There was the smell of the whiskey, sharp and full, as he lifted the glass to his mouth. The first swallow would roll to the back of his throat where it would burn with a kindly fire and fill his head with its vapor. The drinks that followed would burn less, but would bring a merciful gray blur that would draw a curtain between himself and the image of Cooper Matthews, rabid and yelling murderer at him on the Fords’ front porch. But more importantly, the whiskey would blunt the picture in his mind of Althea’s chalky, stunned face when she’d heard Matthews’ ranting.
It had bothered her enough to come outside and question Jeff. Then he’d felt compelled to tell her most of the story, at least the worst part of it. And it had bothered him to have to tell her about it. Not just the telling of it and the remembering, although that had been hard.
What he’d worried about most was losing Althea’s respect. He chuckled wryly to himself. Hell, he didn’t even have it to begin with, and he had no idea why it mattered to him, one way or the other. But it did.
Funny, though—she hadn’t reacted as he’d thought she would. Allie Ford didn’t strike him as the flexible type. In fact, he guessed that what little he’d heard about her was probably true, that she was unyielding and hidebound. He’d seen traces of those qualities himself. But when she stood next to him at the fence this afternoon, he’d also seen compassion in her.
After he told her about Wes, he’d figured that she’d send him packing back to Will Mason. She could yet.
Jeff hoped that wouldn’t happen.
He opened his eyes and glanced at the kitchen window through the lean-to’s open door. Even though he didn’t fit in here with the stiff-backed woman and her feeble-minded sister, he was beginning to like getting regular meals and having something to do every day.
Sighing, Jeff picked up his fork and took another stab at the potato on his plate. He still wished he had that drink.
~~*~*~*~~
After dinner, while Olivia read Jane Eyre to herself, Althea stole up the back stairs to the attic. She usually worked on her needlepoint in the evening, but now she planned to turn her needle to another task.
A rush of heat, like that from a stove, rolled out of the small airless space under the roof when Althea opened the door. A pair of tiny flyspecked windows draped with cobwebs provided the only light, but the sunset on this side of the house cast bright yellow beams across the floor. Fortunately, this part of the roof hadn’t leaked during the rains.
Up here was a dusty clutter of trunks, tea crates, and a few long, cedar-lined clothes boxes. Toys mingled with the chests and barrels, but the only remnant of Althea’s childhood was the wicker doll carriage pushed against the back wall. She pulled a tattered footstool close to the little carriage and sat down.
Putting out a tentative hand, Althea let her fingertips trace the bumpy texture of the woven strips of willow. As a little girl, she had promenaded her doll up and down the road in the buggy, pretending that she was walking to town. When they got to Decker Prairie, she would have tea with toast and jam, while her faceless, make-believe husband—her doll’s father—worked on their farm. It all seemed so long ago now.
Althea’s childhood had ended in her seventh year, the day Olivia was born. She had acquired adult obligations then. Her mother was never really the same after the birth of her second daughter; that was when her strangeness began.
Althea took over the house, just like a grown person. And grown people didn’t play with toys, did they? According to Amos Ford, they didn’t. Then she had a real-life doll to take care of named Olivia.
She sat forward, her elbows on her knees, and let her gaze drift. If she were they type to feel sorry for herself, she might think that with all the responsibility laid on her shoulders she had been cheated out of her girlhood, and the opportunity to do the things other young women enjoyed. If she were a dreamer it would be very easy for her to envision that life she’d pretended as a child. And she’d have made herself crazy with yearning by now.
Crazy.
Althea shook her head and stood up. She had come up here for a purpose, not to think about the past and what could have been.
Avoiding the trunk that she knew contained her mother’s belongings, she went straight to a large cardboard box that sat next to a bushel basket. She lifted the lid and carefully pulled away layers of tissue to uncover a length of gray chambray. Althea smoothed the close-woven material with her hand and nodded decisively.
It would be perfect for what she had in mind.
