Ben’s lips. I could feel them again. I touched my mouth, running my fingers over my lips.
And all we had left—barely had left—was a tumbledown ranch house and a dilapidated barn.
I’d learned to ride, though. And learned to plant. Learned what it meant to tend animals, and preserve food. There was some good had come…
Along with the husband I didn’t want.
I flicked the reins again. The ranch came into view, and I was glad to see it. Glad to have this wagon, glad Ben was way behind, glad to come up on my own, take care of Walter, unload the wagon myself, and get out to the pasture to work on that fence like I should have done instead of riding into Liberal to get married.
I edged Walter near the barn and tugged back on the reins. “Whoa.” He stopped the moment I spoke English. I smiled. Maybe more of a smirk. I lifted off the seat to avoid splinters, climbed to the ground, and walked to Walter’s head. “Good boy.” I patted his nose, feeling the softness of it. “Mind taking me out to the pasture after I unload and change?” He raised his head and nickered. He was a handsome horse. Black, like his owner. “Well, most of you is good.”
I glanced at the things Ben had bought, especially the ridiculously large pan, and carried my bag into the house. Jess would ask. I came through the front door and set my bag on the table. I ran my hands down the front of my skirts. I could blame his father. But I wouldn’t. I could blame Ben. I wouldn’t do that, either. I could blame the bank. Or my father for never telling me what I figured out anyway. About money, and what to do with it. Something he should have told Flynn.
I marched straight for my bedroom and opened the door. Facts. Jess lay facing me, his eyes closed, a gentle lifting up and down of the quilt draped over him. I could see Ted had been there, helping while I was gone.
Facts could wait. I backed out of my room and closed the door. I walked through the kitchen and out to the wagon, where Ben’s things still lay. I looked at what he’d bought, what sort of items a man like him would choose. When other things should have been on his mind.
A sensation bubbled between my heart and my head, and it ran clear through me as I studied what was important to him…to Ben. I touched my lips. No. This was a business arrangement. His name for a time. Then we’d part.
I stretched and grabbed for the closest items, packages upon bundles tumbling to the side. “Ben Miller, where in the world do you intend to keep this many things?” I grabbed again, and red, green, and yellow flashed beyond my fingertips, shiny colors glistening deep within the disorder of what he’d bought. I rounded the wagon, keeping my eye on the colors, coming along its side, and stood on my toes.
Candy. I knew it. Shiny sticks like I’d wanted for Jess. I strained to the very tips of my toes, leaned into the wagon’s side, and stretched my fingers, their tips just short of where the candy lay.
A hand, a rough hand, latched onto the bundle, tugging it up and out of sight. I jumped, I grabbed, I threw my head back, and watched the colors disappear. Under Ben’s arm. He stretched over me again, grabbed a couple more of his items, and headed to the house.
“Wait! What are you doing?” I ran behind.
He went through the door into the kitchen, then to the pantry. He came back with a package wrapped in brown paper, and the candy. “For you.” He extended the parcel to me. “And for the boy.” He gave me the candy and nodded toward my room.
He walked back out while I stood there with three colorful sticks and a plain brown package. He returned with the rest of his purchases while I still stood there, and he toted them to the pantry, also, that heavy black skillet dangling from one hand.
I listened as he arranged and stacked all he’d bought in my tiny space.
He ducked as he came back through the doorway.
“I don’t mind if you keep your things in there.” I lifted my head and nodded toward the pantry.
“Our things. I’m half of this arrangement, and I plan to do my part.” He walked across the kitchen to the door. “I’m taking Walter to the pasture as soon as I put my gear in the loft. I’ll cut some posts and work on the fence.”
“You’re not fixing my fence.”
“Our fence.” He nodded toward the brown package, and closed the door behind him.
Chapter 29
She wears the trousers and I wear the apron. Never seen the like in my life. ~Rex
A man needed a map to figure his way around a woman. My stepmother always said God made woman to be her husband’s helpmeet. I never understood what that word meant. I’d say for once Regina didn’t understand a word, either.
