His skin looked so smooth and warm, touchably so.
He looked over at her then, and their eyes caught and held.
Yes, the shirt did bring out the blue in his eyes.
They were mesmerizing.
Mandy felt like she’d caught fire in that instance. She hurriedly looked away, fearing she’d start having carnal thoughts right there in church.
He’d seen her looking at him.
Had he noticed her staring at his neck?
Mandy’s cheeks burned, and she very nearly dropped her songbook, but somehow managed to keep a hold on it.
Her thoughts flashed back to the social, and to Russell Girard’s name-calling. She was just sure Adam had heard him call her Too Tall Mandy. He must have. And he probably hadn’t wanted to sit near her today at all. He was probably, right now, wondering why she was gawking at him.
Beside her, she noticed Papa gently taking Mama’s songbook from her. Thankful for the distraction, Mandy watched as he held it between them, spread open in one of his large manly hands, hands more suited to ranch work. He circled his free arm around Mama’s waist and tugged her a bit closer so they could share.
Mandy held her breath.
It seemed Mama was holding her breath too. She couldn’t have looked more surprised, or pleased. Mama glanced up at Papa and raised her brows. He swooped in for a quick kiss on her cheek, and her face bloomed with color.
She looks so pretty, Mandy thought, satisfied.
“Awww, wouldya look at that? The lovebirds are back.”
Mandy distinctly heard Perry Atkins, a burly cowboy with iron-gray hair, from two rows back. Perry’s low bass rumbled unimpeded through the quiet sanctuary, since the singing hadn’t yet started up. A few folks snickered. Emma even giggled into her hand. Mandy cast a quick reproving glance at her sister, but Emma wasn’t paying her any attention. For the singing began in that instant, and Emma immediately raised her soft soprano in the opening bars of Amazing Grace, her gaze fixed forward, not even glancing at her songbook for she knew the lyrics by heart. She was completely unaware of Papa’s distress. Or the history behind it. Blissful ignorance. Juliana had apparently heard the sheriff, but didn’t realize it involved Papa.
But Mandy knew. She’d seen Papa’s reaction. He’d visibly winced. His whole frame had stiffened up, not unlike a man discovering a prickly burr stuck to his instep, afraid to move wrong. A muscle flexed in his jaw. And then, after one tense moment where Mandy held her breath, he relaxed. It was plain to see the precise moment he decided he just wasn’t going to let it bother him. At least not enough to quit on Mama.
And Mama... For her part, Mama had softened in a way Mandy hadn’t seen in months—maybe closer to a year. A soft smile appeared on her lips that spoke more than words. Her upswept black hair was still streaked with silver, and there were still fine lines at the corners of her eyes, revealing her age, but she looked younger suddenly, like a much younger woman. In love.
Had Papa spoken to her before church—sharing with her what he and Mandy had talked about in the barn? What had he said? Or had he simply changed his ways with no explanation at all?
Somehow Mandy suspected the latter. It seemed more in keeping with the “cowboy’s code” of romance. If there was such a thing.
After worship, everyone filed out of the sanctuary, which had grown stifling as the morning wore on. They congregated on the church lawn, as was the custom, to “fan and fellowship,” as Papa liked to say, in the fresh air and shade.
Darby held Mandy back in the pews, letting the rest of the members stream around them and out the double doors.
“Wait here,” he said quietly. “I’ll go out and send Russell back in. So you can talk. I’ll keep your folks and your sisters occupied for as long as I can.”
“What about everyone else?” Mandy worried her lip.
“I can’t make any promises, but I’ll do my best.”
In her mind’s eye, Mandy pictured Russell walking in through the doors and striding toward her. Pictured his all-too-smug grin. Tried to form words in her mind. What would she say? How could she say anything? To Russell.
Butterflies whirled around, making circles in her stomach.
“I think I’m going to be sick.” She placed her palms over her cheeks. She felt clammy and cold and too hot all at once.
