“I’d be honored to call you by your given name, Miss MacKenna. So long as your father has no objections,” he said carefully, not wanting to ask for her father’s permission, but the man was standing right there. Politeness dictated his response.
Adam waited for Mr. MacKenna’s piercing gaze to settle on him. This was a man accustomed to playing tough when the situation demanded it. But, it seemed, he was also fair-minded. A thoughtful frown appeared between the man’s brows, then he nodded. “Of course. No reason not to. We’re a small town here. And you’re a member of the community. Your uncle was a well-respected member of our community as well. He’s missed.”
“Thank you,” Adam said, caught unawares by the kind words about his uncle. His vision clouded, and he fought the sudden wash of grief. He didn’t think about his loss every day, but sometimes it hit him out of nowhere. To hear Uncle Joe was missed by people who knew him brought up Adam’s own feelings of loss most sharply. “That means a lot.”
To Mandy, he smiled a trifle uncomfortably due to the sudden influx of strong emotions and said, “I’d be honored to call you Mandy if you’ll call me Adam.”
“I think of you that way already, Adam,” she said rather artlessly, and her father’s lips twitched. But as soon as Mr. MacKenna’s gaze shifted from his daughter to Adam again, his indulgent smile disappeared. In fact, for the briefest moment, the man looked like he could have crushed a stone between his teeth. If Adam wasn’t mistaken, Mandy’s father was sending him a message. But what?
To stay away from his daughter?
To be good to her?
Never hurt her?
He could do all but one of those things. Or at least he wanted the chance to try.
Mr. MacKenna lifted his hand and walked away, leaving Adam to wonder what it all meant.
Chapter 9
As soon as Papa walked off, Mandy caught Russell Girard regarding her.
Had he heard her ask Adam to call her Mandy? Had he heard that delicious moment when Adam had—when he’d called her by name? Likely. And evidently Russell didn’t approve. But since when had he approved of anything Mandy said or did? She wished she could bring herself to not care what he thought. But there were old wounds between them.
Russell. He was going to ruin everything.
Mandy wasn’t sure how, but somehow he’d find a way to make her look the fool in front of Adam.
And that’s when it happened.
Elias Campbell called out a Blind Man’s Bluff, and there was another stir.
“What’s the Blind Man’s Bluff?” Adam asked.
“It’s a roping event,” Russell said, drawing closer. “With a blindfold. And a wooden steer. They’re rolling it over now, see there?” He pointed to the ungainly beast. A contraption formed from wagon wheels and a large potbelly barrel. Pointy sticks formed the steer’s horns. The wheels squeaked as it rolled to the center of the dance square.
“Mandy here’s an expert. Aren’t you, Mandy?” Russell said, not unkindly, but with a thread of bitterness in his voice.
He liked her. He didn’t like her. Sort of both at the same time.
Beside her, Adam stiffened.
Perhaps he was able to read through Russell’s words. Understand what he really meant. That she was a show-off. An abomination to womankind. Something like that, anyway.
Mandy sent Russell a meaningful glare. She couldn’t meet Adam’s gaze, embarrassed without truly knowing why. Russell obviously meant to embarrass her, and she was. Why did she let him get to her the way he did?
She saw her mother at a distance, her anxious gaze resting on Mandy. Petitioning her to please behave herself for once. She’d already won one event. That’s what her glance seemed to communicate without words.
“I think I’ll sit this one out,” Mandy said, mustering what she hoped was a demure air.
“Who’ll be first?” Elias called out enthusiastically, his booming voice carrying over the grass.
“How about Mandy MacKenna?” Russell called out, cupping his hands around his mouth so his voice would carry.
Mandy started.
Everyone turned toward her. Looked at her.
She’d never been shy about competing before, but now she was filled with a desire to sink to the grass and cover her head with a picnic blanket, anything to hide her from view.
Of course she couldn’t. She could only stand there for everyone to see.
And she suddenly felt like a joke. A freak from a traveling circus show.
Too Tall Mandy MacKenna.