“How was town?” Ted spoke from behind me. I didn’t have to turn to know this wasn’t a friendly question.
I steadied my foot on the bottom rung of the ladder I’d just come down, from the closest thing I’d had to a bedroom since I was a boy, the loft above his bunkroom. I gave it a shake; it wobbled worse than the fence I’d started to tear down. “You build this?”
“No, Regina’s husband did. Her real husband.”
That wasn’t a guess I heard. And it wasn’t a trick to get me to say I’d married his boss. I didn’t have to say anything. It was clear he knew.
“The one with a name we honor, and whose memory I intend to protect.” He nodded toward the loft. “Seems she intends to protect it, too.”
I removed my foot from the rung and stretched to my full height. I never liked sleeping where a snake could crawl under me. Never trust them. Always watch them. Do them in if they get too close. I walked outside, straight to the wagon.
“Getting married don’t make you the boss.” Ted stood in the barn’s doorway. I’d seen plenty of anger in my day and knew the results of jealousy. Ted’s face and voice had plenty of both.
“That’s exactly what it does, and since I aim to do the work myself, I guess there’s not much use for you around here anymore.” I hopped onto the wagon and clicked at Walter, the sound that said go fast. This arrangement was a job. Just a job. I headed to the nearest cluster of trees. Fast.
****
“I told Jess.”
I looked up from the four posts I’d cut, the fifth dropping onto the toe of my boot. They were boy’s trousers and shirt I’d bought Regina, but they fit her like no boy I’d ever seen. The boots, too, new and peeking out from cuffs that barely needed rolling. I wanted to whistle, but I didn’t. All I could think was that Flynn Howard had been one lucky man.
“I said, I told Jess.”
“I…” I cleared my throat, stuck on saying what I’d never been able to say to a woman. Maybe because my eyes were stuck on what I’d never seen so much of before, the legs, the hips, things I’d only been able to imagine.
The widow…my wife…reddened, like the red I loved in Oklahoma. “Stammering isn’t a conversation.” She jerked her chin up.
“I mean, I heard you. About Jess. Your ranch manager knows, too.” I ran my arm across my brow. “Your wedding gift looks mighty nice.”
She slid her hands down the shirt that fit in all the right places, cupped her palms around her hips as she slipped them to her thighs. “You should have let me tell Ted.”
I nodded, watching those hands. “It wasn’t me that told him.”
“It had to be you. Unless he just guessed.”
“Men don’t like guessing. We like facts.”
The green of those eyes flashed just before they got corralled under a frown. “Let’s get this fact straight, now that we’ve initiated this arrangement. Your job was to provide a name. I’ll manage Ted, just as I’ll manage my son. And I’ll do this fence, too.” She glanced into the wagon at the extra roll of wire and tools I’d added.
“I told you it wasn’t me that told him.” I had my ideas how Ted might know Mrs. Howard was Mrs. Miller now, but I was surprised he’d known it so fast.
“From now on, just leave the ranch and all of its components to me.”
Ted must be a component. Maybe that meant ranch manager in Eastern talk.
> She bent over my stack of posts, latched onto the end of one, and gave it a tug, her pretty white hands straining as she pulled.
“Is that a component?” I nodded at the post. She dropped the end and walked to the other, lifted and shoved. “I mean, I’d help you, unless that post there is a ranch component.”
“I don’t need your help.”
I watched my bride, hair as red hot as a spark. I knew from burning my father’s ranch it took only one good spark to start a fire hot enough to take a building down. “Let me get the other end. That’s only half a component. We’ll set it on the wagon together.”
“I’ll get this post; you can get the next.”
The next seven. I figured I could have two more cut by the time she got that one anywhere near the wagon. Two more, if I could stop watching those boy britches. “Suit yourself.”
