humility and gratitude.

  Humility and gratitude, along with loneliness, shame and pain.

  His dad had died while he was at Deer Lodge, last March. He hadn’t been allowed to attend the funeral. Talk about pain.

  He shifted ever so slightly in the passenger seat and flexed his right foot to ease the tension building inside of him, aware that Troy might not actually be looking at him, but he was keeping him in his peripheral vision. Smart. You didn’t let a Sheenan out of your sight. Especially not Trey the Dangerous. Trey the Destroyer. Hadn’t he even tattooed that on the inside of his bicep on his nineteenth birthday? What a joke he’d been.

  What an ass he’d become.

  “Should hit Bozeman in thirty minutes or so,” Troy said.

  Trey said nothing.

  “Want to stop for anything? Need anything?”

  Trey shook his head. Silence descended. Troy ran a hand over his jaw. It really was too quiet in the truck, what with the volume down on the Sirius radio station, muffling the country songs, making the lyrics an annoying mumbo jumbo, so that the only other sound was the salted asphalt of I-90 beneath the tires, and the windshield wiper blades swishing back and forth, resolutely batting away the falling snow.

  He itched to lean forward and turn up the radio volume, but it wasn’t his truck and he didn’t want to be demanding. He needed to prove to his family and community that he wasn’t the hot-head Sheenan that intimidated and destroyed, but a man who protected. He was ready to show everyone who he really was. A solid, responsible man, a good man, who was committed to making things right.

  And the first person he had to see was McKenna. He was dying to see her, and TJ. It’d been a long time since he’d seen either of them. Two years and a month almost to the day. It had been Thanksgiving weekend the last time he saw TJ, his son. The boy was three. McKenna had been so very silent and sad, sad in a different way than he’d seen before. He hadn’t realized that would be their last visit. He hadn’t realized she’d decided then that she was through…

  He winced at the hot lance of pain shooting through him.

  It’d taken him a long time to process that she wasn’t coming back. In the beginning of his incarceration, she came every two weeks with the baby. And then gradually she came once a month and then every five to six weeks until that last trip for Thanksgiving when she never returned again.

  He’d about lost his mind at Deer Lodge. He’d died in ways you couldn’t explain.

  She wouldn’t write him back. She wouldn’t visit. She just…cut him out.

  That was when he truly suffered. That was when prison became a living hell. He was trapped. Hostage. He couldn’t do anything about it but write and write and write…

  He must have made a sound because Troy suddenly looked at him, brow creased. “You doing okay?”

  Trey clamped his jaw tight and shoved all the worry and fear deep down into that tough hard heart of his and snapped the lid, locking it, containing it.

  He wouldn’t let guilt and anxiety get the best of him.

  He’d sort it out. Make it work. There was only one girl for him, one family, and that was McKenna and TJ.

  But he had put her through hell. He was the first to admit that he’d done her wrong. She didn’t deserve any of the pain and heartache he’d given her… the trouble he’d dished out in spades.

  So he had one task: fix the mess he’d made of their lives.

  Tonight, tomorrow, sometime this week after he’d cleaned up and calmed himself down, he was going to go to her and apologize for his stupid asinine immature self and beg her forgiveness and show her he was different. Changed.

  She’d see that he’d finally grown up, and he was ready to be the husband she deserved. Ready to be the father TJ needed and a real family at last.

  A wedding, a honeymoon, more kids, the whole bit. He couldn’t wait, either.

  “Worried about going home?” Troy asked, breaking the silence.

  “No,” Trey said roughl
y, his voice a deep, raw rasp. He winced at the sound of it, but what did you expect? He hadn’t talked much the past four years. He’d never been a big communicator to start with, but prison just put the silent in him.

  “Home for Christmas,” Troy said.

  “Yeah.” And it would be nice. He’d missed the ranch. Marietta. Everyone.

  But mostly he’d missed McKenna and his boy.

  Just thinking about her and TJ made his gut burn, and his bones ache. Their memory was a pain that never went away.

  He dug the heel of his foot into the floor and pressed his shoulder blades against the seat back, pinning himself to the black leather.

