by Yvonne Jocks
vanished as soon as she saw Jack in that shadowy, cluttered store. He seemed so tired!
Half-leaning, half-seated on a display stove, he looked more disheveled than she'd ever seen him, even when he'd been drunk. Something stiffened and dulled his dark hair, as if he'd gotten it wet—
but not clean—and then let it dry without benefit of a comb. A day's growth of whiskers shadowed his chin, jaw, and upper lip. His clothes were clean, but obviously thrown on; not only was he in his shirtsleeves, but he'd neither tucked his shirttail in nor had he buttoned its top two buttons. She saw an uneven sprinkling of dark hair below the hollow of his throat before she could make herself look away, flustered.
He seemed so very . . . male. Her common sense made one last try—she ought not be here.
“Miss Garrison,” he said, by way of greeting, and pushed to his feet. Not Audra. Not darling. Just Miss Garrison. She looked back, savored the sight of his face again—whole, alive, even welcoming
—and, oh, her common sense was right. She should go. She couldn't guard herself against this man, not with him so raw and real and her so very, very glad to see him.
Then she noted his weary eyes and knew she could not desert him on the selfish excuse of her own weaknesses. She must behave herself long enough to be of some assistance.
“Mr. Harwood,” she greeted, running her useless palms over her skirt. “Are you well ?” .
Immediately she regretted the question. Surely if anybody could take care of himself it was Jack Harwood! Even as she thought that, he smiled his usual charming smile. "Considerably improved from the morning. And you?"
Her? “Why—I'm fine. But I'm not the one . . .” She did not know what to say after that. She did not want to insult him again after the horrible questions she'd asked just the day before.
He sighed, shoving his hands into his pockets, and only then seemed to notice his untucked shirt.
He stopped smiling. “No, that you're not. You ought not be here, dar—” He stopped himself, then smiled again, this time ruefully. “Ma'am.”
No matter how improper, she missed him calling her darling. “I oughtn't?”
“It won't do much for your reputation.”
Oh! She had the grace to look down at the toes of her shoes, peeking out from under her long skirt. “I suppose I deserve that.”
In the silence that followed, she realized with a deep, squeezing pain that perhaps she'd gone too far, after church, for even the most casual of friendships to survive.
Then Jack said, “Deserve what?”
When she looked up he seemed confused, not condemning, in the half-light.
"You said . . . my reputation. I was rude to you—again— because of your ... choices. When in fact I've been the one at fault, blaming you instead of taking responsibility for my own weaknesses."
She raised her chin. “I apologize for that, Mr. Harwood.”
He blinked, more expressions playing across his face than she could read. “You do?”
She nodded. “When I heard there'd been a shooting, and you were involved . . .” Her heart cramped at the too-fresh memory, at the disarray of the store around them, and she took courage from the strength of her feelings. “I was so very afraid for you.”
He took a tentative step closer to her. “You were?”
“And—” She might as well be honest. Though she often fumbled propriety around Jack Harwood, his own lack of judgments always encouraged her to honesty. "And afraid for myself, I'm sorry to say. What if you had been hurt, or killed, believing that I thought less of you? I mean ... it may not seem important,“ she added, looking down. ”But it is for me. When I knew you were safe, that I could still apologize, I had to come. After school let out, I mean."
He said nothing else, just crossed the few feet between them, so that she now had a view of his mud-scuffed boot toes, his creased pant cuffs. She could feel his intense warmth, even from a respectable foot away; could smell a strange but not unpleasant perfume of river, gunpowder, and coffee, along with the deeper, more familiar scent that was simply Jack.
No whiskey, she noted with the edge of her mind. No tobacco, even.
“You came here to tell me that,” he repeated, low and uneven.
She nodded, and the way he exhaled—half laugh, half sob— gave her the courage to peek up at him again.
