J.T. turned away, a cough rising in his throat. The woman was dangling from a second-story staircase, and he was ogling her legs. What kind of a lecher was he? J.T. tugged his hat down and cleared his throat, wishing he could clear his mind as easily.
She must have heard him, for the kicking stilled.
“Mr. Tucker?”
Her voice sounded breathless. Taking firm control of his wayward thoughts, he stepped aside to better assess her predicament. She must have managed to grab hold of the top step as she fell, for her head, shoulders, and arms were blocked from his view.
“I’m here, Miss Richards.” He cleared his throat again, despite the fact that his mouth had gone bone dry.
“I seem to have dropped my key.”
A quiet chuckle escaped him before he could stuff it back inside. He shook his head, unable to tame the smile that lingered on his lips.
“Yes, ma’am. I believe you have. Looks like you might have dropped one or two other things, as well.”
“I’m afraid so.”
He chanced another look up, careful to steer his gaze along appropriate paths. Was it his imagination, or was she hanging a bit lower than she had been a minute ago?
“Um . . . Mr. Tucker?” His name came out pinched, and he thought he heard a grunt as she shifted.
“Yes, ma’am?”
“I know it wasn’t part of our original agreement . . .” A second noise interrupted. Definitely a grunt. And he swore he could see the edge of her collar peeking out beneath the wooden slats now. She was slipping. His heart rammed against his ribs.
“But might you be willing to catch me? I don’t think I can—”
He dove back under her, her quiet gasp ringing in his ears as loud as any scream. Bracing himself against the impact, he scooped her legs into the crook of his left arm before they hit the ground and caught her upper body with his right. He clasped her close to his chest as he fought to stay on his feet. Once his boots were firmly planted, he looked down into her face, concerned to find her eyes squeezed shut.
“Are you all right?”
The lines around her eyelids softened, and her lashes fluttered upward. The twilight blue of her eyes held him captive.
“I . . . I’m fine, I think. Thank you, Mr. Tucker.”
She blinked and dipped her chin, breaking the connection. As he lowered her feet to the ground, his chin knocked against her already-askew bonnet. The thing sat lopsided on her head, and one of the flowers from around the crown had abandoned its place to drape drunkenly over her forehead. He reached for it and tried to stick it back where it belonged, but the stubborn stem refused to cooperate. Fed up, he plucked the ornery bloom straight off of its mooring and shoved it at its owner.
“Here.”
A hint of a smile played over Miss Richards’s lips as she accepted it from him. “Thank you.”
She must think him an idiot. And why not? He was one. Trying to fix a stupid flower. What had come over him? Looking around for an escape of any kind, he spied her small purse in the shadow of the building.
“I’ll . . . uh . . . look for your key.”
She didn’t say anything, but he could hear the swish of her skirts as she no doubt set about repairing her appearance. He bent over to collect the purse and searched the area around it for the key.
“Perhaps I should have heeded the wisdom of Proverbs before I allowed my pride to send me stomping up those steps in a huff.” Her self-deprecating chuckle drew his attention away from the weed-strewn ground and back toward her. “You know . . . a haughty spirit goeth before a fall.”
Her saucy taunts as she’d rushed up the stairs had surely irritated him, but truth be told, he probably shared the blame because of his impatience in the shop. No one had ever accused him of having a silver tongue.
“I don’t know about the haughty spirit,” he said with a shrug, “but you certainly fell.”
Full-blown feminine laughter rang out, and the sound lifted his mood.
“That I did.” She started walking his way, a free-spirited smile bedecking her face.
J.T. cleared his throat again and returned to his perusal of the ground beneath the staircase. After a moment, he caught a glimmer of reflected light. The key lay beside the broken pieces of what had once been a secure step. He shoved the purse under his arm and picked up the key, along with one of the defective hunks of wood. The thing was rotted through. He frowned. How many other steps had deteriorated?
Miss Richards slipped up beside him and retrieved the purse and key. “Thank you again, Mr. Tucker. If it weren’t for your quick actions, I would likely have suffered a serious injury.”
