If Wishes Were Kisses: Six Beloved Americana Romances, a Collection (Small Town Swains) Read online

  If Wishes Were Kisses

  Six Beloved Americana Romances

  Pamela Morsi

  For my husband who cooked all the meals, my son who washed all the dishes, and my daughter who reminded all her dolls to "be quiet, Mama's writing her book."

  Contents

  Heaven Sent

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Something Shady

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  No Ordinary Princess

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Epilogue

  Sealed With a Kiss

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Epilogue

  Garters

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  The Love Charm

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Also by Pamela Morsi

  About the Author

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be sold, copied, distributed, reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical or digital, including photocopying and recording or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of both the publisher, Gnarly Wool Publishing and the author, Pamela Morsi, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it or borrow it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.

  PUBLISHER'S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Published by Gnarly Wool Publishing, an imprint of Oliver Heber Books

  Heaven Sent © Pamela Morsi

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  Created with Vellum

  Heaven Sent

  Prologue

  The first gray light of dawn illuminated the white clapboard house that sat like an island in a sea of corn near the border of the Indian Territory. The Reverend Farnam Bunch stepped out his back door, bucket in hand, and headed down to the wellhouse.

  He was a simple man who loved the country. He drank in the smell of the early morning air, anticipating the prospect of a fresh day. He had come to the Oklahoma Territory from Kansas five years earlier, seeking a new challenge and a new church. He wanted his family to be a part of the territory, where they could grow, and the future was bright.

  Today the future seemed to be just dazzling out on the horizon as he whistled the catchy melody to "There shall be showers of blessings."

  As he opened the door to the wellhouse, his whistling stopped. He stood frozen, contemplating the shocking sight. On the floor of the wellhouse, a young couple lay wrapped in each other's arms. He knew them both, and yet surely he was mistaken. He threw open the door wide, hoping that the meager morning sunlight would s
how his error. It could not be true. Even as his mind denied it, rage boiled up in him like a volcano and came spewing out in a torrent of angry words.

  "You trifling, no-account scoundrel! By God, I'm going to send you to hell!" he thundered. The preacher had never been a man to curse. He struggled, his hands shaking at his side, with the vile language that rushed to his lips. The situation didn't call for civilized discussion.

  In red-eyed fury he yelled back to the house, "Violet! Bring me my gun!"

  Inside the wellhouse, Hannah Bunch woke from her warm, pleasant dream, startled to hear the sound of her father's angry voice. Disoriented at first, she quickly realized that everything was going as expected. This was a crucial part of her plan, a difficult part, but one that was essential. Her father would be understandably angry, she had known that from the beginning. But it was her father who had taught her that nothing worth having was achieved without sacrifice. A few embarrassing moments could hardly be counted against a lifetime of contentment.

  People came running from every direction. The whole community had camped at the Bunch farm the previous night for the church raising and all of them had heard their preacher's angry cry.

  Hannah had never seen her father in such a rage. His face was a vivid red and his teeth were bared like an animal's as he spat thunderous blasphemies into the doorway of the wellhouse. She knew that more than one couple from the community had anticipated their wedding night, and rather than condemning them her father had always been understanding and forgiving. She had counted on that spirit of forgiveness, but there was no mercy in him right now. He was furious and he seemed to Hannah to be talking crazily, directing his anger to the man who stood silently behind her.

  "People told me not to trust you, that you're a heathen with no morals, a son of a drunken squawman. But I said a man must be judged on his own merits! The more fool me! I invite you into my home, feed you at my table, and this is how you repay me, by ruining my daughter!"

  The preacher's deep booming voice was raised to a pitch that surely made it audible halfway to Guthrie. "Violet! Where is my gun?"

  Hannah was frightened. Her brothers drew close at the door behind her father, their angry words more hateful and vile than her father's. They would not hesitate to come to blows on Hannah's behalf. She had to calm the situation, and quickly. She'd expected it to be difficult, but she hadn't thought her father and brothers would be beyond reason. And she was shocked at the things they had to say about Will. They had always seemed to like him. She couldn't bear such hard feelings among the family. She could feel his presence behind her, and she wished he would say something. Clearly, she must make an explanation and she must make everyone watching believe it.

  "Papa, please don't be angry," she pleaded, leaving the door of the wellhouse and walking toward her father with her arms outstretched, entreating him. "I love him, Papa, and I think that he loves me," she lied.

