by Yvonne Jocks
Then he looked back at the widow Parks and lowered his voice to say, conspiratorial y, "There you have it. The woman is obviously out of control. Will this be all for today?"
“Yes,” said Nora stiffly as he wrapped the ribbons in a piece of brown paper. “It will . And in the future, I would prefer to be serviced by the store owner himself.”
“I imagine you would.” Jack smiled meaningfully. Being a widow, she took his meaning.
On her way out, the widow Parks took Audra's hand and said, "You mustn't let men like that fluster you, dear. Just limit your dealings with them to what is absolutely necessary."
Audra watched her go with the cutest expression of confusion on her china-doll face.
“What in h—in all that's holy are you trying to do to me?” demanded Hamilton, limping from the opposite counter with his crutch. “Are you trying to put me out of business?”
“Not without assistance.” Let Ferris run his own damn store. Starting tomorrow.
In the meantime, Jack finally had a moment with the prettiest schoolmistress this side of the Mississippi. “Miss ... Garrison, isn't it?” She turned back to him, still confused, until he added, “I apologize if I was too ... bold earlier.”
But remembering that boldness—Saturday night's, more than this afternoon's—he was careful not to say he was sorry.
Audra stepped closer to the counter, gray eyes eagerly searching his. "I may have made the same mistake recently."
“Now, I didn't cal it a mistake.” He grinned, and she blushed. How refreshing to see an honest blush.
Ferris startled them by announcing, "I'll help Miss Garrison. Go put some of those ribbons back in order, Harwood."
Damned if the storekeeper hadn't limped all the way over without either of them noticing. Now Ham decided to take charge?
On the bright side, Audra looked as dismayed by the interruption to their double entendres as Jack felt.
“No need,” he insisted, feeling his grin harden into a grimace. “I'm doing just fine here.”
Ham narrowed his dark eyes. "I don't want the lady to think she can't shop here without being insulted."
“I don't,” Audra assured him quickly.
“See?” said Jack. “The lady doesn't think that.”
“And she won't, either, if I have anything to do with it.”
Jack's eyes narrowed. Did Ferris's concerns for Audra run elsewhere? Now that he, Jack, had finally started to loosen her up, Ham thought he was going to limp in and impress her with this
protective, I-own-the-store humbug?
“It's all right,” insisted Audra, looking from one man to the other. Jack wondered which one of them she was reassuring.
“Mr. Hamilton?” Fate intervened in the form of their old laundress. Her cousin had come by for the past two weeks. Now the original woman was back, hovering uncertainly just inside the doorway, dark hands fidgeting with the red shawl she wore over a yellow gingham dress. "
New gingham, Jack noticed, with the increased awareness of having kept shop for a month now.
But in the same room as Audra, the laundress might as well be wearing rags.
“Lucy,” said Ham, almost losing his balance when he turned. Even after he'd caught himself, half with the counter and half with his crutch, he closed his eyes for a frustrated moment. Maybe he'd put too much weight on his leg. “You came back.”
“Yes, sir, I'm considering it. Depends on the conditions. Of employment, I mean.”
Jack hadn't survived by his wits for this long to miss such an opportunity. "Why don't you see to our clean clothes, Ham, and I promise to behave myself around the schoolteacher."
He expected Ham to resist him—especially if the man was setting his cap for Audra—and why wouldn't he be?—but Ham just said, “Yes. We'll discuss your employment,” and limped toward the back stairs to show Lucy the laundress their dirty clothes.
Finally—with the exception of Ned and Charlie, and their ever-present checker game by the cracker barrel—Jack and Audra were practically alone. And Ned and Charlie were about deaf.
“Now, where were we?” Jack asked, propping his elbows on the counter to better gaze at the loveliness that was Audra.
“I believe,” she said quietly to her gloves, “that the subject of mistakes came up.”
Oh. That. “And when they aren't mistakes at all ,” he reminded her, smiling again at her dismay. “In fact, I believe congratulations are in order. You kept your job after all .”
