The Hired Man

by Lynna Banning

  “An hour’s worth of work watering my seeds.”

  “Deal.”

  All through the meal Cord thought about how it would be to feel Eleanor’s hands in his hair, and he couldn’t eat fast enough. Danny, however, dawdled over his chicken drumstick and took only the smallest sips from his glass of milk. Halfway through washing up the dishes, Eleanor started to hum “Down in the Valley” under her breath.

  “Ma always gets real happy when she cuts our hair,” Danny confided.

  She scrubbed off the last dinner plate and splashed it into the pan of hot rinse water.

  “Yeah,” Molly whispered. “But when she cuts my hair I always cry, and then Mama cries, too.”

  Cord tried not to smile. “Well, kids, I’ll tell you what. I’m not gonna cry!”

  Eleanor’s humming changed to “Sweet Betsy from Pike,” and she disappeared upstairs to retrieve her scissors.

  “Gosh, Cord,” Danny breathed. “Can we watch when Ma cuts your hair?”

  “Sure, I guess so.”

  “No!” Eleanor reappeared in the kitchen, clicking the blades of her scissor together.

  “Yes!” Molly sang. “I wanna watch!”

  Eleanor sighed. “It’s up to Cord.”

  “You can watch on one condition,” he said. “Danny gets his hair cut first.”

  Eleanor snapped her scissor blades together. “All right, everybody out on the front porch. Quickly, now, before it gets too dark to see what I’m doing.”

  Danny’s haircut went so smoothly his mother stepped back and studied him. “Not one squawk or even a moan. What,” she murmured, “have I been doing wrong all these years?”

  “Nuthin’, Ma. Guess I just growed up and stopped moanin’ when you cut my hair.”

  When the last shock of his sun-bleached brown hair tumbled onto the floor, Danny scooted off the kitchen chair Cord had dragged out, pushed him into his place and tossed him the dish towel Eleanor had draped around his shoulders.

  “I’m not gonna cry,” Cord teased.

  Eleanor rapped the scissor handles against his skull. “Hush. This is serious business.” She tentatively drew her fingers through his hair, then followed with the comb. After a long, speculative silence, she started to snip.

  Cord sat as motionless as he could manage with the scratchy towel draped around his shoulders and Eleanor running her fingers through his hair. Shivers prickled his spine. She touched the back of his head, tipping it forward, then moved it to one side, her hand gentle, almost caressing. He bit his lower lip and closed his eyes.

  The scissors crunched through his hair, then snip-snipped some more. He kept his eyes shut and heard her satisfied little “Mmm-hmm.”

  “Tip your head to the left,” she directed. More snips, and then more crunches. Her humming changed to “Bonnie Blue Flag.” Sure was an odd choice for a Yankee.

  She slid her forefinger under his chin and tilted his face up. “Keep your eyes closed,” she instructed. The scissors crunched across his forehead, then around the tops of both ears.

  “Your hair is difficult to cut, Cord. It’s wavy, and you have a definite cowlick.” She stepped in closer and her breast brushed his cheek.

  He stopped breathing. Quickly she moved away and continued wielding her scissors. Maybe she hadn’t noticed.

  “How much do you want taken off the back?” she asked.

  “Dunno. How much is there?”

  “It’s touching your collar.”

  “That’s too long, huh?”

  She stopped combing. “Well...”

  “Just don’t let it tickle my neck, okay?”

  She laughed and her warm breath gusted against his forehead. Suddenly he wanted to knock her busy scissors away and pull her down onto his lap. He kept himself under control by gritting his teeth and thinking about flower seeds.

  And then she made a major mistake by nudging his knees apart and moving in between them to reach something in front.

  “Look up,” she ordered.

  He obeyed, then wished he hadn’t. There was nowhere to look but into her face, and what he saw there made his body so hot it felt like torture.

  She gazed into his eyes without blinking, looked away and then looked back. Her cheeks had turned rosy. And her mouth... Lord save him, just then her tongue came out to slide over her lips.

  He groaned silently. At least he hoped it was silently. She refocused on the hair straggling into his eyes, and he clenched his fists. Every muscle in his body wanted her to look at him again, and when she did he wanted to crush her mouth under his.

