He wondered if she knew about the bird’s nest
in the barn, the one with the family of new swallows. He’d seen it
when he’d gone in search of the shingles. She’d like to see that
little family, he’d bet. Watching her now, he knew it would be just
the kind of thing to make her smile.
The birds on her hand flew away to the higher
branches above, and Allie’s head came up. Apparently sensing his
presence, slowly she turned toward him, and a spontaneous smile lit
her face.
“
Jeff! You came back!” She sounded
surprised. Surprised enough to forget to call him Mr. Hicks. She
waded through the tall grass and wild flowers, her skirts swishing
like wheatfields in the wind. When she reached the wagon, he
noticed the meal bag in her hand.
He pointed at the bag. “I’ve never seen
anyone hand-feed birds before. At least not those little ones.”
She tipped her face up to his. “They’re shy,
but they’ll come once they realize they aren’t in danger. It took
some time and patience to prove that to them, and for them to get
used to me.” She smiled again and extended the bag. “And I think
the sunflower hearts were too tempting for them to resist.”
Maybe it was more than the seeds, Jeff
thought, looking at her. It wouldn’t take much to have him eating
out of her hand. She was so beautiful, her face and her slender
softness, he got a lump in his throat just looking at her. Sally
had been pretty, too, but in a different way. His wife had been
younger, and yet there had been a spark of undisguised lust in her
eyes that she’d carried to their bed.
Allie’s was a quiet, simple beauty, like that
of a clear mountain morning, or wild filly running across a stretch
of grassland. She was probably wary of a man’s touch, but maybe her
trust could be earned, just as she’d tamed the birds enough to eat
from her hand. A man could almost forget his foolish past and begin
to think about tomorrow if he had a woman like her beside him.
“
You got everything, then?” She
searched the wagon box behind him. “The seed and all?
“
Yeah. Oh, here—” He leaned back on the
wagon seat and dug two fingers into his front pocket. “I’ve got
your change.” And a damned good thing he did, too. How could he
have come back here with part of the money missing, or worse, with
no money at all? He would have run off to hide rather than face her
with the proof that she’d been a fool to trust him.
When she held out her free hand to take the
coins, he saw an ugly burn on her palm. He gripped her wrist.
“Jesus, what happened to your hand?”
Althea had put out her hand without thinking,
and she saw the blister at the same time that Jeff did.
Self-consciously she struggled to pull her hand away, but his grip
was firm and warm. “I burned it on the iron. It was my fault—I
wasn’t watching what I was doing.”
“
It must hurt like hell,” he said,
studying it with a frown that laid furrows on his smooth forehead.
But she wasn’t looking at her hand. She was looking at Jeff. Faint
lines fanned out from the outer corners of his eyes, the badge of a
man who’d spent time laboring under the sun. His dark lashes were
golden at their roots, like corn silk. So were his brows, and the
sight fascinated her.
He had come back, she thought. He’d come back
even though Olivia had told her he wouldn’t. Even though she
herself had doubted it. Althea didn’t think she’d ever been so glad
to see someone.
His gaze, as green and deep as a bottomless
lake, shifted from her hand to her eyes, and Allie’s thoughts were
occupied with nothing but their hold on her. “Doesn’t it?”
“
W-what?” She rather wished he wouldn’t
look at her like that. How could she think straight if he
did?
“
Doesn’t your hand hurt?”
“
Um, yes, I guess so.” His touch made
her completely forget about the burn on her palm.
He continued to cradle her hand in his own.
“You should see to it. Did you do anything for it?”
“
A little butter. I’ll put some baking
soda on it when I go back inside.” Her insides felt like the butter
that had melted on her hand, and she hoped he wouldn’t notice the
goose bumps that rushed down her bare forearm. “Things went all
right in town?”
Jeff released her wrist and shrugged,
obviously uncomfortable. “Yeah. Fine.” Althea wasn’t convinced. He
jumped down from the wagon, all long legs and grace, and walked
around to lead the mule to the barn. “I’d better get Kansas, here,
unhitched and these sacks put away.”
She took a couple of steps to follow him. He
was so tall that her head just reached his shoulder, and he moved
with a loose, easy gait that she found curiously stirring. But
something was bothering him. “Did someone in town make a comment
about you working here?”
He turned to look at her. “What do you
mean?”