Oh! Jack Harwood was not angry with her. In fact, he was looking at her with such a heady mixture of wonder and even— adoration?—that her heart sped and she forgot how to breathe, both at the same time. The effect made her pleasantly dizzy.
“Oh, darlin'.” He sighed, lifting warm, gentle fingers to her jaw. Her eyes drifted shut at the Tightness of his touch.
Until she felt his breath brush her lips. Somehow she pulled back. “No!” She managed to turn her back to him, arms crossed tight over her front, fists under her chin, wishing her heart could be contained as easily as that. “I can't!” she said, not looking at him.
She longed for him to take her shoulders, turn her, convince her otherwise. She feared it just as much.
This time he said, “Oh, Audra,” almost in a groan. It wasn't with the same passion with which he'd just called her darling, but neither was it as condemning as she'd feared and likely deserved. She'd let him think he could kiss her again. Worse, she wanted his kiss, wanted it so badly that surely he could see it.
But she'd chosen staying away over controlling those immodest wants once before. In the end it had proved more painful even than this frustrating forbearance.
“I mean ... I mustn't,” she explained, hating the pitiable tone of her own voice. “I'm sorry. I ought not have misled you. It's just... I'm sorry.”
She heard Jack's footsteps leave her, but before her heart crumbled, they stopped a safe distance off. “What is it 'just,' darlin'?” he asked, almost in a sigh, but a patient one nevertheless.
When she looked over her shoulder, he'd stepped behind the counter where they kept the mail, so that she would have the safety of a glass case of merchandise between them. He did not appear particularly happy . . . but neither did he look critical.
He even waited, not nudging her on, until she managed to gather enough of her scattered wits to try to answer him. “I... I would like us to still be friends. If that's possible.”
“That is possible,” he assured her, blue eyes crinkling in a way that spelled danger.
“But I would like—I need—to ... to behave myself. I promised to follow the rules when I took this job. I promised my father, too. A person is only as good as her word, you know.”
He'd always heard the saying refer to men. “And that's a problem because ... ?”
Her face heated. “I have difficulty behaving myself around you,” she admitted, chagrined.
The grin that slowly creased his cheeks, dancing into his eyes, was more than charming. It was downright delighted. “Do you?”
“I would appreciate your taking this seriously,” she chided him. Then, recognizing that she'd just used her schoolteacher voice, she had to smile a little herself. Jack Harwood was more of a handful than even Claudine or Jerome could be, but he was a more pleasant handful. 'That's why I thought I should stay away,“ she explained more reasonably. ”Why I asked those terrible questions yesterday. I thought if only I could see the worst in you, I could keep myself away."
“And you figured that was the worst of me,” he challenged amiably.
“There's worse?”
He laughed at that, but sobered all too soon. "Well, Audra— last night I helped kill a man. Most folks would find that worse."
“Wasn't it—wasn't it self-defense?” The idea that Jack, her friend Jack, could be involved in something so nefarious as ambush or murder seemed inconceivable.
“It was,” he assured her, just as she'd hoped. "But a man's still dead and his woman widowed. It was an all-around ugly business. I meant what I said when you came in. Being here won't do much for that valuable reputation of yours."
Even if he were mocking her, she supposed she deserved it. But he did not sound mocking. "It would be, were I here for social reasons," she explained primly. She'd rehearsed the argument thoroughly enough, across the course of the day. “But I'm not.”
He raised an eyebrow, making her smile at herself again.
“Well, perhaps some social reasons,” she admitted, flushing. “But I'm also here to offer my assistance.”
“Your .. . assistance?”
“That's what neighbors do, don't they?” She considered it. “And friends.”
He looked at her strangely. “It has been known to happen.”
Which worried her. "We can be friends, can't we? Even if I don't approve of gambling? Even . . .
even if I mustn't let you kiss me anymore?"
She had let him use her first name, even cal her darling. She must draw the line somewhere!
He hesitated, sucked a pensive breath in through his teeth, and her hopes faltered. "You're leaving town," she remembered, feeling foolish.