“Barely,” she admitted. “They put me on probation.”
“And that would mean ... ?”
“If I do anything questionable, I'll lose my position.”
“Ahhh.” Since she didn't put her hands on the counter, within his reach, he straightened and occupied his hands checking the new mail. "How's that any different? Except that your hair's prettier and you can get away with more than you thought."
“It's very different! I'm under suspicion now. Everyone . . .” She glanced over her shoulder, just in case, and lowered her voice to a near whisper. “Everyone stares at me.”
Well, if she meant to whisper, he'd just lean closer, to better hear her and whisper back. "Even if everyone were, and they aren't, what's wrong with being stared at?"
“I hate it! It's like before, like . . .” But whatever she meant by that, she stopped.
"Maybe everyone stares at you because you are so intensely beautiful, you erase every other thought in their heads?"
She stared, going vulnerable again. Lordy, he needed to kiss her! Now that he knew how soft and warm and pliant she felt, it took all his will power to keep his hands to himself.
“Or could be that's just me,” he teased.
Her focus retreated to her gloves again. “You ought not talk like that, Mr. Harwood.”
Mr. Harwood? “Jack,” he reminded her.
“And we ought not cal each other by our first names.”
Uh-oh. And after all the headway he'd made Saturday. Unsure how to turn her, he glanced with frustration at the letters he'd been shuffling. “Well, looky here! One from Wyoming.”
When she reached to take it, he held on for a moment, so that they were practically holding hands
—joined at the letter.
“Jack!” she hissed in warning, so he let go.
“Why, Miss Garrison,” he murmured. “How scandalously informal of you!”
With a huffing sound, she stuffed the letter into her coat pocket. Normally she spent longer gazing at the handwriting, and she patted her pocket to reassure herself of the letter's presence. "You truly are incorrigible, aren't you?"
“Among other things.” Since he was leaning over the counter anyway, he propped his chin on his hands. “As long as I'm being incorrigible, Miss Garrison—when can I see you again?”
She met his question with so blank a look that, for a moment, he wasn't sure she understood. Then she said, “I'll be back before the end of the week to mail my reply.”
He laughed. "I was hoping for someplace we can talk. Without you staring at the shelves behind me or me going through seven letters ten times before I find what I'm looking for."
Actually, he was hoping for someplace they might do more than talk. But he knew better than to mention that part.
“You went through them ten times?”
“I want to see you again.” Touch you again. Kiss you again. Just watching her mouth form words was sweet agony. He felt like Ferris must, of late, with his laudanum—addicted.
“Outside of the store?”
She was not increasing his confidence in her ability to teach school. “Yes, Audra,” he agreed.
“Outside of the store.”
“That's not possible!”
Well, of course it was possible; they'd proven that. What she meant was, she didn't want to do it—
or to risk it. “I see,” he said, disappointment curdling into annoyance.
“I'm on probation now,” she pointed out, silently pleading wit
h him to understand. And maybe he would have accepted it, if she'd just been disappointing him. But here she stood, using her rules to hide from something she wanted just as much as he did.
That, he truly hated to see.
So he played his trump card. “I believe you still owe me a favor, darlin'.”
Disbelief darkened her face. Jack schooled his expression into complete nonchalance, watching her work through her shock, then her hurt, then—beautiful as ever—her outrage.
“Perhaps I do owe you a favor, Mr. Harwood,” she said in a hiss. "But I am not about to let you manipulate me into something against my conscience! How dare you consider it? I obviously
misjudged you, sir, and I... I hope that you will at least do me the honor of not mentioning what has transpired between us again. Good day!"
He was so busy admiring the kind of backbone she grew when cornered that he didn't interrupt until she turned away. Then he said, “Hold it,” and she spun back.
“Hold it? I am not a horse, Mr. Harwood!”
“Jack.” He smiled. “And that's not the favor either.”
