Jesse's lips quirked to see the cat's tail lash in irritation. As far as he could tell, Stazzie's antics, Eden's morning sickness, and Michael's late-night medical calls were the only disturbances in the Jones's otherwise idyllic routine. He envied their simple life. Riding with Cass was anything but.
Michael gathered his reins and swung into the saddle.
"Just so we're clear," he said finally, leveling his midnight-blue stare at Jesse. "I don't commerce in gossip. I make up my own mind. Hard work and an honest desire to make good go a long way with me. Unless a man proves he can't be trusted."
Jesse steeled himself against a frisson of guilt. Michael's message was clear. If Jesse confessed that he was part Cherokee, Michael would adjust favorably to the news.
But if Michael's Injun hired hand turned out to be a renegade—or worse, a renegade who'd seduced his kid sister—Jesse suspected that the doc's feelings would change double quick.
"So McCoy proved he can't be trusted?" Jesse asked, his tone a bit more challenging than he'd intended.
Michael's eyes narrowed.
"I don't want Sera riding that horse alone. Not after a storm. We get flash floods and mudslides, sometimes. She listens to you. Talk sense into her."
Jesse was surprised by this vote of confidence. "Sure, Doc."
Michael nodded. Spurring his horse, he cantered down the road.
Jesse watched him ride away.
Thoughtfully, he turned back toward the house and that heady scent of cinnamon.
That's when he spied a blond male in oversized dungarees. The youth vaulted Aunt Claudia's fence to land in Michael's backyard then trotted on muddy, bare feet toward Sera's open kitchen door.
Jesse tensed.
The youth was carrying a shotgun.
Muttering an oath, Jesse bolted for his .45.
* * *
Sera had been awake since dawn, fixing breakfast for Michael and caring for her nauseous sister-in-law. Eden had suffered yet another bout of Morning Sickness. Claiming herself too weak to leave bed, she'd begged Sera to fetch her dill pickles and cinnamon rolls.
Sera had grimaced to think of plaguing her belly with such a meal. No wonder Eden was sick! Eden had suffered other bizarre cravings too, but the dill-and-cinnamon combination had to be the most telling. Not for the first time did Sera suspect that her intrepid sister-in-law was being haunted by Gabriel.
Sera didn't know all the workings of heaven, but she was fond of the idea that Gabriel was a guardian angel, who watched over his family and, apparently, pestered Eden. Only Gabriel would mix pickles with cinnamon rolls. Or pickles with lemons. Or pickles with peanut butter, for mercy's sake! That boy was a pickle glutton.
"You aren't fooling me one bit, Gabriel Jones," Sera whispered as she carried Eden's tray of dirty breakfast dishes to the kitchen. "Just because you're playing hide-and-seek with me today, doesn't mean I don't think you're here!"
For good measure, she stuck out her tongue at her brother's ghostly presence—wherever it was.
As if on cue, a shadow darted into the kitchen.
"Ah-ha!"
The thrill of the chase pumping through her veins, Sera dashed after her ghost brother. Imagine her surprise when she found an entirely different type of pest haunting her kitchen.
Sera slid to a halt, nearly jumping out of her skin when she spied the plump raccoon crouching on the work table. The varmint was gobbling up the hickory nuts that she'd been chopping for her Founder's Day pie, which was due at the bakeoff booth in under four hours.
"Vandy Vanderbilt Vandal!" she bellowed in a not-so-ladylike voice.
A comical look of chagrin crossed the bandit's face. Shoving two more "hiccurs" in his mouth, Collie's pet dived off the table, skated across the nuts that his chubby flanks had knocked to the floor, and dashed like greased lightning up the counter and over the water pump to heave himself into his favorite hideout: a copper kettle that hung from a hook over the sink.
"Confound it." Glaring at the muddy coon tracks all over her pristinely swept kitchen, Sera banged down the soiled dishes. "Just look at this floor! Between hungry brothers, sick sisters, and pesky coons, how am I ever supposed to find time to cook anything for today's bakeoff?"
Youthful laughter greeted her grumbles. "Did I sneak into the wrong kitchen, or did Aunt Claudia turn into a bonafide beaut?"
Sera's lips twitched at the compliment. "Don't you 'bonafide beaut' me, Collie MacAffee."
