The Hired Man

by Lynna Banning

  “Some things bother me a little,” he said, his voice quiet. “Some things bother me a lot.”

  “Tell me about the ‘littles.’”

  He laughed. “Well, there’s Mama Cat in my bed at night. And finding a raccoon print in the yard or a broken egg in the henhouse.”

  “What about the things that bother you a lot?”

  He shifted to his other elbow and stuck another blade of grass between his lips. “Those Sunday-afternoon gents with their shiny shoes and bow ties lounging all over your front porch.”

  “Oh, that. Pay no attention to them, Cord. I don’t. What else bothers you a lot?”

  “Watching you.”

  “That’s all? Just watching me?”

  He smiled, an odd sort of half-contented, half-sad smile.

  “I do it a lot.”

  “Why?”

  “Eleanor, I don’t think you really want me to answer that question.”

  She sat up straighter. “Yes, I do, Cord. I want to know.”

  He hesitated. “I watch you because I want—”

  “Mama!” Molly tumbled onto the blanket between them, Danny at her heels.

  “What is going on?” Eleanor demanded.

  “Danny pushed me in the creek and now my shoes are all wet and squishy.”

  Danny hovered at the edge of the blanket. “Well, you asked for it, you big sissy. It was only a frog.”

  “Maybe it’s time for you two to play a game of catch,” Eleanor proposed.

  “Nah. I’m hungry, Ma.”

  Cord stood up and took the boy by the arm. “Lunch later, Dan. How about you show me this frog you spotted?”

  “’Druther play catch,” the boy muttered.

  “After I see this frog. Must be a big one if it made your sister scream.”

  “Aw, she screams at everything.”

  They walked off together toward the creek. Molly watched for a minute, then darted after them and latched onto Cord’s hand.

  He watches me because he wants...what? Eleanor wondered. What does Cord want? Wages? Afternoons off? Strawberries?

  All three of them returned with Cord carrying the lemonade jug in one hand and Molly’s hand nestled in the other. He stopped at the blanket and nudged the lunch hamper with his boot. “Think it’s about time for our picnic?”

  Eleanor sat up and busied herself with the contents of the wicker hamper. But she couldn’t stop thinking about Cord, about what he was about to say. About what he wanted.

  After an hour spent eating fried chicken and coleslaw, along with fresh tomatoes and radishes, the children scampered off to play catch with a sock ball Eleanor had stitched up and Cord stretched out with his arms folded under his head and closed his eyes.

  She sipped the last of her lemonade and found herself studying him. His chest rose and fell steadily, and his breathing slowed. He must have fallen asleep.

  She studied his face, wondering about her hired man, Cord Winterman. Where had he come from? Missouri, he’d said once. But before that, had he been a rancher? A storekeeper? Why did he have no money when he arrived? Could he be on the run? She doubted that, though it might explain his lack of funds.

  But he was too relaxed and at ease on her farm to be fleeing from the law. Besides, Sheriff Rivera always kept a stack of wanted posters on his desk, and when Cord drove her into town, the sheriff didn’t give him a second look.

  She began packing away the picnic things, then noticed that Cord’s eyes were open.

  “Kids still off playing catch?” he asked, his voice lazy.

  She nodded. “It’s funny how something competitive like catching a rag ball solves all squabbles.”

  “Doesn’t work for grown-ups,” he remarked with a grin.

  “Grown-ups compete in other ways.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Of course. My friend Verena Forester, the dressmaker in town, and I have been competing for years over who can sew better. She believes she is winning because for the last year I haven’t had enough energy to make any dresses.”

  He chuckled. “Didn’t realize women were so competitive.”

  “Oh, yes. Verena’s always telling me my dresses are out-of-date, that my necklines are all wrong. Not low enough.”

  “What you’re wearing today is buttoned up to your chin.”

  She fingered the buttons of her shirtwaist. “Well, yes, but this is daytime. My green dimity will be for evening.”

  “Yeah?” he said with a frown. “Evening where?”

