by Yvonne Jocks
He looked angry, and she did not know why. "Maybe I did, and you're so danged innocent you just don't know it"
“No!” She stopped walking, so he had to stop, too. His hat tilted at a funny angle on his head—had she done that?—so she reached up to straighten it. He drew a shaky breath, raised his chin as if expecting a blow, then closed his eyes once she lowered her hand. Odd. The discovery that she was a floozy stunned her, but the idea that he would abuse their friendship for a kiss upset her more. She refused to accept it again. “Don't you dare make it something ugly. It was ...”
Confusing. Joyous. Frightening. New. Electric. Wonderful.
“Enchanting,” he suggested, almost grudgingly.
Yes, enchanting. She smiled.
“And against those rules of yours,” he reminded her.
Which was the tragedy of it. If she could not control these surprisingly dissolute longings within herself, then her only hope was to stay away from him .. . and the very idea hurt her heart. He was a good friend to her. But the rules—rules she had agreed to—forbade her keeping company with any man, much less a gambler. That meant any time they stole together would be just that, stolen and unchaperoned. She could too easily find herself in his arms again, savoring the rasp of his rough, masculine cheek against hers, going completely weak as he did truly shameful, blissful things to her ear.
Being the hoyden that she was.
Goodness, just with her arm resting on his, she found herself noticing his solidity, remembering how easily he'd held her up when her own legs gave way against him.
She cleared her throat. “It is,” she agreed unevenly, “against the rules.”
“Which is not to say we can't speak to each other in the mercantile, of an afternoon,” he pointed out.
See how agreeable he was being now, how conscientious of her reputation?
And if she was a good influence on him—in other ways than this, of course—she had to at least see him. “Oh, yes—we can still do that.”
“Or exchange hellos on the street,” he added.
She nodded. “Of course.” A gust of wind rushed crisply past her ears. They might have cold weather for Christmas. It occurred to her that these trees were full of clumped mistletoe.
“Or,” said Jack, “if we were to meet on this here path ...”
She slanted her gaze sidelong, up toward his strong, shadowed jaw, his dancing blue eyes, his lips.
If they happened to meet in private again she feared—hoped—she knew what would happen.
Even the momentary terror of discovery could not counter such an attraction.
Jack leaned toward her and she held her breath. Oh, yes.
Then he straightened and cleared his throat. “I should probably, uh, go now.”
Damn, she thought—and then she had yet more to be ashamed of! He was right, of course. Trust Jack to help her help herself. Still, she would be lonely at Aunt Heddy's this week.
“Perhaps I'll see you in the store tomorrow,” she said. It came out like a plea. 'To see if I have a letter from home."
“Yes. That would be fine. The mercantile.” He was backing away from her in an odd way, as if she frightened him.
“Is something wrong?” Had she done something—something else—wrong? Had her lack of
restraint upset him even worse than it upset her? Was she horrible to kiss?
He stopped and closed his eyes—and when he opened them, after a deep breath, the glaze of fear had melted; he looked as if he liked her again.
“Everything is marvelous, Audra,” he reassured her gently. “Except...” He stepped closer again, smoothed down the side of her hair—was it mussed?—and rearranged her scarf around her neck.
He stepped back to survey his work, then nodded. His gaze dropped to her hand and he winced.
“Except your bonnet,” he admitted.
She looked down at the poor, crushed hat. And it was from Denver, too! But.. .
“It's just a bonnet,” she told him truthfully.
He stared at her, his eyes going sleepy and dark, as they had before he'd kissed her, and she felt an answering shiver of excitement deep within her. Oh, yes.
But then he straightened too quickly, grinned too broadly. "See you at the mercantile then, Miss Garrison!"
And, backing away, he waved.
Was someone watching?
Audra turned slowly, fully expecting to see Aunt Heddy—or at least a deer—glaring at her from the cottonwoods between them and the barn. She saw nothing.
Then, when she turned toward Jack, she saw nothing there either. He'd gone.