Secretly relieved to know that her young friend was safe, Sera knew better than to show it. Like any wild manchild, Collie disdained displays of caring or concern. The 16-year-old orphan had wedged himself between the stove and the stack of firewood with his—or rather, Aunt Claudia's spare—shotgun.
Sun-bleached, silver-eyed, and as tan as an Indian scout, Collie was thinner than a rail (thanks to months of foraging in the woods.) However, his gangly limbs had shown growth. The patched sleeves of his blue cotton work shirt were an inch too short.
He smelled clean. Judging by his slicked-back, shoulder-length hair and the damp clothes that were plastered to his bony frame, he'd bathed, attempting to make himself presentable, before raiding the window ledge for the food that she'd left for him there.
She shook her head to see him scooping Becky Cassidy's strawberry preserves into his mouth with his fingers. He'd completely ignored the spoon and the basket of cornbread that Sera had thought to leave for him on the windowsill.
Suddenly, he tensed, quivering into stillness. His flinty eyes narrowed on the open half of the back door. His sticky right hand hovered over the scattergun between his knees.
"What? What did you hear?" She peered anxiously toward the brightening sky.
Collie cocked his head. He didn't answer immediately.
"Stazzie. Maybe," he added doubtfully.
Sera blew out her breath. "Don't do that! You know it scares the bejabbers out of me!"
He smirked. "That's 'cause you got Townie ears. Like Jamie."
Brat.
"All right, MacAffee. You know the rules. Where's my flower bouquet?"
"Have you checked your bedroom lately?" he mumbled between slurps of jam.
She gaped. "Collie! You're not supposed to climb up the tree to my bedroom window!"
He shrugged, loudly sucking strawberry goo from a finger. "Just checking."
"Checking what?"
"To make sure I ain't the only fella you make follow the rules around here."
Ooh. Boys.
"Listen here, stinker. I have a brother to guard my virtue."
Collie snorted. "You and McCoy used to run rings around the doc. I ain't so naïve."
Sera didn't know whether to be amused or annoyed by Collie's brand of affection.
She folded her arms across her chest. "Well?"
"Well, what?"
"What do you think of the preserves?"
"They ain't yours, that's for sure."
"How can you tell?"
"Well, for one thing, they didn't explode."
She leveled a withering glare at him. Since Collie refused to sit in anything that remotely resembled a schoolhouse, she knew he couldn't read the heart-shaped tag hanging from the jar's neck. "Becky made them for you."
"Who?"
"Becky Cassidy. You know. The seamstress's daughter."
Collie made a face.
"Now Collie, you be nice. I like Becky."
He burped.
"Barbarian."
He giggled.
"That was not a compliment!"
He endeavored to look contrite.
Doing her best to appear stern, she dragged a soiled towel from the laundry basket and tossed it over his head. "Kindly clean the mess your coon made. I have to do all the arithmetic for a new recipe, since Vandy ate my hiccurs."
Collie wrinkled his nose. "Dang." He rested his shotgun against the wall and heaved himself to his feet. "I never figured numbers was needed to bake pies."
"Were needed."
&nbs
p; "Huh?"
"Never mind." Sera rolled her eyes. "Thanks to you and Vandy, I'm going to lose that lousy ribbon to Puddin' Puddocks—again—and be the first woman to go down in Blue Thunder's history as a kitchen catastrophe."
"Now Miss Sera, me and Vandy are on your side. Lookie here."
He strolled to the pantry and reached high above Sera's line of vision, his youthful arms and spine rippling with the ghost of the musculature that he would someday possess as a man. Juggling some of Eden's pickling spices, he allowed the sun's rays to glance off a suspiciously round piece of metal.
Sera drew a sharp breath. Even before Collie turned, revealing his buckling, tin booty, the fragrance of fresh mint and strawberries was wafting through the kitchen. She couldn't help but recognize the trademark array of tiny, pink rosebuds on the luscious-looking confection.
"Collie! Tell me that isn't what I think it is."
He shrugged affably, but he was grinning wider than an opossum eating persimmons. "Okay. It's not what you think it is."
Sera groaned. "You stole Puddin' Puddocks' strawberry-mint pie?"
"That's not all," he said gaily. He set the pie on the worktable then rummaged around on a lower pantry shelf. Pushing aside canisters of dried macaroni and egg noodles, he produced a mammoth slab of sinfully rich, dark cake on a stolen china platter.
