Funny, though—she hadn’t reacted as he’d
thought she would. Allie Ford didn’t strike him as the flexible
type. In fact, he guessed that what little he’d heard about her was
probably true, that she was unyielding and hidebound. He’d seen
traces of those qualities himself. But when she stood next to him
at the fence this afternoon, he’d also seen compassion in her.
After he told her about Wes, he’d figured
that she’d send him packing back to Will Mason. She could yet.
Jeff hoped that wouldn’t happen.
He opened his eyes and glanced at the kitchen
window through the lean-to’s open door. Even though he didn’t fit
in here with the stiff-backed woman and her feeble-minded sister,
he was beginning to like getting regular meals and having something
to do every day.
Sighing, Jeff picked up his fork and took
another stab at the potato on his plate. He still wished he had
that drink.
~~*~*~*~~
After dinner, while Olivia read Jane Eyre to
herself, Althea stole up the back stairs to the attic. She usually
worked on her needlepoint in the evening, but now she planned to
turn her needle to another task.
A rush of heat, like that from a stove,
rolled out of the small airless space under the roof when Althea
opened the door. A pair of tiny flyspecked windows draped with
cobwebs provided the only light, but the sunset on this side of the
house cast bright yellow beams across the floor. Fortunately, this
part of the roof hadn’t leaked during the rains.
Up here was a dusty clutter of trunks, tea
crates, and a few long, cedar-lined clothes boxes. Toys mingled
with the chests and barrels, but the only remnant of Althea’s
childhood was the wicker doll carriage pushed against the back
wall. She pulled a tattered footstool close to the little carriage
and sat down.
Putting out a tentative hand, Althea let her
fingertips trace the bumpy texture of the woven strips of willow.
As a little girl, she had promenaded her doll up and down the road
in the buggy, pretending that she was walking to town. When they
got to Decker Prairie, she would have tea with toast and jam, while
her faceless, make-believe husband—her doll’s father—worked on
their farm. It all seemed so long ago now.
Althea’s childhood had ended in her seventh
year, the day Olivia was born. She had acquired adult obligations
then. Her mother was never really the same after the birth of her
second daughter; that was when her strangeness began.
Althea took over the house, just like a grown
person. And grown people didn’t play with toys, did they? According
to Amos Ford, they didn’t. Then she had a real-life doll to take
care of named Olivia.
She sat forward, her elbows on her knees, and
let her gaze drift. If she were they type to feel sorry for
herself, she might think that with all the responsibility laid on
her shoulders she had been cheated out of her girlhood, and the
opportunity to do the things other young women enjoyed. If she were
a dreamer it would be very easy for her to envision that life she’d
pretended as a child. And she’d have made herself crazy with
yearning by now.
Crazy.
Althea shook her head and stood up. She had
come up here for a purpose, not to think about the past and what
could have been.
Avoiding the trunk that she knew contained
her mother’s belongings, she went straight to a large cardboard box
that sat next to a bushel basket. She lifted the lid and carefully
pulled away layers of tissue to uncover a length of gray chambray.
Althea smoothed the close-woven material with her hand and nodded
decisively.
It would be perfect for what she had in
mind.
~~*~*~*~~
“
Mr. Hicks, could you spare a moment of
your time?”
Surprised to hear Allie’s clear voice outside
the lean-to, Jeff sprang up from the bed. The door was already
open, and he saw her standing a good four feet back. “Yes,
ma’am.”
Her auburn hair glittered with red, brown,
and gold lights in the setting sun. Had a man ever touched that
hair? he wondered. Had anyone pulled out the pins and had the
pleasure of watching the dark fire of it unwind down her bare back?
He could imagine it very easily. He’d bet with that coloring of
hers, her skin was like white velvet—smooth and soft, every fold,
every curve, every warm cleft under his hands.
“
Mr. Hicks . . .
please.” Her cheeks turned pink and she averted her
eyes.
He glanced down. Damn, no shirt. “Um,
sorry—your rosebush pretty much ripped up the shirt you gave
me.”
“
I know it didn’t fit very well and I
thought—” She cast a sidelong gaze at him, obviously trying to
avoid looking at his bare upper torso, and her eyes flew open.
