by Jo Goodman
“You have a good ear.”
“You do a credible job of disguising it, but Mrs. Maddox was from Boston. I was around her for a lot of years.” She stopped him when he looked expectantly at her, as if she might comment further. “That wasn’t an invitation to talk about me or that family. We were talking about you and yours.”
Wyatt lifted the lid, turned the meat over, then put the lid to one side altogether. He gave the skillet a shake, flipping the potato slices. “My mother’s family could properly be called Brahmins. A couple of brothers and my sister, also. As for me, it’s generally held by the family that I take after my father.”
“But that’s a compliment, isn’t it?”
“Not if you heard my grandparents say it.” He removed the skillet from the stove and divided the contents evenly between them, ignoring Rachel’s protests that he should take the lion’s share. “You could stand to eat my portion as well,” he told her. “Colorado winter’s not kind if you have no meat on your bones.”
“I’ll sit closer to the stove,” she said dryly.
Wyatt tossed the skillet and spoon in the dishpan and sat. He motioned to her to pick up her fork and waited until she’d had her first bite before he did the same. “All right?” he asked.
She swallowed. “Better than that. Delicious.” She intercepted his skeptical look. “No, really. It is.”
“This is pretty standard fare. You must burn a lot of eggs.”
She ducked her head a shade guiltily. “Seems like.”
“You should try soft-boiling them.”
Rachel quickly took another forkful of potato and onion and avoided looking at him.
“Oh,” he said, drawing out the single syllable. “You were soft-boiling them this morning. What did you do? Forget about them?”
“I was putting the hem in a dress for Mrs. Morrison.” She winced at her defensive tone and tacked on a more agreeable admission. “Yes, I forgot about them.”
Wyatt glanced around the kitchen, most particularly behind him around the stove. “Looks like you got the mess scraped off the walls.” He looked up at the ceiling and pointed with his fork. “I’ll get that for you after.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Didn’t think I did, but I’ll do it just the same.” He tucked back into his food. “Maybe scrambled is the way to go for you. Even if they burn, they don’t explode.”
Rachel knew he was amusing himself and decided it would serve him right if he choked on his next mouthful. She waited, hopeful that she’d have an excuse to pound him on the back. He was mannerly, though, and chewed his food thoroughly before swallowing. She blamed his Boston Brahmin mother for that.
“I looked around your woodshed when I was out there,” he told her. “There’s more wood that needs splitting.”
“I know.”
“Who are you going to hire to do it for you?”
“However that contract between you and Mr. Maddox reads, I don’t believe the intent was for you to insert yourself into every aspect of my life.” She paused to give him an opportunity to argue the point, but he merely continued eating. She sighed. “I haven’t asked around yet.”
“Ned Beaumont could use the work.”
Rachel was unsuccessful at masking her surprise. She’d been so certain that he meant to foist himself upon her.
Wyatt correctly interpreted the reason her mouth was now slightly agape. “I have a job, Miss Bailey.” He pointed to the star on his vest. “Plenty to do.”
Her lip curled. She fed his earlier words to her back to him. “There’s not a lot of criminal activity in Reidsville in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“I’m sure you mean that as a compliment to law enforcement, and I thank you for it. I’ll pass it along to my deputy.”
She stared at him a long moment, then simply shook her head and returned her attention to her meal.
“So you’ll give Ned a try?” he asked. “He injured his leg in the mines a couple of years back. That’s why he mostly plays checkers with Abe and picks up the odd job now and again. You won’t be sorry for giving him a chance.”
Rachel didn’t answer right away. It went against her grain to be pressed into a corner. “All right,” she said finally. “I’ll speak to him. Does he have any influence with Mr. Dishman?”
“Couldn’t say. They’re both stubborn cusses. Why?”
“It’s nothing important. Just a wayward thought.”
“I don’t think he can convince Abe to stop proposing, if that’s what you were wondering.”
