“I don’t think you give yourself enough credit,” she heard him say. “You have a gift for evoking a sense of atmosphere that I have seen in few other writers.”
Charlene allowed herself a moment of complacency, enjoying the compliment. Even if it was misdirected. She closed her eyes and lifted the mug to her lips for another satisfying sip.
“In fact,” Matthew went on, “what I’d really like to do is make an extended stay right in this area and visit the scenes of the stories I’ve read.”
Charlene choked, spraying a fine mist of coffee over her dress. Matthew jumped and started to come to her aid, but she waved him away, gasping. She reached for a damp cloth and tried to dab away the stain before it set.
Matthew seated himself again with his back to her, and Charlene tried to catch Jed’s attention. As enamored as Matthew appeared to be with everything he had seen so far, it shouldn’t take much for Jed to suggest other interesting—and distant—places for him to visit. It would be simple, really.
Jed beamed at their guest. “Now that’s a fine idea, if ever I heard one.” He gave the younger man an approving nod.
Charlene stared at her grandfather in astonishment, unwilling to believe what her ears had just heard. She renewed her efforts to attract his notice, shaking her head vehemently while mouthing “No!” and waving her arms back and forth.
“Charlene,” Jed called, cheerfully ignoring her frantic signals, “how about another cup of coffee?”
Wrapping a towel around the handle of the coffeepot, she carried it to the table, still making faces at her grandfather until she came within Matthew’s range of vision.
“Can you recommend a place to stay?” Matthew asked while she began to replenish Jed’s coffee. “Is there a good boardinghouse nearby?”
“Why don’t you stay right here?” Jed offered.
Charlene flinched and sloshed coffee onto the table. In a daze, she hurried to fetch a towel and wipe up the spill while her mind formed a lengthy list of arguments to Jed’s blithe invitation.
She looked at her grandfather closely. Could he be getting senile? Up to now, she’d always thought his faculties were in remarkably good shape, but the events of this afternoon led her to wonder. What else could explain his behavior?
Jed turned to her solicitously. “You feeling all right? You seem to be a little off plumb today.”
Charlene merely glared at him in response and stalked back to the kitchen where she leaned against the doorframe and watched them.
“I wouldn’t want to impose…” The eagerness in Matthew’s voice belied his words.
Jed waved an affable hand, as if to signify that his company would be no trouble at all.
“If you’re sure…” Matthew grinned. “In that case, I accept.” His voice throbbed with excitement. “You don’t know how thrilling it will be to stay with my favorite author. I just hope my presence here won’t interfere with your writing.”
It was Jed’s turn to sputter, and Charlene looked on with satisfaction. He hadn’t minded putting her in a tight spot with his invitation. It was about time he reaped some of what he had sown.
“I, uh, don’t think it’ll be a problem,” Jed finally managed to say. “The, um, the writing can be done while you’re out sightseeing.”
Charlene brightened a trifle. She had forgotten about Matthew’s wish to explore the area. That should take him out of the house for long periods of time, hopefully long enough for her to keep up with her writing schedule.
“Speaking of that…” Matthew paused, as if uncertain how to continue. “I want to visit the settings of as many of your stories as I can. I had hoped to persuade you to guide me to them, but…” He glanced doubtfully at Jed’s bad leg.
Jed came to his rescue without missing a beat. “It’s true, my wandering days are over. But there’s no reason young Charlene here can’t show you around. She knows this area and the story locations as well as I do.”
Charlene covered her face with her hands. What kind of madness had seized him this day? She had been trying to decide how to rearrange her schedule so she would be able to write while they had company—this company!—and now Jed was setting things up so she’d have to spend precious time away from her writing while showing Matthew around. It had to be madness, she decided. There was no other explanation for it.
She heard a chair scoot on the floor and lowered her hands to find Matthew swiveling about to face her. “Miss—Charlene, would you do me the honor of acting as my guide?”