  Warden and his officers might think it was their excellent corrections program that had turned him around, but it wasn’t the work program, or the ranch, or the counseling. It was losing McKenna.

  They’d been together for years, since high school. Well, they’d been together off and on for years, but in the months—or years—they were off, there had never been another woman he’d loved. Sure, he’d screwed a few. He was a Sheenan and Sheenans weren’t saints, but he’d never cheated on her when they were together.

  He’d rather cut his dick off than betray his woman that way.

  And then his conscience scraped and whispered, just like the windshield wiper blades working the glass.

  You betrayed her in other ways, though.

  The drinking. The fighting. The small bar fights. The big bar fights.

  And finally, the afternoon at the Wolf Den that changed everything…

  “You’ve been home for a few days now?” Trey asked his twin, wanting to find out about McKenna and not sure how because Troy hadn’t brought her up, nor had he mentioned TJ, and Troy always talked about the five year old, wanting to keep Trey in the loop.

  “A week.”

  “What’s it like without Dad around?”

  “Quiet.” Troy hesitated. “It’s just Dillon there at the ranch, you know. I’m still dividing my time between San Francisco and Marietta, and when I am here, I’m usually at The Graff.”

  “Things still good with your little librarian?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Wedding date set?”

  “We’re talking February, maybe around Valentine’s Day since we were paired up for that ball. But things are kind of hairy at work and I’m honestly not sure a February wedding would be the best thing.”

  “How hairy is hairy?”

  “Got hit with a big lawsuit. It should sort out but its damned expensive and time consuming until then.”

  “Then wait till it’s settled to marry. No sense being all stressed out over a wedding.”

  “I agree.” Troy tapped his hand on the steering wheel and then exhaled. “There are some other things going on, too. Family things.” He shot a quick glance in Trey’s direction. “Dad was a real bastard when it came to Mom.”

  “That’s not news.”

  “He had an affair with Bev Carrigan. A long affair.”

  Trey said nothing.

  Troy increased the speed on the windshield wipers. “Mom probably knew. Or found out.”

  Trey had heard enough. He’d only just been out a couple hours. He wasn’t ready for family conflict and drama. “They’re all gone now, and the past is the past. Maybe it’s time to let sleeping dogs lie.”

  “Except they’re not all gone, and it’s not just the past.” Troy flexed his hands against the steering wheel again. “Because there is something else going on—”

  “Another affair?”

  “No, but with Callan.” Troy shot him a swift glance, brow creased. “When her dad passed, he didn’t leave the place to her. Or any of them.”

  “What?”

  “There’s some talk in town—just gossip at this point—that maybe he wasn’t their biological father—”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Well, why didn’t he leave the Carrigan ranch to his kids?”

  “I don’t know. But Callan must have been pretty broken up. She loves that place.”

  Troy was silent a moment. “I think Dillon knows something, too, but he’s not saying.”

  “Those two friends again?”

  “More friendly than friends. While you were gone they became drinking buddies. Every Friday night you can find them at Grey’s, playing pool and shooting the shit.” Troy’s lips curved. “Dillon practically lives at Grey’s on the weekends.”

  “He’s not driving back to the ranch drunk, is he?”

  “Usually he finds a warm bed in town, along with an even warmer woman.”

  “Our Dillon is a player.”

  “He’s certainly enjoying being a bachelor.”

  “No little Sheenans on the way?”

  “None that I’ve heard about.” Troy leaned forward, turned up the music and then halfway through the Martina McBride Christmas song turned it back down. “There’s something else I’ve got to tell you.”

  Trey glanced warily at his brother. “Brock got cancer?”

  “Um, no. Thank God.” He sighed. “But it’s not going to make you happy.”

  Trey stiffened. “No?”

  “It’s McKenna.”

  Trey held his breath.

  “I didn’t know how to tell you, or when to tell you, but seeing as you’re out today, now, you’re going to need to know.” Troy’s eyes narrowed and his jaw tightened. “McKenna is getting married tomorrow.”

  They drove another mile in deafening silence, snow pelting the car and windshield. Trey stared out the window blindly, seeing nothing of the Tobacco Root Mountains and Three Forks before them. Instead he fought wave after wave of nausea. McKenna getting married….McKenna marrying tomorrow…

  Unthinkable. Impossible.