“Good lord, what happened to your arms?” Crossing the distance
between them, she leaned closer and looked at the scratches
crisscrossing his hands and forearms.
He shrugged, feeling a little self-conscious
under her scrutiny. “That rose ripped into me, too. It had thorns
as long as bear claws and it didn’t give in without a fight.” He
had washed before dinner but some of the deeper wounds had seeped
for a while and were crusted with dried blood.
“
Oh, dear,” she said, her fingers
resting at the base of her throat. “You should have told me about
it.”
“
We both had other things on our minds
today.”
She nodded. “Yes,
well. . . but this needs to be cleaned up or the
wounds will fester.”
Jeff wasn’t accustomed to having someone fuss
over him. “Naw, it’s nothing. I’ll be all right.”
But she was already hurrying to the house,
and it seemed to him that she was gone no longer than a second. She
waded back through the tall grass, her skirts swishing against the
green serrated blades. Struggling to carry the stool from the
porch, she also juggled a dark brown glass bottle and some cotton
wool.
Jeff stepped forward and took the stool, and
she shooed him into the lean-to.
“
Go on, now. You sit there on the bed
and let me tend these scratches.”
Jesus, two minutes ago, she’d been afraid to
even get close to his door. Now she was pushing him into the room,
all busyness and in charge.
Jeff felt the edge of the bedframe against
the back of his knees and sat down. Althea pulled the stool close
and uncorked the brown bottle she’d carried with her.
“
My soul and body, I’ve never seen the
like,” she said, shaking her head.
“
It looks worse than it is.”
She gazed up at him with those soul-searching
eyes, and Jeff felt another emotion stirring, one he couldn’t even
identify. “I doubt that,” she said. “I would think all these
scratches would sting something terrible.”
“
It’s not so bad,” he lied. In truth,
his arms burned like hellfire, but he wasn’t about to tell her
that.
“
Well, this will fix things up.” Using
her lap for a work space, she made a pad of the cotton wool, then
tipped the bottle opening against it, letting the potion
flow.
Jeff pulled back and eyed it warily. In his
experience, liquids that came from dark bottles also burned like
hellfire, whether a man drank them or put them on an open wound.
“What is that stuff?”
“
It’s just a decoction of comfrey and
lavender, mixed with witch hazel.” She took his left hand and held
it on her own open palm. “This might sting a bit, but only for a
while.” With great gentleness she touched the cotton pad to the
back of his hand and dabbed at the angry, red marks.
Jeff sucked in a breath between his clenched
teeth, but didn’t snap out the oath that leaped to mind.
Althea kept her eyes on her task. Sitting
this close to her, he could see the graceful arch to her russet
brows, and the way her lashes curled at the ends. “I want to thank
you for stepping in with Cooper Matthews today. Dealing with him
was—it was horrible. When he didn’t show up yesterday morning, I
didn’t expect him to come out at all.”
“
Matthews has a temper like a mad dog.
Seeing me here just made him worse.” Jeff decided not to worry her
with Cooper’s implied threat to her. It shouldn’t matter to him
whether Althea worried. He’d stopped caring about everything long
ago. But those feelings, the emotions that he’d suppressed, were
rumbling to life, and it scared him.
“
I wish I’d never spoken to him to
begin with.” She frowned slightly, bringing those russet brows
together as she worked her way up his arm with the decoction. Her
hands were small and cool. “There just wasn’t anyone else to
ask.”
“
Have you been alone here for a long
time?”
She leaned closer to reach a long scratch on
the tender underside of his arm. When he looked down to watch, it
brought his nose within inches of her hair. It smelled faintly of
honeysuckle. “My father died three years ago. He was poorly for
months before that. But I’m not really alone—I have Olivia.”
Jeff didn’t know how much company or help a
feeble-minded girl could be, but he kept that to himself. “Oh,
right—your sister.”
“
Do you have family in Decker Prairie,
Mr. Hicks?” He felt her gaze touching him, feeling for the dark
places that hurt, probing gently, seeking to expose them to the
light.