“Of course,” Jed mused, as if thinking out loud, “with me laid up like this, she does have an awful lot of chores to do…”
“I’ll be glad to help with those!” Matthew beamed and looked back at Charlene, his melting brown eyes full of hope.
There was no way she could win. She might as well give in with as much good grace as she could muster and get it over with. The sooner he saw everything, the sooner he would go home. She nodded, and the two men smiled at each other, obviously happy to have struck a deal.
Matthew soon set off for town to collect his luggage. Charlene waited until the buggy drew away from the house, then she wheeled about to confront her grandfather.
Planting her hands on her hips, she glared at him. “How am I supposed to get any writing done with him under the same roof? It’s bad enough wondering if he’ll learn my secret, but now I’ll fall behind on my stories. Why on earth did you invite him to stay here?”
“Don’t you worry.” Instead of looking the least bit remorseful, Jed’s eyes sparkled with a mischievous gleam. “I know what I’m doing. I’ll keep the boy so busy you’ll have time to show him places and do all your writing, too. You can almost look at it as a little vacation.”
Charlene rolled her eyes and went to take out her frustration on the defenseless bedding in the spare bedroom.
A city-bred gentleman like Matthew Benson was probably used to several courses of fancy food at each meal. She grimaced at the thought and punched a pillow into submission. He would be accustomed to eating foods she couldn’t even pronounce, much less prepare. Well, he was out of luck! Without the supplies she intended to purchase earlier, they were down to basic fare. Very basic. She could imagine how that would compare with what he was used to.
A thoughtful smile curved her lips. If he wanted to see the way Charlie Matkin lived, then that’s what he would get. Nothing more, nothing less. If he didn’t like it, he could just up and leave. It might be the very thing to aid his hasty departure. She wouldn’t be guilty of doing anything overt to drive him away, and he could hardly hold it against her if he wasn’t up to coping with frontier life.
Her smile broadened. Before she knew it, he would get tired of roughing it and head back east so she could continue writing in happy anonymity… and that was exactly what she wanted.
So why did she feel a quick stab of disappointment and see a vision of melting brown eyes?
Chapter 3
Charlene rose early the next morning in a thoroughly disgruntled mood. Far from turning up his nose at the simple meal she prepared the night before, Matthew attacked it with gusto, savoring every morsel. When he had eaten everything on his plate except the blue-and-white pattern, he leaned back in his chair, the picture of contentment.
“That was wonderful. Much better than the restaurant food back home.” He sighed blissfully and beamed at both Charlene and Jed. “Maybe the simple life is just what I need.”
So much for her brilliant plan.
Disappointment kept her tossing in her bed far into the night before she found the solace of sleep. The new day, bright with the promise of spring, brought her no joy. It looked like she would have to put up with Matthew Benson’s presence for an indefinite time.
Grumbling, she pulled on a plain blue dress and hastily whisked the brush through her hair, tying it back at the nape of her neck with a deep blue ribbon that matched her eyes. She stumbled to the kitchen to start the fire in the stove and knead the sourdough sponge she
set out to rise the night before. With the coffeepot in place, she made her way back to her room and plopped down wearily at the desk she had moved from the living room during Matthew’s absence the day before.
With one hand supporting her head, she tried to focus her tired eyes on the paper in the pool of light from the oil lamp and began outlining the next Nick Rogers adventure.
This one would be the story of the time Jed—Nick Rogers—curled up one night in a cave, to be awakened hours later by a grizzly bear who considered the cave her own. Only by making a perilous leap from the mouth of the cave to a crumbling ledge below had he managed to avoid being mauled or killed. It was an engrossing tale, and Charlene became deeply engrossed in penning the story.
Loud, repeated thunks jarred her back to reality, and she recognized the sound as the ring of an axe on wood. Parting her curtains, she gazed out to find Matthew, clad in a very uncitylike plaid flannel shirt, splitting stove wood. Charlene resumed her seat, pleasantly surprised that she would have enough wood for the day with no effort on her part.