Well before he reached the store, which was closed for Sunday, Jack had made up his mind. He'd let things get too serious, trifled with the kind of girl a fellow ought not trifle with. Torn between his desires to have more of her and to see nothing bad happen to her, he was paying the price for it.
Sooner or later, so would she.
He went in the mercantile's back door and climbed the stairs to Ferris's one-room bachelor residence. “I'm leaving.”
“Don't you ever knock?” demanded Ham, standing hip-shot—to favor his bum leg—and tucking his shirt into his butternut pants. “Get the hell out of here.”
“That's what I just said,” Jack insisted, swinging himself onto one of the ladder-back chairs at Ham's little table, where they generally ate dinner together each night. "I'm getting the hell out of here. I've spent too much time here as it is."
“Ah.” Ham glanced out his window, as if watching something, then reclaimed his crutch and limped over to the table, sitting in his own chair. “This is about the schoolteacher, isn't it?”
Was it that obvious? “Don't you go thinking poorly of her,” warned Jack, eyes narrowing.
“I'm not thinking poorly of her; I'm thinking poorly of you. Did you get her in trouble?”
“Go to hell!”
“That'd be a not-yet, I'm guessing. So what's got you so fired up to run?”
“It'd be best for her if I'm not around anymore.” Jack frowned when he heard his own argument.
Best for her? Since when had he looked out for others' welfare?
But he knew the odds and Audra didn't. Satisfying as this game had been, he knew that, sooner or later, the wheel would land on black. Audra might not realize she could ever lose— until she lost big.
“I imagine she'll be disappointed,” said Ham. “Not that I can fully figure out why.”
“She knows I'm leaving.” He'd told her he would ... at some point. “I'll see what I can take from the store. Anything left over in credit, you can have for your foul-tempered hospitality.”
“Kind of a Christmas gift?”
“Why not?” Then the full meaning of Ham's question, and his sarcastic tone, pierced Jack's determination. We Three Kings. Silent Night. “It's Christmas?”
“Day after tomorrow, you dumb bastard.”
“Oh, hell.” Jack slumped back in his chair. He didn't even bother to argue the slur to his late mother. If he bolted right before Christmas, he would be a bastard. “Oh ... damn.”
“That's what you get for not going to church.” As if Hamilton went to church himself.
Then again ... “I could give her a present,” mused Jack. "A combination Christmas and farewell gift.
Something nice to remember me, cheer her up—assuming she needs cheering."
He suspected she would. That scared him.
“She won't accept it,” warned Ham.
“Sure she will.” He'd seen some pretty doodads downstairs that he suspected would please her, but it had to be special.
“Ladies can't accept gifts from gentlemen who are not courting them.”
There was that word can't again. “She might surprise you,” Jack predicted, assessing their inventory in his head. A comb and brush set? A jewelry box? Jewelry itself?
“Anything's possible.” But Ham said it in that dry way of his, so Jack couldn't tell if he really meant it or not. And what did it matte
r what Ferris Hamilton thought? He did not know Audra the way Jack knew Audra. Thank goodness.
A present would soothe Jack's conscience considerably.
Audra refused it sight unseen. “You're sweet to think of me,” she whispered, sliding the paper-wrapped box back to him as slyly as he'd slid it to her. “But it's ... it's just not right.”
He kept his voice equally low; her aunt stood with her back to them, right across the store. “Sure, it is! It's Christmas . . . and I'd like you to have something from me. Once I go.”
Disappointment at the lack of news from home had her so peaked, he couldn't bear to tell her how soon his departure would be.
Somehow, in losing her hope of a letter, she'd also misplaced any scraps of rebel ion. "No. Thank you. My aunt would be sure to ask about it unless I hid it, and... I've hidden so much already, Jack.
You're a dear to think about it, but it's just not proper."
Proper? Even now, with her aunt right there, he couldn't look at her without wanting her. He wanted what he'd had—the taste of her lips, her skin, her ear; her softness pressed against his own aching hardness. And he wanted what he'd not had yet, what he imagined, alone on his pal et at night.
