Printer in Petticoats

by Lynna Banning

  “Oh.” She sounded contrite, but her eyes were blazing. “Exactly why are you helping me, Cole? After all, we are competitors.”

  “You’re darn right, we are competitors. But look at it this way, Jess. We may be on opposite sides of the fence, but actually we’re helping each other. My subscriptions have nearly doubled. I’d wager your subscriptions are up, too. But if your newspaper goes under, there goes reader interest in the competition between my Lark and your Sentinel.”

  She gripped the handle of her teacup so tight he thought it might snap off. “I’ve sunk every last penny I have in the Sentinel,” she said in a shaky voice. “I cannot afford to fight a lawsuit.”

  “Then don’t. Get yourself a set of law books and start studying what’s libelous and what’s just legitimate criticism.”

  She opened her mouth to reply, but Rita interrupted. “Eggs and bacon, right?” She plopped down two loaded platters and stepped back. “You two aren’t gonna fight over breakfast, now, are you?”

  “Not this morning,” Cole said with a smile.

  “I guess not,” Jessamine said in a small voice. “Not when I’m this hungry.”

  Cole crunched up a strip of crispy bacon. “Hunger makes us good bedfellows.”

  She flushed scarlet and he suddenly realized how that might have sounded, but it was too late. Then with extreme care she upended her teacup and poured the hot liquid over his knuckles.

  While he mopped at his hand and swore, she calmly picked up her fork. “Bedfellows?” she said, her tone icy. “That remark is positively indecently suggestive. I should sue you.”

  Cole bit back a laugh. “Yeah, well, it just slipped out. But maybe you should think about it.”

  “Think about what?”

  Bedfellows, he almost blurted. “Libel,” he said instead.

  She pushed away from the table and stalked out, her behind twitching enticingly.

  *

  At the choir rehearsal that evening, Cole appeared with a bandage wrapped around his hand and an odd gleam in his blue eyes. Jess smothered a stab of regret over her impulsive act at breakfast and concentrated on not biting her lips.

  The director clapped her hands for attention, and the singers rose to begin their vocal warm-ups.

  “You’re dangerous, you know that?” he whispered when he and Jessamine stood side by side.

  “And you,” she murmured, “are insulting.”

  “I meant the word bedfellows figuratively speaking,” he intoned.

  Jessamine turned away, but she wondered at the niggle of unease that burrowed under her breastbone. She wished, oh, how she wished, she didn’t have to stand next to Cole Sanders one more minute.

  It wasn’t that he sang off-key. Quite the contrary. His voice was warm and, surprisingly, he read music better than either tenor Whitey Poletti or alto Ardith Buchanan. And he paid attention to Ellie’s directing better than she was at the moment.

  It wasn’t musical unease she felt. It wasn’t even unease about their competing newspapers. It was how he made her feel when she stood so close to him she could sense the sleeve of his blue wool shirt brush against her arm. She wanted to lean into his warmth, his strength. He made her feel small and fragile in a way she had never felt before.

  Even as a schoolgirl, she had never hesitated to double up her fists and pound any boy who made one of her friends cry. Miles said she had been a real stoic when Mama died and then Papa had succumbed to a heart attack.

  But the truth was that Cole Sanders made her feel not only fragile but both furious and frightened at the same time. Furious when he exposed how much she didn’t know about running a newspaper and frightened at the hot, trembly feeling that built inside her when she stood near him.

  As a dried-up spinsterish twenty-two, she was shocked by her reaction. But she was too old to force her hands into fists and beat him up for upsetting her. And Lord knew she was too young to know anything about men and what went on inside them. Cole had smiled at her, but what did that mean? The truth was that Cole Sanders kept her feeling off balance.

  And no matter what he said about the advantages of their newspaper competition, she would bet he was just waiting for her to make a dire mistake so he could force her Sentinel out of business.

  She straightened her spine. Whatever it was Cole Sanders wanted, she would never let him have it.

  Chapter Seven

  “Mr. Sanders?”

  Cole kept his gaze on the page proof spread out on his desk. “Hmm? What is it, Noralee?”

  “How do you know when you fall in love?”

