Strong and Stubborn (30 page)

Gifts she accepted, doling out smiles in reward for shameless scavenging. Mike wouldn't be surprised to find out the men were trapping birds, just to pluck a few feathers and bring them to her. And there was nothing he could do to stop it. Nothing he could say to make her see reason. No way to reclaim her attention when they moved beyond the cozy confines of their work space and half a dozen men clamored to speak with her, sit beside her, gape at her… .

No. Naomi chose to put herself through this. Even worse, Naomi was going to have to choose one of the men, all now tripping over themselves to snag her smiles. Had they no pride? If Mike could join them, would he? Didn't she know she deserved better than this travesty of a courtship, where half their enjoyment came from the competition?

In two days Mike wouldn't be around to keep an eye on her and make sure none of those men stepped over the line. He wouldn't know how she handled things or how the lumbermen stepped up their attentions. The longer this went on, the more intense it became. And with Mike not present in the workshop, she'd be alone.
Unprotected
.

By the time she emerged from the diner, having shed her coat of companions, Mike worked himself into a thoroughly foul mood. When Naomi settled herself beside him to watch Braden engaging in a cutthroat game of horseshoes, he couldn't keep it all bottled up.

“How did you ditch them?” He slid the diner a sideways glance.

“Don't let anyone else hear you say that.” She hushed him, but her grin went a ways toward soothing his pique. “Evie made a batch of shortbread, and she was kind enough to bring out a full plate.”

“Good timing.” Some of the tension eased from his shoulders. “Good to know someone's keeping an eye on how things are going.”

“Oh?” Her green eyes snapped with suspicion. “How's that?”

“You shouldn't be dangled in front of the men like a piece of meat before wolves.” Mike jabbed a finger toward the diner. “At least someone's keeping tabs on where you are and with whom.”

“And if that ‘someone' is supposed to be Evie,”—she pinned him with her gaze—“why did you decide to take on the task yourself?”
Oops
. Mike swallowed, unable to refute the accusation but not willing to own up to it—or open the door for more questions. So he borrowed Luke's method of evading the question. He snorted. Loudly.

“Don't be so dismissive.” She folded her arms over her chest. “It's clear that you've been keeping tabs on me, so why deny it?”

Technically he hadn't denied it, but Mike deduced she wouldn't take kindly to the observation. It would help him think better if she didn't look so pretty, with anger making her cheeks all pink. He realized he'd waited too long to talk when she started squinting.

“It doesn't matter.” He waved it away and looked fixedly at the game of horseshoes, where Braden was gleefully trouncing Corning.

“Then why did you bother bringing it up in the first place?” Exasperated, she wouldn't stop pestering him. “If it didn't matter?”

“I don't understand why you did it.” He shrugged as though her answer wouldn't make much difference. “That's all there is to it.”

“We go for walks because the forest is beautiful, and I can spend time with all of them at once, without obviously favoring anyone.” She sounded calmer now. “It keeps from causing trouble.”

“No.” Mike turned to face her again, wanting to see her face, needing to know what she might refuse to tell him. “I meant I don't understand what possessed you to put out that advertisement.”

For the first time, he understood what people meant by the expression “her face fell.” It was as though everything happy and bright about Naomi just crumpled until she wouldn't look at him. She looked like she might cry, and that was enough to make him want to pull her into his arms and start apologizing until he fixed it.

Only he couldn't. Mike couldn't hold her. He couldn't fix it.

W
hat a mess
. Naomi stared down at her hands, neatly folded in her lap, and wished she could go back to the day Lacey talked them all into that awful ad so she could talk sense into everybody.

“It was a mistake.” She hated how pathetic she sounded. She hated how pathetic she
felt
. And, truth be told, Naomi wasn't too fond of the tell-me-something-I-didn't-know look Michael gave her.

“When the mine went bust, we lost all of the money we invested in Hope Falls. Not just Braden and Lacey, but Cora and Evie and me, too. We'd all gone in together to buy shares. Lacey and Evie invested in the mercantile and café—so they stood to lose the most.”

“That explains why you decided to start a sawmill.” Michael didn't say it, but Naomi heard the unspoken part of the statement:
but it doesn't explain why you put out an ad to hire your husbands!

“It's like dominoes.” She knew it was cliché, but she couldn't really think of another way to explain how everything came crashing down, piece by piece. “The mine failed. The town went bust. We lost our investment, but Lacey saw a way to turn things around. Problem was, none of us knew the first thing about sawmilling, aside from what Lacey researched. And it wasn't as though we thought we could traipse into the forest, swing an ax, and fell trees ourselves.”

“Right.” He looked aghast at the suggestion, but beneath that she saw a glimmer of recognition. “The four of you needed help.”

Naomi tried to speed things up. “But even if we had the funds to hire men, we wouldn't know who to trust. When Lacey first suggested it, we thought Braden was dead. We had no other brothers or fathers or cousins to come with us. We'd have to go alone.”

“Too dangerous.” If she'd thought he looked horrified by the idea of them chopping trees, it was nothing compared to the expression on his face as he considered the alternative. “You couldn't surround yourselves with strange men without protection.”

Naomi nodded vigorously, glad to see that he understood their reasoning. “Exactly. But when Lacey suggested that husbands could solve our problems, we balked. Every one of us refused to listen. We decided we'd rather take the financial loss than strike out with such a far-fetched scheme. Saving Hope Falls wasn't a good enough reason to endanger ourselves and do something so outrageous.”