Darby looked at her suspiciously. Perhaps he thought she was making it up. Trying to get out of talking to his friend.
“I think I am. Truly.” She sipped in a breath, palms still over her clammy cheeks.
“No, you’re not.” Darby snapped his fingers in front of her face. “No, you’re not. You’re a MacKenna. You’re Ask Mack, for heaven’s sake.”
“Shhh!” Mandy dropped her hands and looked around. Thankfully the church was empty but the stained-glass windows were propped wide open. Anyone could be standing right there under one.
“Would you hush?” she whispered fiercely.
Darby brushed aside her panic with a wave of his hand. “You worry too much.”
“It’s not your neck on the line if folks find out.”
“Your neck’s not ‘on the line,’” he protested.
“Oh, you know what I mean.”
He acknowledged that with a crooked half-smile. He plugged his Stetson over his head. “You ready?”
“Never.”
“All right, then,” he said, as if she’d said yes. “I’ll go rustle up Russell.” His smile widened at his pun, and he tweaked her nose before he left.
Mandy was left alone in the overheated sanctuary, standing amid purple and yellow shafts of light.
Adam paced around the church lawn searching for Mandy, but she was nowhere to be found. Her family was still there, her sisters talking together with young Lacy, who was listening as if the two older girls were airing deeper truths with every word they spoke. Mandy’s parents were there too, standing close together, her father’s hand resting comfortably against his wife’s spine. They barely seemed to notice the other couple they were speaking with.
But there was no Mandy.
And Darby, where was Darby?
Adam took another turn around the perimeter all the way back to the front of the church and saw Darby near the bottom of the stairs, pointing Russell Girard up the steps.
Russell climbed the steps and disappeared into the church. Darby ambled over to join Emily, Juliana, and Lacy. But he kept the church well in view. It seemed he was keeping the entire assembly well in view.
What on earth?
A suspicion bloomed in Adam’s mind, one he didn’t like at all. Could it be that Mandy was in the church with Russell? Alone. Just the two of them. And why? Why would she be alone with a man in the church, of all places? And why would her cousin—Darby, by all accounts her protective older brother of sorts—participate in an inappropriate liaison?
Adam had in mind to climb the steps and wander into the building as if in search of something he’d left behind, but then he stopped himself. If Mandy was in there with Russell, and the two had romantic inclinations, did he really want to see that? Did he?
Whatever the answer to that question was, curiosity was nearly eating a hole clean through him.
Mandy watched as Russell sauntered into the sanctuary. He tipped his Stetson way back on his head without taking it off. She waited until he’d stopped in front of her, his arms folded in a defensive gesture across his chest. He looked confused on one hand, and puffed up and ready for a fight on the other.
“Darby says you want to speak to me?” he asked, clearly anticipating some sort of complaint on her part.
Mandy let out a sigh. Did this have to be so hard? Tears threatened, so she pressed forward, inhaling a good measure of the stuffy air.
“Russell,” she began. He lifted his brows, and she compressed her lips. She resisted the urge to fidget.
“Mandy?” he prompted. “Right here. Standing right here. Waiting.”
“Right. Of course. Well, the thing is...
There’s been...trouble, I guess you’d say...trouble brewing between us for years. Would you say that’s right?”
This was apparently not at all what Russell expected her to say for his head went way back.
“What exactly are you trying to say?” he asked carefully. “What sort of trouble?”
“It goes way back, Russell. All the way back to when we were children. There were things said to me. Names called. And...I feel like I have to tell you that...words hurt.”
“Names called?”
“Too Tall Mandy MacKenna,” she reminded him.
“You got me in here to say that? That’s nothing. Nothing but kids being kids.”
Mandy forced herself to meet Russell’s confused, defensive gaze. His familiar brown eyes met hers. And in their depths she thought she saw a flicker of uncertainty. Vulnerability even. She faltered. For the first time, she considered the possibility that her childhood tormentor possessed a soul just as she did. That he had feelings and a conscience. That he was a man of faith.