  “What?” His head jerked up. “What did you say?”

  Noralee scuffed her leather heels against the bottom rung of her stool. “I said,” she repeated, annoyance coloring her voice, “how do you know when you fall in love?”

  Cole stared into his typesetter’s guileless brown eyes. “Well, uh…”

  “My sister, Edith, she’s my twin, she says your head goes all fuzzy and your heart doesn’t beat right.”

  “She does, does she?”

  “Yeah. And she says your hands shake and—”

  “Noralee, you shouldn’t believe everything your sister tells you. Just ask yourself, how would she know?”

  “Oh, Edith says she knows everything.”

  “You believe that?”

  Noralee studied the type stick cradled in her palm. “I dunno. That’s why I asked you.”

  Cole studied the girl’s earnest face, then let his gaze drift out the front window. How did you know when you fall in love? Talk about a punch straight into his gut. Oh, shoot, he didn’t want to remember.

  “Mr. Sanders?”

  “Well, um…”

  “And don’t tell me you just know. That’s what Ma always says, but I think she says that cuz she doesn’t really know.”

  “Why wouldn’t your mother know? She married your father, didn’t she?”

  “Yeah, but… But I think she did it just cuz Pa kept askin’ her. Not cuz she was in love. And that’s what Pa thinks, too.”

  “Noralee, usually when people get married they care about each other. It might not be all flutters and blushes, but it’s real all the same.”

  “How do you know, Mr. Sanders? You ever loved anybody?”

  Cole shut his eyes. God yes, he’d loved somebody. And his heart had pounded and his head had gone fuzzy and all the rest. It had been the most earth-shaking thing that had ever happened to him, and he knew right down to the bottom of his boots that he would never, ever forget it.

  Or her. He swallowed over a sharp rock lodged in his throat and opened his eyes.

  “Well,” he said. He cleared his throat. “Well, I think that, um, you should be sure to take your pulse every morning to check your heartbeat and see if you can remember your multiplication tables to check your brain.”

  “Oh.”

  “You any good at math?”

  “Well, yes, but…”

  “Okay, figure me this—how many articles can you typeset in an hour?”

  “Depends on how long the articles are.”

  “Right. Now, about—”

  “You gonna answer my question, Mr. Sanders?” She poked out her lower lip and swung her heel against the stool rung.

  “Look, Noralee, I’m not going to lie to you. When you fall in love you’ll feel it in every single part of you, your head, your heart, right down to your big toe. You won’t be able to miss it.”

  Her brown eyes widened. “Really? Really and truly?”

  “Really and truly.”

  “Does it ever go away?”

  “No, honey, it doesn’t ever go away. So be careful who you fall in love with, you hear?”

  He had to clear his throat again, but it didn’t help. He could see Maryann in that blue gingham dress he loved, coming through the apple orchard as she always did when he worked late on the newspaper, and a sharp ache knifed into his belly.

  He wondered if he’d ever be able to think of her without
feeling as if he’d been hit over the head with a spiked shovel. Two spiked shovels.

  Probably not. But Noralee didn’t need to know that love hurt like hell and you never got over it. Noralee was only what, eleven years old? Plenty of time to get her young heart trampled to bits.

  “You fancy a sarsaparilla?” he asked.

  “Sure, Mr. Sanders.”

  “I’ll bring one from the Golden Partridge.”

  He bolted for the door and the shot of whiskey waiting to ease that damn pain in his gut.

  Chapter Eight

  “What about it, Sanders?” Conway Arbuckle pounded his fist on Cole’s desk, right on top of Jessamine’s latest editorial. “You gonna let that stuck-up Sentinel woman get away with that tripe she wrote about me?”

  Cole stood up and turned his head to one side to avoid the man’s beery breath. “Nothing libelous about her words, Arbuckle. Just pointed.” He exhaled. “And blunt.”

  “Blunt! She’s like a poker banging into my hide. What are you gonna do about it?”

  “Nothing, yet. The Lark doesn’t come out until Friday.”

  “Nothing! Either you cut that she-witch down to size or I’ll…”

  Cole raised one eyebrow. “Don’t threaten me, Arbuckle.”

