The Hired Man

by Lynna Banning

  She said nothing for a long time, and then she glanced up at him. “I didn’t want to come to this dance,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “And I didn’t think I wanted to dance.”

  “I know,” he said again.

  “And you know what?” She sent him a wobbly smile. “I think I’m glad.”

  Cord missed a step. She’s glad? About dancing with me? That made him warm all the way down to his toes.

  And at the same time it made him damn scared. He’d better get his mind off the woman in his arms in the next sixty seconds or he’d go up in smoke.

  “Look at Danny over there,” he said. “After all that complaining, he’s dancing with that little girl in the yellow pinafore.”

  She nodded. “I think males are just like females.”

  “Not hardly.”

  “Oh, yes. They are very similar. Males, like females, complain about things that frighten them.”

  “Yeah? I’m trying to think if I complain about anything.”

  “Yes, you do, Cord. You complain about my Sunday visitors.”

  He couldn’t think of a single thing to say to that. He did complain about them, he acknowledged. He didn’t want to think about what that might mean. Was he scared one of them would lay a hand on her? Was he scared she might like one of them?

  He couldn’t stand to think about either possibility. In fact, with Eleanor in his arms he was having a hard time thinking at all.

  “Cord, I should get back to Molly.”

  “No, you shouldn’t. I see Molly over on the sidelines, talking to Edith Ness.”

  “Oh, dear. I hope she’s not getting any ideas about painting the front porch green or purple or some awful color.”

  “Your front porch does need a coat of paint, Eleanor. Fact is, your whole house needs painting. You want me to—?”

  “Cord, how long will you... I mean, aren’t you going to California soon?”

  “Not until after your apples are harvested. And,” he added with a chuckle, “your front porch is painted.”

  “I wish I could pay you something. It isn’t right for you to work so hard and not be paid.”

  “You are paying me. Just don’t ask how.”

  “But... I don’t understand.”

  Cord forced himself to look away from her upturned face. “Hell’s bells, woman, neither do I.”

  They danced a full quarter of an hour without speaking another word. For a long time he managed not to look at her, either, but finally he couldn’t stand it any longer.

  “Eleanor.”

  She looked up, and he let himself study her small, heart-shaped face the way he remembered doing that first day when he’d stumbled, hungry and tired, through all those apple trees to her front door. He remembered thinking her eyes were like gray dove’s wings, soft and kinda hurting somehow. They’d made his heart stop for an instant, and they were doing the same thing to him now, stopping his heartbeat like he’d been shot. All she had to do to bring him to his knees was look into his eyes that way.

  Eleanor felt his arm tighten at her back. Cord was still looking at her, but the expression in his eyes had changed. “Cord, why are you staring at me like that?”

  “I’m counting up all the good things about being here in Jensen’s barn.”

  “Tell me some of them. It was very hard for me to come.”

  “Well, one of the good things is teaching Molly to dance so she could twirl around.”

  “She will never forget that, Cord. Neither will I.”

  “And then there’s watching your son, Danny, dance with a pretty girl and grow up right in front of us.”

  “Amazing, isn’t it? How life catches up with us no matter how hard we try to stop it.”

  “And then—” he swallowed hard “—there’s dancing with you.”

  Her lips curved into a lopsided smile. “And then there’s...” Her smile faltered. “Oh, no. Cord, Fanny Moreland is heading straight for you.”

  He didn’t even look up. “Doesn’t matter. Ladies don’t cut in.”

  “I bet this one does,” she murmured. She watched Fanny hover at Cord’s back, waiting for a chance to pounce. What incredibly bad manners! If she had ever behaved like that her mother would have switched her until she couldn’t sit down.

  Fanny stepped forward and brought them to a stop. “Mrs. Malloy, your daughter needs you.”

  “No, she doesn’t,” Cord said.

  Fanny blinked. “Oh, but she does, really.” She laid her hand possessively on Cord’s arm.

  “Why does she need me?” Eleanor asked, her voice cool.

  “Um...well, ah think she’s thirsty.”

  “Can’t be,” Cord said. “We drank about a gallon of lemonade half an hour ago.”

  People were beginning to stare at the three of them. Eleanor saw that Fanny wasn’t going to give up without causing a scene, so she stepped out of Cord’s arms.

  “The field is yours, Fanny,” she murmured. She turned and walked away. Behind her she heard a bark of laughter from Cord and the chatter of Fanny’s voice. From her tone it sounded as if she was trying to persuade Cord to do something. Dance with her, probably.

  When she reached the bench where Molly sat with Edith Ness, she settled her skirts around her and scanned the crowded floor, looking for Cord and Fanny. After a long moment she realized they weren’t there. Aha. Fanny wasn’t persuading Cord to dance with her. She was persuading him to walk outside with her.

  “What’s the matter, Mama? You look all funny.”

  “I’m a bit tired, I guess.”

  No, you are not tired. She had had a long, busy day, but she wasn’t the least bit tired. In fact, dancing with Cord, feeling the gentle pressure of his warm hand at her back and listening to the pleasant low rumble of his voice, she had felt extraordinarily well.