~~*~*~*~~
“Mr. Hicks, could you spare a moment of your time?”
Surprised to hear Allie’s clear voice outside the lean-to, Jeff sprang up from the bed. The door was already open, and he saw her standing a good four feet back. “Yes, ma’am.”
Her auburn hair glittered with red, brown, and gold lights in the setting sun. Had a man ever touched that hair? he wondered. Had anyone pulled out the pins and had the pleasure of watching the dark fire of it unwind down her bare back? He could imagine it very easily. He’d bet with that coloring of hers, her skin was like white velvet—smooth and soft, every fold, every curve, every warm cleft under his hands.
“Mr. Hicks . . . please.” Her cheeks turned pink and she averted her eyes.
He glanced down. Damn, no shirt. “Um, sorry—your rosebush pretty much ripped up the shirt you gave me.”
“I know it didn’t fit very well and I thought—” She cast a sidelong gaze at him, obviously trying to avoid looking at his bare upper torso, and her eyes flew open. “Good lord, what happened to your arms?” Crossing the distance between them, she leaned closer and looked at the scratches crisscrossing his hands and forearms.
He shrugged, feeling a little self-conscious under her scrutiny. “That rose ripped into me, too. It had thorns as long as bear claws and it didn’t give in without a fight.” He had washed before dinner but some of the deeper wounds had seeped for a while and were crusted with dried blood.
“Oh, dear,” she said, her fingers resting at the base of her throat. “You should have told me about it.”
“We both had other things on our minds today.”
She nodded. “Yes, well. . . but this needs to be cleaned up or the wounds will fester.”
Jeff wasn’t accustomed to having someone fuss over him. “Naw, it’s nothing. I’ll be all right.”
But she was already hurrying to the house, and it seemed to him that she was gone no longer than a second. She waded back through the tall grass, her skirts swishing against the green serrated blades. Struggling to carry the stool from the porch, she also juggled a dark brown glass bottle and some cotton wool.
Jeff stepped forward and took the stool, and she shooed him into the lean-to.
“Go on, now. You sit there on the bed and let me tend these scratches.”
Jesus, two minutes ago, she’d been afraid to even get close to his door. Now she was pushing him into the room, all busyness and in charge.
Jeff felt the edge of the bedframe against the back of his knees and sat down. Althea pulled the stool close and uncorked the brown bottle she’d carried with her.
“My soul and body, I’ve never seen the like,” she said, shaking her head.
“It looks worse than it is.”
She gazed up at him with those soul-searching eyes, and Jeff felt another emotion stirring, one he couldn’t even identify. “I doubt that,” she said. “I would think all these scratches would sting something terrible.”
“It’s not so bad,” he lied. In truth, his arms burned like hellfire, but he wasn’t about to tell her that.
“Well, this will fix things up.” Using her lap for a work space, she made a pad of the cotton wool, then tipped the bottle opening against it, letting the potion flow.
Jeff pulled back and eyed it warily. In his experience, liquids that came from dark bottles also burned like hellfire, whether a man drank them or put them on an open wound. “What is that stuff?”
“It’s just a de
coction of comfrey and lavender, mixed with witch hazel.” She took his left hand and held it on her own open palm. “This might sting a bit, but only for a while.” With great gentleness she touched the cotton pad to the back of his hand and dabbed at the angry, red marks.
Jeff sucked in a breath between his clenched teeth, but didn’t snap out the oath that leaped to mind.
Althea kept her eyes on her task. Sitting this close to her, he could see the graceful arch to her russet brows, and the way her lashes curled at the ends. “I want to thank you for stepping in with Cooper Matthews today. Dealing with him was—it was horrible. When he didn’t show up yesterday morning, I didn’t expect him to come out at all.”
“Matthews has a temper like a mad dog. Seeing me here just made him worse.” Jeff decided not to worry her with Cooper’s implied threat to her. It shouldn’t matter to him whether Althea worried. He’d stopped caring about everything long ago. But those feelings, the emotions that he’d suppressed, were rumbling to life, and it scared him.