“
No, ma’am.” He let his gaze stray no
farther than the lower half of her face. Her pink mouth looked
soft, like the petals of the roses on her porch. “They’re in
Klamath Falls. I haven’t seen them since the day I married—” Of all
the things that had happened to Jeff, talking about Sally was the
hardest. “Well, it’s been a long time.”
Althea waited for him to volunteer more about
his wife, but he didn’t. He had been married and he wasn’t now.
What had happened? Though she knew it was none of her business, her
curiosity about Jeff had her speculating over the mystery.
Apparently, though, their conversation had
reached its end. Silence stretched between them while she finished
treating his scratches. She struggled to keep her mind on her work
and away from the thought that she’d never been this close to a man
before, and under such intimate circumstances. Fate, it seemed,
found all kinds of reasons to put her together with Jeff Hicks. And
he was usually without a shirt.
“
There now,” she said finally. “That’s
better, I hope.”
“
Yes, ma’am. Thank you.”
“
All right, then.” She set the bottle
on the floor and reached into her pocket for her tape measure. “I
need to take your measurements.”
“
What for? My coffin?”
Startled by the question, Althea looked up
into Jeff’s serious face. He wasn’t joking. “Of course not. Why
would you ask that?”
He shrugged. “I just don’t expect to live
very long. I could fall off your roof or a horse could kick me in
the head. Maybe even get shot. I don’t know what could happen so
awhile back I gave Cyrus Cheney some money to put in an account for
me at his bank. It’s enough to bury me and pay a preacher to say a
few words over me. Just in case, ma’am. Cyrus will handle
everything.”
His words squeezed her heart, but she ignored
the feeling. “Working here isn’t going to kill you, Mr. Hicks,” she
replied dryly.
He smiled, and this time it reached his eyes.
“No, ma’am.”
Ma’am. Even Allie was beginning to sound
preferable to that. “I’m going to make some shirts for you. You
can’t very well go around here in rags. Or—or like that.” She
gestured at his naked upper torso. “It isn’t decent.” It wasn’t
much good for her peace of mind, either. Seeing him like this made
her feel hot and shivery at the same time, due to embarrassment she
was sure.
“
I can’t pay you for them. Not yet
anyway,” he said.
“
We won’t worry about that. I already
had the cloth so there’s no extra expense. Now stand up so I can
take the measurements.”
Jeff stood, and what remained of Althea’s
forthright composure withered away. The room was suddenly too
small, and Jeff too close. He seemed as tall as an aspen, and all
sinew and long bone. Although he was a little too lean, his broad
chest was braced with muscle and dusted with a V-shaped pattern of
sandy hair that began between his nipples and reached to his
abdomen. His old jeans hung on his hipbones, giving her a clear
view of a narrow strip of dark blond hair that stretched from his
navel down to his low waistband and beyond to a place she couldn’t
see—
Althea dragged her gaze back up to his face,
and realized that he’d caught her studying him. Hot blood rushed to
her face, scalding her from chin to scalp. “Well, um, if you’ll
turn around . . . ”
He held her gaze a moment longer with a look
that was so potent and elemental, it made her suck in a breath. It
wasn’t a broken-down drunk who stared at her, or an ex-sheriff who
had fallen from grace. She saw the bare essence of the man who
lurked beneath both faces.
The very air around them grew heavy and
charged, like a summer night before a thunder storm.
After what seemed like an eternity, he turned
his back to her. Awed by the solid wall of it, she wished she could
run her hands over its planes and angles, to touch what she
realized was one of the most beautiful forms she had ever seen.
That a man’s back could be beautiful baffled her, and yet, it
somehow made perfect sense. Althea felt a most distressing urge to
put her arms around his waist and rest her cheek against its
strength.
Unraveling but trying to hide it, Althea
fumbled with her tape measure and even dropped it once. Finally she
got it smoothed out, and with hands that had suddenly lost all
their dexterity, she reached up to hold the end of the tape up to
the prominent bone at the base of his neck to measure the length of
his back. His skin was warm but her fingers were ice-cold, and
goose bumps appeared on his flesh. From the same starting point,
she measured the length of his arms.