Distraction

by Tess Oliver

  “Too often to count,” he answered.

  “Then get yourself home. And for heaven’s sake, take a bath before you sit on any of my furniture.” She gazed up the road. “So, exactly where is Cade?”

  “He’ll be along soon enough.” He lifted his hat up and down. “See you at the ranch.”

  ***

  A wide, well-worn road divided the town in half. Tall, straight rectangular buildings lined each side of it like rows of uneven teeth. They looked austere and simple compared to the squat, thatch covered houses of Salem Village. The people milling through town yelled, laughed, and looked generally happy. Another stark contrast to the village. And their clothing was simpler, less cumbersome, and altogether less black. “I would love a blue dress like the one Charlotte wears,” I blurted without thinking.

  “We’ll see what we can do about that,” Libby answered. “The shop is just down here at the end.” Libby steered the horses around a large group of people gathered in front of a shop. They peered inside a window.

  I twisted back to look at the crowd. “That place seems to hold a great deal of interest.”

  “That’s the gambling saloon. Here’s the dress shop. Now, let’s get those pies and see about some proper clothes for you.”

  Susan was a spirited, loquacious woman who was thrilled to trade for the pies and looked liked she’d enjoyed a few in her day. Libby told the dressmaker the story of how I’d been nearly killed by a grizzly and how I was now waiting for my grandmother to come take me back home to the east coast. She didn’t seem to question the tale at all and set immediately to finding me a suitable dress.

  I could have stood in her dress shop for hours looking at the rainbow of fabrics and threads. But the peculiar one armed table that rivaled Libby’s pie baking box in character had me truly captivated. It was a glossy black with gold trim and a thick arm that held tightly to a pile of fabric. I could not take my eyes from it.

  Susan seemed to notice me gaping at it. “That’s my pride and joy,” she said. “Ain’t she a beauty? Just bought her last year, a Singer no less.”

  “Do you mean it makes music?” I asked.

  Susan was visibly baffled by my question. “No, child, it’s a sewing machine. The only music it makes is the hum of the needle as it trails a perfectly even stitch across the fabric.” She walked around the table and sat down. “Let me show you. Her foot rested on a large platform and she began pumping with her foot. I stumbled back a few steps as a long needle at the end of the arm pumped up and down and grabbed ferociously at the fabric. It seemed Nonni’s powers would be nearly useless in this modern age.

  Susan looked up from her machine and laughed. “I can hardly believe you’ve never seen one of these before.” She glanced at Libby. “I thought you said she was from Massachusetts.”

  Libby cleared her throat. “Well, Poppy seems to have come from a very remote part of Salem where these fine industrial inventions haven’t reached quite yet.”

  Rumbling voices outside the shop drew Libby’s attention to the window. “What’s happening across the street at the gambling hall that has everyone’s interest?”

  Susan stood from the machine and waved her hand in dismissal. “I don’t know. I heard a few people talking about some poker game that’s gone on all night. You know how those end after they’ve been up all night drinking firewater. Some poor sap ends up betting the farm, the wife, and anything else of value before he finally realizes he’s destitute.” Susan looked me up and down for a moment. “I think I’ve got the perfect peach calico for this girl. Let’s have a look in the back.”

  After a good long hour of trying on dresses, we settled on a peach colored dress dotted with small green flowers and a muted blue dress with yellow flowers. The fabric was much softer and lighter than the rough, heavy homespun fabric I was used to. The new dress flowed like a soft, colorful breeze around my legs.

  “We’ll get you a nice chemise and petticoat to go under it. A tiny thing like you has no need for a corset.” Susan leaned closer as if her walls were listening. “Truthfully, I go without most of the time too. Much easier to sew and cut fabric without one.”

  The sound of glass breaking startled all of us. “Now what on earth—” Susie glanced back at me as she headed to the front room, “You can wear that one out of the shop today. Much better than that tent-sized dress you wore on the way in.” With that she left the room to see what the ruckus outside was.