They were all thinking it.
Except Adam, of course. Likely, he hadn’t heard her old nickname. Hopefully. She’d rather he thought of her as simply Mandy. It had sounded so heavenly coming from his lips.
“Amanda MacKenna!” Elias called her forth, evidently delighted by the idea of her winning the next event as well.
Before Mandy knew what was happening, Russell was flagging Ezra’s son over to lead her away. She couldn’t very well say no to poor Harry, who was having enough trouble navigating the lumpy church lawn with his box camera and tripod in hand. A crowd gathered. Surely more people than actually lived in Cross Creek. Surely. And Adam. He was there, standing by, watching her.
And then Mandy had a rope in her hands and a black blindfold tied tightly across her eyes.
She heard Russell laughing and taunting her off to one side. “Come on, show us all, Too Tall Mandy. Show us how it’s done.”
All Mandy could see was an image in her mind of Adam Booker hearing those words. That ugly, ugly name.
Was that his voice? Saying something to Russell? It was. It sounded just like him. What was he saying? The noise of the crowd drowned out his words.
“Time’s a wasting,” Ezra called out, laughing. More laughter filled her ears. Not just Ezra’s but the whole town’s, laughing and calling out her name. “Rope that steer, Miss MacKenna!”
Hands were turning her.
She heard the squeak of the wheels, the steer being towed around her in a circle.
“Throw it!”
“Amanda!”
“Come on, Mandy!” Darby maybe?
“Throw it!”
So she threw the rope.
The worst happened, of course.
She didn’t know precisely how bad it was until she wrenched the blindfold off to find she’d roped Adam Booker. The subject of all her concern and interest. He was staring at her with a stunned expression. He reached to loosen the rope from around his chest. She’d slung it right around him and tightened down, nearly knocking him off his feet probably.
Mandy weaved slightly on her feet. Her head spinning with it all. The roaring laughter. The crowd. Russell nearly doubled over, bracing one hand against his brother because he was laughing so hard.
Even Darby was laughing. Darby. How could he?
Mama stood there, frozen, looking like she’d swallowed a bug.
And Adam. Adam was still staring at her, awash with the crowd’s laughter and attention too.
Mandy had never been so entirely mortified in her life. Maybe that’s why she felt the curious need to spin around and flee. She had to go. Leave now. Go somewhere—anywhere but here. Somehow she resisted the urge to run. Instead, she made herself turn calmly, breathing. And she sailed off, silently cutting a path through the crowd, not seeing any particular person, just an endless sea of faces.
Chapter 10
Adam searched the church grounds for Mandy. He wasn’t entirely sure what had happened. Everything had been going so well.
Until Russell and the Blind Man’s Bluff.
Until Mandy pulled off her blindfold. And saw she’d roped him—Adam—and she’d gone blank. Looked right through him. She hadn’t said a word to him. She hadn’t laughed and joked with him, which was what he’d hoped she’d do. It had been funny after all. But no. She’d looked right through him. And then she’d simply walked away. Disappeared.
Adam hadn’t seen her since the roping event
.
She’d missed what happened next. How Ezra Campbell moved things along after her awkward departure. How the man had tied the blindfold on Adam and made him go next.
She hadn’t even been there to see him rope “the steer.”
At least, he was pretty sure she hadn’t seen. She’d been missing from the crowd both before and after he’d taken off the blindfold.
If she’d been there he felt fairly certain he would have seen her. He always saw her. Wherever she went.
He was still looking for her now, after the luncheon. After all the remaining festivities were over, though he couldn’t have said what they were. Everyone was packing up their things now and streaming toward their carriages and wagons. But Mandy was nowhere to be seen.
Adam made his way to his horse, discouraged.
Up ahead, he saw Ezra Campbell’s son, struggling with a load of wooden cases tucked under each arm. Adam hurried to catch up with the young man to ask him about the photograph, thinking he could at least have that one moment with Mandy captured on film. Something to keep on his nightstand and look at before he went to bed every night. To look at every morning when he woke up.
