Free Text Order Bride by Kirsten Osbourne Page B

wondering what Jason was up to. Was he working? Eating lunch?
    Doing his grocery shopping?
    She finished grading papers early in the day, and had her lesson plan done
    for the following week. She ate her dinner alone, as usual, and this time,
    she didn’t mind it as much as she usually did.
    Amanda had moved back to the small town she’d grown up in after college.
    Her mother had been ill, and she’d felt that it was her duty, as an only child,
    to take care of her. She’d loved her mother, and nursing her for the last
    two years of her life hadn’t been a burden. After her mother’s death, she’d
    thought about moving somewhere else, but where? Everyone she knew,
    and everything she knew was centered in that small town.
    She knew she needed to make a fresh start. As she ate, she decided that
    this would be her last year teaching in Maypearl. She was going to find
    somewhere else to live and just start over. She would let the principal
    know on Monday and start sending out resumes. There was a school
    somewhere just right for her.
    She had just finished washing the dishes when her phone beeped to signal
    a text message. She almost danced over to where her phone lay on the
    table. “Hey, did Jason ever contact you?”
    Amanda sighed. She’d hoped it was from Jason. She quickly keyed,
    “Yeah. We spent hours talking last night.”
    Stephanie simply replied with, “Woohoo!”
    Amanda grabbed a book from the shelf in her bedroom and padded into the
    bathroom. She ran herself a hot bubble bath, carefully setting her phone
    on the floor beside the tub. She didn’t want it to get wet, but she wanted to
    be able to respond if he called or texted.
    She was about a chapter into her book when her phone signaled another
    text. She picked it up and read the screen. “Hi there. What are you up
    to?”
    Her thumbs tapped out her response. “Just reading a book. You?”
    It wasn’t a full minute after she sent the message before her phone rang.
    “Hello?”
    “What book?” Jason asked.
    She smiled. “It’s an Amish fiction book that was recommended by a
    woman at my church.”
    “Is it any good?”
    “Yeah, so far. I’m only about a chapter into it.” She tried really hard to stay
    still in the water so that he wouldn’t hear the splashes. She didn’t really
    want him to know she was talking to him from the bathtub.
    An hour later they were still talking. Not about anything important, just
    chatting and getting to know one another better. Her water was so cold
    she started to shiver. She needed to either add hot water or get out. She
    decided to get out of the tub and hoped that he wouldn’t hear her. She
    moved slowly to a standing position and toweled off before stepping out of
    the water. He was talking about how he’d come to own his family’s farm,
    so she knew she had a minute.
    As she stepped out, he stopped talking. “Why do I hear water?” he asked.
    Darn. She should have muted it before getting out. “Um…yeah.
    Probably.”
    “Are you washing dishes?”
    “No.”
    “Why did I hear water?”
    She sighed. She wasn’t going to lie to him. “I was getting out of the
    bathtub,” she admitted, her face flaming red.
    He was silent for a moment. “You were in the tub the whole time we’ve
    been talking?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Now why don’t we have video chat?”
    She laughed softly. “Sorry. I should have told you right away and called
    you back.”
    He grinned. He could almost hear her blush. He couldn’t believe there
    was a woman in her thirties left in this country who could blush. It was
    refreshing to say the least. “I’m just teasing you. It’s fine.”
    She pulled on a bathrobe and went into her bedroom to sit on the bed and
    talk. She lived in the house she’d grown up in, and had taken over her
    mother’s old bedroom when she died. Her father had died when she was a
    small child.
    “I don’t mind being teased as long as it’s not about how tall I am,” she told
    him