I listened to her grunts, ladylike Eastern gushes of air as she managed to get that post up on its end. She waltzed it to the back of the wagon, making me envy that block of wood the way she wrapped herself around it and swayed through the grass. I grunted when she dropped it against the bed. Looked up when I realized my thoughts were the only sounds. Red was there. Red stare, red flare. I bent to the fifth post I’d made as she bent to and rolled the other three. I didn’t watch as she worked each one to the end of the wagon, lifted her leaning post on top of them, climbed on the three herself, and hoisted her post the rest of the way in.
Red. I let the fifth log lay. Red looked good when it was wet. Red hair stuck to her forehead from the work she’d done.
“Bring me that one at your feet, and I’ll load it, too.” She swiped an arm against her forehead as she pointed to post number five.
“You did yours. My turn now.”
“I changed my mind. I’ll do it myself. I’m pretty good at it.” She hopped down and marched to my post and kicked and rolled it to the wagon’s end.
I watched this time. “This would go a lot faster if you’d just let me help. No sense you struggling with…”
“I’m not struggling, I’m contriving. Besides, these posts probably weigh half of what that pan you bought today weighs.”
“Skillet.”
“Okay, skillet. I don’t know how you expect me to cook with that thing.” She hoisted one end of my log onto her little platform of posts.
“I don’t expect you to cook with it. I’m probably a better cook, anyway, so I’ll handle the skillet.”
“I won’t have you in my kitchen!” She planted her fists on her hips, hips plainly seen in those nice-fitting boy’s pants.
“Well, if you don’t want me in your kitchen, or your pasture, and certainly not your bedroom, Mrs. Howard…I mean, Mrs. Miller…then I guess I’ll leave you alone. You can take over from here.” I shoved log number five into the wagon, then loaded the three that made up her platform.
I looked down at the widow, my wife, wrapped my hands around a waist begging to be touched, toted her to the wagon’s seat, and planted her on its top. Her mouth…her lips…were wide open as I made a sound Walter lifted his head to. “He’ll get you to that pen you’re going to build. I’m heading to the house.” Walter hopped-to at my next sound, quick enough she toppled over—red, a flash of green, and pretty little arms and legs flailing to hold on.
Arms and legs I now knew more about than I probably should.
Chapter 30
Now I know what grub really is. But it’s apparently the way Kansas cooking should be done. ~Regina
I rolled the wagon to my barn, bringing Walter to a halt. It was nearly dark, and I glanced around in the shadowy light, letting the wind cool my skin where my loose curls and my shirt were plastered with sweat. Every muscle protested as I stood, dull aches fighting me as I climbed down and settled Walter for the night, then dragged Flynn’s tools into the barn, past Ted’s closed bunk room door, where the too-quiet told me he wasn’t there. Probably off for a ride. Or something. I dropped Flynn’s tools near where he’d kept them. Ted said he checked on things. Flynn said that’s what ranch men did. Probably checking on nothing, but nothing was what I was paying him.
I glanced around the barn, arching my back while squinting through the meager light at the nothing I owned. Lifting, dragging, rolling posts, digging holes, along with stringing wire, wore me out. But not as much as Ben did. If I could find what else I needed, besides getting his name, Mr. Miller would be paid off and out of my life. I stared around the main section of the barn where I’d already scoured the obvious places for Flynn’s money and any extra deeds. Under boards, in knotholes, behind whatever I could move.
“Flynn, why did you have to go and die without telling me anything? Even if you’d just told me where our money was, I could take care of the fix I’m in now. Myself. My way. With a healthy boy at my side.”
I glanced at the places Flynn had favored for his things—his saddle, his tools, his tins and boxes. “Come on, Flynn, show me.” I moved around the interior, forcing every muscle to cooperate in the waning light. I checked around the lower floor and stared up toward the small loft above. Ben’s place. He wasn’t really a husband; he was just temporary. Just a name. A name who was sorry he’d kissed me.
I looked toward the ceiling, then at the door to Ted’s room. I’d never been through that door, never even seen inside the bunkroom where he stayed. Flynn had said Ted kept it neat, stayed warm enough in the winter with a tiny stove he’d put in there.