  “Another evening at the Jensen’s barn next Saturday night. This time it’s a square dance.”

  He sat up. “You want to go?”

  “We are all going. As you say, it would be good for the children.”

  “Well, that’s sure a switch. What changed your mind about social stuff?”

  “Oh, I don’t really know. Molly loves to dance now that you’ve taught her how to twirl. And maybe that little girl in the yellow pinafore will be there. That would please Danny.”

  Then she looked off across the meadow. She could never admit the real reason, that she felt safe and protected when she was with Cord. That she wanted to feel his arms around her again.

  He sat up. “Last time we went to a dance Fanny Moreland crawled all over me and you got mad and wouldn’t talk all the way home.”

  “I did not!”

  “You did.”

  She looked down at the picnic basket for a long time. “Well, I’m over that now. With the children along, I’d need to take the wagon and I don’t feel strong enough yet to handle it alone. So...would you come?”

  Cord laughed out loud. “Well, now, Miss Eleanor, I thought you’d never ask!”

  Chapter Twenty

  Darla Bledsoe clutched Eleanor’s forearm, eyeing Cord, who was just now entering Jensen’s barn after parking the wagon. “Who is that delicious-looking man?”

  Eleanor sighed. It was one thing to work up enough courage to brave another dance. It was quite another to fend off another hungry female.

  “That’s my hired man,” she replied. “His name is Cordell Winterman.”

  “Your hired man? You mean he’s helping to bring in your apple harvest?”

  Eleanor edged away from the pretty red-haired widow. “Yes, that and more. He’s been very helpful doing all sorts of things, repairing the barn, mending the pasture fence. He has even dug a flower bed for me.”

  “How nice,” Darla said tightly. Her avid gaze followed Cord’s loose-limbed progress across the floor toward them.

  Molly dashed across the plank floor and grabbed Cord’s hand. Eleanor watched him bend down to her daughter’s level and listen to what she was saying. Darla watched, too, her eyes calculating.

  Cord straightened, scooped Molly up in his arms and waltzed her around and around to the sound of guitars and a violin playing “Clementine.” She flung both her little arms about his neck.

  “Is he married?” Darla asked, watching him.

  “No, he isn’t.” At least Darla wasn’t as annoyingly obvious as Fanny Moreland. Eleanor sat down on a wooden bench on the sidelines and turned toward Sarah Cloudman beside her. The gray-haired boardinghouse owner sent her a raised-eyebrow look.

  Cord danced past with Molly in his arms, and all at once Darla sank down beside Eleanor. “Call him over,” she whispered.

  “No, Darla. He’s busy waltzing with my daughter. Molly will talk about it for days. He—”

  Before she could finish her sentence, Darla shot off the bench and darted across the floor. Eleanor watched her bring Cord to a halt with a possessive hand on his arm, then push Molly off toward the sidelines. On second thought, Darla and Fanny were apparently cut from the same man-hungry cloth.

  “Watch o
ut,” Sarah Cloudman murmured. “That one’s got claws like the tines of a pitchfork.”

  Molly skipped over and Eleanor lifted her daughter onto her lap. “That lady said you wanted me, Mama.”

  “Hah!” Sarah huffed. “What’d I just say?”

  Eleanor cuddled her daughter close. “Shall you and I have some apple cider?” At Molly’s nod, the two of them stood up and moved toward the refreshment table. When they returned with two cups of golden apple cider, Eleanor asked Molly where Danny was.

  “He’s playing outside with my grandson, Mark,” Mrs. Cloudman volunteered. “Rooney, my husband, is teaching them to toss horseshoes.”

  Horseshoes! Her son was turning into a man before she got used to his being a little boy playing with marbles.

  Eleanor’s gaze returned to the dance floor, where sets were forming for a square dance. Darla was tugging Cord into position in the first set when he stopped dead and lifted Darla’s hand off his sleeve.

  “Oh, please, Cordell.” Darla’s petulant voice rose above the violins. “I bet you’ve had a lot of square-dancing experience.”