Sera choked. His frosted prize, which was at least as thick as his arm, oozed with raspberry sauce and was artistically topped with fudge swirls, cocoa-dipped fruits, and chocolate shavings.
"That's Mary Blackburn's raspberry fudge cake!"
Collie winked. "Call it what you like. I call it breakfast."
"Are you trying to ruin me in this town?"
"Naw. I'm trying to help you win."
She wanted to swat him with that towel—which he had tossed aside and never used.
"Collie, don't you understand? I can't compete in good conscience after what you've done. Folks will say I cheated. They'll say I sent you to steal Puddin's and Mary's entries."
The boy snorted. "You ain't any kind of cheater, Miss Sera. They are. Mary smuggled Swiss chocolate off the Louisville stage for her 'made-from-scratch' fudge. And Puddin' never even stirred the batter for this pie. Her mama did the baking, while Puddin' did the snoozing."
Stunned, Sera blinked at her champion. "H-how do you know that?"
"Oh... I sneak around. I listen under windows. There ain't a body in this town that ain't got something to hide."
Sera groaned again, rubbing her temples. She didn't know what was worse, having Collie for a friend, or having Collie for an enemy.
"Collie, I thought you and Eden had an agreement. That she would bake you any dessert you liked, as long as you stopped stealing."
"Shoot. This ain't stealing." He grabbed a fork from the strainer by the sink and jabbed it into Mary's gooey frosting. "This is studying for my profession," he mumbled around a mouthful of fudge. "How much do you reckon they pay bakeoff judges, anyway?"
This question was greeted by a warm rumble of masculine mirth. Collie and Sera both started, turning their heads toward the kitchen door. Jesse was their eavesdropper. He was standing on the threshold, limned in radiant orange sunshine. Clean-shaven, with his dark hair neatly slicked back to curl softly against his collar bone, he'd dressed in a faded, red shirt, the rolled up sleeves of which only helped to accentuate his well-defined biceps. He looked like he'd paid a visit to the water pump before heading to the kitchen for breakfast.
Sera scowled when she realized that he'd sneaked up on her in perfect silence again. "Am I going to have to tie bells around your neck, like Stazzie?" she groused at his handsome, feline smirk.
"Who's that?" Collie hissed, his silver eyes narrowing, and his right hand twitching above the chopping knife beside the hickory nuts.
Sera deftly plucked the blade from the boy's reach. "Some things changed while you were gone, Collie. That's Jesse Quaid. He's Michael's new hired hand. Jesse," she continued briskly, "meet Collie."
"The doc don't need no hired hand," Collie snapped. "The doc's got me."
"Yes, well, you disappeared right after the spring thaw, didn't you?" Sera reminded him more gently, hoping to teach the boy a lesson. "You didn't tell anyone where you were going. You didn't tell anyone when you'd be back. For all Michael knew, you were dead—and didn't need your wages anymore."
"Yeah? Well, I'm here now." Collie glared at Jesse. "Get lost."
Sera winced. "Honestly, Collie, do you have a single, civil bone in your body?"
"That's all right," Jesse drawled amicably. "I'm just here for a few more weeks. After I finish training Miss Sera's new filly, I'll be riding on."
"Yeah?" Collie didn't look convinced. "When will that be?"
"He said a few weeks, Collie," Sera retorted testily, not in the least bit pleased to be reminded of that eventuality. "Jesse, help yourself to the oatmeal warming on the stove. I'm afraid you'll have to do without eggs this morning. I need them for...
"Well, for something," she corrected herself, gazing in despair at the teeth marks on the hulled hiccurs that Vandy had scattered across the floor. "Obviously, I can't make maple-hiccur pie anymore, thanks to Vandy," she added with a murderous glance in the coon's direction.
Jesse looked inordinately amused as he unlatched the door. She was quick to notice, when he strolled inside, that he'd strapped on his Colt. She decided not to question him about the revolver, though. Collie was antsy enough as it was.
"You caught yourself a coon, son?" Jesse asked.
"I ain't your son."
"Collie rescued Vandy from an animal baiter when the coon was still a kit," Sera told Jesse as she picked her way through the shells that littered the floor to retrieve a broom. "Now he keeps Vandy as a pet."
