by Jo Goodman
Buster shrugged. “You ever find that extra man to help you through the winter?”
Zach initially came up blank, then he remembered the story that Cutter had put out there to learn what he could about Israel. He had no idea if he recovered quickly enough to turn aside suspicion so he just shook his head and said, “Nope. Never did.”
“I asked around like I promised Cutter I would. No nibbles. Are you still looking?”
“I think Willa’s decided we’ll manage on our own. We’ve been doing it so far.”
Eli tipped his chair, balanced it on the two back legs, and regarded Zach as though from a great distance. “But you wouldn’t turn anyone away, would you? Say, if someone showed up looking for work?”
Zach regretted leaving the bar for the table. Hell, he regretted giving in to the urge for a drink. He answered Eli’s question the only way he could. “I don’t imagine we would, that’s supposing they have some experience and don’t mind hard work.”
Eli nodded and dropped his chair in place. “Good to know, Zach. We’ll keep looking for you, then.”
Chapter Eight
“Tell me what he said exactly.” Willa was going over the books and bills of sale at the kitchen table when Zach walked in and made his report. When he was done repeating the conversation he’d had with Eli and Buster, there was a chill in her marrow and no color in her face. She nodded when Zach asked her if she wanted a drink.
He put a tumbler of whiskey in her hands and pushed aside the books. “Those can wait.”
She nodded dumbly and pressed the glass against her lips. She sipped and was glad for the heat sliding down her throat and emptying in her belly.
Zach pulled out a chair and sat. His broad brow folded into deep furrows. “Eli was feeling no pain, Willa. He might have been talking to hear his own voice. He’s been known to do that.”
Willa gave him a clearly skeptical look. “Do you really believe that?”
“No,” Zach said after a moment. “Probably not.”
“Then be honest with me. I depend on that, Zach.” She took another swallow. “So do you think Eli’s going to send someone our way?”
“He never said it outright, but it seemed like he had it on his mind.”
Willa gave a jerky laugh. “And I think we know it wouldn’t be because he’s trying to help us out.” She set her drink on the table. “Have you had supper, Zach? Did you eat in town?”
“No. I came here straightaway.”
She told him to stay where he was and then she set about warming up the leftover kraut, sausage, and dumplings. He declined liquor so she brewed a fresh pot of coffee. “I think better on my feet,” she said, leaning a hip against the sink. She kept an eye on the pan on the stove. “I’m concerned that someone’s going to show up here looking for work and we won’t know that he’s Eli’s man.”
“Won’t Eli want credit for it? He likes for you to think well of him.”
“Perhaps, but what if he doesn’t want credit? Wouldn’t that be what he’d do if he’s sending a spy?”
“A spy?” Zach showed genuine astonishment. “You mean because of Israel? You think it has something to do with him? I figured Eli for trying to impress you with his thoughtfulness or some such thing and make another run at marriage. That’s what I was thinking, especially on account of that kick he gave Buster under the table.”
“What kick? You didn’t tell me about a kick.”
Zach realized he had repeated the initial exchange that he’d had with Buster, but he’d neglected to describe the kick. He made up for that oversight now. “I didn’t see it, you understand, but I don’t think I mistook what was going on.”
“So Eli did not want Buster asking after me.”
“Seemed that way, but then I challenged Buster about it and maybe that’s what Eli didn’t like.”
Her nostrils flared as she exhaled heavily. “I can tell you, I don’t like it.” She picked up a dishtowel and folded it around her hand so she could remove the coffeepot from the stove. She poured Zach a cup and replaced the pot. “Kraut’s almost ready.”
He nodded. “I’m real sorry about this, Willa.”
“So am I.” Thinking, she unwound and rewound the towel around her hand. “Lord, but I hope he doesn’t have another proposal in him. How many ways do you suppose a person can say no?”
“You need to head him off at the pass.”
“What does that mean?
“Get hitched,” he said bluntly. “Eli would have no reason to ask you again if you were already married.”
Willa stared at him. “That’s not a serious answer.”
“It isn’t? Maybe you should sit down, Willa. I’ll get my own supper.” He stood and gently pushed a chair toward her. She dropped into it, not hard, but slow and easy, and once she was down, he pushed it up to the table. He took a plate from the china cupboard and heaped it with food before he joined her again.
“Not only is it a serious answer,” he told her, “it’s also the most obvious one.”
“Has Happy been talking to you about this? I’m just hearing that he’s so bent on seeing me settled that he’s been approaching matrimonial candidates.”
“You’re just hearing that? You didn’t know?”
“Of course I didn’t know. I would have put a stop to it. Dammit, Zach, he asked Jinx Shreve to consider it. Jinx Shreve! Can you imagine? He’s spastic when he gets close to work or a woman!”
Zach could not quite suppress a grin. “I’m trying to put it out of my mind.”
That prompted Willa to smile as well, although not for long. She stared at Zach, at his open, ruddy face, at the concern expressed in his dark and kind eyes. There were more short gray wires in the stubble of his beard these days, and a few more creases at the corners of his eyes, but he still had a big heart and sturdy, broad shoulders, which she had been leaning on for years.