  Libby peered over my shoulder at the mirror. “You look like a picture, Poppy. That pink color suits you. We’ll have to work on a suitable style for that long hair of yours. Although, it seems a shame to hide it in hair pins. It is truly lovely.”

  I turned to face her. “I don’t know how I’ll ever repay you, Libby.”

  “Oh hush, child. There’s nothing to repay.”

  “Libby,” Susan called from the front of the shop, “you’d better come see this.” There was urgency in her voice, and Libby and I rushed out to the front room.

  The crowd had moved to the center of the road, and there was a fair amount of yelling and cheering making its way around the circle of onlookers. The center of their attention appeared through a break in the bodies. Two men were having an intense fist fight. Libby took one look at the brawlers and marched outside to the street. She stopped several feet away and put her hands on her hips. Curiosity drew me outside, and I walked up to stand next to her. The sickening sound of fists hitting flesh and groans of pain filtered through the mass of bodies. The entire front window of the gambling hall was shattered into a pile of glass shards. The crowd split apart as one of the fighters was thrown clear across the street. He landed directly at Libby’s feet. His lids were swollen but I could see the pale green color of his eyes as he looked up at Libby. The other fighter, a man with a shoulder span that matched the building behind him, pushed out of the circle toward the man he’d just thrown. He took a faltering step as he met Libby’s furious glare and then spun around and stumbled angrily away.

  Libby tapped her foot directly in the face of the man on the ground. “The east fence needs mending.”

  With some effort, he pushed to sitting and swiped at the blood on his mouth with the back of his hand. “Yep.” He looked at me for a long moment but didn’t say anything.

  “And hurry up.” Libby turned on her heels, and I followed her back to the shop.

  “Can I at least get my hat?” he called to her.

  “Just make sure you pay the owner for that window,” Libby yelled without looking back at him.

  I peeked over my shoulder. He pushed to his feet and swiped at the blood on his shirt. Just as I watched him, he watched me until the shop door shut behind me, breaking our line of vision.

  I watched him once more through the window as he disappeared into the gambling hall. It hadn’t been my imagination at all. Even bloodied and bruised, I recognized my knight.

  Chapter 9

  Cade

  A cold bath relieved some of the swelling and bruising from the week’s activities. One all night poker game, two bottles of whiskey, and a fight with the loser who weighed more than a plow horse had made it tough to think clearly. But one thought drifted through my mind over and over again as I washed for supper— the girl was still here.

  She was not at the dining room table but there was an empty place setting. Libby carried in a platter of chicken and set it down in front of Jackson.

  I looked up at her. “Do you think that’s wise?”

  She slid the platter toward the center of the table and Jackson sneered at me. My stomach was so empty it was eating itself. I leaned forward and grabbed two pieces of chicken just as the screen door swung open. A streak of lightning could have shot through the ceiling and split the kitchen table in two and I still would have had less reaction. Her slim hips swung side to side beneath the smooth calico dress as she strolled into the dining room and sat down.

  Libby set down the bowl of potatoes and smiled at her expectantly. “Well, h
ow did it go, Poppy?”

  “My method worked,” she answered confidently. “He came at me with a look of fierce determination, but I didn’t give him the satisfaction of looking him in the eye. Just like my Chauncy back home, he took it as an insult and stomped away like and angry child.”

  “Would you two like to let us in on your odd conversation,” Samuel said.

  “Poppy went out to put the chickens in the coop, and I warned her that she should take the broom in case she needed to give that mannerless rooster a couple of whacks. She insisted on going out there unarmed.”

  “Back home, our rooster was more devious than the foxes circling the coop at night. I found there was nothing he hated more than being ignored.” Every detail— the up and down motion of her small chin, the movement of her throat as she spoke, the way her lips formed the words— all of it drew me in and I couldn’t drag my gaze away.

  Libby sat down. “Roosters do tend to have an arrogance problem.”

  Poppy placed a napkin in her lap and looked across the table at me with those dark brown eyes and for a moment everything and everyone else in the room vanished.