She smiled slightly. “It’s funny—people talk
about Olivia and me and they think we don’t know. Well, I suppose
Olivia doesn’t. But I do. I know what they say—I’ve known it for
years. So I thought that maybe someone asked you about working for
the crazy Ford sisters.”
He frowned. “They’d better not call you that
in front of me. Anyway, that didn’t happen.” Since it didn’t seem
that he was going to say more, she was about to let the subject
drop when he said, “I saw Cooper Matthews in town, that’s all. We
tangled a little. You know how he is.”
Yes, she certainly did. He’d been no better
as a boy, but as a man he was more menacing. Cooper made trouble
wherever he went. “Do you think he’ll come here again?”
He shook his head. “I doubt it. He’ll wait
until I’m in town again, or some other time when he can sneak up on
me.”
She looked up at his clean profile again, and
took a breath. “I-I know it’s none of my business—and I know you
were only doing your job at the time and had no choice. But
maybe—if he’s carrying such a grudge about Wesley, do you think it
might help if you apologized to Cooper for killing his son?”
He came to such an abrupt stop, Kansas bumped
his nose against Jeff’s shoulder. His face full of anger and raw
pain, he spun toward her with a violence that made her shrink from
him.
“
Apologize!” The mule’s ears went flat
and Allie jumped. “Good God, woman, don’t you think I did that? I
was the one who went to Matthews to tell him I’d killed Wes. I
could barely string my words together for the guilt I felt and the
anger. For the senselessness of it all. But I told him I was
sorry—that it was the sorriest day of my whole goddamned life. All
he said was that I hadn’t seen that day yet, but he’d make sure I
did. I even paid the undertaker for the boy’s burial expenses and I
went to his funeral. Cooper didn’t. As far as I know, he’s never
visited his own son’s grave. I’m not apologizing to him
again.”
“
No, of course not—” Althea fumbled,
her heart beating double-time in her throat. She was unaccustomed
to raised voices. In the Ford house, anger had always been
expressed with austere disapproval and a dour cold
shoulder.
“
And anyway, to Cooper’s way of
thinking, a man who shows pity or remorse or mercy is weak, and I’m
not going to be the one to change his narrow little mind. I don’t
have to.”
“
Then maybe it isn’t important that
Cooper forgives you. It might be that you need to forgive
yourself.” Althea couldn’t believe she’d given voice to the
suggestion.
His sandy brows went up. “Myself! That’s what
Sally— What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
She didn’t want to make him angrier. Besides,
it was really none of her business. She retreated another step and
shook her head. “I spoke out of turn. I’m sorry.”
He glared at her with eyes that looked like
green ice. “Everyone is great at giving advice. Well, I’ll tell you
something, Miss Ford. Until you’ve walked in my boots— Oh, hell,
just forget it!” he snapped.
Turning, he wrapped his hand in the
uncooperative mule’s bridle and pulled him forward again, drawing
closer to the barn doors than Althea wanted to go. Why she cared
she wasn’t sure, but she didn’t want him mad at her.
She stood on the path and called after him.
“Mr. Hicks—Jeff—wait.” He didn’t respond and she called again.
“Please stop?”
He stopped and faced her, his expression
suddenly weary, as if the outburst had cost him all of his newly
gained strength. The sight of it struck her heart.
She closed the distance between them and
tried not to twist her hands together like an awkward girl. “I
really am sorry.”
His hard expression melted. “Well, I guess I
shouldn’t have gotten so hot under the collar,” he muttered.
“
I’m glad you—I want to thank you for
coming back,” she said, fiddling with the meal sack. She didn’t
know why, but she felt it was important to tell him
that.
“
You didn’t believe I would,
huh?”
She opened her hands. “I know you don’t
really want to be here. And I gave you the perfect chance to run
off.”
He turned his attention to a bloom of Queen
Anne’s lace near his boot, avoiding her gaze. “I didn’t plan to do
that. I have to confess that once I got into town, with money in my
pocket I had some trouble staying out of the Liberal Saloon. But I
did.” He lifted his eyes to hers and took a step toward her.
“You’re wrong about one thing, though, Allie. I do want to be
here.”
There was something about the way he said it
that made Allie’s breath come a little faster. “You do?”
He moved closer, keeping his grip on the
mule’s lines but letting them out a little, the way a cowboy might
give some slack to a yearling after a hard day. “Well, not at
first, I admit that. But it’s good to have a tie to the land again,
to sink my hands into it and grow things. To watch the season turn.
