A Bargained-For Bride

by Marcia Lynn McClure

  And so, there I went, skipping along (stressing to the hilt!) and writing only novel-length books. Until, that is, the “Midnight Masquerade Incident of 2012–2013.” If you’ve read my book Midnight Masquerade—or had to wait months before it arrived in your mailbox so that you could read it—then you know what I’m talking about. The gastric juices are flooding my stomach just thinking about it, so I won’t go there again. The point is, I became very discouraged and began feeling like I could never write another novel ever (for a ton of reasons).

  Until one day, “ZING!” went my brain! I remembered how much I used to love writing novella-length stories—how they were kind of a quick-fix for readers, little shots of romance candy, you know? I also wondered why in the world I’d ever quit writing novellas.

  Well, truth be told, I’d quit for many reasons—not limited to but including the diminishing demand for print books and the crazy sick pricing messes where e-books are concerned on the big e-book selling sites.

  But the more I thought about it, the more I thought, “What the heck? I used to love writing novellas, and readers loved reading them…so why did I ever stop? I’m starting again! I’m going to write a novella. Actually, I’m going to write three. And I’m going to call them the Novellas of Summer 2013!”

  Well, I wrote my first novella for the Novellas of Summer 2013—but then the Midnight Masquerade Fiasco of 2013 hit! (The Midnight Masquerade Fiasco of 2013 is part of, but not all of, The Midnight Masquerade Incident of 2012–2013…just to clear things up! Ha ha!) Ugh! (Again, if you waited an eon to receive your copy of Midnight Masquerade, you know what I’m talking about, right?) So due to the glitches in the release of Midnight Masquerade, my first Novella of Summer 2013, A Good-Lookin’ Man, was delayed—as were the releases of the other two, A Bargained-For Bride and The Man of Her Dreams. (Ironically, the delays are why I was able to add this part of the Author’s Note to this book.)

  Why did I babble on and on about this whole “why I quit writing novellas and then started writing them again” thing? In truth, I have no idea! I think I just wanted to give you a little bit of insight into why Boone and Jilly’s story was told “novella style.” Their story is one I’ve wanted to tell for so long, but it always lingered in my mind novella style, so I kept putting it off. But when I decided to give myself (and you) some quick-fix romance candy and a break from novel-lengthers (you know, after all the Midnight Masquerade drama of 2013), I knew it was time for me to finally share Boone and Jilly’s romance with you. So I really hope you liked it!

  Meanwhile, I’m off to finish my newest novel-lengther. Wish me luck!

  ~Marcia Lynn McClure

  A Bargained-For Bride Trivia Snippets

  Snippet #1—You know the first scene in the book when little Georgie Lillingston falls into the creek? Well, that scene was actually inspired by a couple of real-life events. The first is my mom’s little bucket. The story of my mom’s little bucket was always sad to my sister and me. Mom didn’t have many toys, being that she lived on an isolated ranch in Colorado during the Great Depression. Rural life was simple, and luxuries, like toys, were few. So when my mom was playing by the “crick” and the current swept away her little bucket when she tried to fill it with water, my Grandpa States chased it way downstream in an attempt to retrieve it. Mom always says she can still see her dad running down the creek bank trying to catch up with that little bucket. But in the end, the bucket was lost. So in thinking about Mom’s sad little bucket story, I got to thinking about how thankful I was that she didn’t fall into the creek that day with her bucket, right?

  That line of thinking led me to thinking about the arroyos we have here in Albuquerque—and about all the tragic losses that have happened in them. You see, we have these flash floods here in New Mexico. It doesn’t even have to be raining right where you are, but if it’s raining somewhere else, sometimes you’ll hear this roar of rushing water, looking into the arroyo, and see a river of rapids coming down it. (Oh, just in case you’re not familiar with arroyos—they are sometimes natural and sometimes manmade, basically ditches or canals that are routed through the landscape to divert these flood waters.) Back in the ’80s, kids had taken to skateboarding in the large, cement arroyos in the city. Several teenagers were swept away by flash flood waters moving anywhere from twenty to forty miles per hour. There was one incident that was caught on camera in the late ’80s; a boy had been washed down an arroyo, and some firefighters had raced downstream and flung a line across the arroyo. One firefighter had hooked himself to it and pulled himself to the middle of the raging water. Miraculously, when the boy came washing toward him, the firefighter managed to get an arm around him. But before he could secure him, a huge lounge chair came washing down in the raging water, knocked the boy loose from the firefighter’s hold, and swept him away. The boy was not saved; his body was recovered down where the arroyo waters emptied into the Rio Grande River. It was a horrible incident—tragic and very haunting.