“Harry! Harry Campbell!” Adam called out. The bookish young man set one of his cases in the back of a nearby buckboard. He turned, balancing the other on his hip.
“What can I help you with, Mr. Booker, sir?”
“It’s Adam. Call me Adam. I was just wondering if I could buy a copy of that photograph off of you”—he paused, letting a family of five trudge by them, laden down with picnic baskets and folded blankets—“the one you took of Amanda MacKenna and me? After the three-legged race?” He flashed a hopeful smile.
“Already sold it,” Harry said cheerfully.
“Surely you can make another copy?”
“Sold the whole thing, sir. The negative and all.”
“To whom?” Who in the world would want his photograph with Mandy—or who wouldn’t want him to have it, perhaps? Russell Girard. It had to be.
Or maybe her father, not wanting it to go in the paper. It seemed drastic, but Mr. MacKenna was a wealthy, influential man. He might not want a photo of Adam—still an outsider, really—with his favorite eldest daughter splashed across the front page of the Cross Creek Gazette.
Could Mandy have asked for it—bought the negative? Why would she do that?
As of a few minutes ago, Adam had become convinced she didn’t much want to have anything to do with him.
“I’m sorry, sir, I promised not to say,” Harry answered.
“You promised—” Adam stopped, incredulous. Now this was even more curious. Someone had bought the photograph—“negative and all”—and bought Harry’s silence as well.
Harry lifted one shoulder.
“Can you at least tell me if it was a man or a woman?” Adam asked. “Was it the local paper—was it Gus Proctor?” he guessed, though he hadn’t seen the Gazette’s editor hanging around. Adam kept a close eye on Harry’s face and saw what he thought was a brief flicker of recognition. Aha.
Too late Adam realized he’d asked too many questions. He would’ve been better off simply asking if it had been a woman. The question he most wanted answered.
“I can’t say.” Harry loaded his remaining case onto the buckboard and lashed everything down with crisscrossing leather straps. His camera equipment, most likely. “Congratulations on your win though.” He raised a hand in salute and strode off whistling back to the church grounds, presumably to recover more of his equipment.
Adam turned to find Mandy’s parents walking toward him. As they approached, Mrs. MacKenna saw him and faltered. She immediately took her husband’s elbow. Did that mean something? It seemed she’d seen Adam and needed her husband’s support. As if Adam was a source of discomfort.
They drew level with him.
Adam cleared his throat. “I was looking for Amanda,” he addressed himself to her father, not daring to use her less formal name, Mandy, not now. “Have you seen her, sir?”
Mr. MacKenna came to a stop and briefly covered his wife’s hand on his sleeve. Much like he was comforting her after a tragic event. Was that tragic event the Blind Man’s Bluff?
Acid rose in Adam’s throat.
“She left earlier to go home with her cousin, I’m afraid, Mr. Booker.”
“Is she—quite all right?” Adam asked cautiously, noting the look of disapproval on Mr. MacKenna’s face.
“I’m sure it’s none of your concern.” Though said politely enough, it was still a dismissal of sorts.
Adam’s face flooded with heat. Did the man think he’d done something to insult Mandy? Or—worse—that he’d made an inappropriate advance? Whatever Mandy’s father thought, he’d evidently decided Adam was no match for his eldest daughter.
“I’m sure you’re right.” Though it was the only thing Adam could say in response, the words stuck in his throat. He didn’t want Mandy to be “none of his concern.” He wanted much more than that.
Mrs. MacKenna simply compressed her lips. She linked her arm more securely through her husband’s. Mother and father shared a look of parental concern.
“Good evening, Mr. Booker.” Mr. MacKenna firmed his jaw and led his wife away.
Adam was left standing there, staring after them. Wondering what had gone wrong. Things had been going so well. Dancing with Amanda. Then the three-legged race. Their win. Her asking him to call her Mandy.
How had things fallen so completely apart?
Did it have anything to do with Russell Girard?