  Eleanor gritted her teeth. On second thought, maybe she preferred Fanny Moreland.

  Cord plucked the woman’s hand off his sleeve. “Sure have,” he said blandly. He took her elbow and purposefully steered her to the sidelines, where he left her standing with Jessamine and Cole Sanders, publishers of the Smoke River Lark-Sentinel. As he turned to leave, Jessamine winked at him and he chuckled. The woman had read his thoughts exactly.

  He didn’t want to dance with Darla. He scanned the crowd, praying Fanny Moreland wasn’t present. He didn’t want to dance with Fanny, either. He wanted to dance with Eleanor. She was sitting across the room next to Sarah Cloudman, with Molly on her lap. He crossed the room in long strides, walked up to Eleanor and held out his hand.

  “Oh, Cord, I don’t think I ought to do any dancing tonight. I’m not very good at square-dancing.”

  “I don’t care,” he said shortly. He lifted Molly onto the bench next to Mrs. Cloudman, pulled Eleanor to her feet and piloted her into an assembling set that was short one couple.

  “Cord, I don’t think...”

  “Don’t argue. I haven’t been to a real square dance since... In a long time.” He maneuvered her into position. When the call came to “swing your partners,” he turned to her.

  As Cord remembered from the first time she’d danced with him, Eleanor fit perfectly in his arms. After a minute he had to laugh. She said she wasn’t good at square-dancing, but she was so light on her feet it was like dancing with a snowflake. Maybe she hadn’t done very much recently, but she must have at some time; she knew every call, every tricky maneuver. She even added a double turn on the “promenade home.”

  Her gray eyes sparkled, and he felt absurdly pleased that she was enjoying herself. Correction, that she was enjoying herself with him. He blew out a long breath and swung her around and around until her long ruffled skirt got tangled up between his legs.

  The square dance caller finished up two more sets and then announced that a slow two-step would be next. When the music started, Eleanor headed for the sidelines, but Cord caught her shoulder.

  “Dance with me.”

  “But I have been dancing with you,” she protested.

  “Not hardly.”

  “But—”

  “Eleanor, for God’s sake, stop making excuses and dance with me.”

  “I’m not mak—”

  “Yes, you are.” He pressed his hand against her back and pulled her close. “Now hush up and dance.”

  She tried to stop moving with him, but he wouldn’t let her. “Cord, you know I dislike it when you order me around.”

  “Yeah, I know,” he whispered. He nestled her chin against his shoulder. “Dance with me. That’s an order.”

  She laughed. And then she didn’t say another word for the next twenty minutes, through “Red River Valley” and “Clementine” and maybe another song, but he lost track. He closed his eyes and breathed in the lemony-rose scent of her hair and listened to her breathing until he thought he’d go crazy.

  He wanted her so much he ached. “Eleanor,” he murmured.

  “Hmm?”

  “When will the apple harvest be finished?”

  “Around the middle of October. Why?”

  “You know that I’m staying until then.”

  She lifted her head and looked up at him. “Yes, I know.”

  “That’s two months longer than I planned to be around when I came in the spring.”

  “Oh.” She was silent for a long minute. “Yes, I remember now. You are going on to California.”

  “I was, yes.”

  “And now you’re not?”

  “Now I don’t know.” He didn’t want to tell her what his plans were because he no longer knew what they were. The only thing he knew was that he couldn’t stay on as her hired man. He wanted more than that. And Eleanor was married to someone else.

  He pulled her closer and felt the nagging hunger he’d known ever since the first day he’d laid eyes on her. As the washtub bass thumped and the violins dipped and soared, they slowly circled around the plank floor and he held her close and stopped trying to think rationally.

  The music filled the noisy barn, rising above the sounds of crying children, the good-natured laughter of storekeepers and wrangling rival ranchers. Eleanor closed her eyes. She wouldn’t think about the apple harvest or October or Cord’s leaving, not tonight. Not here in his arms, inhaling the scent of shaving lotion and sweat and whiskey.

