by Jillian Hart
"No. He's a bit late and I'm worried." Eunice's chin went up. "I heard you practically give away the penny candy to the Worthington girls. They are a wealthy family. They can afford to pay."
"They are good customers and Meredith's sisters." The bell sang above the door in one soft note, as if someone had opened it gently.
"I don't care who they are." Eunice set down her pencil. "I do not want to have this discussion again."
"Fine." She'd been worrying over her decision all morning. The noon hour had been busy. A break in the rain had sent customers flocking into the store eager to get their shopping done without being rained on. She may as well ask the one question weighing on her mind while the store was quiet again. "Is there any chance you will ever pay me a wage?"
"A wage? Whatever do you need that for?" Eunice picked up her pencil and made a mark on her clipboard. "You have everything you need right here. Your father provides for you."
"Yes, but I am requesting a wage." She knew it was a losing battle, but she had to ask. She had grown up in this store. She did not want to leave. "Please. It would not have to be much."
"Your father relies on me to keep this store running at a profit." Eunice looked at her as if she'd sprouted two heads. "I can't imagine you would want to interfere with your father's income."
"No, I certainly would not." The bell jingled once and was still. A second customer? This was not the time to discuss the issue further.
"That's a good girl. Don't forget to keep the floor clean. Customers are dragging in all kinds of wet and mud." Eunice turned her back, absorbed in counting the merchandise.
This was the way it had to be, she realized. The store echoed around her. No customers roamed the aisles or selected purchases off the shelves. Odd, considering she'd heard the door.
A bouquet of sunflowers lay on the front counter. Raindrops dampened their satiny pedals like dew. She ran a fingertip over one closed bud and smiled. A shadow fell across the window. Burke stood on the boardwalk, hands on his hips, boots braced powerfully. The impact of his dark blue stare speared through the glass and it was as if they stood side by side. She felt the brush of his kiss to her forehead, the comfort of his hand against her cheek.
Just one chance, she found herself praying. Just one.
Burke lifted his hand in a slow wave. She missed him even before he strode from her sight. The need to hear his voice tore through her with a terrifying power. She wanted to rip open the door and run after him. To be close enough to see the lighter blue flecks among the midnight-blue and the hint of a day's growth on his granite jaw. She wanted every minute she could find with him. Overwhelmed, she gripped the counter where his flowers lay, hurting so much she could not breathe.
The back door rasped open and Pa's voice rumbled low in the hallway as he spoke with his wife. Lila curled her free hand around the green stems to give her courage.
"Was that the deputy I forbade you to see?" Pa asked, his tone low and ominously quiet. His footsteps stopped behind her.
"You said I couldn't talk with him." Lila clutched the flowers, drew her spine up straight and faced her father.
"It was what I meant, and you know that. Daughter, I am disappointed in you." Hurt pinched in the deep crinkles in his face. He looked smaller, more vulnerable than she'd ever seen him, even after the death of her mother.
"Please allow me to talk to him." She wished she could tell him why. "I want to see him."
"He brought you those flowers? He's courting you?" Pa looked horrified.
"No, not courting. He is more than a friend, less than a beau." She loved her father. She did not want to hurt him. "You were young once. Surely you can guess how I feel."
"He's a bad man, Lila. The way he treated me." He shook his head. Only the faintest wisps of color marked his eye. The thin scab on his lip was the only visual sign of the beating he'd suffered. His hat hid his stitches. "He's spending a lot of time with Dobbs. He's one of those charming men who are friendly until they have lured you in close or have no use for you. You need to stay away from him."
"I can no longer do that." The door from upstairs inched open and Lila saw her sister listening in, perhaps sensing what was to come. "I've been offered a job and I've decided to take it. It comes with lodgings, so I will be moving out, as well. This is my formal notice."
"You can't mean that. You can't walk out on your responsibilities here because of a disagreement over a man, a man who isn't good for you." Pa's jaw tensed. His color flushed. "Lila, you will not take that job."
"It's for the best," she insisted, although the move would not be easy. Eunice came out to see what was going on. Her stepmother looked as displeased as Pa. Lila had to be honest. "I'm not happy here. I love this store. I love you, Pa, and I respect everything you are trying to do here, Eunice, but our differences can't be solved. I hope you can understand in time."
"Lila, you can't go," Pa pleaded.
"It's time for me to move out. I'm not happy about it, either." She stopped to brush a kiss to his cheek. "If I don't do this now, then I'm afraid life is going to pass me by."
It was time to grow up. Her parents would understand eventually. She spun away, already going through her possessions and how best to pack them. On the stairs she stopped to give her sister a hug. "Now it's your turn."
"He's not the kind of man who will marry you," Eunice called out from the base of the stairs, her pronouncement echoing against the ceiling like thunder.
"He's not why I'm doing this."
She had always lived in these rooms. The parlor sat quiet, everything in its place. She remembered being a little girl running around the couch to show Ma the pretty bow she'd tied in her rag doll's hair. She could hear the echo of Lark's toddling footsteps and Ma's musical alto as she lavished praise and gave both daughter and doll a kiss on the cheek.