It was the oddest thought, really.
Russell wasn’t just a—a black fog that circled her worst memories. He was a man. A person like her.
She shook herself mentally. “Well, it hurt. It hurt quite a lot. I’ve had a hard time forgiving. And I don’t like myself, the bitterness in me. I want all that to change.”
Russell stared back at her.
“Well? Aren’t you going to say anything?” Mandy rested her hand on the pew newel, agitated by his lack of response. Had she just wasted her breath and the discomfiting hours of butterflies in her stomach for nothing? Just for another mortifying moment for her to bare her heart and have it lay there out in the open?
She swallowed her disappointment. Evidently, the answer was yes. Russell was going to stand there—silent—until they both got tired of looking at one another.
“Well, I guess that’s that.” She gathered her skirts aside, prepared to sail out the double doors at the back of the church.
She wouldn’t look back.
She should have known—
“I’m sorry, all right?” he said abruptly, almost angrily. He spread out his palms, empty-handed. As if he was at a loss. “I’m sorry. I never meant it that way. I was just a dumb boy. Like all the rest of us.”
Mandy stopped short, letting the fabric of her dress slip from her hands. He’d said he was sorry. He’d said it. Russell, who seemed incapable of admitting any fault. Or so she’d assumed. He’d gone as far as to call himself a “dumb boy.” Guilty of saying unkind words. Guilty of hurting her.
It took all the heat away. Melted the indignation right out of her. Again, she saw a flicker of uncertainty in his eyes. A soul deep inside him looking out at her. Wanting forgiveness, a second chance. It was so incredibly moving.
“Like me too,” Mandy said, clearing her throat. Until that moment she hadn’t truly experienced her own guilt as something she should apologize for. But it was very possible she’d hurt Russell too. Or at the very least irritated him.
“What?” he asked, angling his head slightly as if he couldn’t possibly have heard her right.
“I made mistakes too, Russell. Evidently. It’s been pointed out to me recently. And...I’m sorry. I’m sorry too. It was never my intention to ‘shame’ anyone. And I’m afraid you took the brunt of it because you were the one I was most angry with. There. I’ve said it. I’m sorry.”
“We’re square?”
“Square.” Mandy held out her hand.
Russell frowned down at it.
“Aren’t you going to shake it?” Mandy asked, proffering her gloved hand in an unmistakable manner.
“I suppose I could, but it seems the moment warrants an embrace. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“An embrace?” Mandy was immediately suspicious. Was this a joke? Another opportunity to mock her somehow? She let the hand he’d refused to shake fall to her side.
“Like brother and sister,” Russell clarified. “We practically grew up together, after all.”
An embrace?
Like brother and sister?
Mandy shrugged. She’d come this far.
Perhaps mending burned bridges had a steep price.
“All right,” she said.
Russell swept her in for a bone-crushing hug, perhaps never having handled a young lady in such a way. Having only one brother as he did.
Mandy tried to gasp for air as she patted him on the back. Firstly, to return his “brotherly embrace,” and, secondly, to warn him she needed air.
“Russell,” she wheezed. “You can release me now...”
He shook with laughter, the silent kind.
“Russell,” she warned. “Let me go.”
“You going to make me?”
Infuriating man-boy. That’s what he was.
“Darby will kill you if you don’t,” she said, only half teasingly.
“Darby is my best friend,” he scoffed. “And besides he’s not even here.”
“He’s not far. And if I say one word, Russell. One word. He’ll kill you.”
He laughed again and, before he released her, laid a smacking kiss on her forehead. Which she’d have to wash off later with the strongest soap they had back home.
“Russell!” Mandy protested. She swiped at her forehead with the back of one of her Sunday-best white gloves.
“No one’s watching,” he said.
“As if that were the only thing that matters.” She shook her head, dumbfounded by his behavior. “Just—don’t ever do that again.”
“You’re in love with him, aren’t you?”
“Who?”
