Of course, that could have been Adam’s imagination playing tricks, except he noticed Miss Judith, the postmistress, hovering on the fringe of a cluster of women chatting. Perhaps it was her lemon-yellow-striped gown that had caught his eye. Or the fact that she’d styled her hair with more care than usual. Whatever it was, Miss Judith appeared to be oblivious to the other women. Whatever they were talking about flowed around her and over her head. Her attention was fixed on the church.
Everyone else seemed oblivious.
And then, finally, both front doors had swung open. Adam straightened and watched as Russell came through, adjusting the fit of his hat more snuggly on his head. He allowed the doors to fall shut behind him, not holding them open, like a gentleman, for Mandy to walk through. Perhaps they’d planned to exit separately? Why would they do that unless they had something to hide?
Adam flexed out his hand, aware he’d made a fist without meaning to.
It wasn’t his place to judge, of course, and it wasn’t as if he truly believed Mandy MacKenna was a woman of loose morals. But he didn’t care to think what liberties Russell might have tried to take while the two were alone. Had he stolen a kiss?
He watched as Russell plunged down the steps in that cocky loose-limbed way of his, as if the young rancher hadn’t a care in the world. Russell looked around, gave a quick nod to Darby, then set out toward his brother. To get to him, Russell had to pass by Miss Judith. He lifted his hand to tip his hat at her, but she turned away before he drew level with her. She made some show of inspecting the contents of her lemon-striped reticule. And that was obviously all it was, a show.
Russell continued on more slowly, his expression turning inward. He glanced back at Miss Judith after he passed by and caught her looking at him. She hurriedly lowered her gaze. His face grew grim, which made Adam wonder if the other man had at one time given some indication that he was interested in the postmistress. If Adam remembered correctly, the two had danced a set together at the social.
A movement near the front of the church captured his attention—a flash of bright cherry red as one door opened and closed. Adam caught sight of Mandy as she left the building. He searched her face for any sign of distress. For tears or red cheeks, but she seemed strangely subdued. What did that mean?
Was she treasuring memories of some sweet kiss? A tender embrace?
With Russell.
Adam swallowed and tried to appear as if he wasn’t, in fact, watching the church steps, when all his attention was focused on Mandy’s progress, one slow thoughtful step at a time. At the foot of the stairs, she paused with her hand resting on the newel post, her gaze far off. Perhaps Adam wasn’t as good at hiding his interest as he hoped, for she looked over, and her gaze collided with his. Perhaps she’d sensed she was being watched.
Adam tried to school his features, tried to shove any wounded feelings down deep. His chest burned. Heat climbed into his face.
But why should he think he had any claim on Mandy?
It wasn’t as if they were courting—and he’d caught her with another man.
He hadn’t even had the chance to ask, not even once, if she’d go out driving with him. Or if he could come calling. What was the use now?
He saw how she immediately looked away, embarrassed, her cheeks flushing a pretty rosy pink.
He saw how she swept the crowd and marked Russell’s location.
He also saw the moment when she realized Miss Judith hadn’t missed a thing.
Mandy rushed over to the other woman’s side as if to repair some damage she’d caused. But Miss Judith ignored her. She simply swung around and started walking in short choppy strides, her little bag dangling from her wrist, no longer a prop for pretended interest. From the beeline she was making across the lawn, her intention was to disappear into her quarters above the post office across the street.
“Miss Judith,” Mandy exclaimed softly, her skirts flashing as she followed the other woman. For all appearances, Mandy was the guilty party chasing after Miss Judith, the injured party. And yet she somehow managed to maintain an air of companionability. As if she’d simply forgotten a recipe she wanted to share. Perhaps a show for anyone who might have taken notice of them.
Russell too was aware of the interaction between the two women and, if his deep scowl was anything to go by, he was displeased.
It was a puzzle, but it didn’t take a genius to figure it out.
Adam was no genius. He was just a man.
A man who apparently thought too much of his own worth in Mandy MacKenna’s eyes. He’d been fooling himself all along. He should have realized that after the social when Mandy practically ran away after lassoing him in the Blind Man’s Bluff. If not then, he should have realized each and every time she so studiously avoided looking at him.
Mandy MacKenna was not interested in him.
And she likely never would be.
Chapter 14
When Adam arrived home later, Cookee was standing at the stove, stirring an enormous pot of chicken stew. The tantalizing scent of steaming broth, herbs, and vegetables filled the air. Without all the men piled in though, the kitchen seemed an empty cavernous space.
As Adam closed the back door and took off his hat, Cookee turned toward him.
He took one good look and said, “What happened?”
“Nothing happened.” Adam dragged a hand through his hair. Even that one small motion felt exhausting, like too much effort. “I went to church.”
Cookee made a dubious-sounding grunt. He set his big spoon to one side of his pot and leaned back against his worktable. He crossed his arms over his chest and examined Adam, much like a sailor turned schoolteacher, looking over a student who’d just lied about why they were late for class.
“What?” Adam asked, perhaps a mite defensively. His shoulders drooped from weariness that had little to do with how tired he felt and a whole lot more to do with Mandy MacKenna.