Nothing stayed the same. Life rolled forward inexorably like a wave in the ocean too mighty to stop. If she did not show courage now and seize this opportunity Cora had given her, there may not be another. She may spend her days wishing she'd had the courage to follow where God's wave would have taken her, sitting in the mercantile always wondering what if. If she was going to be the heroine of her own life, then she needed to make a change.
Fiona was married. Meredith was engaged and teaching school. Her friends had followed their dreams. Now it was her chance to live hers.
"
Burke strode out of the alley after a productive day. He'd left Lucky, his mustang, bedded down in a warm corner stall at the livery. With the evidence written down in his back pocket he had enough for a territorial judge to issue a warrant. All he had to do was telegraph his superiors in Helena. He whistled as he marched down the street. When he looked up, he couldn't believe his eyes.
Across the way, Lila struggled with a heavy crate in her arms. All thoughts of work flew right out of his head. He bolted out into the muddy street and the rain, which had returned with the thunderheads. "Hey, pretty lady. Where are you going with that box?"
"Wouldn't you like to know? It's good to see you." Sorrow dimmed the wattage of her smile. "Thank you for the flowers. Again."
"Do you know what they mean?" He took the crate from her, surprised at how heavy it was. Her father should have given her the wagon if she had this large of a delivery. "Sunflowers always move to face the sun. That is what you do to me, heart and soul, make me move to face you."
The admission cost him, so he said nothing more. He studied her out of the corner of his eye, pretending
he wasn't. He shouldn't be giving her flowers or carrying her delivery. He wanted to keep his distance, but he didn't like being apart from her. "Maybe next time I should go for something fancier."
"No, I rather like the sunflowers." She blushed shyly, a light pink color traced across her nose and cheeks.
In the silence between them, hope beat crazily in his chest. She turned down the cross street and he matched her pace, taking the outside edge of the boardwalk so she could walk beneath the shelter of the striped awnings and jutting roofs crowning each store front.
"You're speaking to me." He broke the stillness between them.
"Yes. My father isn't pleased, but as I no longer live under his roof he can't forbid me to." She watched him through the long curl of her lashes.
"Wait. You don't live above the store?" He skidded to a halt. "You moved out?"
"Moving." She pulled a key ring from her skirt pocket. "Here we are. Would you mind carrying that up for me? It's really heavy."
"Yes, as it is full of books." He caught the door she held open with his elbow, so she could slip up the stairs first. The enclosed landing made a tight turn and kept rising. Another door whispered open and he stood in a pleasant room with polished floorboards and white plastered walls. A green length of calico covered a sofa with neat tucks. A length of yellow cloth draped a round table at the other end, near to a small cookstove in the corner.
"Welcome to my home." She gestured toward a built-in row of shelves near the door. "The furniture came with the rooms and is worse for the wear, but I can spruce things up. I will have it cozy in no time."
"It already is." He set down the box. "Why did you move out?"
"I stayed at the mercantile because it was a family business. It was expected. But in truth, Eunice and I do not see eye to eye and we never will. It will always be her store to manage, since that's the way Pa wants it. It's her right as his wife." She knelt to fish a book out of the box and slip it onto a shelf. "I've been staying there because it was easy, because I can still remember my mother in that store and because I was afraid to make a change. I would have to stand up to my parents, face their displeasure and be on my own."
"You aren't alone." He set a book on the shelf, his arm brushed hers. "You have family. You have friends. You have me."
"I know." She couldn't resist turning toward him. "I have been praying for God to fix my mundane life, and I wonder just how long He has being trying to do that. But would I budge off the fabric counter stool? And if I did, I didn't go far. I was the problem in my life. I can see that now. I was waiting for it to come to me. I think you might just be God's last ditch effort to get me to figure this all out."
"Me?" He chuckled, shaking his head. Shadows deepened around him like twilight. "I don't think God would use me for good."
"Too late." She knew the truth. "You stumbled in bleeding and almost dying. You were the answer to my prayers, although I'm sorry you were shot."
"Thanks, I think." Then he took the book from her hands and set it carelessly on the shelf. Moving in, moving closer, as ominous as the dark clouds visible through the window behind him.
"I wouldn't have discovered who I really was without you." She splayed her palm against his chest. The reliable thud of his heartbeat made her smile. Sturdy and stalwart, that beat. Just like the man.
"You give me too much credit." Sadness weighed in his voice, dropping it a note lower. "I'm a bad influence on you. Everyone says so."
"Eunice. My father, sure. But they don't know about the other badge you carry." She loved the man. She wished she could step back into denial where it was safe. Where as long as she didn't love him, she wouldn't get hurt. It was too late for safety. "Although you could be right. I quit my job. Moved out of my father's house. Who knows what I might do next."
"It's not a joke, Lila." Although the curves of his mouth threatened to hook upward. "They aren't wrong. If all goes well, I leave next week."