  But something must be bothering her because Molly had noticed it. She set her mind to assessing what it was. She had already acknowledged she was jealous of Fanny’s youth and the fact that she was so pretty, so that couldn’t be it. But now...

  Now, she had to admit, she was jealous. She was jealous because...because Fanny and Cord were taking a walk outside. Perhaps walking out behind the barn, which everyone understood was another way to say “for a kiss.”

  That was what she was jealous of—that Cord could be kissing Fanny Moreland!

  * * *

  The next morning at breakfast Molly stopped Cord in the middle of his explanation about storing garden tools. “Do you like that pretty Fanny lady?”

  “Some,” he said.

  “Better’n me?”

  “Nope.”

  “Better’n Mama?”

  “Nope.”

  “A big ‘nope’?” Molly persisted. “Or a little one?”

  He chuckled and looked over at Eleanor, who sat across from him, drinking a second cup of coffee. “A big ‘nope,’” he said with a grin.

  Eleanor’s cheeks turned pink.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The garden plot waited. It had been spaded and raked smooth, and Eleanor’s fingers itched to poke in the nasturtium and zinnia seeds Rosie Greywolf had given her. The peas and beets and carrots she had planted in the backyard beds were already shooting up and were looking green and healthy.

  She’d never tried to grow flowers before, but ever since her recovery from pneumonia she had hungered for more than the pink roses and honeysuckle clambering over the porch trellis. She wanted a riot of blooms in orange and yellow and scarlet, not organized in neat rows but all tangled up so the colors swirled together like a painting. The picture in her mind made her smile. So helter-skelter and unplanned. Like life.

  All at once she remembered the day Cord had uncovere
d the gravestone that now stood at one end of the plot. And the kiss they had shared. It wasn’t the “bet” kiss; she was still half expecting that. Maybe he’d forgotten all about it. Or maybe Fanny Moreland had taken his mind off the kiss Eleanor owed him.

  Or maybe he was no longer interested.

  The seeds made both her apron pockets bulge out, and she hurried out to the sun-drenched plot beyond the maple trees. When she reached it, she stopped short. At the far end of the spaded area she spied the gravestone. The encrusted dirt had been scrubbed off so the name and the dates were clearly visible, and it now stood upright, its base securely anchored in the earth. She clasped her hand over her mouth and dropped to her knees.

  She would plant red nasturtiums at little Amanda’s gravesite, she decided, and let them tumble at the base and trail over the upright stone. Taking a shaky breath, she set to work. She had planted the area halfway to the far end of the plot when a shadow fell over her shoulder.

  “Figured you’d be out here,” Cord said. “You’re getting dirtier than Molly and Danny put together.”

  “No doubt I am, but I don’t care. Ever since I was ill I’ve wanted to have masses and masses of flowers. I was so hungry for life and color and...happy things! You probably don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?”

  He was silent for a heartbeat. “I do know, Eleanor. I know what it feels like to wonder if you’re going to live or die. And when you do survive, you wake up one morning hankering for all sorts of things.”

  “I wanted ice cream and perfume, of all things,” she confessed. “And flowers. What did you want?”

  “Steak. Whiskey. Strawberries. Sunshine. A pretty face.” He laughed softly. “And apple pie.”

  “Sunshine? That’s odd.”

  “Not when you’re in...Missouri in the middle of winter. You miss funny things sometimes.”

  In prison everything was gray. Gray walls, gray uniforms, gray mattress, gray faces. Even the food was gray. That alone made it deadening. It had been a lifeless hell he never again wanted to experience.

  Eleanor nodded and dug her fingers into her pocketful of seeds. “Thank you cleaning off that gravestone, Cord. I’m planting nasturtiums at the base.”

  “I’ll fetch a bucket of water if you want the seeds watered in.”

  She watched him go off to the pump and fill the tin bucket, and when he returned he used his cupped hands to scoop water out onto the planted area. For the next hour they worked in tandem, Eleanor on her knees sprinkling her seeds and patting the soil over them and Cord moving behind her, splashing water onto the earth.

  As she worked she could feel him watching her. It made her feel warm all over, warmer than was warranted by the temperature this afternoon. In fact, she felt warmer than she had felt since she was a girl at her first square dance. Even, she thought with a jolt, warmer than when she’d married Tom.

  Cord’s voice startled her. “Know what I think?”

  “I’m sure I could never guess.”

  “I think you’re getting tired, and—”

  “Don’t start telling me what to do!” she said.

  He jerked, and water slopped over the edge of the tin bucket onto her apron. Furious, she slapped down her trowel and stood up. Her vision blurred and she took an unsteady step backward.

  “What’s wrong?” He touched her shoulder.

  “I’m a little dizzy.”

  “Probably stood up too fast.” He set the bucket down, turned her toward him and gripped her shoulders with both hands.

  For some reason she couldn’t think, couldn’t utter a single word with him touching her that way. She swayed toward him and felt his fingers tighten.

  “Eleanor.”

  “What?” she said in an uneven voice.

  “You still feel dizzy?”

  “N-no.”

  “Okay if I let you go?”

  “N-no,” she murmured. “I mean yes. Let me go.”

  But he didn’t. Instead he stepped in close and pulled her into his arms.

