by Jillian Hart
“Ella?” Sarah skidded to a halt when she spotted her daughter sitting on a bench with Lucy in front of the barbershop.
At the sound of her name the girl glanced over her shoulder, her cheeks rosy and her smile bright, completely unaware of her mother’s behavior.
Thank heavens for that. Sarah cannoned down the boardwalk, relieved to find that Augusta Carpenter greeted her with a pleasant nod, and the barber, coming out to catch a bit of fresh air while he waited for his next customer called howdy to her.
Good. With any luck, she hadn’t totally embarrassed herself in front of the whole town. If this luck held, then probably no one had noticed. Look how busy everyone appeared.
“We must hurry home.” She caught Ella’s hand in hers. “Lucy, good luck to you on Monday. Miss Fitzgerald is a fine teacher.”
Gage watched his daughter look far too innocent as she smiled prettily up at Sarah Redding.
“Thank you. Now I shan’t be worried at all.”
Shan’t? Where had Lucy learned that word?
It was too late to call after Sarah. She walked amazingly fast considering a woman’s burden of skirts and petticoats. Poor Ella was nearly running to keep up. At the end of the walk, they slowed, looked for traffic, and crossed the busy street.
“Hey, there, young fella.” The old man from the post office scampered toward him. “Don’t go running off before I can get your change to you.”
“You might as well keep it for your trouble.” He jammed his hands into his trouser pockets. “I owe you for seeing that Mrs. Reddings’s letters were mailed.”
“I’ll give the coins to your girl then.” Winking, as if the man were taking the greatest amusement in Gage’s plight, he dropped the coins on Lucy’s eager palm. “You take good care of your papa. Bein’ love-sick is the greatest affliction there is. Sorry, my boy, but there’s only one cure.”
“Death?”
The old geezer chuckled. “A sense of humor helps.”
Humor? He wasn’t trying to be funny. Squinting, he tried to make out the brown of Sarah’s coat and the hem of her gray dress in the crowded boardwalk, but he’d lost sight of her.
Just as well. What was he going to do? Apologize? Try to figure out what had made her so damned angry with him? Hell, that would only lead to looking at her. And looking at her would lead to noticing her mouth. And noticing her mouth would only cause him to lose every sense of decency and restraint he possessed. And if he actually succeeded in kissing her…well, wouldn’t that bring with it a whole passel of trouble?
Yessir. It was best to keep far away from Sarah Redding. This time, he meant it.
Chapter Six
“Hear you and Mr. Gatlin have taken a sparking to one another.” Mrs. McCullough set her knitting basket on the front desk.
“Where did you hear an untrue rumor like that?” Sarah eased the heavy bucket onto the bottom step. “You know better than to believe everything you hear, don’t you?”
“Well, at my age I’ve learned to believe in possibilities.” Mrs. McCullough lit the crystal lamp and pulled up a chair. “You and Mr. Gatlin. Now there’s a possibility.”
“You’re just anxious to see me married off.” Sarah wrung the mop and for one brief moment imagined it was Gage’s neck. “The last man I would ever want is one who won’t marry for love.”
“What other reason is there? For money?” Mrs. McCullough reached into her basket and produced her knitting needles and a ball of green yarn.
“Mr. Gatlin doesn’t believe in love.” Sarah swabbed one step, maybe a little too hard, and the mop head rammed into the newel post with a smack loud enough to echo through the sleeping hotel.
“Ain’t his girl about the same age as your little one?”
Sarah moved up a step, leaning on the mop. It didn’t take a brilliant mind to figure out what Mrs. McCullough was about to say. “Our girls are friends, that’s all. Why, the man insulted me terribly today.”
“Sure enough sounds like a courting man to me.”
“Courting? I hardly know him.” She knew enough about him already—and she didn’t like him. Not one bit.
He was forward and brash. He was a scoundrel of the very worst sort, charming her, furrowing the garden, returning her chicken and smiling at her as if she were a young and beautiful woman. When she was a widow with more debts than a future, more dreams than money in the bank.