  “Speaking of arrogant,” Charlotte’s harsh tone snapped me back to reality, “that Jane Crosston is certainly full of herself. Her mother had a pile of newspapers to give me, and that girl bragged on and on about the new wardrobe her parents ordered her from New York.”

  Samuel grabbed another piece of chicken. “I don’t know why you go over there, Charlotte. You always come back with your petticoat in a twist after you’ve seen her.”

  Charlotte shifted angrily on her chair. “Well, Samuel, some of us like to keep abreast of what’s happening in the world, and Mabel Crosston always has the most recent newspapers.”

  “So tell us, Charlotte,” Libby stepped in to keep them from their usual supper table argument, “what is happening?”

  Like a spoiled child, Charlotte shot a self-satisfied smirk at Samuel. “Apparently, some vile cotton eating insect has come over from Mexico, and the Texas cotton growers are worried about it.” She glared over at Samuel. “It seems like that should be of interest to you and Cade.”

  I broke off a piece of roll and chewed it as I looked at Charlotte. “Does this insect eat cattle?”

  “What a silly question, Cade. Of course not,” Charlotte answered.

  “Then it doesn’t interest me.” I shoved the remainder of the roll in my mouth. Samuel laughed and then seemed to think better of it.

  Our blunt reaction didn’t deter Charlotte from continuing. “And in New York, they’ve opened a grand music hall, Carnegie or something like that. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if they had something like that here? Then we could all go dancing.”

  Now that Libby had opened the spout on the kettle, Charlotte would drone on until she sucked all of the air from the room. Our guest seemed intrigued with Charlotte’s string of new announcements. I, on the other hand, was intrigued with the small indentation beneath the girl’s full bottom lip. The small dimple in her chin had my complete and undivided attention until a strand of her white gold hair swept across her shoulder as she reached for a piece of chicken. It curled up neatly atop the small curve of her breast. I watched that strand of silky hair dance on her bare skin with every breath she took until the tip of Jackson’s boot kicked my shin.

  Jackson leaned his shoulder closer to me. “Christ, Cade, stop gawking,” he said from the side of his mouth. “You’re about as subtle as a two-bit whore.”

  “If President Harrison keeps pushing those tariffs on us then I think we’ll have Cleveland back in the white house next term,” Libby said. Apparently the world event conversation had gone on uninterrupted while I’d drifted off to catalogue every inch and curve of the girl sitting across from me.

  Poppy put down her fork. “Is this president important?” she asked, and the room fell silent. Her long lashes shadowed her cheeks as she stared down at her plate, obviously embarrassed by her question.

  “You really do live in a remote area, Honey,” Libby said with a laugh. Poppy lifted her eyes. “The president runs the country. He signs the laws— good or bad,” Libby continued.

  She nodded hesitantly. “But what about the king?” Silence again.

  “You mean the queen?” Libby asked. “I’m sure she’s sitting in her English castle sipping her overpriced English tea.”

  Laughter circled the table but Poppy looked distraught. Libby obviously sensed her worry and masterfully changed the topic.

  “So, Cade, did you two break a lot of horses? Seems you took more of a beating from poker than you did in the corral.”

  “They were an easy bunch of colts,” Jackson answered for me. “But there was this one filly, whooee, did she give Cade a good licking. She shot him in the air just like one of those geysers down in Yellowstone.”

  Samuel grinned. “I would have liked to have seen that. So you were beat by a filly, eh? Figures.”

  I dropped my napkin on my plate. The chair back creaked as I leaned against it. “No one said anything about her beating me. She just tossed me into the air a few times. Faster and smoother than any horse I’ve ever ridden. I bought her from Trenton before I left his ranch. I’m riding out to pick her up tomorrow.”

  “What about the east fence?”

  “It’s already mended.” My brother hated it when I beat him to an order. “If you don’t mind, Libby, I think I’ll head out to the porch for a smoke. The food was delicious as usual.”