I haven’t felt like that for a long time. Anyway, you need someone
around here to fix things up.”
His reaction was so different from that of
the other men she’d hired to work here. Jeff didn’t treat her like
a crackpot, watching her with rude, sidelong gazes, or talking down
to her as if she were an idiot who couldn’t understand. But maybe
he didn’t because he knew what it meant to be treated that way
himself. And it might be why she didn’t want him angry with
her.
So relieved that he’d gotten over his temper,
Allie said, “For dinner I thought that you might want—that
is—you’re welcome to have dinner with my sister and me. If you
like.” She extended the invitation, feeling so awkward and shy, she
knew she was blushing.
“
You’re eating on the porch
again?”
“
Well, no, we’ll sit at the dining room
table inside. Maybe it might be a nice change from eating from a
tray in the lean-to, or in the yard. You
know . . . not so lonely.”
Absently he stroked the mule’s neck and
finally he nodded. “Thanks, Allie. I’d like that very much.”
He was so handsome standing there, she
thought. The late afternoon sun glimmered on the blond streaks in
his hair and his lean-muscled height called to her. She was loath
to leave his presence. In fact, just looking at him flooded her
with a torrent of feelings and emotions that pulled her to him and
she felt powerless to resist. Was he ever lonely, she wondered,
lonely to the marrow of his bones as she sometimes was?
“
We’re having roast beef,” she noted
inanely.
Allie could have told Jeff she was serving
boiled goat hide for all he cared right now. She had invited him to
her table and that was good enough for him. At this moment he felt
just a little taller than the man who had robbed Farley Wright’s
hen house.
His eyes never left hers—they were the color
of a sunset sky in winter—and he watched her hesitant approach.
Sometimes when he looked at her he saw loss and a loneliness that
he couldn’t define. It was there in those eyes.
But right now, all he saw was the woman. Her
breasts swelled beneath the plain bodice of her serviceable dress,
and her waist cut in sharply to flare gently at her hips. He
imagined running his hands over her bare skin, following the
flowing line of her body. A curling tendril of copper hair resting
on her pale forehead hair fluttered in the breeze, as delicate as a
flower petal.
She stopped not more than a pace before him,
and Jeff dropped the reins. A surge of desire bolted through him,
not unlike what he’d felt the day Allie measured him for his shirt.
But it was even stronger now.
His instinct driving him, he knew what he
must do, what everything male in him demanded that he do.
He leaned forward, his lips just inches from
her face.
Closer—closer until he touched his mouth to
hers, softly, gently, with a kiss that was little more than a
shadow.
Jeff hadn’t kissed a woman sober since Sally
left. The sensation was so moving, so sweet, he felt his emotions
rise even as his body responded with hardness.
Resisting the urge to crush her to him, he
allowed himself only to bracket her chin with his fingertips. But
God, it was a trial to keep his hand on her jaw. He heard her swift
intake of breath. Please don’t pull away,
Allie . . . please, no, he thought. But she
didn’t.
“
Allie,” he whispered, breaking the
kiss. “Thank you.” He was so damned grateful to her, it was all he
could manage to say. Her hand, at least he could take her
hand—
“
Ouch!” She jumped back and snatched
her fingers from his.
“
Damn, I’m sorry, I forgot about your
burn—”
She backed away, then, her eyes still wide,
her fingers pressed lightly to her lips. “It’s all right. Um—I’d
better see to dinner if we’re going to eat.” She turned and hurried
through the grass to the back porch.
When she reached it, she looked at him over
her shoulder, then ran inside.
~~*~*~*~~
“
Do you mean he came back?” Olivia,
ashen-faced, stared at her sister across the lid of the grand
piano. Althea thought she looked crestfallen, as though she’d
suffered some grave disappointment, but she couldn’t imagine why.
Olivia got her way on nearly everything.
“
Yes, isn’t it wond— I mean, of course
he did. I’ve asked him to have dinner with us.” Althea had dashed
upstairs to her room to put on a clean dress and tidy her hair. Now
she fussed with a bud vase on the side table next to the settee and
straightened a needlepoint pillow. She felt excited and
lighthearted, terrified and rather womanly, all at the same time.
Jeff had kissed her! A proper lady would not have permitted such a
liberty. In fact, she should probably be very angry. But she wasn’t
and at this moment, she didn’t care.
Womanly. Yes, that was how Jeff Hicks made
her feel.