Collie snorted. "Vandy ain't no pet. He's trained."
"Trained to do what?"
"Ain't none of your beeswax," Collie growled at Jesse.
"Collie," Sera called, emerging from the washroom with a dust pail, "if you can't keep a civil tongue in your head, I'm going to ask you to leave."
Collie folded his arms across his chest in a huff.
Sera mouthed silently behind the boy's back, "He's sweet on me."
Jesse did a masterful job of keeping a straight face. "Uh-huh. Do you need a hand, Miss Sera?" he offered, bypassing the stove to reach for her broom.
But Collie was faster. He elbowed Jesse out of the way, swooping to grab the dust pail from Sera's hand and shooting Jesse a skin-flaying look. "Don't you have a horse to break, or something?"
"All right, you two," Sera interceded. "If you don't have any useful advice about baking, I need you both to leave the kitchen."
"Shoot. I got all kinds of advice," Collie said quickly, sweeping up a pile of gnawed hiccurs and heaving them into the yard. Vandy scrambled out of his kettle after the meal.
"First off, you need to bake something with chocolate in it. Whenever Old Doc Perkins, Mayor Frothingale, or Aunt Claudia sits on the judging committee, they vote for chocolate."
Sera's eyebrows knitted. "How do you know that?"
"'Cause I pay attention. Next, you gotta stop worrying so much about Puddin'. She and Widow Cassidy are entering the same danged pies."
At the mention of Allison, Sera slid a sideways glance at Jesse. "And that's a problem because...?"
Collie snorted. "If you're the only caramel pecan in a field full of sweet potatoes, you're gonna stand out."
"The boy has a point," Jesse drawled, opening the icebox and peering inside. "I reckon you've got enough cream and butter in here for a cream pie."
"She needs chocolate," Collie reminded him tartly.
"A chocolate cream pie," Jesse corrected himself, fetching a clean bowl from the strainer and heading for the stove.
Sera worried her bottom lip. "I've never been much good at meringues."
"How about macaroon pie?" Jesse suggested. He cleared a space for his oatmeal on the worktable and settled on the benc
h with a spoon and an apple.
Collie looked smug. "Betsy Frothingale is entering that. But I don't know of a soul in this town who is trying to win with peanut butter."
"You just want me to bake peanut butter pie," Sera accused, "because it's your favorite when sweet potatoes aren't in season."
"That don't make it a bad idea," Collie argued. "Besides, peanut butter goes good with chocolate. And chocolate goes good with bourbon. Just ask Mary Blackburn."
Sera planted her fists on her hips. "Are you suggesting that the organist from my daddy's church is pouring liquor into her fudge cake?"
Collie shoved the stolen slab in her direction. "Taste it."
"But I wouldn't know what bourbon tastes like," Sera admitted sheepishly. "And you shouldn't either! A boy of your age!"
Collie rolled his eyes. "You're forgetting who my Pa was."
Jesse choked on his mouthful of oatmeal. He looked like he was trying not to laugh. She gazed at him helplessly.
In response, he tugged a silver flask from the back pocket of his dungarees and set it beside the cake.
"What's that?" Collie demanded, his nostrils flaring.
"You said bourbon tastes good with chocolate and peanut butter. I have to agree."
Collie pressed his lips together. "See?" he told Sera grudgingly. "Even he agrees."
Jesse winked at her.
Sera fidgeted. She still wasn't sure about adding bourbon as an ingredient. To do so felt like cheating, somehow.
"But I don't know how much..."
Her voice trailed off. Collie was already hefting the flask and weighing it with an expert hand.
"I'd say you have enough liquor in here for two pies. And maybe even a tart. I'll take the tart for my trouble."
"What trouble?"
He grinned, all boy again. "I rustled a cake and a pie, remember?"
"How about for my trouble, I dunk you in the rain barrel for a proper bath?"
"Hmm. Maybe it's time me and Vandy paid a visit to Aunt Claudia. She's not so particular."
"You do that, scapegrace!"
Sera glared after the boy as he grabbed his plateful of cake and bolted out the back door.
"Works every time," she told Jesse dryly.
He chuckled, cutting his apple into wedges. The scene reminded her of their stairwell rendezvous.
Seduced by an Angel (Velvet Lies, Book 3) Page 11