  God help him he wanted more than that. He concentrated on pushing air in and out of his lungs, taking it slow and counting his breaths. In...two...out...three...

  Didn’t help. He was still aching to kiss her.

  “Cord? Cord?”

  He jerked to attention. “Yeah?”

  She touched his shoulder. “You’re finished.”

  Not hardly, lady. I’m just getting started.

  She slipped the comb and scissors into her apron pocket. “I’m feeling a bit faint, so I’m going upstairs to lie down for a while.”

  “You all right?”

  “Of course I’m all right. Just tired. When I get up I’m going to sow my black-eyed Susan seeds. And don’t tell me I shouldn’t.”

  “Okay, I won’t tell you.”

  “And don’t look at me like that!”

  “Like what?”

  “Like you do when you disapprove of what I’m doing.”

  He raised his arms, then let them drop. “I would if I thought it’d do any good, but...”

  “Correct.” She marched through the screen door and disappeared into the house.

  Danny paced all the way around him, eyeing his hair. “She didn’t cut your hair half as short as mine,” he pronounced.

  Cord grinned. “There’s always next time, Dan.”

  “Yeah? Whaddya gonna do next time?”

  He shrugged. “Don’t know. Maybe next time I’ll volunteer to cut her hair.”

  That brought giggles from both Danny and Molly, and they scampered off the porch toward the barn. Cord stood for a long moment, studying the screen door. He felt himself splitting into two parts. He definitely did not want to get involved with a woman. He knew what it cost a man to love someone, and long ago he had resolved never to risk it again.

  But boy did he want Eleanor Malloy.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Cord paused while rubbing saddle soap into the leather saddle he’d found hanging in the barn and stepped closer to the two children playing in the open doorway. They weren’t arguing about a game of marbles or which kittens were girls and which were boys. This was about something else.

  “You ask her,” Danny ordered.

  “No,” Molly insisted. “You ask her. Mama won’t like a picnic.”

  Picnic? What picnic? Guess he’d have to wait until supper to find out, but he knew instinctively that Eleanor wouldn’t want to attend a picnic, especially if it involved a crowd of Smoke River townspeople. She didn’t like dealing with people in bunches. He smoothed his hand over the softened leather and started counting the hours until Eleanor called that supper was ready.

  The meal was Eleanor’s special creamed something over biscuits. The biscuits were light and fluffy as usual, but the creamed whatever it was tasted suspiciously like corn and carrots from the vegetable garden out back. Didn’t matter, though. Dessert was strawberry shortcake, and Cord could put up with a lot of carrots for a few strawberries.

  He kept waiting for Danny to bring up the picnic, but the boy circled around and around the subject, talking about his teacher, Mrs. Panovsky. About his classmate Adam Lynford and his sister, Sally. About the A he’d gotten on his ge
ography test. Last he brought up the subject of the Fourth of July picnic.

  “It’s just a few weeks away, Ma. I hope you got lots of vacation chores saved up for me to do.”

  Eleanor’s hand stopped over the bowl of crushed strawberries. “What did you say, Danny?”

  “Chores,” he said with unusual enthusiasm. “You know, Ma, stuff you want me to do this summer.”

  His mother stared at him, then at Molly, then at Cord. “I feel I am missing something here. What is going on?”

  “Danny wants us to go to the Fourth of July picnic!” Molly blurted out.

  “Oh. I see.” She went on slicing up strawberries as if she hadn’t heard the word picnic.

  “Well, Ma? Whaddya say? We can go, can’t we?”

  “No,” she said calmly. “We cannot.”

  “But, Ma,” Danny wailed. “It’ll be the Fourth of July picnic! You know, down by the river. You didn’t let us go last year, so I thought maybe...”

  Eleanor’s face tightened, but she kept on slicing up the berries. “Molly, peek in the oven and see if the shortcakes are getting brown. Use the potholder!”

  Cord tilted his chair back onto two legs. “Who all is invited to this picnic, Danny?”

  “Everybody! All the students and their parents and their brothers and sisters.”