“I was leaving town last night,” he admitted. That alone made her stomach lurch. "But after the ...
trouble ... I suspect my friend Ferris could use my assistance for another week or so, anyhow. Until we're sure nobody takes it into their heads to try finishing what they started."
The possibility had not occurred to her. “You think they might?”
He smiled. "We held them off just fine before; I figure we can do the same again. It'd be nothing so difficult as trying to be your friend without stealing a few friendly kisses now and again."
His words made her shiver almost as deliciously as his kisses once had—which rather proved his point.
“I cannot be your friend if you mean to behave like a common masher, Jack Harwood,” she warned him. At least, she would have to be his friend from a safe distance.
“That would be a shame,” he agreed, his eyes laughing at her.
“Yes, it would!” she agreed sternly.
He braced his hands on the counter, and leaned into them. “‘Course, you ought not be my friend anyhow. Considering that you have a reputation to uphold."
Which should be true, as well. She'd be foolish to forget what she'd seen of vice in Fort Worth. To openly befriend Jack Harwood might imply to the school board and the community that she
condoned such sins, which she certainly did not.
But to continual y avoid him would imply, to herself, that she'd become a narrow-minded ingrate simply for fear of public opinion. His sins couldn't stain her own morality unless she Allowed it. She hoped she'd learned enough, matured enough, to Allow no such thing.
“I'll see to my own reputation,” she assured him. “You do what you can to keep your hands to yourself.”
He did not have even the decency to blush. “I honestly don't know if I can do that.”
“Then you risk ending our friendship yet again,” she warned him, then gave him a shy smile. “And you must admit, it's rather tiring to keep track.”
He laughed again. "That it is. How about we take a chance and just see how the cards play out? I will at least attempt to treat you like the lady you are."
It pleased her that he still thought she was a lady, even after the things she'd said and not said, even after the way she'd kissed him, held him. Oh, dear.
“I'd best go now,” she announced hurriedly.
“But what about that assistance?” he challenged quickly, starting around the counter but then, to her mixed relief and disappointment, apparently thinking better of it and staying his approach.
“You wouldn't want to give the appearance this was a social cal , now, would you?”
She studied him through narrowing eyes, suspecting that he cared more about keeping her in the store for a few minutes more than he did about appearances. Worse, she did, too.
“Is there anything you or Mr. Hamilton need?” she asked, taking refuge in propriety. "especially Mr.
Hamilton. I believe he was injured."
“Mr. Hamilton will be fine,” Jack said dismissively. “Doctor said so.”
“Oh. That's a relief.” She fidgeted with her gloves. “Well, then.”
“Could be I need something,” he added, his voice thick, and she studied him for sign of what that might be. She quite liked him disheveled. She wished she could run her finger over his jaw and feel the rasp of his whiskers, even wished she could see a little more of that triangle of male chest revealed by his shirt collar. Oh, but she was in grievous trouble.
And it still seemed better than staying away.
“What?” She had to ask twice; the first time it just came out as a croak.
“I don't dare tell you,” he teased, and though he smiled, his blue eyes glowed more with unsettling heat than with amusement. “It would end our friendship for sure.”
“I'd best go now.” Audra all but bolted for the door.
“Maybe you'd best, darlin',” he agreed, softly, behind her.
Neither of them mustered much enthusiasm in their goodbye—but enthusiasm, Audra decided as she hurried home, could remain low on her list of priorities. First she must honor what she knew in her heart was right, including her friendship with Jack. Then she must honor her family and her word, especially in her contract with Candon. In that order.
You can't cross rivers you ain't reached, her father often warned.
Such trivialities as enthusiasm she would deal with if it became necessary, not before.
Thoughts of Audra kept Jack whistling the rest of the day and gave him savory dreams that night.