  Whiskey? Had he been drinking? Underneath everything she detected the laundry soap smell of the blue chambray shirt he wore. The sleeves were rolled up almost to the elbow; his bare forearm rested against her upper back. She pressed against it, not to move farther away from him but to feel his warmth.

  He folded her right hand into his and lowered their intertwined fingers so her knuckles rested in the middle of his chest. His heartbeat thumped steadily under her palm. In his arms she felt protected. Valued. Almost...cherished.

  At night, when she allowed herself to examine her most secret feelings, what she felt for Cord Winterman was decidedly unsettling. She drew in a long, uneven breath. What is wrong with me? I should not be feeling these things in another man’s arms.

  Suddenly she felt Cord’s pulse jump into an erratic rhythm. Surely he couldn’t be reading her thoughts, could he? Oh, heavens, she was growing far too warm.

  “Darla Bledsoe is stalking us,” he whispered.

  She looked at him sideways and laughed. “Darla is stalking you, Cord. Not me.”

  “Let her. I’m not interested.”

  “Darla is quite wealthy,” she couldn’t resist saying. “Like Fanny Moreland. When Darla’s husband died she inherited a lumber company.”

  “Not interested.”

  Another question popped into her head and she opened her mouth, and then immediately closed it. Mercy sakes, she couldn’t possibly ask him that! Not in a million years. First of all, it was none of her business. And second, she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the answer. After all, a man’s private life was...private.

  But she wondered about it just the same. And she spent most of the night thinking about it. After the apple harvest, would Cord stay and court one of the hungry females who lusted after him?

  And how would she feel if he did?

  * * *

  The following morning Cord awoke to Danny’s anguished voice from the barn door below him. “Cord! Come quick! Ma’s collapsed.”

  He swept Mama Cat and the kittens off his blanket, yanked on his jeans and climbed down the loft ladder.

  “Hurry!” Danny cried.

  He raced out the door after the boy and pounded up the porch steps. The fr
ont door stood ajar. “Where is she?” he shouted.

  “In the kitchen. She was standin’ at the stove and she just kinda crumpled up all of a sudden.”

  Eleanor lay sprawled awkwardly on the kitchen floor, facedown, inches away from the hot stove. A sobbing Molly knelt beside her.

  Cord crouched beside her and felt for a pulse in her neck. It was there, but it was faint. Gently he rolled her over and began rubbing one of her hands. Her face was dead white.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Molly wept.

  “Don’t know yet. Danny, get a wet dish towel.” He bent over her. “Eleanor? Eleanor, can you hear me?”

  Danny pressed a sopping towel into his hand and he slipped his hand under her to raise her head a few inches off the floor, then pressed the towel against her neck.

  “Is Mama gonna die?” Molly wailed.

  “No, honey. She’s breathing and her heart’s beating. She’s gonna be just fine.” He began to undo the top buttons of her blue gingham dress and spread the bodice wide. Thank God she wasn’t wearing a damn-fool corset. “Danny, get me another cold towel.”

  He slapped this on her upper chest. “Eleanor, can you hear me?” He thought she gave a little moan, but Molly was crying so hard he couldn’t be sure.

  He lifted Eleanor into his arms and started for the staircase. “Danny, run ahead and open her door. And bring those towels.”

  Cord climbed the stairs after the boy. “Don’t cry, Molly,” he called over his shoulder. “Your mama’s going to be fine.”

  The girl trailed him all the way up, snuffling loudly. At the top of the stairs he headed for the last room on the right and angled Eleanor’s body through the door. Danny smoothed out the rumpled quilt and Cord carefully laid the limp form down on the bed.

  Her face still looked white as fresh plaster. He replaced the wet towel at her neck, swung the second one in the air to cool it and again laid it on her chest.

  Molly crawled up on the bed beside her mother. “Mama, wake up. Please wake up.”

  “Danny, go down and check the stove, see if there’s anything left on it that could burn.”

  “Ma was makin’ coffee,” the boy volunteered.