All he wanted to do was hole up somewhere by himself until supper.
He definitely didn’t want to talk about it.
“Run into any trouble in town?” Cookee pressed.
“I wouldn’t put it quite like that.” Adam avoided the other man’s observant eyes. It occurred to him that the ranch hands would be bursting in through the back door any moment. The whole lot of them, ready to eat. As loud as ever, and as curious as Cookee about the mental and emotional state of their boss.
Adam pinched the bridge of his nose, feeling the beginnings of a headache coming on. He couldn’t face the men right now. He gave Cookee a respectful nod, then walked straight through the kitchen and out the other side, intent on escape.
Once he got to the foyer, he hesitated. He felt too much like a coward going up and hiding in his room, no matter how much he longed to close the door behind himself and fall face first onto his mattress.
Instead, he wandered into his uncle’s dining room and dropped onto one of the four chairs around its oblong perimeter. He almost never came into this room. Where the kitchen table was enormous, the dining table was tiny in comparison. There were four more chairs lined up like soldiers on guard against the walls, presumably for occasions when the table was opened up to its full length. A fancy walnut buffet sat in one corner. For what, Adam didn’t know. It wasn’t like Uncle Joe had ever entertained guests, not to Adam’s knowledge.
It was so different here from the house he’d grown up in in Denver, a fancy, four-story brownstone on Front Street. More like a small palace, with servants’ quarters in the attic and a full kitchen and laundry in the basement. A formal dining room.
Here it was more...down-home. Instead of pink wallpaper with embossed roses and oriental rugs, Uncle Joe’s dining room was paneled in earthy knotty pine, like the rest of the house. In the middle of the wide plank pine floor was a large homespun rag rug, in manly shades of forest green, brown, and golden yellow. A cozy place for family dinners.
His uncle had been a private man, with little time for an
ything besides working the ranch. He’d never married. Maybe he’d hoped to one day. Maybe that was why he’d built a big ranch house with a separate family dining room. Maybe he’d wanted a family, a wish left unfulfilled. What a sad thought.
“How would you put it then?” Cookee came in, continuing the conversation as if they’d never left off. He set a big fragrant mug of coffee before Adam and leaned his thick muscular forearms against the high back of one of the chairs.
Adam took a gulp of coffee. Although he appreciated the bite of the hot brew as it slid down his throat, he had no intention of talking. He set his hat on the table and stared down into his mug. Yesterday’s Cross Creek Gazette was folded beside it. Had Cookee left it there? Had he come in here earlier for a moment to himself to read?
Cookee waited, practically breathing down on Adam, likely expecting the whole story to come pouring out of his lips.
After a moment of silence passed, Cookee inhaled and let it out slowly, his manner turning contemplative.
“Is it possible this trouble of yours—whatever it is—could be solved by looking at things differently? From another angle?”
Another angle?
Adam looked up, curious now. “What do you mean, another angle?”
“Well, sometimes I think we get stuck on something when all we need to do is move to one side and look at it from another angle. Get a fresh view.”
Adam sipped his coffee thoughtfully. What other angle could there possibly be? Mandy MacKenna wasn’t the one for him, no matter how much he might wish it to be so. That was the only angle.
Wasn’t it?
“A fresh view...” Adam echoed, letting the words stir in his thoughts. Was there a fresh view? Some other way of thinking about “his troubles,” as Cookee called them?
The back door swung open on its hinges and slammed shut with a bang. The men were here, wondering aloud where Cookee was.
“Well, that’s that,” Cookee said. Meaning his short break from his kitchen duties—if it could be called a break. “You coming?”
“Not just yet.”
“I’ll leave you to your coffee then.”
Adam lifted his mug in thanks.
Cookee walked off, mumbling under his breath, something about forgetting to put the rolls in the oven.
Adam took another gulp of the bitter black coffee. He had no wish to turn over the events of this morning in his mind, but he couldn’t stop thinking about Mandy MacKenna.
How could he have been so blind as to think she might be interested in him?
How could he have been so blind not to see her heart was already engaged?
Just the thought of it made him sick. He’d never felt so cold inside as he had today outside the church. It was the cold of giving up on hope. On love.
He cradled the warm mug in his hands. If only coffee could cure the chill inside him. But it couldn’t. He set the mug aside and rubbed his forehead.
How, how, how could he have been so blind?
He’d even leapt ahead to the idea of asking Mandy MacKenna to marry him. To bring her back to this house and make a family with her. He’d imagined them at this very table, sitting here enjoying an intimate dinner together. Someday having children to run around and make noise and break things.
That’s how far his thoughts had strayed.
And he’d let them. If anyone was to blame for that it was him. He’d let himself get carried away with dreams of the future. He’d best own up to that and move on.
For some reason, his thoughts turned back to the past, to the summer he’d stayed with Uncle Joe, when his sister, Margaret Kate, was born. Adam’s mother—being “of a certain age,” as his father had explained it to him—had experienced a difficult pregnancy and birth. So Joe had offered to take Adam and keep him busy for a couple of months. It had been a glorious summer for a boy of thirteen—his first inkling that he had a wildness inside him, one that the city simply couldn’t tame.