“We don’t like each other.” That much was true. He’d been pretty mad at her.
So, why had he tried to kiss her?
Troubled, she sudsed her mop, churning it up and down in the bucket. Water splashed and soap bubbles drifted and popped.
She was still so furious at him.
Every time she thought of him, there he was in her mind, more handsome than any man had the right to be, and he was asking her—her, Sarah Redding—to dine with him. In the fanciest dining room in the county. The dining room she’d just finished mopping from corner to corner tonight.
She fetched her bucket and carried it the rest of the way up the stairs, feeling more angry than she had a few moments ago. What was it about Gage Gatlin that affected her? That cut straight to her heart like a double-sided blade?
Because Gage had held out his hand and asked her to dine with him. For one brief moment Sarah had believed he’d meant it.
When he’d been feeling pity—not friendship—for her.
And then he’d hauled her out of the post office, which would be the stuff of which gossip was made for months to come.
He’d probably thought he would kiss her out of pity, too.
Well, she would have no more of it. Gage Gatlin would never do her another good deed. She would never again be beholden to him for a dollar or a plowed garden.
She’d pay him back. They’d be even. And she’d never have another reason to see Mr. Gatlin again.
Unless it was across the fields, as she’d noticed him this afternoon when she’d returned home and gone to the barn to milk the cow.
Was it her fault that if the door was open, she could see Gage’s land while she milked? Surely it wasn’t her fault that the sight of him at work, shirtless, with the sun burnishing his dark skin, made her forget what she was doing until the cow kicked her?
That was the best way to see Gage Gatlin—from a distance. And that’s how it would stay.
Sarah reached into her apron pocket and withdrew two coins. There was no light coming from beneath Gage’s door. He was probably asleep, for it was late. The thought of him lying on the other side of the wood wall, sprawled across the big comfortable bed…
A slow shiver zinged down her spine. All in a flash, she imagined him shirtless, his bronzed skin exposed to the night’s touch, his strong chest rising and falling slowly in sleep—
Enough of that. How was she ever going to get him out of her head if she kept imagining him like that? She had no idea.
Sarah studied the coins in her hand. She worked hard for that money, and it meant a lot to her. But her pride meant more, so it was easy to slip the coins beneath Gage’s door. Easy to find satisfaction in the rasp of silver against polished wood and know that she need never be humiliated by Gage Gatlin again.
As she straightened, smoothing her fraying apron and the patched calico dress, she told herself her heart wasn’t hurting.
Really. It wasn’t.
Gage bolted awake. Sweat beaded his brow and cooled on his bare flesh as he realized he was already out of bed, standing in the dark silence of his hotel room. Not in the Badlands, but in the prairie town of Buffalo. In the present. Not the past.
Hell, he was shaking as if he had a fever. Hands quaking so hard he couldn’t wipe the sweat from his face. Memories taunted him, faint shadowy images of a past he’d put behind him forever. No, damn it. He wasn’t going to let those images into his mind, asleep or awake. A man could only take so much.
And he’d had his share.
The wind gusted, driving hard pellets of rain against the window.
A mean storm was blowing tonight, and he lit the lamp against the darkness. Wondered if he could get back to sleep.
A flash of light caught his gaze. There, in the shadows by the door. Looked like something metallic. It sure as hell wasn’t his. He knelt, recognizing the coins before he touched them.
Two fifty-cent pieces. Why would anyone shove them under his door?
Sarah. Her name drove into his thoughts like a well-aimed bullet. Why had she gone out of her way to reimburse him for a few letters? Did she think he was the kind of man who held a grudge over a dollar?
Guess she’d made her point. She didn’t need his help. Which worked out just fine because he didn’t need her. He didn’t need anyone.
“Ma?” Ella skidded to a stop among the mown thistles and weeds and glanced around. “They aren’t here!”
There was no mistaking Ella’s disappointment. Sarah deposited the picnic basket in the shade of the tilting old shanty. “It’s early yet, baby. School just let out.”