“I wish I’d never spoken to him to begin with.” She frowned slightly, bringing those russet brows together as she worked her way up his arm with the decoction. Her hands were small and cool. “There just wasn’t anyone else to ask.”
“Have you been alone here for a long time?”
She leaned closer to reach a long scratch on the tender underside of his arm. When he looked down to watch, it brought his nose within inches of her hair. It smelled faintly of honeysuckle. “My father died three years ago. He was poorly for months before that. But I’m not really alone—I have Olivia.”
Jeff didn’t know how much company or help a feeble-minded girl could be, but he kept that to himself. “Oh, right—your sister.”
“Do you have family in Decker Prairie, Mr. Hicks?” He felt her gaze touching him, feeling for the dark places that hurt, probing gently, seeking to expose them to the light.
“No, ma’am.” He let his gaze stray no farther than the lower half of her face. Her pink mouth looked soft, like the petals of the roses on her porch. “They’re in Klamath Falls. I haven’t seen them since the day I married—” Of all the things that had happened to Jeff, talking about Sally was the hardest. “Well, it’s been a long time.”
Althea waited for him to volunteer more about his wife, but he didn’t. He had been married and he wasn’t now. What had happened? Though she knew it was none of her business, her curiosity about Jeff had her speculating over the mystery.
Apparently, though, their conversation had reached its end. Silence stretched between them while she finished treating his scratches. She struggled to keep her mind on her work and away from the thought that she’d never been this close to a man before, and under such intimate circumstances. Fate, it seemed, found all kinds of reasons to put her together with Jeff Hicks. And he was usually without a shirt.
“There now,” she said finally. “That’s better, I hope.”
“Yes, ma’am. Thank you.”
“All right, then.” She set the bottle on the floor and reached into her pocket for her tape measure. “I need to take your measurements.”
“What for? My coffin?”
Startled by the question, Althea looked up into Jeff’s serious face. He wasn’t joking. “Of course not. Why would you ask that?”
He shrugged. “I just don’t expect to live very long. I could fall off your roof or a horse could kick me in the head. Maybe even get shot. I don’t know what could happen so awhile back I gave Cyrus Cheney some money to put in an account for me at his bank. It’s enough to bury me and pay a preacher to say a few words over me. Just in case, ma’am. Cyrus will handle everything.”
His words squeezed her heart, but she ignored the feeling. “Working here isn’t going to kill you, Mr. Hicks,” she replied dryly.
He smiled, and this time it reached his eyes. “No, ma’am.”
Ma’am. Even Allie was beginning to sound preferable to that. “I’m going to make some shirts for you. You can’t very well go around here in rags. Or—or like that.” She gestured at his naked upper torso. “It isn’t decent.” It wasn’t much good for her peace of mind, either. Seeing him like this made her feel hot and shivery at the same time, due to embarrassment she was sure.
“I can’t pay you for them. Not yet anyway,” he said.
“We won’t worry about that. I already had the cloth so there’s no extra expense. Now stand up so I can take the measurements.”
Jeff stood, and what remained of Althea’s forthright composure withered away. The room was suddenly too small, and Jeff too close. He seemed as tall as an aspen, and all sinew and long bone. Although he was a little too lean, his broad chest was braced with muscle and dusted with a V-shaped pattern of sandy hair that began between his nipples and reached to his abdomen. His old jeans hung on his hipbones, giving her a clear view of a narrow strip of dark blond hair that stretched from his navel down to his low waistband and beyond to a place she couldn’t see—
Althea dragged her gaze back up to his face, and realized that he’d caught her studying him. Hot blood rushed to her face, scalding her from chin to scalp. “Well, um, if you’ll turn around . . . ”
He held her gaze a moment longer with a look that was so potent and elemental, it made her suck in a breath. It wasn’t a broken-down drunk who stared at her, or an ex-sheriff who had fallen from grace. She saw the bare essence of the man who lurked beneath both faces.