  Growing up in Albuquerque, storytellers used to actually come to the elementary schools and tell the story of La Llorona—The Weeping Woman. It was said she roamed the ditch banks, canals, and arroyos looking for her drowned children. It was said that La Llorona (pronounced Lah Yo-rro-nah) would snatch children away and drown them if she found them wandering on the banks of the ditch, canals, and arroyos. Creepy, horrible way to keep kids away from the ditches in Albuquerque, right? When my kids were in school here and people were being washed away in arroyos to drown, there was an ad campaign featuring the “Ditch Witch” with the slogan, “Ditches are deadly! Stay away!”

  Anyway, now you know what inspired the scene when poor Georgie Lillingston falls into the rain-swollen creek and is eventually saved by Boone Ramsey.

  Snippet #2—So here’s the thing about the Christmas orange Jilly gave to Boone the year his parents died. Like most Americans (I think) Santa Claus always left an orange or tangerine in the toe of my Christmas stocking (my little sister’s too, of course). He always left an orange or satsuma (we call them Cuties down here in New Mexico) in the toe of my kids’ Christmas stockings too.

  When I was still a child but old enough to really know Santa Claus, his history, and good intentions, I asked my mom why Santa always left us an orange or a tangerine in our stocking. I mean, it was lovely and always fun to find—and my stocking would never have seemed the same without it—but I didn’t know the reason for it, other than simple tradition. Come to think of it, at our church Christmas socials, when Santa Claus would come and one of his helpers would hand each child a brown paper sack filled with peanuts and candy as he or she hopped down from Santa’s lap, there was always an orange or tangerine in the bag too—just like the ones Santa left in our stockings. I always just assumed that Santa Claus was nothing if not consistent and very traditional.

  Of course, my mom did answer my question about the orange in our stockings. She explained that when she was a little girl, Santa had always left an orange or tangerine in the toe of her Christmas stocking as well. It was always just as fun for her to dig down through the unshelled peanuts, walnuts, hazelnuts, almonds, Brazil nuts (my favorite!), and candy to find the orange in the toe of her stocking. Therefore, Santa had always put an orange or tangerine in the toe of my Christmas stocking, just as he had put them in the toes of her and my dad’s Christmas stockings when they were kids. I was already smart enough to know that Mom and Dad receiving an orange for Christmas as children growing up during the Great Depression must’ve been a rare and wonderful treat indeed—and I left it at that.

  In fact, one of my favorite episodes of the currently popular sitcom The Middle is an episode entitled, “A Simple Christmas.” The orange in the toe of a Christmas stocking makes Frankie (the mom) realize that things need to be simplified in their family Christmas. She feels her kids don’t appreciate the orange the way she did—the way her grandmother did when an orange was the only thing she received in her stocking at Christmas. Therefore, Frankie and he
r husband, Mike, sit down with their three children to explain that they’re going to have a simple Christmas—“To truly experience the orange.” (Ha ha! I love that line!)

  Naturally, the children, Axl, Sue, and Brick, are distraught, thinking that their parents don’t plan on giving them any gifts.

  Brick asks, “What’s the orange?”

  Axl then answers, with great dramatics and irritation, “You remember…from our stockings…that stupid orange from when mom used to live on the prairie and all she got was that stupid orange for Christmas.”

  I love that scene! And even though it’s funny, it really does ring true to me. I always worry that one day “Santa” will stop leaving oranges in stockings and another sweet, traditional part of history will be lost. But again, I digress.