“Oh.” Ella’s head hung. “I can wait.”
“It’s really good luck that Lucy is going to be living here soon, isn’t it?” Sarah eased the hoe she carried to the ground. “Their new house is going up quickly. Look, you can see where the rooms are going to be.”
“It’s gonna have an upstairs.” Ella paced around the building site. “Lucy’s gonna have a bedroom all to herself.”
Wistful those words, quietly spoken, but Sarah understood the longing beneath. “I know it hasn’t been easy in Aunt Pearl’s shanty.”
“I know, I know. We’re grateful.” Ella dropped to her knees to search through the growing grasses. “But I’m all better now. Maybe I could get a job to help out. Then we’d get our own house, too.”
“Oh, baby.” Like a blow to her chest, Sarah felt as if she’d had the wind knocked out of her. She brushed stray wisps of curls from Ella’s face, but the worry remained etched deeply in her soft brow. “This isn’t your fault.”
“I got sick.” She spun away and dropped a nail into a pail on a stack of lumber. “I didn’t mean to.”
“I know that.” She was only a little girl, small for her age, frail from a year battling illness. Even now she covered her mouth and coughed, a testimony that her lungs were not as strong as they’d once been.
Aching, Sarah pulled Ella against her, wrapping her arms around her dear child. “You are all that matters to me. Do you know that?”
“I know.”
“There isn’t one thing I wouldn’t do to make you happy. But first, we have to make sure you’re well enough for me to work full-time.”
“I can help—”
Sarah knelt to brush those glimmers of tears away with her thumb. “You can help best by being a little girl. That’s your job. You know I answered all those advertisements. Now we just wait for the answers.”
“But it will take forever.”
“Not quite that long. And if we’re lucky, someone will want to hire me. Think about it. Maybe you can have your own room.”
“And a horse, too?”
“You just can never tell what’s going to happen. Maybe.” Sarah tugged Ella’s sunbonnet into place and retied the strings. “Why don’t you sit on the fence and watch Mr. Gatlin’s horses? You might get an idea what kind you’d like to have.”
“Sure!” The sadness disappeared as Ella dashed away, braids flying out behind her as she sailed across the yard.
Please, let there be a good job for me. For us. It mattered so much. In truth, living with the Owenses was wearing her down. And if Ella kept growing stronger, then moving out was a possibility.
As Sarah gripped the hoe’s smooth handle and dug it into the gnarled tangle of bean vines and weeds, she couldn’t help imagining—just a little.
A little house with a big window in the kitchen, like the one Gage was building. Where she could mix rolls or knead bread and get a good dose of sunshine. Where she’d be able to watch Ella ride her very own pony through the fields.
Dreams. They kept her going. Even when she noticed a dark spot on the awakening prairie—Milt. He was driving the plow, and raised his arm to lash the whip. The horses leaped forward, and her stomach clenched as she realized Milt was watching her. Or rather, keeping an eye on Gage’s property.
Feeling uneasy, Sarah cleared the plot of vines, weeds and half-rotted stems. Didn’t look as though old man Buchanan had bothered to put in a garden for the last year or so. Frost has pushed a few rocks to the surface and she cleared those, too, whenever her hoe struck them.
That made the work harder, but she didn’t mind. She’d get the earth nice and soft and ready for planting. Maybe Lucy would want a long row of carrots planted right here, so she could pluck them sweet and juicy from the ground during the summer. Or a stand of corn—
A jangling harness and the clomp of hooves on hard-packed earth announced Gage’s arrival. There he was, looking more fine than any man had the right to, perched on the wagon seat. His hat at a jaunty angle. His spine straight, his jaw set. What a fine man he was.
Too bad he was all wrong for her. Completely, utterly wrong.
“Howdy, there.” He didn’t sound pleased to see her.
Well, she wasn’t pleased to see him. Remembering the hotel, fresh resolve swept over her so it was easy not to look at him as she gouged the blade into the stubborn ground. For Lucy and Ella’s sakes, she would not be rude.