When the sound of the axe continued far longer than it would have taken her to split a day’s supply, she ventured to the window again with an inward grin, wondering if he was finding the task more of a challenge than he’d thought. Her eyes widened when she saw the amount of split wood piled up before him. Where did a newspaperman learn to do that? It surely wasn’t a skill she would have expected from a deskbound editor.
Resting her cheek on her palm, she leaned against the windowsill and watched in the gathering light as he set up another thick chunk of wood. With his hands spread apart on the handle, he expertly swung the axe up, whirled it around his head, and brought it down again with a loud whack. The axe blade struck the edge of the wood precisely in the center and it fell apart, split neatly in half.
Charlene made a face. It would have taken her at least two strokes, maybe three, to split a chunk that size.
Matthew set one half upright and swung the axe again. This time Charlene watched, not the axe, but the broad back muscles rippling under the fabric of his shirt. He worked with an economy of motion, like one accustomed to hard labor.
Her grandfather must have looked like that in his younger days. In fact, she could almost be looking at Nick Rogers.
The idea brought a wistful smile to her face. In addition to being modeled after her grandfather, Nick Rogers had one facet even Jed didn’t know about—he was a compilation of every attribute Charlene thought desirable in a man.
At twenty-four, she had long ago given up hope of attracting the notice of any of the young men in the area. Women her age were already married, and usually had a passel of youngsters. Charlene had her home and Jed.
Not that she was complaining. The loss of her parents brought her and Jed together in a special way, and she couldn’t imagine life without him—feisty, ornery character that he was. But love, at least in the romantic sense, had passed her by.
She could understand the lack of suitors when she took time to look in the mirror. Compared to the young ladies in town, she found her own face woefully plain, and she didn’t have the money to offset that lack with the latest fashions. Nor did she have the leisure to focus on improving her appearance. Other women might have time to primp before a looking glass, but Charlene had to work.
As for her hair, she usually caught it back and tied it with a ribbon, with the ends curling freely around her shoulders. Even then, instead of staying decorously in place, wayward strands crept out from the ribbon’s confines during the day, until by late afternoon she generally had a cloud of loose strands swirling about her face. Hardly the picture of an attractive woman!
Nor did she know how to simper and flirt like other girls. She was just Charlene, prosaic and plain—except when it came to her writing. Then she was able to let loose her flights of fancy, spinning wonderful tales of derring-do. That was when she felt the most real. She saved her romantic daydreams for Nick Rogers.
And there he stood before her, wielding his axe like a lumberjack.
Then he turned his head, revealing a face that was not Nick Rogers’s at all, but that of Matthew Benson, the man who had come along to complicate her life. Disgusted with her wayward imagination, she strode back to her desk and resumed writing.
By the time Matthew came through the kitchen door bearing a hefty armload of wood, not only had Charlene made a good start on her story, but she’d already set the table with coffee, loaves of bread fresh from the oven, butter, and wild raspberry jam. She also found time to gather some early wildflowers to put in her mother’s blue vase as a centerpiece.
She looked at the table with satisfaction and a touch of wonder. Splitting the day’s wood was a routine part of her morning. She never realized just how much time it actually took up. With Matthew taking over that chore, and by getting up earlier than usual, she had already made a surprising amount of progress that day.
Jed came out of his room in time to watch Matthew tumble the load of wood into the woodbox. “Not a bad morning’s work for a city feller, eh, Charlene?” He chuckled, and Matthew beamed at his approval.
Charlene agreed grudgingly, trying to ignore the guilt she felt about taking Matthew’s willing help when she wasn’t being completely truthful with him.
He looked even more handsome this morning than the day before. After a good night’s sleep, he had shed the signs of fatigue following his long journey, and he showed every appearance of being invigorated and ready for whatever the day might bring.
As they gathered for breakfast, she noted the way he bowed his head, completely at ease as he waited for Jed to ask the blessing.