  So back to the orange thing. Over the years, I’d seen a children’s book floating around entitled Christmas Oranges. But believe it or not, I’ve never read it. I think it just didn’t draw me in for some reason. I loved oranges at Christmas, used them as part of the stocking tradition in our home, and that was enough for me. That is, until Jilly gave the orange to Boone that bright, cool, and crisp Christmas day so long ago.

  A moment or two after I’d finished writing the scene where Boone mentions the orange and Jilly reminisces over the event, my curiosity suddenly spiked, and I wanted to know more about the orange in Christmas stockings tradition. The first thing I did was look up a synopsis of the children’s story Christmas Oranges. I’m guessing you already know the story about the little orphan boy, Jack, who is looking so forward to receiving his Christmas orange from St. Nicholas. But Jack makes a mistake and is punished by having his Christmas orange stripped away by some mean old lady in the orphanage. However, on Christmas morning, he is awakened by a soft hand slipping something into his and discovers that the other boys in the orphanage have each broken their own Christmas oranges into segments—gifting Jack one segment each so that he too had an entire, lovely, delicious Christmas orange. It’s a lesson in forgiveness and love, a truly tender and sweet story. But I figured that couldn’t be all of it, right? After all, Santa Claus has been leaving oranges in the toes of Christmas stockings for more than a hundred years, the way I figured it. So I searched a bit further.

  It turns out that the Christmas orange tradition dates back as far as good old Saint Nicholas himself. I couldn’t find a true, sure date on the legend of the oranges, but the story goes like this. Long, long ago, a poor widowed man had three very beautiful daughters. Indeed, though his daughters were lovely, they were as poor as church mice, thus having no dowries. The poor man was ever so worried about what would become of his daughters when he died. It was a very heavy burden on his heart, for he loved his three daughters more than himself.

  Well, one day, Saint Nicholas was passing through the village where the poor man and his daughters resided. A group of villagers stood talking about the poor man and his beautiful, albeit destitute, daughters, and Saint Nicholas overheard their conversation. Saint Nicholas wanted to help, but the villagers told him that the poor man would never accept charity. Yet Saint Nicholas was not to be discouraged.

  Late that night, as all the villagers slept, Saint Nicholas crept down the chimney of the home of the poor man and his daughters. There he found that the daughters had hung their stockings from the mantle to dry after having been washed. Drawing three bags of gold from his pocket, Saint Nicholas dropped one bag of gold into one stocking of each set of stockings. Then Saint Nicholas went on his way.

  When the poor man and his daughters awoke the next morning, finding the three bags of gold, they were overjoyed. The three girls, each having her own dowry at last, were soon married, and everyone lived happily ever after.

  Who knew, right? Well, obviously everybody but me! I guess sometimes the story is told that it was balls made of gold that Saint Nicholas left in the girls’ stockings, and that makes even more sense—that a bright, happy orange in the toe of a Christmas stocking represents Saint Nicholas’ care and love for others. Again, who knew?

  The whole Christmas stocking tradition stems from an old Germanic/Scandinavian story where children left their boots out filled with straw, carrots, and sugar for the Norse god Odin, to feed his flying horse. Once his flying horse had eaten what the children had left in their boots for him, Odin would fill the boots with candy and gifts as his thanks for their kindness toward his horse.

  Seriously, once I get started on something, I could go on forever—so I’ll stop now. However, just in case you are an ignoramus like me, I thought you might like to know the very beginnings of why Santa always leaves an orange or tangerine in the toe of a child’s Christmas stocking. I like oranges in Christmas stockings all the more now. (And if you see old, old drawings and things of Saint Nicholas, he’s often depicted with three golden balls or gold coins. Fun, huh?)