She would not let her anger show. “Good afternoon, Mr. Gatlin. How was school today, Lucy?”
“I’m the new girl all over again.” There was a thud as she landed nimbly and skipped away from the wagon. “Ella! Wanna help me brush Scout?”
“Sure!” Pure delight in that word.
The girls scampered off together, already talking a mile a minute.
And leaving her alone with Gage. He was unhitching the horse without saying a word. Kept his back to her. Didn’t look at her. He had to be remembering their almost-kiss. Did he regret it, too?
Her hoe struck a rock with a clink, sending a ricocheting pain up her arm. She could feel Gage’s gaze on her, so she kept her back to him as she knelt for the offending rock—
His wide fingers curled around the stone and gave it a toss. “I know why you’re doing this. It isn’t necessary. It’s my land. If I want a garden—”
“Just returning the favor.”
“Repaying a debt, you mean. I don’t like it.”
“I don’t care what you like. I’m furrowing your garden and then I’m done with you. For good.”
“That’s a mighty shame.” He straightened, sweeping off his hat so the wind caressed those thick tousled locks and the sun burnished his perfect smile. “I was counting on you for a friend, Sarah. A man like me doesn’t get the chance for too many of those.”
“Why is that?” She hurled the hoe into the earth, refusing to let his good-natured words whittle away at her fury. “Because you’re so incredibly disagreeable?”
“Partly. Moving around hasn’t helped.” He thought he was so irresistible with the way he agreed so easily.
He didn’t fool her for a second.
“Plus, I’m a scoundrel of the worst sort. I ought to know better than to try to kiss a decent and proper widow who was minding her own business at the local post office.”
“Darn right I was!”
“Based on my appalling behavior, I ought to be the one doing a favor for you. Not the other way around.” He whisked the hoe from her grip with the ease of a seasoned thief.
She’d underestimated him. “It’s not the fact that you assumed you could kiss me on the boardwalk, in plain view of our daughters and half the township that has me so furious with you.”
“Then tell me. Or I’ll be forced to pay you another favor.” He narrowed his gaze beneath the Stetson’s brim, as if to gauge her reaction.
“I’m not sure you deserve an explanation.” She held out her hand, determined to not look at him or his smile that would only remind her of how his mouth h
ad parted and her own lips had buzzed with anticipation. “Give me back my hoe.”
“How about if I hire you to plant me and Lucy a garden? I’d pay you a fair wage—”
“Pay me?” Was he this thickheaded on purpose? Was he trying to aggravate her? “That’s enough. Give me my hoe. I’ll return when you’re asleep or something and finish this up.”
“Because you think you owe me?”
“No. Because I’m no charity case, Mr. Gatlin. I’m proud to earn my way, and don’t you dare forget it.” She yanked the hoe from his steely grip and stormed past him as fast as she could without tripping on the mown weeds.
“Charity case? Where in tarnation did you get that notion? Because I paid for your postage? It was a dollar.”
“That’s not your only offense.” She snatched the basket from the shade and kept going. One look at Gage would make the burning behind her eyes worse. She wanted to forgive him. She wanted him to like her.
“Wait one minute. I’m not in the habit of letting a woman toting a food basket walk away from me.”
“There is a first time for everything.” She had to stay angry with him. She bit her tongue and kept going.
“What’s in that basket? Another one of your great-tasting pies?”
“Wishful thinking. If I had one, I may or may not share it with you.”
“What do you need? Bribery? A horse? Cold hard cash? I’d do just about anything for a slice of your pie.”
That made her stop and stare. What a sight he was, with that saucy glint in his eyes. He thought he was funny. Thought he was charming her.
He was wrong. She refused to be charmed.
“An apology might be in order,” she hedged.
“A dumb man may need to know what he’s apologizing for.”
Astounding. Her chest felt near to cracking in two with the shame. And he didn’t know.
“You asked me to dinner in front of Louisa Montgomery.” It seemed silly and shallow, but he’d hurt her pride. “You made it seem as if you were doing me a favor. Feeding the poor widow.”