  The man snapped his mouth shut, pivoted and stomped out the door. Behind him, Noralee coughed politely.

  “That man’s still got really bad breath.”

  Cole laughed. “You don’t like Arbuckle much, do you, Noralee?”

  “No. And it isn’t just his breath. He’s mean. What are you going to do, Mr. Sanders?”

  Cole thought that one over. True, Jessamine’s latest editorial had hit hard on Arbuckle’s weak spots, his blustery attitude, his arrogance, his preference for insulting his opponent personally rather than engaging the sheriff on specific issues.

  He scanned the editorial again. “Bombastic…barbarian…bully…” Seemed she preferred the B words this week. Made for poetic reading matter, but she was skating on thin ice.

  Well, so what? Let her punch a hole in the ice and sink. In this business she had to learn to be not only smart but tough. If the intrepid young editor of the Sentinel wanted to take potshots at Arbuckle, let her. And let her pay the piper.

  Anyway, two could play at that game. He picked up his pen.

  *

  Jessamine slept late, bone-tired after scrambling to get the Wednesday edition of the Sentinel written, printed, folded and stuffed into Teddy’s saddlebags and Billy Rowell’s over-the-shoulder sack and then studying the soprano vocal part for tonight’s rehearsal.

  Her small upstairs bedroom was freezing cold, and while she could hear Eli chunking wood into the potbellied stove downstairs in her office, she knew the heat wouldn’t penetrate to the second floor for at least an hour. She snuggled down under the double layer of quilts and waited for the sun to hit the windows and warm up the room.

  Oh, botheration! She’d have to get out of bed to raise the window shades to catch the morning sunshine. Clutching a quilt about her shivering body, she crept out of bed and across the room, snapped up both shades and peered out.

  Oh, my stars! Directly opposite her, framed in the window above the Lark office across the street, stood Cole Sanders. And mercy! He wore nothing but his— She tugged down the shade. Then she thoughtfully bit her lip. If she could see him, then he could see her! But she always closed her shades at night, so he couldn’t possibly…

  Oh, but he could. Each night she undressed by the light of her kerosene lamp, and that meant Cole was in a good position to see her naked body silhouetted against the window covering.

  Why, that…that…no-account devil! Surely there was something in Sheriff Silver’s law books about spying on a woman? Hurriedly she pulled on her drawers and camisole, tied her petticoat around her waist, and donned a dark green wool skirt and a clean shirtwaist.

  Then she paused and swallowed hard. Before accusing him, she would have to check her facts. She would wait until he left his office for breakfast, then sneak across the street to the Lark office and check out the view from Mr. Sanders’s upstairs window. She was learning.

  At ten o’clock she watched Cole saunter off down the boardwalk toward the restaurant, and she grabbed her coat, sped across the street and made a beeline for the Lark office.

  The room upstairs was a mirror image of hers except that the bed was on the opposite wall, and he used fruit crates for bookcases and his washbasin was tin, not china, like hers.

  She advanced to his window. Just as she suspected; he could see directly into her bedroom across the way. She knew it! At night he would be able to see her shadow behind the drawn blinds and…

  Downstairs the door clicked open, and every nerve and muscle in her body froze. Then the door closed and she heard the woodstove grate open, wood being chunked in, and Cole’s voice humming. Clementine again.

  She would wait it out. She tiptoed over to the narrow cot and very quietly sat down on the rumpled quilt.

  An hour went by. Then two. More humming, and a chuckle or two. He must be writing articles for his newspaper.

  By noon she was so hungry her stomach began to growl loudly enough she was sure he would hear it. Could she open the window and climb out? Would a drop from the second floor kill her? Or just break her legs?

  She twisted toward the window and accidentally knocked a book off one of the fruit crates beside the cot.

  The humming downstairs stopped. Jessamine held her breath and clasped both arms over her belly to muffle the gurgling. Please, Lord, rescue me from this embarrassing predicament. Heavy footsteps sounded up the stairs, and in the next instant Cole Sanders loomed in his bedroom doorway.

  “Jessamine! What the hell are you doing up here?”

  Jess quailed at the outrage in his voice. What excuse could she possibly offer?