She scowled at him, suspicious, from beneath that cute little hat, those soft sorrel curls. “What is not the favor?”
“Meeting with me.”
She opened her mouth. Then closed it. Then she did both again. “Oh,” she finally said.
“But I'd best meet with you to tell you what the favor is.”
Suspicion became wariness. “Why can you not tell me here?”
“Because it has to do with— Ferris!” he greeted more loudly, hearing the awkward clumping on the staircase before Ham appeared. "You haven't been with that laundress this whole time, have you? This store has a reputation to uphold."
He realized he was pushing his luck even to imply that Ferris would have anything to do with a colored woman, but even so, he did not expect the murderous glower that hit him.
“Lucy left the back way,” the storekeeper said. “I was resting.” And likely dosing himself with more laudanum. Jack had mentioned the favor to stall Audra, but even as he did, he knew just what he could ask from her.
“I'm glad you did,” he told Ferris now. “High time you healed up and let me go my dissolute way.”
“Nothing's stopping you.”
Nothing except for a decent chunk of credit, maybe his conscience, and the pretty girl standing beside him. Audra slanted her eyes toward Ferris and mouthed the word, Him?
Jack sent her the barest of nods, then continued his second conversation. "No need to get rude about it. As you can see, I didn't even chase away the schoolteacher in your absence."
Audra widened her eyes at him, as if Ferris would not have noticed she was still here.
“Do whatever you want,” groused Ham, clumping off to his chair by the opposite counter. “Just don't use me as an excuse.”
“You're the owner of this fine establishment,” assured Jack agreeably, then dropped his voice. “I'd like you to talk to someone for me. About him.”
She hesitated. “Someone respectable?”
He folded his arms in challenge. She wasn't the only one who could do “holier than Thou”; he'd learned from experts.
She had the grace to drop her gaze. “I'm sorry.”
Then he felt guilty. "Considering my own reputation, I'd prefer someone respectable speak for me."
“About what? To whom?”
Not so fast. “Where can I meet with you?”
She considered it—and he held his breath. This was what would really test whether her upbringing was truly irreversible and would stifle the poor gal forevermore.
Relief warmed him when she finally nodded. Then she said, "I am practicing piano at church on Sunday afternoons, for Christmas services."
Church? “Not church.”
“Why not church?”
For his own reasons. “Who walks you home?”
She looked wary again. “Nobody.”
“Then I will.”
“That's against—” She stopped; he'd narrowed his eyes at the mere hint of rules.
“Someone was seen skulking toward Mosier Valley a few nights back,” he said. "Could be dangerous, you walking alone."
“You don't believe that.” He liked that she hadn't adopted the townsfolk's fear of their colored neighbors.
“No, but anyone who catches me walking with you might.” She hesitated, glanced back to where Ferris sat ignoring them, then bit her lip and looked at Jack again.
He put on his most innocent face, the one he used when holding aces or better. When she leaned closer, he restrained himself from pressing his cheek to hers.
“Just this once,” she warned, almost silently.
“Of course,” Jack bluffed, euphoric.
She eyed him with suspicion—perhaps she was not so easy a mark as she'd first appeared? But she was too well behaved to put whatever misgivings she felt into words.
Al the better for him.
“Is anything wrong, Miss Garrison?” called Ham from behind the other counter. Maybe he'd noticed more than they'd thought. He surely would, if Audra did not better hide the flush that pinkened her cheeks.
“She's trying to get me to go to church,” Jack called back with complete honesty.
Ferris Hamilton laughed at the very concept.
With a sigh, Audra turned to leave the store, pausing in the doorway to slide her troubled gaze toward Jack one last time. She surely took things seriously, didn't she? He winked at her, and she left almost as quickly as Nora Parks had. But unlike Nora Parks, Audra was blushing.
That had to be a good sign.
Was it possible to acclimate oneself to sheer terror?