It only seemed proper that she give him the right of first refusal. “What about you, Zach? Will you marry me?” She allowed that her timing left something to be desired. Poor Zach had a mouthful of hot coffee, and it seemed to Willa that he might spew before he managed to swallow. “Sorry,” she said, watching him choke it down. She leaned over to clap him on the back when he began to cough, but he quickly put a hand out to stop her. She tossed a dishtowel at him instead so he could dab at the tears in his eyes.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Zach said when he could catch his breath. “Maybe you really do think better when you’re standing.”
She shrugged. “Shall I assume your answer is no?”
Zach swiped at his eyes again and then laid the towel across his lap in the event he had further need of it. “Hell, yes, my answer is no. Jinx is a better choice.”
“No, he’s not. I like you.”
“Well, I like you, too. Love you, in fact, but not in the way a man should love a woman he’s set on marrying.”
“Do you think you’re too old for me?”
“Age ain’t got nothing to do with it. It doesn’t matter that I’m old enough to be your father. It matters that I feel like one toward you.”
Willa lowered her eyes, nodded. “I feel the same. Not like a father, I mean like a—”
Zach put down his fork and laid a hand over hers. “I know what you mean.”
She smiled jerkily, ruefully. “I guess Happy never suggested that you should be a suitor.”
Zach removed his hand and leaned back. “Actually, he did.”
Willa’s head snapped up. “He did?”
“Mm. We didn’t discuss it. He brought it up and I put him down. He’d been drinking so he just sort of folded. It was a long time ago. If I’d asked you then, I might have been your first.”
No, she thought. He’d forgotten about Eli. Eli had been her first. “How long ago?”
“Soon after your mother d
ied. So I guess it’s been five years.”
Willa’s throat thickened, and she was relieved she had nothing to say because she couldn’t have spoken just then. She got up and poured a cup of coffee for herself and drank it while Zach finished eating.
When he was done, he took his plate and fork to the sink and dropped them in a pan of water. “Unless you need something, I guess I’ll go on over to the bunkhouse.”
“I think they’re playing cards. I sent Annalea out with pie after dinner and I sent Happy out after Annalea. They haven’t come back, and I haven’t minded.” She waved a hand over the ledger and papers cluttering the far side of the table. “But their continued absence suggests penny poker.”
“Thanks for the warning. Annalea took me for two dollars last time.”
“Stop letting her cheat.”
Zach grinned. Standing behind her, he put one large hand on her shoulder and squeezed lightly. “Good night, Willa. Give a holler when you want Annalea back and I’ll send her over.”
Willa tipped her head back to look up at him. “Would you ask Israel to come here? No hurry. He can play out his hand.”
“He’ll be over directly then. He doesn’t play cards.”
“He doesn’t?”
“Never. Can’t get him to sit at the table.”
“Huh. What does he do when you and Cutter and Happy are playing?”
“Damnedest thing. He reads.”
* * *
Israel knocked on the back door and waited for Willa’s invitation to come in. He had expected her to call out, but she opened the door, stepped aside, and ushered him in. He brushed snowflakes off his shoulders and tapped his boots against the side of the house before crossing the threshold.
“I didn’t realize the weather had turned,” she said, looking out. Pale yellow light from the bunkhouse illuminated the quietly falling snow. She stood in the doorway a moment longer before she backed into the kitchen and shut the door. When she turned and saw that Israel was standing beside the table, hat in hand, she inclined her head toward the empty hooks to the left of the door. He hung up his coat and hat and removed his gloves. He stuffed those into the pockets of his coat.
“Are those the gloves Zach picked out for you?” asked Willa.
“Yes. He just gave them to me.”
She nodded and pointed to a chair. “Please, sit.”
He did.
Willa also sat but not before she bent down to look at his boots under the table. “Those aren’t new.”
“I didn’t take the time to try out the new ones.”
“I told him there was no hurry.”
“He said that, but I thought there might be more pie here.”
She gave a short laugh. “No, you didn’t.”
“No,” he said, smiling briefly in return. “I didn’t.” He looked around while he waited for Willa to announce the reason she’d requested his presence. This kitchen was not as ordered as the one he recalled from his childhood. In that kitchen the dry goods were kept alphabetically and the seasonings were all labeled in his mother’s copperplate hand. The space he occupied now was infinitely more inviting. It was not merely the residual heat from the great iron stove that gave it its warmth; it was also the gently scarred china cupboard and the mismatched cups and saucers on display there, the plates soaking in dishwater, the fragrance of freshly brewed coffee, and the chair under him that wobbled ever so slightly when he shifted his weight. He rocked it back and forth several times. “Do you want me to fix this?”
“What?”
“This chair wobbles. Do you want me to fix it?”
“No. Why would I want you to do that?”
“Because it wobbles,” he said patiently. “And I’m assuming you asked me here for a purpose.”
“I did. Of course I did.” She sat down abruptly, straight-backed, and folded her hands on the table. “What were you reading?”
“Pardon?”
