Strong and Stubborn (20 page)

“Worse than a cad.” Her gaze became a green-and-blue battering ram. “A demanding, order-spewing bully entirely without feeling.”

Her assessment stunned him. When the sense of shock began to recede, Braden recognized the familiar tingle of pricked pride. “However irritable I may have been, I am not without feelings.”

Cora began hazarding guesses. “Entitlement? Anger? Jealousy? I'm curious, Braden, just what types of feelings you believe you've shown during the past two months. The only emotion I've seen that even remotely recalled the man I loved was your fear for Lacey two days ago. Even then, your self-indulgent petulance overshadowed all else.”

“A man feels far more than he shows.” Braden pushed aside his mounting indignation and tried to explain what he could. Even if she hadn't called him self-indulgent, he wouldn't discuss the shame, guilt, and despair he'd been battling. “You can't deny that I've been protective of you women and determined to get back on my feet.”

“When your protective instincts devolve to the point where you threaten to call law enforcement and evict us from our own property—simply because it's legally held under your name—it's no longer admirable.” She crossed her arms, closing herself off. “As for your will to recover, I wonder at the source behind your motivation.”

“What do you mean?” Braden would've paced the room if he could. “Right now I can't protect any of you women. I can't do my part to start the sawmill. I'm all but useless as long as I lie here.” It killed him to say it out loud, but how could she fail to understand?

“So you want to force everyone to do things your way. If Hope Falls remained a failure, no more than a ghost town, would your will be so strong?” She rose from her chair, looming over him like an avenging angel. “Would you push yourself half so hard if you weren't fighting to wrest control of Lyman Estates back from Lacey?”

Unwilling to lie, unable to explain his other reason for pushing so hard, Braden condensed his protests. “That's not fair.”

“Tell me about it,” Cora countered as she gathered up the tray and swept from the room. “But that, Braden, was
the wrong answer
.“

“I have to make it right.” Miss Higgins looked at him, green eyes alive with anxious hope. “Are you willing to help me, Mr. Strode?”

Mike didn't even have to think about it. For all he knew, he
couldn't
think. Not when she made him feel like the answer to all her problems. How could a man turn down Miss Higgins? “Absolutely.”

She blinked, probably taken aback by the speed of his answer, then gave a low, husky laugh that sent tingles down his spine. “I suppose this means the others were right. They said it wouldn't hurt to ask you, but I never imagined you'd make it quite so easy.”

“It's work.” Mike shrugged it off, but something stuck in his craw. If it was just work, why did it bother him that the women encouraged her to ask? She made it sound as if the others knew he'd be easy to convince. Did he seem so susceptible to feminine wiles?

“You're frowning.” She now wore the same expression. “Why?”

“I don't just agree to anything a pretty woman asks.” Mike wouldn't go forward with her thinking he could be manipulated.

Once a woman glommed on to that notion, it was practically impossible to convince her otherwise. Hadn't it taken years of refusing to play her games before Leticia tired of trying? His late wife and her mother seemed to think they'd purchased him outright when he owed—and gave—nothing more than the protection of his name and his best efforts to fulfill the sacred vows they'd made.

He wouldn't let another woman think him so gullible a mark. Not even if she stood there, lovely and lush as the forests around them. Belatedly, he realized that he'd let her know he found her pretty. But she'd already suspected as much—or at least her friends did. Or maybe they hadn't.
If not
, Mike winced,
they certainly will now
.

“It's simply a business proposition.” The sparkle in her eyes seemed to say she liked being told she was pretty—even if in such a roundabout way. Her pleasure at the backhanded compliment made Mike relax a little. “Whatever your reasons, I'm grateful you agreed.”

“I do have reasons!” Opportunity stared him straight in the face, and Mike had been too busy ogling her to notice until now. Here was his chance to secure a home for Luke. “One reason, really.”

“Oh?” She pulled back, looking suddenly wary. “What's that?”

“My son.” Praying that she'd understand, that his instincts about Miss Higgins were correct, Mike pressed on. “Luke. He's ten, and I came here hoping to find a good town where I could raise him.” Suspicion softened then sharpened. “Is he with your wife?”

“No.” Mike drew a breath. “Luke's in Texas with my sister, waiting for me to fetch him. My wife passed on a few months ago.”

“Oh.” A kaleidoscope of emotions rippled across her face, leaving behind any trace of the wariness. “I'm sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you.” He couldn't tell her not to worry, that he'd lost more on the day he married Leticia than on the day he buried her. “I was hoping I could work hard enough to make it worth you letting me bring Luke home with me—whenever you all think the time's right.”

She probably didn't realize she was doing it, and probably no one else would have noticed, but Mike was looking hard enough to see her nibble on the inside of her lower lip while she thought it over.

“The thing is …” The silence—and the nibbling—unmanned him. The thought that he'd blown his chance made him begin babbling. “Luke's already started learning carpentry. I haven't had a chance to show him much in the way of joinery, but he has the makings of a fine apprentice. I understood there wasn't a place for him while I was working with the lumbermen, but I figured it'd be easier to keep an eye on him once construction began. He'd even come in handy.”

“All right.” Her cool words cut across his frenzied speech.

For a second all he could do was stare at her. “All right?”

“Yes, Mr. Strode. You've agreed to help me with a very difficult and detailed project, sure to consume all of your time for weeks to come. In return for your assistance, your skill, and the heartwarming love you exhibit for your son, you may bring Luke to Hope Falls.” She paused for a moment. “I'll have to discuss timing with the others, but it won't be long before you'll need to make a trip for supplies. I would hope you could pick him up then.”