Her sister scowled, wrinkling up her delicate
face like a Danish squash. “Dinner! Althea, you can’t mean you’re
going to invite that man, that derelict, into the house.”
“
He’s really tried hard to get back on
his feet since he got here, and he’s made progress. Anyway, I think
it will do us both good.”
Olivia traced the ivory keys with her
fingertips. “But you know I get tired so easily.”
“
But that’s all right. You won’t have
to do anything special except help me set the table, and maybe
slice the bread. The roast is almost finished—it’s been in the oven
for more than an hour.” Distracted, she added, “I wish we had a
dessert.”
“
But you can’t cook with your hand
burned like that,” her sister continued, a faint panicky sound in
her sweet voice that Althea chose to overlook.
“
I’ve already cooked dinner, Olivia,”
she pointed out again. “Just as I always have.” With her teeth
gritted, she had applied a cooling paste of baking soda to her burn
and bandaged it.
“
I don’t want some stranger sitting at
the table with me, watching me eat.”
Althea had spent most of her life catering to
her sister’s wishes and had never asked anything for herself. Just
this once, she would. She walked to the piano bench and put her
uninjured hand on Olivia’s shoulder. The blond hair under her palm
was as silky as a child’s. “Heavens, dear, he’s not going to watch
you eat. Please, Olivia—I think it would be a nice change. It’s
Saturday evening—a lot of people entertain on Saturday evenings. We
can do it just this once. Besides, I’ve already asked him. I can’t
take back the invitation now.”
Olivia pursed her mouth into a white line.
“All right, Althea.” She looked up at her with a sidelong gaze. “If
that’s what you want.”
CHAPTER TEN
Jeff stood outside the lean-to and stared at
the back door across the yard. He had washed, shaved, and washed
again, as nervous as a moonstruck boy calling on a girl for the
first time. He wasn’t really calling on Allie—she had only invited
him to dinner after all, a mere courtesy extended by a woman to her
employee. Just the same, he’d stood before his shaving mirror,
trying to see all of himself by ducking and stretching, although it
had been no use. A little bay rum would have been a nice touch,
too, but he’d settled for slicking down his clean hair with
water.
He hadn’t sat down at anyone’s table for a
long time, and the prospect had him so edgy he almost wished he’d
declined the invitation. He’d spent so much time alone in his blur
of endless days and nights, he didn’t remember how to make small
talk and was worried that he might forget his table manners. Maybe
if he just concentrated on his plate— But he wasn’t really going
there to eat. He was going because he wanted to be close to
Allie.
He couldn’t believe he’d kissed her like
that, in the middle of the yard with a damned mule looking on.
Wasn’t that romantic as hell? He hadn’t planned to do it, but with
her standing so close and looking so good, he’d settled his mouth
over hers before he knew quite how it happened. With all other
woman he’d ever kissed, he’d considered each move before he made
it, but with Allie, it had been a spontaneous act, as natural and
essential as breathing.
And it had more than made up for Cooper
Matthews’ bedevilment.
After ducking back inside the lean-to for a
last glance in his shaving mirror, Jeff decided he looked as good
as he was going to and he struck off for the house. Stiff as
celluloid, his new jeans sang like a pair of crickets with every
step he took. He cringed at the noise. Hell if he didn’t look and
sound like a new-made Christian, fresh from the river of salvation
and all spruced up in his new clothes, ready to shout hallelujah.
Remembering the feel of Allie’s soft lips beneath his and picturing
her smooth, creamy skin, though, his thoughts were anything but
pious.
When he reached the porch, the aroma of food
drifted to him, rich and savory, and he paused with his knuckles
hovering over the door. What would he say? What would Allie and her
sister say? Maybe they’d ask a lot of questions that he didn’t want
to answer. They might want to know about Sally and why she’d left
him. People loved to hear about the miseries of others. It made
their own mundane lives seem more tolerable.
He glanced back at the lean-to, as weathered
and gray as the barn it was attached to. He could still turn around
and go back. Make up some excuse to avoid hurting Allie’s feelings
and escape this—
Suddenly the door opened and Jeff found
himself face to face with Allie Ford, his upraised knuckles
perilously close to tapping on her nicely formed nose. He dropped
his arm and backed up a step. Damn, wasn’t she pretty? Her pink
dress was complemented by a pink satin ribbon that she’d wound
through her curls, and her smooth skin looked as velvety and
delicately colored as a rose. All thoughts of begging off fled from
his mind.
