Free A Bride for Tom by Ruth Ann Nordin

done by then.”
    “What about next winter?”
    She groaned. “That’s a long time.”
    “Only to a young woman. Time goes faster as
you get older. The year will pass before I have time to blink.”
    “What about early September? Right before the
harvest?”
    The woman crossed her arms. “I suppose that’s
close enough to a full year. Alright.”
    She smiled and got ready to leave the
bedroom.
    Her mother stepped in front of the door.
“This conversation is hypothetical. You haven’t even called off
your engagement to Peter.”
    “I’ll do that after dinner.”
    “And you don’t know that things will work out
with Tom. Sure, he’s a good boy, but you have to get to know
him.”
    “That’s what this next year is for.”
    “And,” she continued as Jessica reached for
the doorknob, “you have to wait and see if he wants to marry you.
Don’t go putting the cart before the horse.”
    Jessica paused. Her mother was right. She
couldn’t be sure what he wanted until he told her. “Then I’ll have
to find out.”
    “Make sure you do.” She stepped aside. “Now,
you go pay attention to him while I finish up with dinner. But in
the future if he comes over, you will have to be sure that he
arrives when you’re done helping me in the kitchen.”
    “I didn’t ask him to come by. He just showed
up.”
    “I know, but you need to do some cooking to
show him that you’ll be a good wife. The way to a man’s heart is
through his stomach. That’s how I got your father to marry me.”
    “Your point is noted.”
    “Good. There will be plenty of time to visit
with him after the meal.”
    “Is that all?”
    Her mother seemed to think it over before she
nodded. “Yes.”
    Jessica opened the door and left the room,
only having a vague notion of how to proceed. She found Tom looking
out the window. She stepped forward and cleared her throat.
    He turned his head in her direction and
almost bumped into the rocking chair beside him.
    “You know, we’re going to have to do
something about your anxiety,” she said as she walked up to him. “I
promise I’m not scary.”
    He laughed. “I’m not scared of you.”
    She shot a questioning look at the way he
gripped the chair. His knuckles were turning white.
    “Alright. Maybe I am...a little bit,” he
admitted.
    “You weren’t scared the last time you kissed
me. Of course, that was when you thought I had Margaret and Peter
hiding in this house.”
    He chuckled. “That is silly, isn’t it? I
don’t know what I was thinking.”
    She grinned. “Is that the only way I can get
you to kiss me?”
    “W-What do you mean?”
    “Well, you never did answer my question.”
    “Y-Yes, I did.”
    “Not really. I asked you if I wasn’t engaged,
would you have kiss me? All you said was that I was engaged so it
was pointless to answer the question. Now I’m not engaged. So...”
She took a step closer to him so that they were almost touching.
“Would you have kissed me that day if I hadn’t been engaged?”
    He shrugged. “I don’t know.” Clearing his
throat, he took a step back. “I guess it would have depended on how
things went.”
    She forced aside her irritation and took
another step forward. “Let’s say things went well. Let’s say you
had a lovely meal and we had a wonderful conversation. What
then?”
    He backed up again and this time his back hit
the wall.
    At least she had him cornered. She approached
him. “You’re hard to nail down, Tom. All I asked was a simple
question.”
    “No. No, it isn’t an easy question.”
    “Sure it is. It’s a yes or no question.”
    “But...I mean...there are too many ways you
can take that answer, and depending on how you take that answer,
things could be bad.”
    “Bad? Bad for who?”
    “For me.” He blinked. “Or you. Or Peter.
Or-”
    “You know what I think?” she interrupted,
feeling like this had gone on long enough. Really, he’d let this
continue all night if he could, and she wanted her answer