The very air around them grew heavy and charged, like a summer night before a thunder storm.
After what seemed like an eternity, he turned his back to her. Awed by the solid wall of it, she wished she could run her hands over its planes and angles, to touch what she realized was one of the most beautiful forms she had ever seen. That a man’s back could be beautiful baffled her, and yet, it somehow made perfect sense. Althea felt a most distressing urge to put her arms around his waist and rest her cheek against its strength.
Unraveling but trying to hide it, Althea fumbled with her tape measure and even dropped it once. Finally she got it smoothed out, and with hands that had suddenly lost all their dexterity, she reached up to hold the end of the tape up to the prominent bone at the base of his neck to measure the length of his back. His skin was warm but her fingers were ice-cold, and goose bumps appeared on his flesh. From the same starting point, she measured the length of his arms.
To do a proper job, she should have determined the circumference of his neck and chest, but both would require putting her arms around him to encircle him with the tape.
No! Althea could not make herself do that, especially given the chaotic feelings churning through her mind and body. She would have to work from memory when she cut the fabric. Looking at Jeff now, she didn’t think that would be difficult.
“That—that should do, Mr. Hicks,” she said, and stuffed the tape back into her pocket. He turned and faced her again, and her heart began pounding so hard from the nearness of him she thought she might faint.
“Jeff . . . my name is Jeff.”
She stared up into his green eyes, feeling like a deer hypnotized by lantern light, as if she dared not look away. Although he wasn’t touching her, he held her fast. “What?”
“Say it.”
She could feel waves of heat pouring off his body. Dear God, what was he going to do to her? “J-J-J—Mr. Hicks—really, I should be go—”
“Say it, Allie.” He commanded her with a whisper that caressed her name. “Say ‘Jeff’.”
“J-Jeff.”
“Again.”
“Jeff.”
“No more ‘Mr. Hicks.’ No more ‘ma’am’ or ‘Miss Ford.’ ”
She shook her head slightly, her gaze still fixed on his weary, handsome face. She saw loneliness and fear in his green eyes that pierced her heart. But she saw fire, too.
“Jeff. Allie.”
“Jeff,” she repeated, beginning to tremble. All she wanted at that moment was to lean closer and feel his arms enfold her. He brus
hed her jaw with his fingertips, then let his hand slide down her shoulder and around to her back. With a little pressure, he pulled her toward him as though they were dancing.
Her breath came faster, as her heart demanded. She’d never been held by a man, and had never thought she would be. Until now.
Slowly, Jeff tipped his head toward hers, filling her field of vision with his eyes and handsome face, bringing his lips within scant inches of her own—
“Althee-ah! Where are you?”
They jumped apart. The sound of Olivia’s voice cut between them like a cold, sharp blade, dragging her back to the present, and to everything else.
She glanced over her shoulder toward the house. “Oh—I shouldn’t have stayed so—my sister—I’ll start work on your shirts as soon as I can.” Then she turned and fled the tiny room where a man she hardly knew had made her feel, for a breathless, dizzying instant, that they were the only two people in the world.
The only two people who mattered.
~~*~*~*~~
“Althea, I was so worried when I couldn’t find you. I didn’t know where you went. One moment you were in the kitchen, the next you had disappeared.” Indeed, Olivia looked pale and distraught as she tagged after her sister. Althea could only hope that her own face was not as red as it felt. “I looked in every room for you. For all I knew, you could have had an accident outside somewhere or been hurt by that—that handyman—”
Althea clutched the length of gray chambray in her arms that she’d fetched from her bedroom. Olivia had become so uncertain and clinging since Jeff Hicks had come to stay. But Olivia had nothing to fear from him—only Althea did, and that was the loss of her own good sense. If her sister hadn’t interrupted, Jeff would have kissed her. And she would have let him.
She carried the fabric to the dining room table. “I had to measure Jeff—Mr. Hicks, that is—for the shirt I need to make him.”
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