"So soon?" She swallowed hard to hide the wince of pain. It slashed through her like a saber. Maybe if she sat very still, the agony would stop.
"Yes. I have what I've come for." An apology marked his features. He could not mask his infinite caring. "I wish I could stay."
"I do, too." Her affections wobbled on the edge. She held on to them tightly, afraid of where they would take her. "You could stay now. For supper. I could fix something."
"No, let me. I will be right back." He cradled her chin in his hand. His face became stone, his gaze remote and he tore away from her with a grimace he could not hide. Sorrow cloaked him. "We have this time. Let's make the most of it."
His abiding strength shone through as he tipped his hat. He turned crisply, striding away like a Western hero straight out of her dreams. He was her dream, she realized. Everything she had ever wanted in a man, everything she prized, everything she loved.
She must not let her heart fall any further for him or she would never get it back. She listened to the door click shut and his boots ringing down the stairs, growing more distant until there was only silence.
"
What are you doing, Burke? he kept asking himself that question as he dogged down the boardwalk in the rain. The delicious scents from the meal the diner had packed up for him permeated the air, undeniable proof of what he was about to do. He was beauing Lila. He shouldn't be anywhere near her, but he was acting like a courting man.
I know I don't have that right, Lord. He wanted God to know he was perfectly clear on what he deserved and what he didn't. He wasn't making assumptions. His boots splashed through a puddle on a low place in the planks and he shifted the box he carried so he could see his way better. He'd been honest to Lila about having to leave, but he felt as if he were doing something wrong. That was usually a sure sign that he was.
He was being selfish. He wanted time with her. For once he wanted to know what it was like to be loved. It had been a lifetime since he'd felt accepted, since someone had looked at him as if he were somebody in their view. Forgive me for wanting that, Father. I am not strong enough to stay away from her.
Thunder grumbled, rumbling as if in answer. He wasn't a man who could forgive himself for that weakness. He wanted to see her gaze up at him with love quietly alight in her eyes. He wanted to walk into her rooms and feel as if his existence mattered to her. She chased away the loneliness which had trailed him since he was four. Being with her made the sorrow of the past twenty years vanish.
"I saw you from the window." The door swung open. Lila's skirts snapped in the fierce winds. "It's raining so hard, you're drenched. Hurry in."
"Another storm is on the way." He shook off what water he could like a dog, which made her laugh. He thought of the lucky man who would have the privilege of listening to her soft, musical laughter, the man who would be able to take her as his wife. Terrible jealousy rolled through him mixed with complete despair. He didn't dare ask God to let him be that man. They both knew it couldn't happen. The Lord would never allow it.
"That smells good. Did you go to Dolly's?" She led the way up the stairs, lithe and graceful. She spun at the landing and closed the upstairs door after him. Cool air blew through the windows and snapped white curtains. Rain beat on the roof with wet fury as he surrendered the food carton to her.
"She makes the best fried chicken." He managed to speak past the lump gathering like a fist behind his sternum. "I got something else, too."
"Let me see." She dug through the packaging and came up with a book. "Oh, you bought it! I was going to give you my c
opy after I was through."
"I figured this way we could read it together after supper."
"You have the best ideas, Deputy." The lamplight shining from the table's center revealed her completely. She felt open to him, unguarded spirit and emotions. He was vulnerable to her in a way that frightened.
No barriers stood between them. There was no past and no worries about the future. Nothing but the present moment with her gentle regard and his ardent devotion. He swallowed hard, taking a step forward. He could not stop. His future would be barren without her, but he would be satisfied with this moment to hold in his memory forever. He would always see her like this, polished by lamplight, wholesome beauty and calico innocence with raindrops drying on her long cinnamon-brown braids.
Lightning scored his eyes and flashed like gunpowder. Lila jumped, twisting toward the window where thunder boomed in answer, rattling the glass panes. The liquid hammering of the rain had changed tunes. Hail fell like snow and hit like steel.
"Let's eat in front of the window and watch the storm." She handed him a plate. "I love to watch the lightning."
"Whatever you want." He did not take the plate but unwrapped the bundle of fried chicken for her. "I'm happy as long as I'm with you."
"My feelings exactly." She filled her plate with chicken and buttermilk biscuits, hashed potatoes and buttery green beans. She left the thick wedges of cherry pie for later. "You aren't like the Rider in the books, are you? He has a woman fall in love with him in every town he rides into."
"I've never had a way with the ladies." He grabbed the other plate from the table and dropped two drumsticks on it. "Truth is, you're the only one I let close to me and that was because I was shot and bleeding. I was too weak to ward you off."
"Yes, I had you at a disadvantage. What was a man to do?"
"Exactly. I was unable to use my typical woman-repelling powers on you in my injured state."
"Your unconscious state, as you were asleep most of the time you stayed with us." She grabbed a cup of cool water and settled in front of the large window seat. The wind blowing in brought welcome coolness. The hail fell at a slant away from opened glass. "I'm not sure I believe you. Surely you have left a broken heart behind, at least a time or two."