I tapped a boot on the hard dirt floor and eyed Flynn’s tools I’d just put away. I wrapped my fingers around the handle of a shovel and thrust its tip against the ground. It bounced back, every muscle shrieking in protest. “You wouldn’t work this hard to bury something, would you?” I dragged the shovel to the barn door, thumped the dirt floor with my boot, and looked for places soft enough he would have been comfortable digging, or still loose because that was where he’d actually dug. And hopefully buried what I needed.
I pockmarked our barn floor in a steady rhythm, turning scoop after scoop of dirt over, and shoveling each back where it belonged when I saw nothing was there, leaving the ground looking like a prairie dog field. My muscles cried, but I kept digging. One of these gouges would surely pay off and get Ben off my ranch. “Your money is in here somewhere, and not out in the prairie or the fields. Right?”
“You talking to me?” A tall lean silhouette framed by what was left of the outdoor light stood in the barn’s doorway.
“No, I wasn’t talking to you.” I pressed the shovel close to my side, stretched as tall as I could, so its handle wouldn’t show above my head.
Ben stepped into the barn, his silhouette becoming more like a cowhand as he approached; steady, powerful, more capable than any I’d ever seen. He turned as he came close, edged to my left, walking near enough I could see one of my tea towels dangling from his hand. I inched with him, keeping my face his way and the shovel behind my back.
“You’re in my kitchen cooking, aren’t you? I told you not to, and now you need my help. Right?”
“You planting a shade crop in here?” Ben lifted his hat and scratched his head as he studied the ground around me, the craters scattered across the barn floor. “I’m handy with a skillet, but I’m more handy with a shovel. After we eat I could dig a few more holes in the barn for your shade garden. What did you say you were planting?”
“I’m not planting anything; I’m just loosening the barn floor. It’s good for it. You go on with destroying my kitchen and our meal. I’ll manage the barn.”
He flipped my kitchen towel over his shoulder. “You need to come in and eat. The cooking’s done.”
“Cooking’s not why you’re here, you know, and I could do whatever you’re doing, with a more sensible-sized pan.”
Ben cut between the mounds of dirt. No longer a vague silhouette, he stood tall, a commanding man towering over me. “Mrs. Miller, nothing about why I’m here is the right way for things to be done. Not the way your husband would have intended, I’m betting
, and not something I relish looking back on and feeling rotten about someday. I’ve never been married before, but one thing’s for sure—I married a woman, and I intend to stay a man no matter what I do for her. And her boy.” Ben slid my towel off his shoulder. “And whatever you do, and however you choose to do it, even after I’m gone—keep in mind that boy in there still needs a ma.”
He draped the towel over the handle of the shovel behind me, stretching his arm above my head as he did. In his nearness, in his quiet, I stopped breathing. I waited, watched as he retracted his arm, knowing he could, he should say more. His lips parted, and his eyes stayed on me like two black holes in the night. I closed my own, tipped my head up, and waited for whatever his lips decided to do.
“Supper’s ready.” The shovel jiggled at my back. I opened my eyes as the towel he’d snatched from its top sailed past in his hand.
He went from a man to a silhouette again as he marched through my barn and headed for my house. Fast.
Chapter 31
They say three’s a crowd. No matter how many there are, I’m always number three. ~Rex
I snatched the towel off her shovel and left Regina behind in the dark. Fuming, I’d suspect. No, not just fuming—something else, too. Something I saw in her eyes the moment she closed them. I kicked at the ugly brown dirt of her barnyard as I headed back to the house.
I’d never been a widow, and certainly never a mother, so how was I to know what was wrong or right? I’d been a man all my life, and I’d known plenty of hurt. A long ride in the open spaces took care of most of it, and Courage took care of the rest. I paused and looked back at the black hole of a doorway on her barn. Our barn. I slapped my palm with her towel. It stung. Maybe she and I both needed a little Courage.
I stepped into the kitchen and stared at what I’d made. Picked up one of her too thin, too tiny, too delicate china plates and heaped it with biscuits, chipped beef gravy, and potato fried in lard.
The Lady's Arrangement (Help Wanted) Page 14