Or perhaps Adam himself had somehow offended Mandy. Disappointed her. Had he said something, done something? He couldn’t recall anything. In fact, he’d planned to ask her—as soon as he had a moment alone with her—if he could come calling after church tomorrow. Or ask her to go out riding in his buggy.
But then she’d fled. Essentially.
Worse, her parents had apparently deemed him an inappropriate suitor.
Chapter 11
It was nearly a week later when Mandy finally gathered the nerve to talk to her father about the situation between him and Mama.
Mandy stayed home from church the Sunday after the social, too mortified to face the congregation. And Russell. And Adam. Especially Adam.
Sunday morning, she’d told her mother she was feeling poorly. And the truth was she had felt very much like an illness was coming on. Knots in her stomach. A headache that refused to ease. Only she’d never actually gotten sick. Unless cowardice was a sickness.
The week had been subdued at the ranch, filled with normal everyday chores. The everyday small emergencies to take care of.
Mandy and her father were sitting on bales of hay outside the barn doors, oiling tack together. The afternoon sun was high and bright, the air dry. Hot but not miserably so. The sky as blue as blue could be. It could have been any summer day. No sign of storms on the horizon. Unremarkable. Perhaps it was simply the topic she intended to broach that made the view of the ranch crystallize around her, the making of a memory. The greenness of the rolling hills. How the horses were looking over the paddock fence at her. Taking turns snorting or nickering occasionally, as if tempting Mandy to switch her attention to feeding them a treat or coming over to scratch their forelock.
She and her father had sat like this so many times, with Daisy lolling at their feet.
And yet today Mandy couldn’t shake the feeling of getting older, that her father was older too.
As they worked in companionable silence, Mandy turned through several different approaches to talking with him before settling on one. Finally, she told him straight out all she’d noticed between him and Mama. After she’d said her piece, he regarded her seriously, the girth and oiling rag in his hands forgotten for a moment.
“Things change as you age, Mandy,” he replied in a matter-of-fact voice, not denying that there had indeed been a shift in his behavior toward Mama. And not particularly inviting further discussion.
“
Do they? Do feelings change?” she asked carefully, her heart sinking and growing a little cold inside. There were things that, if they were true, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
“What do you mean feelings?” He sounded a little prickly now.
Mandy picked up one of the horses’ bits and a brush and began scrubbing away at a speck of dried hay.
“Mandy,” her father prompted.
“Do you still love Mama?” She continued to scrub, not looking up. Not daring to.
Please, please, still love Mama. I couldn’t bear it if you said no.
“Of course I still love your mother.” Papa snorted. “How can you ask me that?”
Mandy looked up then. He appeared quite genuine.
She’d known it. In her heart she’d known it, hadn’t she? Of course he loved her.
“But you don’t show it anymore,” she said softly. “I never hear you say it.”
“Well.” He went back to his tack, dropping the discussion with that one word. The most inadequate response she’d ever heard.
“But you can’t simply stop doing things you’ve always done without telling the other person why,” she protested, her fingers tightening around the brush handle.
He looked over at her. “What?” he said, clearly uncomfortable with the turn in conversation.
“Why, Papa—why did you stop?”
“I don’t know.” He sat back, setting the wide leather girth he’d been working on over his knees, thinking, his gaze unfixed and far off.
“Think. It’s important. You need to tell Mama.”
“Why?” He focused a piercing gaze on her, as if he’d caught her in an act of collusion. “Has she said something to you?”
“No. She’d never. She just seems...sad sometimes. And...it’s just the way she looks at you sometimes, missing you. The way things were, I mean.”
Papa fell into thought, his face reflecting his emotions. He so obviously didn’t like to think of Mama sad. But he didn’t want to have to go talk to her. He was like that about his feelings, about speaking from the heart. He’d always been the one to take Mama’s hand instead, to squire her around with his arm about her waist. Hold her songbook in church. Kiss her cheek, quick-like, when he thought no one was watching.
Only the Heart Knows Page 10