Mike wanted to kiss her, but all he could do was nod. “If you're willing to let him watch and try his hand at some of the more minor detailing, it would even be a good chance for him to learn.”

“Not to sound desperate, but I'm happy for any help I can get.” She smiled and extended one delicate hand. “Do we have a deal?”

He wrapped his entire hand around her soft one. “Deal.”

Y
ou're not keeping up your end of our agreement,” Cora chided, steering the ponderously pregnant Arla back to the bentwood chair they'd brought outside for her to use. “You need to take it easy.”

“Seems as though I've done nothing in days.” Arla Nash grudgingly allowed herself to be settled into the seat, legs up on a stool.

Cora scoffed. “You're working twenty-four hours a day!”

“Nonsense.” Arla picked up her needle and began stabbing stitches into another of a dishearteningly long parade of holey socks. “You'd feel the same way, sitting around day in and day out. I'm not accomplishing a blessed thing, resting on my laurels!”

“Do you think setting hens don't accomplish anything?” Cora intentionally chose Arla's favorite animals in the modest Hope Falls menagerie. “Because you're doing the same thing—the human way.”

“I'm incubating?” Her friend put down the sock and laughed until her shoulders shook. “That's one way of looking at it. But I must say that this isn't turning out at all the way I envisioned.”

“Although we're happy to have you, you know we weren't informed of your situation when we hired your brother.” Cora hadn't quite managed to forgive Mr. Lawson for packing his newly widowed, heavily pregnant sister out to the wilderness for the sake of a mere job.

“It was an unpleasant shock when my brother told me we needed to move. I did think he could have left me back in the city to mind the house, but he refused to leave me alone.” Arla sighed. “I dared ask him whether he might forgo this particular opportunity and await the next, but he's anxious to secure a future for the baby. I'm afraid Mr. Nash didn't leave us much after the estate settled.”

“I understand.” Some of Cora's resentment toward the engineer ebbed away. “We went through the same thing when Papa died. Evie had to sell the house after the money ran out. Then she worked her fingers to the bone setting up her diner and keeping us going.”

“We are blessed in our siblings.” Arla stroked her stomach fondly, her voice catching slightly. “I always hoped to have at least two children, so neither one would ever have to be alone.”

“You never know.” Cora finished pinning the last of the freshly washed garments across the clothesline and steeled herself to start another batch. It never ceased to amaze her how much filth their skirts collected out here—and that wasn't even counting Lacey's mining getup. “There might still be another man for you.”

Even as she spoke the words to Arla, Cora wondered if they'd prove true for herself. Having found the right man and lost him, was it possible to love another in the same way? Or was a second love doomed to play second fiddle to a memory, always second best?

“I hope so,” Arla murmured. “Even if it seems disloyal to Mr. Nash's memory, no woman wants to be alone for a lifetime.”

“No.” Cora agreed, plunging her paddle into the steaming vat of wash water. Her hair frizzled instantly. “We all hope to find love.”

“Since everyone needs love”—Arla started sticking her needle into the fabric again—“you'd think it would be easy to find.”

“You'd think so,” Cora agreed, watching her clean, soapy water turn gray, then brown, then blackish. It had been the same with Braden. They'd been so clearly, purely in love. But time changed things, tragedies muddied the waters, and it took a long time for the filth to fall away. If you were patient, things settled. If you kept agitating the water, things never cleared up, never improved.

If someone asked about Braden, Cora wouldn't be able to say whether she was letting things settle or trying to stir things up. Maybe, just maybe, it was better to let Braden decide for himself.

Decision to help Miss Higgins made, the deal to bring Luke home to Hope Falls in place, and the troublesome fool still locked away in the privy, Mike sat down feeling better than he had in months. It didn't hurt that the table all but vanished beneath a bountiful breakfast.

The fare wasn't fancy or unexpected like those Scotch eggs. Still, Mike never met a man who'd turn down hot coffee with a heaping helping of fluffy flapjacks smothered with butter and syrup. Even the cougar he'd noticed before looked less like he was snarling down at the diners and more like he might be licking his chops.

Riordan and Clump made for good company at the table. They knew that the time for talking was after a man filled his stomach. They ate in companionable silence until they'd done justice to the food. For the first time, Mike didn't pepper them with questions; he was saving those for his meeting with Granger later that morning.

Mike was also loathe to lose the newfound camaraderie of his logging team. These men moved from working at his side to backing him last night. Mike had no doubts they would've fought alongside him if needed, the sort of friendship usually forged by years. How could he explain that he wouldn't be working with them much longer?

“I'm going to borrow Mike for a bit.” Granger clapped a hand on his shoulder and addressed Bear. “He'll join you at the worksite.”

With that, Mike didn't need to explain anything. Bear nodded, got up, and made his way out the door. Clump followed, one of the last of the men trickling into the bright sunlight of a workday. In almost no time at all, Mike and Granger sat alone in the diner.

“There've been a few changes since I arranged this meeting. You've already spoken with Miss Higgins, so you know the bind she's in.” Granger poured a cup of coffee and eyed Mike through the steam. “And since I've spoken with Miss Higgins, I know about your son.”

It seemed to Mike that the room shifted. Everything around him came into sharper focus. In his conversation with Miss Higgins, he'd revealed his vulnerability because requesting her assistance in return for his own made for an even trade. Now Mike needed Granger's agreement to finalize the bargain—a different dynamic.