How he’d loved this big old ranch house.
And now it was his. He lived here now. Practically alone. With only Cookee for company.
If he really wanted a family of his own—and he did—maybe it was time to stop thinking about Mandy MacKenna. Somehow. Maybe it was time to “look at it from another angle.”
Get a fresh view.
And start thinking about how else he might find a bride.
Chapter 15
At dinner a few evenings later, Mandy sat at the table with her family, but her thoughts were far away. Thinking about Adam. He’d acted so strangely after church on Sunday. When last she saw him, his expression had seemed troubled. Upset even. She’d been preoccupied though with chasing Miss Judith down and trying to explain to her friend that she and Russell had merely been sharing a conversation in private, that they’d needed to settle some old childhood hurts.
Mandy still didn’t know if Miss Judith believed her. Her friend’s prickly attitude hadn’t softened in the least, though Mandy had followed her all the way to the post office, talking all the way.
By the time she’d returned to the church lawn, Adam was gone.
What had he been troubled about? Perhaps something had happened on his ranch. Something he’d ask her about in one of his letters... She could only hope. She longed for one of Banks’ letters. Anything to erase the feelings of embarrassment she felt whenever she thought about how she’d roped him in front of the whole entire town, practically. Even now just thinking about it, she felt the sting of mortification. Only, what if she was simply allowing her emotions to carry her away? Surely it hadn’t been as horribly embarrassing as she’d felt it was.
“I have something for you.” Darby waited for a lull in the conversation—at least it appeared that way to Mandy—to lean forward and whisper that little nugget across the dining room table.
Mandy swallowed thickly, excruciatingly aware that every head swiveled her way. The bite she’d taken of her mother’s delicious roasted potatoes suddenly tasted like nothing.
“You have something for Mandy?” Emma asked, her eyes alight with curiosity. Emma, who couldn’t keep a secret to save her life. Everyone in the family knew that. Or should have known.
Mandy glared at Darby, shooting daggers at him from across the table. He couldn’t have waited until later? Why tell her now? He swallowed, his cheeks suddenly a bit flushed, as if he was just now sharing her discomfort. Mandy wished her cousin had the power to lasso his words and reel them back in. He’d always been good with roping, if not with discretion.
“Oh, just some things from town,” he said, but his tone was overly dismissive, like a twelve-year-old boy rehearsing for his role as shepherd in the church’s annual nativity play.
Mandy widened her eyes in dismay, trying to signal a warning for him to stop.
It was too late.
Juliana had already picked up on Darby’s strange tone of voice. So had Mama. So had Papa, who frowned ever so slightly, perhaps wondering if he too should take an interest. He lifted his water goblet and eyed first Darby, then Mandy over the top. He appeared to be taking a wait-and-see approach.
“What things?” Juliana asked, taking no such approach. More often than not she had a mystery novel tucked under her pillow and kept her lantern lit well into the night, until Mama called down the hall to put out her lamp. She apparently smelled a mystery now.
“Oh, paper and ink, that sort of thing,” Mandy said lightly, before Darby could blunder on and say something even more damaging. What she said was true enough, in a sense, so she hoped desperately that her response sounded sincere. At least sincere enough to convince her family. “Isn’t that right, Darby?”
Darby stared blankly at her a moment too long. “Uh, yes, paper and ink from town.”
Juliana and Emma immediately lost interest—Lord bless them—but Mama and Papa shared a glance that made Mandy a mite uncomfortable.
Just wait till she had Darby alone.
She bent over her plate and speared several plump green
beans with her fork. After nibbling determinedly on them for several seconds, she was relieved to see her parents return to their food.
Mandy shot out one foot and kicked Darby smartly in the shin. She was too furious with him to stop herself or to worry about him making a noise. He must have seen it coming, because he simply grimaced and held back his grunt.
She held her breath and then let it out slowly, feeling ever so slightly guilty at her display of temper. She’d lashed out at her cousin. Though he had much to answer for, it wasn’t exactly charitable of her—or of good Christian character—to resort to violence, was it? Darby, on the other hand, seemed to be growing in one of the most classic virtues of a good cowboy: stoicism.
She lifted one brow to signal a chiding message to him: Ask Mack news can always wait till later. Please, don’t ever forget that.
He quickly bent over his plate—avoiding her eyes—and started shoveling food into his mouth.
Well after dinner, Mandy followed Darby to the back porch, where he produced a satchel he’d stowed behind an old butter churn that Mama liked to keep there just for how it looked.
“What’s that?” Mandy asked, her eyes going wide.
“Your letters,” Darby said. “Why? Weren’t you expecting some?”
“Not that many,” she whispered.
She peeked in through the kitchen window. Emma was still washing dishes—it was her turn tonight—but Mama was nowhere to be seen, which was a bit concerning.
Where was she, and what was she doing?
Was she off talking with Papa about the conversation at dinner? Mandy hoped not.
Only the Heart Knows (The Brides Series) Page 13