If she knew what he did to her in those fantasies, she'd slap him for sure, no matter how she'd responded to his kisses. And her aunt would have him arrested.
As if sensing herself as a topic of conversation, the widow Cribb looked up from the wrapped apples Ham had just handed to her. “Do we or do we not have mail, Audra?”
Audra winced and turned to her aunt. “Nothing, ma'am.”
“Harrumph! Then we have no more business here—especially not with that man.” The widowed schoolmarm stomped out, a forlorn Audra in her wake.
Well, tarnation.
Ham limped across the store to Jack's counter. “I don't blame their apples for going bad,” he muttered. “If I lived there, I'd go bad, too. So did the schoolmarm take it?”
Jack scowled at him. It was the perfect gift for her, too—so why was it still in his pocket?
“Told you so,” said Ham with an uncharacteristic grin.
Jack made a rude gesture.
“Maybe you'll listen to your Uncle Ferris next time.”
“She didn't even get a letter from home.” The more he thought about it, the more that soured him.
He knew what store Audra put in those letters. Today she'd nearly glowed with anticipation. Then, when he broke the news that she had neither letter nor package, her face had fallen so low, nothing he could say or do had lifted her spirits. "Who would send a slip like that across the country and then forget her at Christmas?"
Ferris snorted. “You almost forgot her at Christmas.”
Jack made another rude gesture, hidden from the rest of the store by the counter.
Hamilton cocked his head in an annoying, thoughtful way, until Jack demanded, “What?”
“You really care about her, don't you?”
“You have a point?”
“I do.” Ferris drew his crutch in front of him, rested his hands atop it and his chin on his hands, and gazed solemnly at Jack. "I know how you can get your little schoolmarm to accept your present. If you want to bad enough."
Al Jack's instincts flared with suspicion. “What's in it for you?”
“Sheer entertainment,” Ham assured him, grinning for the second time in one day.
It felt like a sucker's bet, but, remembering Audra's dejection—and after she'd been practicing her Christmas music, for mercy's sake!—Jack took the bait. “Talk.”
And Ferris did.
Chapter Fourteen
Teachers must regularly attend church services.
—Rules for Teachers
Audra knew her family could not have forgotten her; something had happened to their letter, that was all. But to spend her first Christmas away, without even written greetings from home, revived the homesickness she'd thought she'd conquered. By Christmas morning, she resigned herself to a dour, lonely day.
Then, at morning services, Christmas found her.
Wreaths of loblolly pine hung on each of the double doors, tied with red ribbon and hung with cowbells. Inside stood a cedar tree, decorated with garlands of popcorn and holly berries, with lit candles. Festive calico bags tied in ribbon, and apples, and oranges, and the shiny round tops of tin cans all hung off its branches, reflecting the light. The mingling of scents, from the sweetness of fruit to the more romantic smell of fresh cedar, soothed Audra considerably.
Thousands of miles from home, with snow a mere memory, it could still be Christmas!
She sat at the piano, reacquainting herself with the keyboard she'd learned at her mother's side, and began “The Holly and the Ivy” from memory. The church filled with the citizens of Candon, sharing handshakes and smiles and Christmas greetings. Audra knew most of them; she wasn't so terribly alone here, at that. Unsure that people in back could even hear her carols, she continued playing anyway. “Lullay, Lullay.” “Deck the Halls.” “I Saw Three Ships.” And perhaps they could hear.
Even up front, she heard exclamations and then a falling silence when someone entered during
“God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.”
When she saw why, her fingers tangled up the “tidings of comfort and joy.” Nobody paid it any mind, including her. She'd never received a better Christmas present in her life!
Jack Harwood, black sheep of Candon, had come to church.
Well, damn. Rather. . . durn.
Even after an adult life happily strayed from the proverbial flock, Jack felt guilty even to think a cuss word in church. His pa would've smacked him for a word like dad-gum, or shoot. Or durn. But his pa wasn't here. It helped some to remember that.