He felt her withdrawal, but he had already started inspecting the other steps and didn’t pay her much mind.
“I know you’re anxious to return to the livery,” she said, “so I’ll get the door unlocked in a trice.”
She was halfway to the top when her meaning finally sank into his distracted brain.
“Get down from there, woman, before you take another tumble!” His words came out sharper than he’d intended, but fear for her safety had ignited his temper. That and the fact that when he raised his head from his stooped position under the stairs to call out to her, he got another eyeful of stockings and petticoats.
“Don’t worry, Mr. Tucker. I’m not stomping this time, and I’ve a firm grip on the railing. I’ll be fine.”
Gritting his teeth, J.T. strode out from under the steps and glared up at the stubborn woman whom he had earlier mistaken for intelligent.
“The wood from that broken step is rotten. There might be others ready to give way, as well.”
Her eyes narrowed and the skin around her lips drew taut. “Thank you for your concern, but if they held me the first time, there’s no reason to believe they won’t do so now.”
“What if you weakened them the first time?” He crossed his arms and raised a brow in challenge. Just because the steps he had checked so far had turned out to be sound didn’t mean the remaining ones wouldn’t cause a problem.
The woman deliberately took another step before answering him, her chin angled toward the sky. “You need not treat me like a child, sir. I am perfectly capable of navigating this staircase on my own.”
He snorted.
Her nostrils flared. “I promise not to ask you to catch me again, all right? Now stop scowling.”
Of course he did no such thing.
Those deep blue eyes of hers shot sparks at him, and he had to work to keep his expression stern. The woman was a firecracker.
“Tell you what,” she huffed, “if I fall, you have my permission to gloat as much as you like. How about that?”
Without waiting for his answer, she spun around and marched the remainder of the distance to the top, stretching her stride to span the gulf over the missing stair. He followed her from below as a precaution and didn’t relax until she disappeared into the room that would serve as her personal quarters.
Fool woman. She’d rather risk her neck than admit she might not be able to manage something on her own. He jumped up and grabbed hold of one of the higher steps, testing its strength against his dangling weight. It held. The top step, too, remained firmly in place even after all of Miss Richards’s clinging and scraping. Apparently, the only unstable lumber was the step she fell through. Didn’t matter, though. She still should have waited until he checked it out before trudging up the stairs like Joan of Arc on some kind of crusade.
J.T. pulled another toothpick out of his shirt pocket and wedged it between his molars. His tongue fiddled with it as he stared up through the hole in the staircase. He had to give her credit. Miss Richards knew how to handle herself in a crisis. Not only did she have the presence of mind to latch onto another step to keep from crashing to the ground, but there’d been no screaming, no hysteria, just calm conversation and a polite request to
please catch her
. Any other woman, his sister included, would have shrieked like a hog at butchering time.
Shaking his head, J.T. headed back to where he had left the dressmaker’s trunk. The box had tumbled to the bottom of the stairs and now lay upside down. He flipped it over just as Tom came around the corner with the other pink-ribboned trunk hefted on his shoulder.
“I done finished the blue ones, J.T., so I thought I’d bring this ’un to ya. How come you’re so slow? I expected you’d be done afore me.”
“Miss Richards had a mishap on the stairs.”
Tom’s eyes widened in glazed panic.
“She’s all right,” J.T. hurried to assure him. “She’s up in her room.”
“W-what happened?”
J.T. hauled the trunk off Tom’s shoulder and set it down next to his. “One of the steps broke and she fell, but she’s fine.”
“If she’s fine, how come I can’t see her anywheres?”
The boy’s breathing came in quick shallow gasps, and his head flew from side to side.
J.T. squeezed his arm to get him to focus on him. “You know how womenfolk are, Tom. She’s probably up there figuring out what kind of curtains she should hang in the windows and where to put all her knickknacks. She’ll be down in a bit.”
The boy glanced up at the open door. “You sure?”
“I’m sure.” J.T. stepped behind him and started steering him across the street. “Now, what we menfolk oughta do is fetch a new plank from the lumber pile in back of the livery and fix that step for her so she doesn’t have to worry about any more mishaps. You think you can find me a good board while I dig up a hammer and nails?”