  ***

  Warm air ushered from the house as the door behind me opened and shut. The cool night breeze shuffled through the tree tops near the house as I strummed my calloused fingertips across the guitar strings. It took me only a second to sense that she was the one standing behind me.

  “That’s a lovely tune.” The sound of her voice traveled like soft fingers over my shoulder. She sat down on the step next to me and hugged her knees to her chest. “We didn’t have any music back in my village. It was forbidden.”

  I stopped strumming and looked down at her. I hadn’t steeled myself for having her face so close to mine, and it took me a second to find my tongue. “Forbidden? That’s one I’ve never heard before.”

  She gazed out at the ranch, and I took the opportunity to memorize her stunning profile. The side of her lip curled up. “Of course, at home, my grandmother, sister, and I took every opportunity to hum and sing. We were far enough away from the village that nobody could hear us.”

  I squinted down at her. “I thought you looked like the shifty type.”

  She smiled. A breeze blew through her hair and a long lock fell across her cheek. She reached back and made a futile attempt to tuck back into the pin it had sprung free from. “Poor Libby spent a fine chunk of the morning trying to pin my stubborn hair up but it’s just no use. There is far too much of it.”

  “Yeah, it’s downright distracting,” I said it with humor, but I couldn’t have been more serious. I leaned my guitar against the porch railing. “Something just occurred to me.”

  Her brown eyes looked glassy beneath the starlit sky. “What is it?”

  “Do you mean to tell me there were no dances in your village?”

  She shook her head and the same stubborn strand of hair fell loose. She ignored it this time. “Sometimes my sister and I would push aside the chairs in our front room and dance around the floor.”

  “I feel sorry for the boys in that village of yours.”

  “The boys?”

  “To have a girl like you floating around the village and know that I could never dance with you, that would be nothing short of torture.”

  “I’ve never danced with a boy. I’ve always thought it sounded like something I would like, but dancing was forbidden.”

  “Well, it’s not forbidden in Montana.” I pushed to my feet and lowered my hand for her to take. “I’m better at roping and shooting than I am at dancing, but I know a few steps.”

  She looked at my hand for a moment then placed her palm
on mine. It felt smooth and warm and right. I helped her to her feet. “Now face me.” She turned her feet toward mine. I was a good head taller than her. She lifted her chin and peered up into my face and then I wondered what the hell I was doing getting so close to those lips.

  I swallowed back the nearly urgent need I had to kiss her and took hold of one of her hands. Her fingers felt tiny and vulnerable laced between mine. I placed my other hand on the small of her back and tried to convince myself this was all being done to let her experience dancing with a boy, but in the back of my mind, I knew I had badly wanted to touch her. I could feel the heat of her skin through the thin calico fabric of her dress and I questioned my sanity for going through with this.

  Our steps were awkward and slow, and the only music was the wind whistling around the yard and the crickets chirping under the porch, but I’d never enjoyed a dance so much in my life.

  Poppy kept staring down at our feet as if she worried about stepping on my toes. She lifted her face and her brown eyes glittered. “I think I’m getting it.” A thick strand of hair fell across her face. She sighed and pulled her fingers from mine to push it away. “Now if I could just get these pins to dance with us.” She struggled to put the strand back in place behind her head.

  Reluctantly, I dropped my hand from her back. “I think I can help with that.” I reached around her with both my arms. Her warm breath caressed my throat as I pulled the pins from her hair. The thick, golden strands fell down around her shoulders. I leaned back and admired my work. “Much better.”

  My hand pressed against her back and I took hold of her hand with the other. We returned to our silent dance.

  “Thank you for saving me from that bear.”

  “I still can’t figure out how you got there. All alone in the middle of nowhere like that.” I could feel her tense beneath my hand. Her gaze dropped back to our feet. “It’s like you were running from something.” Her fingers squeezed mine. She didn’t say a word. The only sound was our feet moving on the planks of the porch and the persistent wind whistling across the fields. But her small body had grown rigid beneath my touch. “You’re hiding from someone . . .”