Audra hardly knew how she survived the week after her haircut. First, she had to face being a hoyden—she'd kissed a gambler in her aunt's kitchen, and enjoyed it! Then came the terror of church the next morning, and her aunt's return with a suitably chastised Claudine. The school board met and, though formal y disapproving of her coiffure, they offered her one last chance.
One. How could she risk that by meeting Jack in private?
But she knew how. She risked it because she owed him, not just for helping with her hair but for looking at her with admiration instead of censure, for reminding her to keep her head up, for holding her as if she were something precious.
She owed him.
She could think of little else, after that. She struggled with her pupils, but she thought about Jack.
Saturday felt interminable. Sunday's services lasted forever and ended too soon. After dinner she considered claiming illness to stay in, but how could she respect herself if she added lies and cowardice to her growing list of sins? So she put on her coat, walked to the church, and dutifully practiced the Christmas carols she would play at the end of the month, letting the familiar music distract her as little else could.
But still she felt terror. Or something very like it.
She was meeting with a man. She had become a woman who would meet with a man, a gambler, in secret. Were they discovered, she would have no excuse. At least with Peter she'd been a victim.
Her family hadn't blamed her. This time ...
They simply must not be discovered.
Too soon, the slant of pale November sunlight through the church windows told her to go home.
Audra played a few more chords on the piano—music made her feel close to her mother. Then she closed the lid, put on her coat, and left the church.
Nobody stood outside waiting for her.
Her shoulders sank—with relief or disappointment? She hurried for the wooded path that would take her back to Aunt Heddy's. Live oaks, she'd heard, would not shed their green-black leaves until spring. Cedar and loblolly pine were evergreen. Used to the snows of Wyoming, which by now would have worked their way down the mountains and across the plains, she could hardly believe it was December, Christmas music aside. Occasional clumps of prickly-pear cactus increased her displacement. Cold wind stung her eyes, and she fel
t desperately alone.
And then she heard a whistle: We Three Kings.
She stopped, looked around, her aching heart starting to beat again.
It sounded from above her.
There! Stretched casual y across a low tree branch, grinning down at her like the Cheshire cat in Mr. Carrol 's Alice in Wonderland, was Jack Harwood.
Maybe it was possible to acclimate oneself to terror. To do anything but turn and run was to disobey her employers, shame her family, betray promises she'd made even to herself. And yet, unable to resist his dancing blue eyes, the silliness of his position, Audra smiled happily back.
Chapter Eleven
Teachers may not use liquor in any form.
—Rules for Teachers
At Audra's approach, Jack pocketed the playing cards he'd been using to busy his hands in the chil air. Then he regretted it. Was he trying to hide who he really was?
Yep. Probably.
She wore the same coat as before, sleek and somber, and another understated bonnet. This Sunday-school Audra would likely risk a great deal if she thought he—or his soul—truly needed her. But if she knew he mainly needed another kiss, she would avoid him like . . . sin. So despite the welcoming smile on her clean, upturned face, Jack would play this one according to Hoyle. Until he eased her into a better appreciation of sin, anyhow.
Thus the cards stayed in his pocket as he hopped down from the tree, landing lithely beside the little schoolmarm. He even tipped his hat to her. “Good afternoon, Miss Garrison.”
She averted her face from his nearness. “Mr. Harwood.”
Well, hadn't that been fun? He'd rather be kissing her. Don't kiss her. No, he'd do whatever gentlemen did when meeting with ladies. In secret. Whatever the hell that was.
He saw by the slant of her lashes that she watched him, sidelong. Her seeming interest made his ears ring pleasantly ... or maybe that was the echo of her fine piano music. Her hands might look small, but her music proved them intriguingly deft.
Be a gentleman, Jack. He cleared his throat. “Thank you for meeting with me.”
A shy smile touched her pretty mouth, then vanished. “You're welcome.”
He offered his arm. Her gloved fingers stretched toward it-then curled into a fist, and she withdrew them to beneath her chin and shook her head. “I'd best not,” she explained, gray eyes apologetic.