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.
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