She studied him as she moved to the kitchen and back, bringing the men more coffee. It might be nice to have him here under other circumstances. As a neighbor perhaps, someone who would be living close by.
There was no denying he was handy around the place. Goodness, he must have split nearly the whole woodpile. She wouldn’t have to do that chore again for a good while. And he certainly looked natural in that setting, leaning back contentedly in his chair and visiting with Jed.
He brushed a hand at his ear, as if shooing away an irritating fly. Charlene stifled a giggle. A wave of his rust-colored hair curled forward, the ends barely touching his ear and apparently tickling it. She felt a sudden longing to reach out and tuck the wave back into place, and she brought herself up short with a start.
Pressing her hands against her cheeks, she closed her eyes and shook her head. Maybe she had been spending too much time in the realm of fiction. It was time to move back to the real world and leave Nick Rogers in her stories, where he belonged. She sat down briskly and finished her last few bites of bread.
Matthew wiped his mouth with his napkin. “Is there anything else I can do for you, Miss Matkin?” Jed cleared his throat, and Matthew grinned sheepishly. “I mean—Charlene?”
“You’ve done a great deal already,” she replied, fighting down the surge of pleasure she felt at hearing the sound of her name on his lips. “I’ll be ready to go as soon as I wash the dishes and straighten up a bit.”
Matthew watched her cheeks grow pink when he said her name. Like the blush on a rose. He smiled inwardly at the thought. And her eyes were the deep blue of his mother’s delphiniums back home.
What about her hair? He tried to think of some comparison that would go along with his fanciful garden theme. Ripe wheat? Maybe. No, more like corn silk. He liked the way the tiny wisps pulled free, forming soft tendrils around her face.
“Let me dry the dishes,” he offered, wanting to study the effect more closely. He won out over her objections by pointing out that it would save them time, and soon found himself with a dishtowel in his hand, wiping the dishes Charlene handed him, while Jed supervised.
Uneasy at first about working with Matthew in such close quarters, Charlene found to her surprise that it felt curiously natural to share a chore with him, with Jed providing a running commentary while they worked. Better
get used to being close to him, she told herself. There isn’t much room on that wagon seat.
“You’re pretty handy at splitting wood for a city feller,” Jed commented.
“I’ve done a good bit of camping,” Matthew explained. “I like being outdoors and roughing it. In fact—” He paused long enough to finish wiping a cup and set it down with care. “—my family has a summer home in the country that I use as a retreat whenever I feel the need to get away from the city. I spend quite a bit of time there.”
Charlene started at the mention of his family, and wondered for the first time if that included a wife. But she hadn’t seen a wedding band on his hand. She mentally scolded herself. As if it were any of her concern whether he was married or not! With the dishes done, she soon had the house put in order and went to her room to get ready for Matthew’s first tour.
The dress she’d put on earlier was serviceable enough, not something that would easily be ruined by a long drive in the wagon. She turned to the mirror to pat her hair into place and let out an exasperated sigh when she saw the unruly strands curling around her forehead. Loose already, and the day hardly begun! She shrugged and left them as they were. No point in tying them back when they’d be pulled loose again by the spring breeze as soon as she stepped outside.
A glance at the sun’s position outside her window showed her it was much earlier than she’d expected to leave, and with her writing and housework caught up, too. This arrangement with Matthew might not be so bad, after all. She would make the most of it while it lasted.
When she emerged from her room, she found Matthew had changed into a gray broadcloth shirt and had already hitched up the horses. She shook her head, marveling at the continual need to reassess her perception of the man. He certainly wasn’t the helpless city slicker she’d expected.
“What do you want to see?” she asked after he helped her into the seat and had climbed in himself. She forced the words out with difficulty, finding herself unaccountably shy now that they were going to be alone for the first time. Panic rose up within her, and she fought to keep it at bay. What would they talk about? Would she be able to keep from revealing her secret without her grandfather around to lend a hand?
Where the Heart Is Romance Collection Page 59