“Who?” He echoed mockingly, making her grit her teeth. Hadn’t she told him mere minutes ago how much she hated being mocked? He continued, “That Booker fellow, Adam Booker, the banker. The one you threw a lasso around.”
Lord, have mercy.
Mandy flushed hot and cold. She looked down at the toes of her shoes, just as quickly as she dared, and back at Russell, trying to compose herself. As if she’d ever tell him such a thing. She hadn’t even told her mother, or Darby. She could barely admit it to herself. It didn’t really bear thinking about. Did she love him? Certainly not a question that needed asking or answering.
Why, she couldn’t even meet Adam’s gaze for longer than a few seconds.
Every time she thought of him, she was cast back to that moment at the social when she’d yanked off the blindfold to find him with the rope looped around him, staring at her in shock.
“That is none of your business.” Mandy again wiped Russell’s all-too-wet kiss off her forehead. She scowled at him for good measure.
“Meaning it’s true.” He smirked.
“Meaning nothing,” she insisted. “Meaning you should mind your own business.”
“I’ll tell you, if you tell me.”
“Tell me what?”
“You know, the object of my affections.” He grinned, so sure of himself.
“You mean Miss Judith?” Mandy blurted out, without fully recognizing the sudden flash of insight that brought the words to her mouth. As soon as she said them though, she knew it was true. Russell had feelings for Miss Judith. His stunned expression said as much.
Memories flickered through Mandy’s mind: Russell standing across the street from the post office and looking over, catching Adam holding her in what must’ve seemed a compromising position, when in actuality it wasn’t. At the time, Mandy had only been concerned with her own feelings, being caught by Russell of all people. Seeing his mocking smirk. But what she hadn’t realized until this precise moment was the real reason he’d looked over at the post office, and the significance of that little nod he’d given to Miss Judith. He’d been looking for her. Miss Judith. Mandy and Adam had only just happened to be standing there. Miss Judith was the only one who was supposed to be there. Because she was the postmistress, and she was always there that time of day.
And Russell had danced with Miss Judith at the social.
Mandy had seen them together at least that one time. It could’ve been more though. She’d been too caught up in her own dancing with Adam to truly notice who’d been dancing which sets with whom.
“Has she said anything to you?” Russell demanded. A muscle flexed in his jaw.
“What? Miss Judith? No. Miss Judith wouldn’t discuss such a thing with me.”
“I thought you were friends.”
“Well, we are, I suppose,” Mandy answered uncomfortably. Was it possible her role as friend had been lacking in some way? Was she doing something that made Miss Judith hesitate to speak to her on sensitive matters of the heart? “But, no she hasn’t said anything to me about you.”
“Well,” Russell said, backing away. He set his Stetson in place, shading his eyes. He was withdrawing into himself it seemed, putting up a wall. Their own moment of intimate personal disclosures was over.
He may as well have said goodbye.
He was going to leave her with this air of discomfort hanging between them.
Mandy watched Russell disappear through the front doors of the church. She should wait a fair amount of time until she joined her family. Wait long enough for Russell to get away from the steps at least. She didn’t care to start any rumors that there was something romantic going on between her and Russell. The very thought.
Chapter 13
Adam was leaning back against a tree trunk, watching the front doors of the church, when Russell came out. In the past excruciating minutes—Adam wasn’t sure how long—he’d been in this same spot standing alone. Not talking to anyone. A couple of members of the congregation had already looked over at him curiously, but he’d just tipped his hat and smiled, and they let him be. By now, many of the church folks were loading into their carriages and buggies and heading home for their Sunday suppers.
The MacKennas, however, were still gathered in their two small groups. From the moment Russell had stepped into the church to join Mandy—alone together—Darby in particular had seemed intent on keeping his family occupied, going back and forth between his cousins and then his aunt and uncle, juggling conversations. His expression seemed increasingly put upon, to Adam’s mind, and he’d looked up frequently at the church doors, as if willing Russell and Mandy to come out quickly.
Only the Heart Knows (The Brides Series) Page 12