But the true courage of her visit became increasingly obvious over the next few days. Apparently the townsfolk of Candon had no intention of forgiving Ferris for his transgression, at least not as long as Lucy remained. They were driving to Euless or Estil for their goods. Even the postal delivery
moved to the lumber mil , with a new postmaster sworn in, so that even for their mail folks wouldn't have to brave the den of iniquity that was the Candon Mercantile.
Tuesday someone egged the store—the only eggs they'd seen, since their supply of eggs, milk, and butter from the farmers' wives had stopped coming in. Their only visitor was an old colored man asking after Lucy. He handed over a worn flour sack, which, Jack assumed, contained her clothes and possessions. They talked, and he left.
Jack went outside to clean the windows then, preferring even the sulfuric stench of rotten eggs to the sound of a woman's sobs. Ferris wasn't fit company for a porcupine, much less a personable fellow like Jack.
The next day someone whitewashed get out—along with several racial slurs—on the front
window. Jack hurried to wash off the worst of it before Lucy could see, not that she often ventured where folks might catch a glimpse of her. If the three of them were prisoners, she was the one in solitary, and went only out back for the outhouse or to do laundry.
Hamilton had protested that. “You aren't our laundress anymore, Lucy!”
But when she'd asked him, “Then what am I?” he hadn't known what to answer.
“You gonna do something about this?” asked Jack as they sat alone, playing a listless game of checkers at the deserted cracker barrel.
Ham snorted, wrathful as a stomped snake. “About what?”
Jack moved a red wooden disk from one square to the next. "You're the one who took up with the girl in the first place."
“And that makes me a criminal?” Ferris challenged. “If you could've sweet-talked that schoolmarm into joining you by the river in the moonlight, I guarantee she wouldn't stay respectable for much longer than it would take you to hike her skirts—”
Jack slapped the board off the barrel, scattering checkers across the room. "You watch how you talk about her."
He'd reacted faster than he would have guessed possible and now took longer to calm. Only belatedly did he realize an extra cause to his fury, something he'd conveniently forgotten in the excitement. It could be that Audra wasn't so pure. It could be tha
t some bastard had already gotten to her. That, as much as Ham's rudeness, made him angry enough to spit nails.
Not that it made a bit of difference to his point. “Audra Garrison,” he continued with marginal y more calm, “is a lady.”
Ham's eyes narrowed. “And you're saying Lucy isn't?”
"Sounds like you're the one saying it. If al she is to you is a good lay, I have other places I can be.
And she could use an escort to somewhere a touch less dangerous than this damned town of yours herself."
They sat silently for a few minutes. finally Hamilton looked up, solemn, and said, “You watch your damned mouth. She's more to me than that.”
Good. “Then start acting like it.”
“What the heck am I supposed to do, marry her?”
“Hell, yes. That's what I'd—” He stopped too late for either of them to miss the surprising admission. He'd thought it before, too. Audra Garrison did that to him. "If the gal meant enough to me,“ he clarified, ”and I'd ruined her place in the community, damned right I'd marry her."
Though he pitied the woman so yoked.
"Wel , that's fine for you to say, but in case you forgot, Texas has miscegenation laws. I couldn't marry her if I wanted to."
Jack folded his arms. “Do you want to?”
The question hung between them, thick and choking as sour smoke, until Ferris shrugged his good shoulder, the one not in a sling. “I don't know,” he admitted.
Well . . . damn. Not that Jack didn't appreciate his honesty. But it didn't do Lucy Wolfe a lot of good.
"Well, if a gal didn't mean enough for me to marry her, I hope I'd at least take care of her. Make sure she wasn't in the family way. Give her enough money to settle herself elsewhere, someplace folks didn't know her." God, but he hoped that wasn't what Audra had already done in coming here. “Could be the kinder thing, in fact, 'cause I'd surely make one sorry husband.”
Lucy said, “That's what I want,” and both men looked up guiltily.
“If you meant to ask me,” she said evenly, from the doorway to the back “that's just what I'm wanting. To go somewhere and start new.”