  “Cord—”

  “Yeah, I know. I shouldn’t do this. But you owe me a kiss, remember? I’ve been thinking about it for weeks. I liked thinking about it.”

  He bent his head and caught her mouth under his. For a long, heart-pounding moment she felt as if she were flying away toward the sun.

  All at once he released her. “Eleanor, open your eyes.”

  She looked up into his steady gaze and drew in a shaky breath. “Yes?”

  “You sure you’re all right?”

  “I th-think so. Why?”

  “Not dizzy?”

  “No.”

  “Finished planting all your seeds?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m gonna kiss you again and I don’t want you thinking about your zinnias.”

  She blinked, and then she laughed and tipped her face up to his. “Nasturtiums,” she whispered. She rested her palms against his shirtfront. “Red ones.”

  Cord kissed her, and then he kissed her again, longer this time. Just when he thought about lifting her into his arms and heading for her bedroom, a voice in his head screamed into his brain, Let her go. She doesn’t belong to you. You have no right to her.

  “Oh, God,” he groaned against her temple. “I don’t think I can stand another Sunday afternoon watching you pour lemonade for some randy visitors from town.”

  “I can’t stand it, either,” she admitted.

  “How about we go on another picnic instead?”

  “We’ll have to take Molly and Daniel with us.”

  “Maybe they’ll fall asleep,” he murmured.

  She pulled out of his arms and bent to fluff out her apron. “They won’t fall asleep. They’ll want to play catch or make grass blade whistles or pick blackberries.”

  Cord chuckled. “If I make you a blackberry pie will you kiss me again?”

  “Certainly not,” she said. “But I bet Molly and Danny would.”

  “Not exactly what I had in mind.”

  “I know,” she said, her voice quiet. “But you and I both know this cannot go any further. It’s time to put a stop to it.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  No amount of fried chicken and coleslaw could take up this much space, Cord thought, loading the last picnic items into the wicker hamper. He lugged it out through the apple orchard to a grassy spot by the stream and spread a blanket in the shade of a grove of cottonwoods. Out of breath, Eleanor flopped down and immediately propped her head on her bent knees.

  Molly patted her shoulder. “Mama, does your head ache again?”

  “No, honey. I’m just a bit out of breath. I’ve been frying chicken since breakfast. Wouldn’t it be funny,” she said with a little laugh, “if now I’m too tired to eat our picnic lunch?”

  “Wouldn’t be funny at all,” Cord said, kneeling beside her. “Why don’t you stretch out and rest while I rustle up some lemonade?”

  She took his suggestion, lay back and gazed up through the leafy trees at the blazing blue sky overhead. Molly and Danny raced off to the stream to hunt for minnows, and Cord rooted around in the picnic hamper. “Keep an eye on the children, would you?” she murmured.

  He folded her hand around a jar of cool lemonade and walked off toward the stream with the big water jug. She watched him wedge it among some rocks, say something to Molly and Danny and start back toward her. For a long minute he stood looking down at her, then he stretched out beside her and propped his head on his bent arm. Idly he plucked at the grass, stuck a blade between his lips and rolled it around with his tongue.

  She watched his mouth move and listened to the sound of the children’s chatter drifting on the still air. Surely she
was crazy to like this man so much, to let him kiss her and, even worse, to enjoy it. It was scandalous.

  But the truth was she had never been kissed like that before. Even married to Tom she had never experienced the rush of heat, the giddy, devil-may-care feeling that flowed through her when Cord touched her. How could that be?

  She had liked Tom well enough when they were married. But she had never felt this unsteady thrum in her chest when she was near him, not even when she was lying next to him in their bed. Mostly she had felt grateful that he had taken her away from her parents’ miserable, oppressive household.

  But Cord... Cord was another matter. She couldn’t begin to understand what she felt about him. She was miffed when he ordered her to rest, touched when he did small, thoughtful things like erecting Amanda’s gravestone in her flower bed or baking an apple pie or drying the supper dishes. But, she acknowledged, when he stood near her, or when he touched her, she felt something much more basic. Much more...involving.

  She liked him. She hadn’t wanted to like this man, but she did. She trusted him. She trusted him with her children. She’d felt it instinctively from that first day when her eyes rested on his craggy, unshaved face and looked into those clear blue eyes that didn’t look away no matter what she said.

  She rolled over and sat up. “Nothing much bothers you, does it, Cord?”

  He spit out the blade of grass. “Plenty bothers me, Eleanor. You have something specific in mind?”

  “Well...you’re not disturbed when the clean laundry blows off the clothesline and needs to be rinsed again. Or when the children escape after supper and leave you doing up the dishes. Or when Molly wants you to dress one of the kittens up in her doll clothes. Or—”

  “Or when you snap at me and tell me to mind my own business when you’re so tired you can’t walk straight. Or when Danny begged you to let him ride the horse to school and you wouldn’t listen, or—”

  “Cord, what does bother you?”

  He let a long silence lapse, during which Molly screeched at something they found in the creek and Danny yelled at her to stop being a sissy. Eleanor didn’t think what they found was life-threatening because animated chatter followed. So she waited, watching Cord’s face.