Rachel beat an impatient tattoo against her plate with the tines of her fork. “Is there anything you don’t know?”
He shrugged. “Plenty, I expect.”
She didn’t believe him, not about what went on in Reidsville at any rate. She stabbed a triangle of ham and brought it to her mouth. “I gather that most folks know about Abe.”
“Mmm.” He finished cleaning his plate and pushed it aside. “How’re you going to turn him down this time?”
“Maybe I’m not.”
Wyatt showed no reaction, just waited for her to come to her senses.
“I haven’t decided yet,” she admitted. “You don’t think he’s really serious, do you?”
“All you have to do to find out is say yes.”
“I’ve thought of that, but I’m a little afraid.”
His mouth took on a wry twist. “Trust that feeling.”
Rachel smiled a little herself. “Thank you. I’ll do that.” She stood, gathered their plates, and carried them to the washtub; and she filled the kettle with water from one of the buckets and set it on the stove to heat. Setting her hip against the oaken washstand, she addressed Wyatt. “I appreciate what you’ve done, Sheriff, bringing me word about Mr. Maddox. I didn’t make it easy for you. I didn’t kill the messenger, but it wasn’t for lack of trying.” She spoke carefully, no trace of humor in her tone. She meant for him to understand how much she wanted him gone. “I tolerated your presence and to a point, your inquiry. Dinner was excellent, and I thank you for that, but I want to have my home back and that means you can’t continue to occupy a chair in my kitchen—or anywhere else.”
It was a firm dismissal. Wyatt considered his options and decided that ignoring her wishes was not the better course. He made a halfhearted attempt to see if he could turn her by pointing at the ceiling. She didn’t bite. Her dark eyes remained unwavering on his. The remnants of eggshell, albumen, and yolk would be there for a while, he supposed.
His chair scraped the floor as he pushed away from the table. He swept his napkin off his lap and dropped it on the seat of his chair when he stood. “I’m sorry about your loss, Miss Bailey, but you should know you won’t be the only person in Reidsville grieving the passing of Clinton Maddox.” He saw her eyes widen marginally, so he knew she’d heard him; then he nodded once in her direction and showed himself out the same way he came in.
Rachel resisted the urge to go to the window after she heard the back door close. With the lamplight behind her, he would have only had to glance up to see that she was watching him. She had to trust that he was leaving. The thought of him lingering nearby made her more uncomfortable than entertaining him in her kitchen. She didn’t need him to know that.
She collected the items remaining on the table. Before she wiped it off, she used one of the chairs to comfortably and safely reach the tabletop; then she applied herself to removing every vestige of the morning egg mishap from the ceiling. If Wyatt Cooper thought she was going to supply him with an excuse to wriggle his way back into her house, he was mistaken. The mealworm.
That image, which had curdled her stomach when she’d applied it to herself, had the opposite effect when she used it to describe him. This time, she smiled. The fact that it was a wildly inappropriate comparison appealed to her. It wasn’t as easy to know what he would think of it.
Rachel could admit that she found him surprising in that regard. She hadn’t anticipated his rather sly se
nse of humor or the lengths he’d go to make his point. He could be self-deprecating as well, when it served him. He impressed her now as the kind of man who saw advantage in taking a few steps back to gain a better view of the end game.
He was a chess player.
Rachel’s legs were a little wobbly when she climbed down from the table. She realized that Wyatt Cooper was likely the source of his deputy’s earlier observation about checkers, chess, and Abe Dishman’s proposals. The lingering doubts she still harbored about the contract he’d signed vanished. Little that she’d done seemed to have escaped his notice.
“You never breathed a word about that, Clinton Maddox. Canny old bastard.” In her mind’s eye, she imagined him smiling. Like Reidsville’s sheriff, he knew how to turn an epithet into a compliment.