“And then you learned Braden hadn't died.” Michael demonstrated that spectacular ability to piece things together. “You said Miss Lyman and the younger Miss Thompson were coming with or without you. So they came for Braden, and you and the older Miss Thompson came to make sure they didn't get themselves killed along the way.”

“That's a rather blunt way of putting it.” Naomi considered it for a moment before confessing, “Very blunt—but dead right.” A smile played about the corners of her mouth at the pun.

“Which brought you right back to where you started—heading for an isolated place where none of you had the strength or know-how to save the town.” Understanding was dawning, but Michael didn't look happy about it. Which was just fine with Naomi, since she wasn't very happy about the situation either. “Without male protection.”

“Precisely.” Naomi sighed. “At this point, we were also concerned that Braden's injuries might clear the way for unscrupulous men to encroach on the property. We couldn't defend the land, we couldn't protect each other indefinitely, and we couldn't trust any men who'd be willing to follow us to an isolated area.”

By now Michael was raking his fingers through his hair in obvious agitation. “Did it occur to you to just wait until Braden recovered? Until either he came home or he could look after you?”

“It occurred to us. But we'd been mourning for my cousin for weeks already. It was only natural that his sister and fiancée would rush to his side when we heard he'd been pulled from the mine.” She sniffed at the memory of those intense days. “At the time, there was still some question as to whether or not he'd survive. You know about his knee, but the more dangerous injury was a severe concussion that left him unconscious for two days after he was rescued.”

She fell silent, having explained all she could. Michael stayed quiet, too, and Naomi knew he was turning the problem around in his mind, trying to puzzle out a solution that was already too late. Anything more she could add ventured into very personal territory, and Naomi wasn't about to reveal the other salient points Lacey made while convincing all of them to take such drastic action.

How could a woman explain the impact of Lacey's argument that hiring a husband wasn't merely a mercenary flouting of convention, it was a chance for them to decide what they really wanted from a spouse? A unique opportunity to select a life partner who could fill those needs. Instead of waiting for a man to offer a ring entwined with a lifetime of
his
expectations, they would choose for themselves. And instead of feeling privileged to have been chosen, they would feel valued by the men who'd proven themselves worthy.

The idea awakened a dormant hope Naomi had long since left for dead. A man responding to the ad wouldn't expect an overly traditional bride. A man willing to view marriage as a partnership might value her for the prospects she brought to the table. In short, she might find a man willing to overlook her lack of virtue and even—here's where the temptation became overwhelming—feel as though he wasn't making an unspeakable compromise in wedding her.

How could she explain any of that to the man sitting beside her? She couldn't even explain it to her closest friends. And the way things turned out, Naomi couldn't justify it to herself. She'd done an excellent job of backing herself into a corner, and her only possible escape would be on the arm of a man she didn't really want.

Wrong man
. No matter how kind and attentive Mr. Corning was, Cora found herself thinking the same thing every time she saw the admiration in his gaze.
Why isn't Braden looking at me like that?

This made it difficult to keep up her end of the conversation. At a certain point, Cora realized that it didn't make much difference to Mr. Corning. So long as she contributed the occasional smile, a few nods, and the odd “mm-hmm” or “oh?”, Mr. Corning kept things going. Either the man loved the sound of his own voice or else he didn't get much opportunity to speak without interruption.

Her only consolation was the dark looks Braden kept casting poor Mr. Corning whenever he looked the other direction. Of course, Cora couldn't be sure that Braden wasn't just taking exception to having another man take his place pontificating. But somehow she thought his irritation had more to do with the attention Mr. Corning was giving her. That thought alone kept her smiling and nodding.

She'd enjoyed a brief respite during supper, but when everyone bundled in their coats and gathered around a large fire, he glommed on to her again, and Cora couldn't help thinking that after all his practice, she thought Braden could wheel to her side a bit faster!

Gradually she realized that Mr. Corning wasn't yammering on any longer. He was, in fact, looking at her with that very specific combination of expectation of a response and concern that she wasn't giving him that response. But no matter how hard she racked her brain, Cora realized she'd lost the gist of the conversation entirely. She didn't know whether to agree or disagree, and the time clearly passed for a politely vague murmur to suffice.
Oopsie
.

“I'm afraid I just realized I forgot something,” she hedged, casting about for an appropriate excuse. She caught sight of Evie bustling back from the kitchen storeroom with a bag of what looked like … “Marshmallows! I'm supposed to help Evie pass them out so everyone can toast a few over this lovely fire. You might want to find a long twig or a thin branch or something of the sort.”

With that, she hopped up and hurried to meet her sister. As usual, she didn't need to fill Evie in on why she'd rushed over.

“Quite chatty, that Mr. Corning.” Evie shook half of the marshmallows into Cora's waiting apron. “You'd think Braden would be so kind as to absorb some of his guest's fondness for conversation.”

“You'd think so, wouldn't you? But apparently we'd both be wrong. Thank you for the distraction.” Cora tilted her apron so the fluffy little treats lumped together more or less in the middle.

Evie looked from her half-empty bag to the fire, where the men were already holding out stripped branches in obvious readiness. “Well, these won't hold him off for long, I'm afraid. They don't take long to chew … but fires are good for more than roasting marshmallows. What if I get everyone to ask you to tell a story?”

“All right.” Cora began thinking of stories, weighing options and discarding several that wouldn't hold the attention of a bunch of lumberjacks. She smiled at her sister. “My voice is well rested.”