  “Well, that sounds interesting,” his mother remarked in an offhand manner.

  “Just about everybody in Smoke River’ll be there!” Danny added.

  Cord could see her interest deflate.

  “The shortcakes are done,” Molly called. “Can I have two?”

  “One will be plenty, Molly.”

  “But I hafta grow bigger so I can go to school next year!”

  Eleanor sniffed. “You can grow bigger on creamed vegetables.”

  Danny caught hold of Eleanor’s blue-checked apron and gave it a tug. “Can we go, Ma? Huh? Can we, huh? There’ll be fireworks and everything, even a band.”

  Cord thought the boy would jump out of his seat before he got an answer from his mother.

  “I could take a couple of my apple pies,” Cord offered.

  Danny grinned. “And I could pick some more strawberries and maybe some blackberries, too.”

  “No,” Eleanor said again.

  “Aw, Ma. Why not? It’s only a picnic.”

  Cord rose, grabbed Molly’s potholder and removed the pan of shortcakes from the oven. “Yeah, Eleanor, why not?”

  She shot him a look. “We will discuss it later. Now, who’s ready for shortcakes, and who wants whipped cream on top?”

  Molly and Danny remained uncharacteristically silent. Their mother frowned. “You two don’t want any dessert?”

  Both children shook their heads. She turned to Cord. “What about you, Cord?”

  He gritted his teeth, folded his arms across his midriff and shook his head. Sure was hard to smell the enticing scent of that bowl of ripe berries and refuse dessert. But he did.

  All at once Eleanor sank back onto her chair and lowered her head in her hands. “Oh, very well, we might as well go to the picnic.”

  An hour later, Cord folded his hands across his belly and sent Danny a wink. “Strawberry shortcake never tasted so good, did it?”

  * * *

  The river, bordered with frothy cottonwoods and groves of birch trees, rippled lazily through a grassy meadow of yellow goldenweed and purple lupine, interspersed with sprangly clumps of wild roses. Eleanor wore a blue gingham dress with lace at the neck; her dark hair, loosely gathered with a blue ribbon, shone like polished mahogany.

  Cord tried not to look at her too much, but no matter what he did to distract himself, his gaze eventually returned to her. From the moment he lifted her down from the wagon bench, he sensed her unease. It took only ten minutes to see why.

  No sooner had he spread a blanket near the riverbank and settled the wicker picnic basket on it than a slicked-up blond fellow appeared, followed by the red-bearded one with the horsey laugh. Cord had seen them both before, draped over Eleanor’s porch steps, drinking her lemonade on Sunday afternoons.

  Molly and Danny raced off to join a game of Run Sheep Run. Eleanor smoothed out her skirt, laid aside her straw sun hat and paid no apparent attention to the men. Instead, she began unpacking the picnic basket. She sent Cord off to the river to chill the two mason jars of lemonade. He immersed them between two large rocks, surreptitiously keeping one eye on Eleanor.

  A band was playing somewhere, and the strains of “She’ll Be Comin’ ’Round the Mountain” floated on the warm afternoon air. Townspeople spread blankets and opened picnic baskets while children waded in the river or played catch with their pet dogs or each other. A low hum of contentment spread along the riverbanks and over the meadow.

  Now another man joined the growing circle gathered around Eleanor, someone Cord hadn’t seen before. She shared the molasses and burnt sugar cookies she’d brought, but he heard her explain that the lemonade was chilling in the river.

  Cord decided to ignore the company, and he stretched out and pulled his hat down over his eyes. He could still hear, though.

  “Miss Eleanor, you never did answer the question Red asked last Sunday.”

  “Oh? What question was that, George?”

  George! Who’s George?

  “You know,” a baritone voice said, “whether you’re going to join the church choir.”

  “That would mean coming into town every single Sunday, would it not?”

  “Well, yes, it would. And we rehearse every Wednesday evening. How about it?”

  Eleanor’s answer was indistinct, but from the flurry of protests, Cord guessed she had declined the invitation. That made him smile for two reasons—first because the fellow was pushy and second, while he was sure she was perfectly capable of driving the wagon, he didn’t want her going into town without him.