  She could lie.

  No, she couldn’t.

  She could cry.

  No, she couldn’t. Tears would be just as much a lie.

  “I—I wanted to check what you could see from your window.”

  He propped his hands on his hips. “Yeah? What can you see from my window?”

  “I can see straight into my bedroom window.”

  He nodded. “So, now you know.”

  “I should think you would deny it,” she muttered.

  “Not likely. You’re intelligent. Observant. And curious. You’d have it figured out in a matter of seconds.”

  “Well, yes, I did figure it out.”

  “And you want me to apologize.”

  “I want you to stop spying on me.”

  He gave her a lopsided smile. “It’s a free country, Jessamine. You don’t own the view from my window.”

  “Well! You have a lot of nerve. I’ll—I’ll report you to Sheriff Silver.”

  “Go ahead. Know what he’ll say?”

  She shook her head.

  He laughed. “He’ll tell you to undress in the dark.”

  She couldn’t look at him. Somehow her presence in his bedroom sent her pulse skittering. A heavy silence fell.

  Cole took a single step into the room. “Jessamine, it’s not illegal for a man to admire a woman’s body.” He waited, but she said nothing.

  “Don’t undress in the dark, Jess. You’re beautiful. I’m not going to apologize for noticing that.”

  He moved another step into the room and reached one hand to touch her shoulder. “But you’d better get out of my bedroom. Might give Noralee the wrong idea.”

  All the way down the stairs and out the front door she heard his rich, gentle laughter. It made her spine tingle.

  *

  Rita Sheltonberg planted her feet heavily in front of Jess’s desk and leaned over the high rolltop. “Miss Jessamine, we gotta do something more for Johnny.”

  “Johnny? Who is Johnny?”

  “You know, Jericho. Sheriff Silver. When he decided to run for district judge, I volunteered to be his campaign manager, but I’ve plumb
run out of things to do.”

  Jessamine smiled at the still-handsome older woman. “Seems to me you’re doing a good job of spreading the word, Rita. I’ve seen the posters you put up all over town.”

  “Nice, aren’t they? Kids at the schoolhouse made ’em for an art project. ‘Cast Your Vote for the Battle of Jericho.’ Kinda catchy, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, catchy,” Jess agreed. “The trouble is, Mr. Arbuckle is putting up posters, too. ‘A Vote for Arbuckle Is a Vote for Good Government, Like Good Coffee.’”

  “I don’t get it,” the waitress blurted out.

  “Mr. Arbuckle’s grandfather is the founder of Arbuckle’s Coffee.”

  “Oh, that Arbuckle. I’ll have to make sure the hotel restaurant changes brands right away.”

  “There’s money behind his campaign, Rita. And he’s finagled the support of the Lark newspaper but— Wait a minute! I have an idea.”

  “Oh? What’s that?”

  “Yes, a wonderful idea. Rita, you just leave everything to me.”

  When Rita left to return to the restaurant, Jess grabbed her coat and scarf. Eli planted himself in her path.

  “Hold on a minute, Jess. Last time you had a ‘wonderful idea,’ the ranchers and the sheep men in this county ’bout came to gunplay.”

  “This,” she said, patting his arm where he’d shoved up the sleeves of his baggy sweater, “is an even more wonderful idea.”

  “Criminy,” he muttered as the office door slammed. “Guess I’d better mosey on down to the mercantile and get some more cartridges for my forty-four.”

  *

  Cole trotted Dancer alongside Teddy MacAllister’s roan mare as they rode toward the Sorensen ranch. The minute they reached the edge of the spread, Cole reined up.

  “Want to trade mounts, Teddy? I mean Ted?” The boy was trying so hard to grow up it made Cole’s insides hurt.

  “Sure do, Mr. Sanders.” The boy slipped off his roan and clambered up onto Cole’s Arabian. They rode in companionable silence for a mile before Teddy spoke.

  “Kin I ask you something, Mr. Sanders?”

  “What about?”

  “Girls.”

  Cole disguised his surprise with a cough. First Noralee and now Teddy. Guess he was the “go-to” source for youngsters wondering what life was all about. “Fire away, son.”