  His stomach rolled and heaved. He gave his head a sharp shake. This couldn’t be happening. He couldn’t lose her now, not after waiting four years to make things right.

  “Hey, Troy. Pull over.” Trey’s deep voice dropped, cracked. “I’m going to be sick.”

  Chapter Two

  ‡

  These weren’t butterflies McKenna was feeling. They were giant wildebeests swarming with flies. So no, she wasn’t nervous. She was terrified.

  Not terrified of marrying Lawrence, but terrified that if she didn’t marry him, the rest of her life would be just as hard as it’d been the first thirty-three years.

  She was ready to lose the Douglas off her name. Ready to no longer be that tragic McKenna Douglas who’d lost five of her immediate family members as a not-quite-fourteen year old in the Douglas Home Invasion Tragedy nineteen years ago. People spoke of it like that, in newspaper headlines.

  She was ready to stop being the brave girl folks hovered over, worrying about, petting, protecting to the point that McKenna couldn’t show fear or anxiety or everyone would hover more and worry more and suffocate her with the worrying that changed nothing, and the hovering that made it impossible to breathe. The only one who never hovered and worried was Trey and she’d loved him for it.

  And hated him.

  But that was neither here nor there. He was the past and today she was stepping into a bright new future as Mrs. McKenna Joplin, Lawrence Joplin’s wife.

  She was more than ready to relinquish the title of ‘devoted single mom’. Of course she was devoted, she was a mother. And yes, like all moms, she tried to be a great mom, but she was ready for a partnership, ready for a daddy for her boy, and a warm, kind loving husband to help carry the burden…emotionally, physically, financially.

  Lawrence would be a great partner, friend, and father for TJ, and just minutes from now she’d be walking down the aisle, joining Lawrence at the altar. But my God, the butterflies…

  The wildebeests…

  They were bad. She was shaking. She was this close to throwing up.

  From joy, not nerves.

  And okay, maybe a little bit of nerves and exhaustion thrown in there, too, as TJ had spent the last week sick with a virulent flu and she’d been up wit
h him, night after night, fussing over his temperature, holding him as he heaved into the toilet, measuring out thimblefuls of fever reducer and pain killer since his five year old body ached and ached so that her normally busy and bright boy was a whimpering tangle of arms and legs against her.

  She loved that boy to distraction. Some said she loved him too much. But how could you ever love a child too much? Children needed love…tons and tons of love. And fortunately, TJ was better—bouncing back the way five year olds do—and at this very moment, tearing away with her brothers in the groom’s dressing room. Even better, she hadn’t come down sick, herself, so everything was good.

  Everything was fantastic.

  Which was why her eyes burned a bit, and her heart thudded. The only thing that could make today perfect was if her mom and dad could have been here, and Grace, Gordon, and Ty…

  There were days where she didn’t think about them, those who died at the house that day, and then there were days she couldn’t forget them. Today was one of them. But then, it was natural for a bride to wish her mom was there to help her dress, and her dad was there to walk her down the aisle…

  She blinked hard, quickly, holding back the emotion even as the door to St. Jame’s bridal dressing room opened, and the delicate light bright strains of Vivaldi reached McKenna, the organist continuing to make her way through the prelude play list, and then the heavy oak door closed behind Paige Joffe, silencing the music.

  “The church is full,” Paige said, hands on her hips. “The flower girls are in place. The bouquets are in the foyer. All we need is you.”

  McKenna nodded and reached up to wipe beneath her eyes to make sure they were dry. “I’m ready.”

  But Paige heard the wobble in McKenna’s voice and was immediately at her side, ruby red bridesmaid dress swishing. “What’s wrong, Kenna?”

  McKenna shook her head, forcing a smile. “Nothing. Absolutely nothing!”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re not getting cold feet, are you?”

  “No!” McKenna’s voice rose, horrified. She didn’t have cold feet. Her nerves weren’t cold feet. Her nerves were an accumulation of emotion. Fear, hope, love, loss, longing.