  Snippet #3—The truth is I did get dumped once. And I deserved it! The story of the time I got dumped was what inspired the thread in A Bargained-For Bride where Jilly is so disgusted, disappointed, and angry at herself for the whole “Jack Taylor” thing. I was in college at the time, and a bunch of my friends in one of the dance bands I sang in kept telling me that this one guy really liked me. They kept pressing me to date him, listing all his great qualities, and pointing out how cool and hot he was. And he was cool and hot—super cool, in fact! So when he walked up to me a few days before the Valentine’s Day dance and said, “You will be my girlfriend, and I’m taking you to the Valentine’s Day dance,” I thought, What the heck? After all, he was cool and hot, right? To make a long story short—and I do want to point out that I did like the boy—he and I became a couple. He was tall, tall, tall and way, way, way cool, and all the girls I knew wanted to be his girlfriend. So we dated awhile, and I felt kind of crummy for sort of leading him on and allowing him to think things were more serious between us than they really were, you know? But then something would happen, like we’d go to the dance club and suddenly a guy would walk up to us and hand us some sort of prize because we were the best dancers or the coolest-looking couple (because of him, I’m sure), and I’d think, Well, he is cool and hot, and I do like him, and I’d keep being his girlfriend. However, when he had to be gone for about ten days on a tour with another band, he called me every day at first, wrote me cards and letters, and promised he’d call the minute he got home. Now there’s a lot more to this story, including the fact that he ended up bunking in at one home during the band’s tour with another guy I liked—and, boy, was I sweating it out—because I hadn’t told this guy that I was even dating the band guy! (I was an idiot for about a month there!) Anyway, about four days before my cool, hot boyfriend was due to return, he stopped calling me every day. I got suspicious because I knew there was this gorgeous girl on tour with him who was a little older and really, really after him like a cougar to her prey! And I began to grow suspicious. Sure enough, when cool, hot guy arrived home (and I knew he was home because all the other band guys were home), he didn’t call. I waited and waited, and still he didn’t call. And did my heart start to break? Nope! Instead I found that I was enraged—enraged not at him but at myself! I called him up, and he came over with his head hanging with the guilt that he’d cheated on me with this gorgeous cougar girl (she was really only twenty-oneat the time) and wanted to break up. Well, I flipped my lid! I flipped my lid at him—but really, inside myself, I was flipping my lid at myself. I was angry at myself, not hurt. We broke up, and he felt bad—but I felt worse! (I still remember the song that was playing when we broke up in my dorm room that day—“Almost Over You” by Sheena Easton.) I was a creep! Though I liked him well enough, I’d really only dated him for fun and because some other people thought I was crazy not to. Even my best friend, Sandy, had scolded me for dating him—but sometimes we have to learn life-lessons the hard way, you know? And I learned so, so, so much from that incident. I always felt so bad about it all—in fact, I still do. As well I should! But then I remember that we d
id have a lot of fun together and that he did dump me in the end, so I kind of hope it all came out in the wash, you know? Oh, but I do want to make the point that my cool, hot boyfriend was nothing like Jack Taylor, okay? He was a great guy and still is! I’m ever thankful to him for the life-lessons he helped me learn and for the maturity I gained after going through what we went through together. He’s a great guy, and I’m not just saying that. (By the way—he’s still ultra cool!)

  Snippet #4—Now, as you know, I love to find out where certain clichés, metaphors, and sayings come from. Furthermore, when using one in a book, I like to make sure it was actually used during the time period in which the story takes place. So when I used the phrase “naked as a jaybird” in A Bargained-For Bride, I got to thinking, “Okay…so jaybirds aren’t even naked. So what’s up with that?”

  It seems that in the nineteenth century, “jay” referred to a person who was either gullible, a simpleton, or a hick—thus the term “jaywalk,” referencing a “country bumpkin” or “hick” weaving here and there through city streets looking up at tall buildings and such and paying no heed to traffic. Although this explanation dates the phrase as probably used in the nineteenth century and therefore okay to reference in A Bargained-For Bride, it didn’t really explain the “naked” part—because I highly doubt that rural people walked around gawking at tall buildings in the nude, especially in the nineteenth century. So I moved on.

  I then found that all literal jaybirds, like blue jays and such, are born with hardly any down at all and looking quite naked. Thus, “naked as a jaybird.” Hmm. But it still wasn’t a satisfactory explanation.