  So, she didn’t want to sing in church, did she? And from the next conversations he overheard he gathered she didn’t want to attend square dances or taffy-pulls or anything else.

  “Gentlemen, I am a wife and a mother. I am far too busy keeping up my farm to do any of the things you are proposing.”

  Then another voice joined the circle. “Are you gonna stay for the fireworks tonight, Miss Eleanor? I’d be pleased to keep you company.”

  Cord swiped his hat off his chest and sat up. The speaker was one of the workers at the sawmill, Sam something. Cord didn’t want anyone to keep her company, especially not during fireworks after dark. He couldn’t stand this one more minute.

  Eleanor was facing him, still seated on the blanket next to the picnic basket. She caught his eye and shrugged.

  “I’m going down to the river,” he announced. “I’ll bring you some cold lemonade, Eleanor.”

  He thought the attentive males looked hopeful, but he’d be damned if they guzzled any of her lemonade. She had sliced up the lemons and he had squeezed them for her; that lemonade was for Molly and Danny and Eleanor and him and no one else.

  Guess he was a little hot under the collar today. Maybe he was just a tad jealous. He tramped off to the river, grabbed a jar of lemonade and went in search of the kids. He found them playing hopscotch.

  He pointed at the lemonade jars and they scampered over to his side. Cord unscrewed the top and Danny slurped down three big gulps. “Gosh, thanks, Cord, I was really thirsty!” The boy handed the jar to Molly, but Molly handed it right up to Cord.

  “You have some, Cord. You look really hot.”

  His chest got real tight and he went down on one knee before the girl. “There’s plenty here, Molly. You have some.”

  When she’d drunk her fill, he swallowed a mouthful or two and had just taken half a dozen steps back toward Eleanor when a feminine voice hailed him.


  “Oh, Cordell, is that you?” Fanny Moreland appeared at his elbow. “And lemonade! Oh, my.”

  “Yeah. I was just taking it over to—”

  “Why, aren’t you sweet!” She reached for the jar and tipped it into her mouth. Cord reached for it, but he was too late. He watched her swallow in silence.

  “Are y’all staying for the fireworks tonight?”

  “Uh... I don’t know whether Mrs. Malloy—”

  Fanny laid a possessive hand on his forearm. “Oh, ah wouldn’t worry about her, Cordell. She won’t be alone. She’ll have just scads of company.”

  “Might be she doesn’t want company.”

  “Don’t be silly. Every woman wants company.”

  “Mrs. Malloy isn’t exactly ‘every woman,’ Miss Moreland.”

  Fanny laughed. “Why, of course she is. Goodness, you men don’t see what’s right smack in front of you sometimes.”

  Cord resisted the impulse to roll his eyes. “Yeah? What don’t we men see?”

  Fanny gave his arm a squeeze. “Oh, you know. A woman’s smile says a great deal about what she wants. And a man’s, too. All a woman has to do is look.”

  Cord took care not to look at her for fear she would imagine an interest he didn’t feel. At least not in Fanny Moreland. Across the meadow he spied Eleanor, still perched demurely on the picnic blanket and still surrounded by her bevy of admirers.

  That did it. Eleanor was not hungry for male attention. Eleanor was thirsty!

  “Excuse me, Miss Moreland. Mrs. Malloy’s waiting for this lemonade.”

  “What? Oh.” She laid one hand on his forearm. “Perhaps we could meet later on to watch the fireworks?”

  “Sorry. I promised Molly and Danny I’d watch with them.” He detached her fingers from his arm and started to move away.

  “But...but... Well, ah’ll be just over there with mah aunt and uncle—” she waved a hand in the general direction of the riverbank “—in case y’all change your mind.”

  Eleanor watched Cord across the meadow, where he stood talking to Fanny Moreland. She edged away from Todd Mankewicz, who was blocking her view, and narrowed her eyes against the sun’s glare. Molly and Danny were plodding across the meadow toward her. She straightened and made it very obvious to the men gathered around that she was ready for lunch when she pulled the wicker picnic basket toward her.