Rachel slept fitfully. Once she woke to discover she’d been crying. It didn’t seem possible she could have tears left, not when she’d begun mourning Clinton Maddox’s passing fifteen months earlier. His insistence that she could have no contact with him meant that for all intents and purposes he was dead to her, if not dead in fact. Only when she wanted to punish herself did she seek out any information about him, and it was hard to know if it was more blessing than curse that there was so precious little news to be had.
Clinton Maddox had outlived her expectations and his own. Neither of them gave him as long as fifteen months once she left. He must have played the game like a master to hold on so long. She regretted that she couldn’t have seen it for herself, but that had always been their conundrum. If she’d stayed he couldn’t have maneuvered his pieces nearly so well.
He’d been correct. Sacrificing her was the right strategy.
Turning on her side, Rachel saw a needle’s width of light slipping between the curtains. It wasn’t dawn, just the precursor to it, when the margin of the ink-blue sky began to fade in narrow increments.
She knew a certain reluctance to get out of bed. On any other morning, it would have been because the floor was cold, but today it was the thought of going through her routine knowing as an absolute truth that Clinton Maddox was dead.
Did her mother know? she wondered. Rachel couldn’t imagine that she didn’t. There wasn’t much that Edith Bailey didn’t know about the Maddox family. It was because she had that breadth of knowledge that she sanctioned, even encouraged, Rachel’s departure. This morning Rachel felt the separation from her mother even more acutely than she usually did.
She found her thoughts drifting to her sister, Sarah. Sarah and her husband, John, had been every bit as adamant as Edith that Rachel should leave. Rachel could hardly blame them for their firmness on the matter. They had their twins to consider, and Sarah hoped to have another child someday. There would never be peace if Rachel stayed.
But it was also a fact that her mother and sister had each other to turn to. She was the one on her own. She didn’t doubt they missed her with an ache that left a lasting impression on their hearts, because she felt it in the very same way. Yet it didn’t mean she could easily put aside the envy she experienced, knowing they were still a family and she was gone to them.
It hardly mattered that leaving had been the right decision. She was safe. And to the best of her knowledge, so were they. As long as they never traded a single card, letter, package, or telegram, it would remain that way.
Rachel realized she had to turn away from that thinking if she was ever going to get out of bed. Her head was beginning to pound and knowing she was facing a cold floor didn’t help, either. What did give her the impetus to throw back the covers and jump to her feet was the sound of wood being split in her own backyard.
Ignoring her slippers, Rachel yanked her robe over her shoulders on her way to the window. She threw back the curtains and stared through the murky blue-gray light at the two figures standing in front of her woodshed. One of them cast a shadowed profile exactly like Wyatt Cooper’s and was raising a maul over his shoulder, while the other one wore his coat collar turned up to protect his jug ears just like Ned Beaumont and was sitting on a short stack of wood with his feet resting comfortably on a stump.
Rachel opened her mouth to yell at them, then thought better of it. “It would serve him right if he amputated something,” she muttered. She didn’t weigh much, but she managed to make every pound of her thunder on the way to the back door. Grinding her teeth, she stuffed her feet into a pair of work boots, then flung the door open and continued her punishing march to the woodshed, bootlaces dragging.
Ned Beaumont sat up straighter, but Wyatt Cooper didn’t miss a beat. He brought the maul down in a graceful arc on the log and split it cleanly in two. Satisfied, he threw them one at a time at Ned, who stood to catch them, turned to set them neatly on the stack, and then sat right back down again.
Wyatt hefted the maul so the handle rested on his shoulder and turned to Rachel. He looked her over and liked what he saw. “It’s easy to see why Adele’s been pining for some of that Belgian lace.”
Chapter Three
Rachel heard herself actually stutter and realized her brain was doing the same thing as her sewing machine: slipping a gear. Her tongue tripped over itself as she tried to make sense of what he’d just said to her.