  Her father's look, if possible, became even more murderous. Her brother Leroy snorted an obscenity in protest. She grabbed her father's clenched fists and brought them up to her face in supplication. "He's a good man, Papa. You know that as well as I."

  The crowd of people stood watching in shock as Violet, who had heard the commotion and her husband's call for a weapon, came running with his old squirrel gun, as though she'd thought some rabid animal had got shut up in the wellhouse. Seeing her stepdaughter, clad only in her thin cotton nightgown, she stood stunned in disbelief, but retained the good sense not to give her husband the weapon.

  "Papa, we want to be married," Hannah pleaded, praying silently that Will would not dispute her statement. "Please, we want your blessing."

  Her brothers exchanged looks of furious disbelief and righteous indignation. "You're a dead man!" Rafe, the youngest, threatened.

  Hannah was tempted to go over and box his ears.

  "Give me that gun!" Ned ordered Violet, but she gripped it tighter.

  Hannah's patience with the whole group was wearing thin. It wasn't as if she were a green girl, she was a grown woman of twenty-six and was thoroughly entitled to make her own mistakes.

  "I love him, don't you understand?" she lied. "I want to be with him."

  "That low-down snake doesn't deserve the likes of you, Miss Hannah!" a voice just to the right of her father shouted in anger. "What's got into you messing with a decent farmer's daughter?" he yelled at the man behind her.

  The voice captured Hannah's immediate attention. She turned toward it, shocked. Will Sample, the man she planned to marry, was standing in a group of men staring angrily at the wellhouse.

  With a feeling of unreality, Hannah turned toward the object of their anger. In the doorway of the small building, with his hands upraised like a captured bank robber was Henry Lee Watson, a man Hannah barely knew.

  Chapter One

  Practical problems have practical solutions. Hannah May Bunch had always believed that. Perhaps that was why, with only the merest twinge of guilt, she had set herself upon the plan. As a solution, it would have been good for all parties concerned. It had seemed perfectly reasonable, and except for some of its slightly underhanded aspects, it was essentially biblical.

  Or it had seemed so yesterday.

  She had begun the previous morning at first light, leaving her bed and her still-sleeping younger sister to start the morning fire. It was no longer her job, but years of habit forced her to be the first to rise. In the kitchen she opened the grate on the stove and stirred the ashes.

  This is the day, she thought. The day that will change my life.

  She'd finally decided that her situation was not going to get any better. She needed to take action. Action to get what she wanted, or more specifically who she wanted. Moving to the water pitcher, she lifted it and poured half into the bowl and began washing. Hearing movement behind her, she glanced back, offering her father a pleasant “good morning," which he answered with a yawning "hello" as he headed for the wellhouse. Water drawn the night before was fine for washing, but Papa insisted that his morning coffee be made with freshly drawn water.

  A well close to the house was the nearest thing to a luxury that one could find on the prairie. Most farmers either lived next to the small creeks and streams of the territory, or built the difficult and undependable cisterns to collect rainwater. Finding water right next to the homestead was such a stroke of good luck that it could only be considered a gift from heaven. Hannah's father was very proud of his well. So proud in fact, that he built a house for cooling and washing right around it. Wellhouses were common in Kansas, but here in the territory they were rare.

  Checking first to see that the fire was going to catch, Hannah returned to her bedroom to dress and awaken her younger sister.

  "Myrtie, you better get up," she ordered the rounded pile of bed linens. "The sun will be up any minute and there is a world of things to do this morning."

  Myrtie snuggled deeper into the covers and made an unintelligible answer.

  Hannah pulled her blue gingham from the hook in the wardrobe. It was her most attractive work dress. She reasoned that looking her best today could be important. For her plan to work, the entire community might need to believe that she was capable of attracting the opposite sex.

  "Come on, Myrtie, everybody in the country will be here in an hour. You don't want them to catch you with your hair a mess."

  Myrtie sighed loudly and moved to rise. Hannah knew that prodding her sister's vanity was the one sure motivator. Myrtie was about the prettiest girl in the territory, everybody said so. Even if she was just sixteen, there was not a doubt in anybody's mind that she was something to see. Unlike many sisters who, being older and less attractive, might have struggled with sibling jealousies, Hannah was proud. Maybe it was because she felt more like a parent than a sister.