Tom’s head bobbed up and down. “Yes, sir.”
“Good.” J.T. thumped him on the back and moved into place beside him. They walked several yards in silence, but when they reached the livery doors, Tom turned back to look at the building across the street.
“You know, J.T., since Miss Richards ain’t got no regular menfolk, it’d probably be a good idea for us to look after her. You reckon that’s why God brought her to us? So’s we could take care of her?”
J.T. chomped down on his toothpick and clenched his jaw. He didn’t want to think about the Lord purposefully bringing the dressmaker into his life. He had enough responsibility looking after Cordelia and widows like Louisa James. He didn’t want to be bothered with an opinionated, stubborn piece of baggage like Miss Hannah Richards, even if she did fit in his arms like a pistol in a custom-made holster. No, sir. After he fixed her step and finished unloading her paraphernalia, she’d be on her own.
Hannah hid out in her living quarters until the muted male voices below faded away. She peeked out the doorway to make sure they were gone, then flopped into the single wooden chair that resided in her room. It tilted to the side and nearly threw her to the floor before she caught her balance with her boot heel. A frustrated scream welled up inside her, held at bay by the barest thread of self-control. Even the furniture plotted to steal her equilibrium.
A scrap of kindling shoved beneath the too-short leg would fix the chair, but what was she to do about Mr. Tucker? One minute he was a gallant knight, rescuing her from a mess of her own making, teasing and charming her, and holding her with arms that made her feel cherished and safe. The next he was an arrogant, overbearing lout who chastised her as if she were a child and ordered her about on her own property. She didn’t know if she should kiss his cheek or kick his shin.
Right now, the shin kick was winning.
She sighed and tossed her purse onto the worn oak table beside her, the movement highlighting the ache beneath her arms. More concerned with the state of her clothing than any scrapes or bruises resulting from her fall, Hannah raised each arm in turn and examined the fabric and seams. She found a small tear on the left where the side seam met the sleeve—easily repaired with a few strokes of her needle. The snags on the fabric would be harder to fix, but at least they were in an inconspicuous area. The front of the dress had been spared, and she hadn’t lost a single button. Of course, she always double stitched hers, so she’d expected nothing less.
Having assured herself that the damage to her traveling suit had been kept to a minimum, Hannah broadened her inspection to include the room. A cookstove stood on the left wall flanked by small windows on either side. A primitive-looking bedstead and mattress dominated the back corner. A few hooks protruded from the wall for hanging clothes, but no bureau or washstand could be found. A table and the lopsided chair she sat on completed the tally of furniture. Pretty spare. And it would be more so after she hauled the table and chair downstairs.
Her shop demanded top priority. She needed a work surface for cutting patterns and piecing them together, and a chair was essential for using her treadle sewing machine. Not knowing how long it would take her to build up a steady income, Hannah planned to save whatever money she could.
Once her business was turning a decent profit, she would order furnishings for her apartment. Until then, she’d make do with the trunks she’d brought. She could use them for storage as well as makeshift benches. If she stacked two, they might be tall enough to give her a counter of sorts. An oilcloth cover and her large breadboard would give her a surface for food preparation. That should suffice. She’d have to keep meals simple anyway, with all the time spent in her shop.
Hannah pulled a small tablet out of her purse and began jotting down a list of the items she would need to purchase at the mercantile. Halfway through the word
potatoes
a thought occurred to her. If the store owner boxed up her purchases, she could use the crates for stools and even a washstand. She smiled and nibbled on the end of her pencil. With a little ingenuity, she’d have all the comforts of home in no time. Of course, she’d have to find someone to supply her with fresh milk. She wouldn’t last a day without her morning cocoa.
A sudden pounding outside made her jump. Grabbing up her handbag and list, Hannah rushed to the door. Three steps down, Mr. Tucker stood bent over the gaping hole in her stairway, legs straddled, arms swinging as he nailed a new stair into place. As he reached for a second nail, he caught sight of her. He gave her a brief nod and then hammered the nail in with a tap followed by a single sure stroke.