“What in—? Did you just—? Belgian lace?” She followed the direction of his gaze to look down at herself. Her robe, which she’d no time to close securely, was gaping open, and the delicate ecru lace border of her nightgown’s neckline was what had provoked his comment. She was hardly immodestly covered, but Rachel closed her robe and belted it anyway. Wyatt, she noted, had already turned his attention to her face. It was Ned sitting a few feet back that was having a difficult time putting his eyes back in his head. In spite of both those things, she managed to collect herself.
“It’s at least ten minutes before daybreak. You’re standing in my yard, splitting wood. Mr. Beaumont’s…well, I’m not certain what Mr. Beaumont’s doing, but I—”
“I’m stackin’,” Ned said helpfully.
“He’s stacking,” Wyatt said. “You were going to hire him, weren’t you?”
“Yes, but—”
“Well, he can’t split wood, now, can he? I told you about his injured leg.”
“Yes, you did, but—”
“Can’t split wood,” Ned interjected. “Can’t plant my feet proper and throw my shoulder into it.”
“Thought I could help him,” Wyatt said. “You don’t have to pay me, just him.”
Rachel looked at the throne Ned had made for himself out of Wyatt’s labor. “Pay him for sitting.”
Wyatt and Ned objected with one voice. “And stacking.”
Rachel was certain her brain slipped another gear. She took a steadying breath. “Why are you here now?”
“Sorry about waking you,” Wyatt said, setting up another log. “Ned’s got a second job to do this morning, so we thought we’d come early and get a decent start on this one.”
“Actually,” Ned said, sliding off the stack, “I need to be goin’. Joe Morrison’s got some shelves that need repairin’ at the emporium. Told him I’d be there before he’s set to open.” He tipped his hat at Rachel. “Don’t worry about paying me now, Miss Bailey. I’ll come back round for it later.”
Rachel stared after him, her lower jaw a tad slack with disbelief as Ned loped off, favoring his injured leg. When she looked back at Wyatt, she saw his features were so seriously set that he could only be suppressing a howl of laughter. “I su-p-pose you think you’re f-funny,” she said, thrusting her hands deep in her pockets to keep them warm.
“Go on back inside. You’re cold.” He swung the maul, driving the wedge cleanly into the wood and splitting it in three pieces this time. “I’ll be in when I’m finished here and you can make me breakfast. That’ll even things out between us.” He set another foot-long length of wood on its end and took aim. Just before he swung, he spared a glance for her. “Scrambled eggs, if you don’t mind.”
Rachel decided the best response was
not to make one. She pivoted smartly and marched back to the house. If she owned a shotgun she’d use it to point out the direction of Longabach’s restaurant, then shoot him with it if he didn’t take the hint. She liked the idea so much that she entertained herself with plans to buy a shotgun. That kept her occupied while she washed up, pinned back her hair, and dressed for the day, but when she went to put a pot of coffee on, she saw he was still cutting and splitting wood. In spite of the briskness of the morning, there was a fine sheen of perspiration on his face and throat. She watched him pause once, lift his hat, and wipe his brow with a kerchief, then go right back to work.
It shouldn’t have softened her toward him. Rachel reminded herself that she hadn’t asked him to do anything for her and, in truth, had made several attempts to direct him elsewhere. She sincerely doubted this was what Clinton Maddox had in mind when he arranged for Wyatt Cooper to look after her.
Rachel wondered if she could find a way to better explain her opinion on the matter over breakfast.
Wyatt stomped his feet as he came in the door, alerting Rachel to his presence. The combined hearty aromas of bacon and coffee made him hope that she intended to feed him. He hung his coat and hat by the door and stepped into the kitchen. It was a consequence of the appetite he’d worked up that the first thing he noticed was that there were plenty of eggs and bacon in the skillet. She’d even made some biscuits that were now staying warm on top of the stove. Evidently she’d elicited the great black beast’s cooperation this morning.
“Smells good.” He came up beside her at the stove and warmed his hands several inches above the basket of biscuits.