“Zach said you don’t play cards. He says you read instead. I wondered what you were reading. More dime novel adventures?”
“Oh. I see.” He didn’t see at all. It occurred to him that she had been drinking. There was an empty tumbler at her elbow that might not have been Zach’s. “Your father brought me A Tale of Two Cities from the house.”
“You like Dickens?”
“Usually. I’m not sure about these particular high-minded characters. Too much nobility for my tastes.”
“That’s right. The Quill effect. I forgot.”
“How’s that again?”
“You don’t like saints.”
Frowning, Israel raked his fingers through his hair. “What am I doing here, Willa? If this is about this afternoon, then tell me what I did and I’ll apologize.”
“You didn’t do anything, at least nothing I can think of.”
Israel almost suggested that she give it time, and it would come to her, but he choked off the words. He rose instead and found a glass and a bottle and poured himself a drink. When she pushed the tumbler at her elbow in his direction, he gave it a generous splash. He sat down, touched the rim of his glass to hers, and then drank. After that it was a matter of waiting.
The pads of Willa’s fingertips turned white with the pressure she forced on her glass. “Zach saw Eli Barber in town today. Had a drink with him actually. Eli was with Buster Rawlins, the ranch foreman who works for the Big Bar. There was some conversation, not much, but enough passed between them for Zach to get the impression that Eli might be planning to send someone out here, someone looking for work.”
“All right.”
“I don’t think you understand.”
“Oh, I’m sure I don’t.” He took another swallow. “Go on.”
“Eli would be much more likely to hire every vagrant passing through Jupiter just to make sure they never reach our spread. Looking out for the Pancakes is not characteristic of his behavior. The opposite, in fact.” She carefully repeated Eli’s conversation as Zach had recalled it to her.
Israel listened, and when she finished, he felt the full force of her expectant expression. What he did not have was a well-considered response. “All right,” he said again, more carefully this time.
“All right? Do you have any idea what he’s planning?”
“No. None. Do you?”
Her shoulders slumped and she stared at the drink in her hands. “No.”
“Then . . .”
“You realize there is a possibility that he knows something about what happened to you. I’m not prepared to say he bears any responsibility for it, but he was out there poking around the day after Annalea found you. And he had his father with him. That’s never good.”
“So you think he suspects I’m here and he’s looking for some way to confirm it.”
“That occurred to me, yes. You could be in danger.”
He ignored her last statement and spoke to her first. “Anything else occur to you?”
She hesitated, sipped whiskey, and then turned to him, lifting her chin a mere fraction higher than it had been before. “Not to me. To Zach. He thinks that Eli is looking around for a way to impress me and chanced upon this.”
“And a good impression,” said Israel, the light beginning to dawn, “would be the preamble to another declaration of devotion and an eventual proposal of marriage. Is that right?”
“Yes.”
Israel had to lean in to hear her reply. “Did you say yes?”
This time she nodded.
“Well, if I understood your objections this afternoon, then you’ll tell him no and that will hold him off. How long since he last proposed?”
“Six months ago, perhaps a little longer than that.”
“Then it will hold him off for another six months or so.”
Willa finished off her drink and set the tumbler do
wn. It thumped dully against the tabletop. “What if I don’t want to hold him off this time?”
Israel wondered if he blinked. He didn’t think he had but in every other way he was at attention. The hairs at the back of his neck were standing up, and something cold that might have been his blood was slithering under his skin. There was a breath lodged in his throat, and he felt his heartbeat stutter to a stop, then resume a moment later with a thud loud enough to concuss him.
“You’re going to tell him yes?” he asked, carefully neutral.
Willa blew out a breath, all exasperation this time. “No, I’m not going to tell him yes.”
“But you said—”
“I said I don’t want to hold him off any longer. That doesn’t mean . . .” She paused, hearing the words again. “Oh, I see why you’re confused . . . I wasn’t clear, was I?”
“Not remotely.” Israel was moved to consider what method might work best to encourage Willa to stop talking. Choking her was undeniably a solution to the problem, but kissing her would give him so much more pleasure. He had just decided on option two when she started talking again. He poured another measure of whiskey in his glass and sat back to listen.
“I don’t merely want to hold him off,” she said. “I want to stop him altogether. I am weary of the shadow he casts. It has weight and substance and darkens my thoughts, my life. I’ve had enough. I want to be done with his proposals once and for all. I want to be done with him. Is that clear enough?”
Israel was struck by her vehemence, but he did not allow himself to respond to her urgency. Calmly, he said, “I think so, but don’t forget I told you I wasn’t good with a gun. If you’re asking me to kill him, I might not be—”
Willa snatched the glass from his hand and set it down hard beside hers. “I am not asking you to kill him. Are you truly recovered from your concussion? I am asking you to marry me!”
This announcement was followed by a profound silence. Israel did not know how long it was before he heard the sound of his own breathing. Sometime later, he heard hers. The thrum in his ears came after that, dull at first, then louder, clearer, like the rush of water spilling from a pump, intermittent in the beginning and finally steady with no hint that it would ever stop.