“
Mr.—I mean, Jeff—please—come in.” Her
gaze swept over him and his clothes, and she smiled. “You wore the
shirt I made for you. I haven’t seen it since the afternoon I left
it in the lean-to.” She tipped her face down in a gesture of
shyness that touched him. Until this moment, Althea Ford had not
struck him as a shy woman. “I was worried that you didn’t like
it.”
He fingered one of his cuffs. “No, ma’am,
it’s a fine shirt. I was saving it for a special occasion.” He
looked up again. “I guess this qualifies.”
Her cheeks colored a bit as her eyes slid
away from his. He couldn’t help but smile. “We’re just about ready
to sit down. Come on this way.”
“
Thanks.” He followed her inside,
noting that at the nape of her neck, wispy little curls had escaped
the hairpins to lay in shimmering red ringlets against her pale
skin, making him think of swirls of raspberry juice on
cream.
She moved ahead of him with precise, fluid
grace, the rosy folds of her skirts whipping the door jambs as she
passed. Jeff couldn’t decide which smelled better—Allie or
dinner.
Inside, the house looked better than it did
from the yard. As he passed through the kitchen, he saw it was big
and bright. In the dining room curtains graced every window with a
definite feminine touch that, surprisingly, didn’t seem so bad to
him. Jeff would prefer more rugged surroundings himself, but the
lace tablecloth and flowered upholstery on the chair seats in the
dining room made him think of the house he’d grown up in.
Except for the pale specter of Olivia
Ford.
She sat at her place at the table and studied
him with a careful, assessing look from beneath long lashes.
Not addle-minded, Eli Wickwire had told him.
No, up this close Jeff could see that his original assumption had
been wrong. He had the feeling that this young woman missed
nothing. There was also something that lurked behind those hazel
eyes, something Jeff had seen somewhere before, but couldn’t
quite—
“
Olivia, won’t you say hello to Mr.
Hicks?”
“
Hello, Mr. Hicks,” she parroted and
gave him a flat smile.
“
Ma’am.”
Allie directed him to the place across the
table from her own. “This is a real treat, isn’t it, Olivia? We
don’t have company very often.”
“
I’m so sorry about that Althea,”
Olivia said in a soft voice that struck Jeff as too sincere to be
real.
“
Sorry?” Althea echoed. “Whatever
for?”
“
Well, it’s my fault that you never get
to entertain,” Olivia replied earnestly. “Because I haven’t been
well for the longest time.” She took a biscuit from the plate that
Allie handed to her. “I don’t know if Althea told you that, Mr.
Hicks. I worry about being a burden to her, but she’s an angel to
have put up with me all this time. I have no idea what I’d do
without her—a person couldn’t ask for a better sister.”
Surprised by the younger sister’s sudden
talkativeness, Jeff looked at Allie as she served a slice of meat
to Olivia. “I’m sure that’s true, ma’am.”
Allie smiled and shrugged. “I only do what
anyone else would. But tell us about the garden, Jeff. You’ll start
planting tomorrow? It’s already so late, I hope we’ll have enough
time to get a decent harvest.”
He spooned mashed potatoes onto his dish.
“I’ll get the corn in first. It needs the longest growing time, but
it shouldn’t take too long to sow, providing that Kansas is still
agreeable—”
“
Excuse me, Mr. Hicks—” Olivia broke in
and turned to her sister. “I forgot to bring out your blackberry
jam, dear. Would you mind? It’s so good.”
Althea paused, her fork suspended on its path
to her mouth, holding the first bite from her plate. “No,
Olivia . . . of course I don’t mind. I’ll get
it. Please excuse me, Mr. Hicks.” She smiled apologetically at Jeff
and abandoned her untouched meal, pushing herself away from the
table to go to the kitchen.
During Althea’s short absence, Jeff
considered Olivia Ford, but she gave him another bland smile and
put a teaspoon of peas on her plate.
“
I really think you’ll like Althea’s
blackberry jam. My father used to say it was the best he’d ever
tasted.”
Allie reappeared with a small bowl of jam and
put it on the table.
“
Now then,” she said, and put her
napkin back in her lap and turned her attention back to Jeff. “What
about the corn? We usually plant ten rows, and I’d also like to put
in a few pumpkins this year. I think I have some seed in a jar in
the kitchen.”
“
Althea,” Olivia interrupted. “Isn’t
that the shirt you made for Mr. Hicks?”
“
Yes, that’s right.”