With the gaze of just about everyone in town on him and Hamilton, Jack wondered for a moment what he was doing here, too. Then he recognized the piano music, sweeter even than it had sounded from his perch in the oak tree, and he remembered.
He'd come for Audra. What the ... heck ... had the woman done to him?
At his shoulder, Ferris murmured, “Having fun?”
Audra hadn't gotten him into this mess; Ham had. The storekeeper had used dares, guilt, and finally pragmatism: Did Jack want to see her get her present, or not? It turned out Ham was supplying candy for the church's Christmas tree—the reverend's increased interest in him had resulted in that, if nothing else—and could slip Audra's present amidst the others. But to see her get it, Jack had to attend services.
So far God hadn't struck him down at the threshold. Not that Jack expected to be called home. Not to God's home, anyhow.
Oh, well . He'd dressed decently for it, anyway.
“Take off your hat, you heathen,” he muttered now to Ferris, and nodded a hello to those folks he recognized. Surprisingly, that was the majority of them. Some ladies turned stiffly away, affronted that he would dare darken their doorway. Others, especially the menfolk—many who already looked uncomfortable in their go-to-meeting clothes—returned the silent greeting.
None was the person Jack wanted to see. And standing there, hat in hand, hair slicked back and feeling younger than he had in years, Jack marveled at just how desperately he did want to see her.
He might recognize these other folks, but he didn't fully trust them and their tight-laced sensibilities. Audra he trusted. Seeing her here would go a long way toward reminding him of what church might be, toward crowding out some of the darker memories of what, in the hands of hypocrites, it could become.
He followed the cal of the music ... and there she sat at her piano, coaxing joyful notes from it and staring back at him, an expression of wonder on her candlelit, china-doll face.
Jack nodded to her as well.
With a smile she turned back to the piano. He felt surprise at how easily he recalled the words to the song she played, especially since his pa hadn't held with singing. "To save us all from Satan's power when we were gone astray ..."
Maybe folks don't n
eed saving, challenged a voice—his own, years younger and raw with grief—
from too deep in his memory. That unsettled him powerfully. He ought not be here, had been in the right all along in staying away from such places.
But to leave now would be rank cowardice.
He found a stretch of bench with a comfortingly clear view of his pretty, short-haired piano player, and he and Ferris sat. As Reverend Col ins stepped up to the pulpit, Jack resisted thoughts of other sermons and the miseries that went with them. Watching Audra, how she cocked her head or nodded while listening to her minister, anchored him when the memories might have swept him into darker places than he'd like.
Only once he relaxed into the rhythm of the minister's words—and the relief that Col ins might not be the fire-and-brimstone type his pa had been—did Jack allow himself to compare this service to his ragged religious past. The neat, whitewashed Candon church was finer than nearly anyplace Jack's father had preached. His earliest memories leaned more toward outdoor revivals, sweltering daylong sermons in brush arbors. The congregation would fan themselves or mop their faces with handkerchiefs, usual y with some children shouting off in the distance, released from their spiritual imprisonment by parents kinder than his. He'd sit beside his mother, itchy in his charity-barrel suit, Ma squeezing his hand in warning anytime he started to fidget.
Of course, she'd mainly kept his fidgeting in check because he'd get worse from his pa if he didn't behave himself. So Jack would sit, sweltering in the Texas heat, listening to his father rant about the perils of damnation, and he would pray that someone would offer his pa a real preaching position at a real church.
Pa tended to go through churches pretty fast. Jack remembered that, too.
“. . . in singing, 'The First Noel,' ” announced the reverend, and Jack stood only a beat behind the rest of the congregation. He watched Audra as she played and sang—a shame he couldn't pick out her voice amid the others—and took deep breaths of air perfumed with candle wax, fruit, and cedar.
He surely appreciated the smell of cedar lately, since that afternoon in the woods.
When Audra glanced in his direction, he winked at her. Her eyes widened and she turned hurriedly back to the music, a pretty flush on her cheeks . . . and what looked encouragingly like a smile pulling at her lips.