“See that it never, never happens again.”
To her surprise, he turned his back on her. “I’ll bring in your sewing machine.” He removed his jacket and began rolling up the sleeves of the starched white shirt he wore underneath. His bare forearms looked so…so…unlike Papa’s. Papa’s hands and his short, plump arms had always been milk-white.
A funny tingle went up the back of her neck. This man’s skin was sun-bronzed, and sinews rippled underneath. Indecent. No proper gentleman in the South ever bared his arms in the presence of a lady.
He grabbed up the mop bucket and moved through the open doorway onto the board sidewalk.
“Never,” she repeated into the silence. Her breathing steadied.
In the next moment he reappeared, balancing her sewing cabinet on one shoulder.
Her head pounded. Her legs trembled. Oh, she wished he would just go away! Go do whatever bankers did at the end of the day.
This is ludicrous, Jane Charlotte. You’d think she had never scrubbed a floor in her life! Here she was shaking with exhaustion, her muscles refusing to obey her commands. And it was all his fault.
“Never,” she repeated under her breath.
“Where do you want this?”
Jane jerked. “What? Oh. There, by the window.”
He bent his knees and tipped his broad shoulder forward. The cabinet legs clunked onto the scrubbed plank floor, and he shoved it gently against the wall and stepped away. She pounced on it with a clean rag, flicking off the veil of dust on top and refusing to look at him.
“Here’s your pattern box,” he announced after his next trip out to the wagon.
She desperately wanted him to stop. She would not be beholden to him.
“And the iron and your button jar. Didn’t know it took so many things just to sew a dress.”
“Didn’t your mother sew?” she snapped. She regretted the words the instant they passed her lips. From what she remembered about Rydell Wilder, he’d lived on his own, without mother or father, ever since he’d come to Dixon Falls as a boy.
“No,” he said, his voice quiet.
Oh, bother. She’d been rude and she was sorry. But she didn’t want his help. His very presence in the tiny store made her thoughts tumble like the bits of colored glass in Aunt Carrie’s brass kaleidoscope. He had touched her. Kissed her. And now he acted as if nothing unusual had occurred.
But it had. She couldn’t get it out of her mind. His mouth had pressed hers, and a sweet, silken warmth kindled in her belly. Back in Marion County, she would be hopelessly compromised by such an event. Out here in this wilderness they called Oregon, one pair of lips touching another didn’t carry the same significance. What an uncivilized place!
It would certainly matter to Papa. Papa would have Mr. Wilder horsewhipped or betrothed within the hour. But Papa was gone.
And so the significance of being kissed by Mr. Wilder, or lack of significance, is up to you, Jane Charlotte.
Oh, she couldn’t think a bit straight. She was so tired she knew if she took a single step she would totter just like Granny Beaudry. Her grandmother had been near eighty when they left Marion County; at the moment, Jane felt nearly as old and just as frail. She’d worked too long without stopping to rest. Had eaten nothing since her meager breakfast of toast and tea.
Had felt decidedly wobbly ever since Rydell Wilder had kissed her. All she wanted to do now was get him out of the store, away from her.
“I will arrange the chairs and the dressmaker’s mannequin later,” she announced. “Thank you, Mr. Wilder, and good afternoon.”
He straightened. “Whatever you say, Miss Davis. Lefty’ll come by tomorrow, see if you need anything. He’s pretty handy, even if he has only one good arm. Sensitive about it, though.”
“It will be a relief to have him instead of…I mean—”
Rydell chuckled. “Got your brain tied up some, I’d say.”
Jane sucked in a quick breath. “Whatever do you mean?”
“All of a sudden, your tongue doesn’t quite know which way to flap.” He grinned at her. “That’s not like you.”
“Just what gives you a harum-scarum idea like that?”
“Instinct, I guess. Woman savvy. Either you don’t like me…” His grin widened. “Or my kissing you meant something.”
Two thoughts collided in her brain at the same instant. One, she hated him. Two, she liked the kiss. “I believe,” she said with all the ice she could muster in her tone, “the former statement will suffice to explain why I want you to depart before I—”
“Talk plain English, Jane. This is the frontier, not a parlor.”
“Out,” she snapped. She snatched up the broom and whacked it across his knees. “Out!” Fury gave her the strength for two more blows before he backed out the doorway, still grinning. She heard his lazy laughter as he climbed into the wagon and rattled off down the street.
Jane leaned against the broom handle to steady her shaking body. Even if she was a lady, the next time that man kissed her, or touched her, or even looked at her sideways, she would kill him! She had no time for such nonsense; she had work to do. Dresses to sew. A loan to pay back.
She propped the broom in the corner, swiped her dust rag over the sewing cabinet one last time, and surveyed the rudimentary beginnings of her new life. Rough, uncultured town and Mr. Rydell Wilder be damned. She would succeed or she would die trying.
“You mean you jes’ grabbed her and bussed her, right there in front of the store window? Lord love ya, Dell, you’re gonna scare the bejeesus outta the lady.”
Rydell watched his friend hobble to the potbellied stove in the corner and splash more hot coffee into his mug. “She didn’t act scared, Lefty. She acted more like she’d been poleaxed. Truth is, I don’t know exactly what came over me.”
“You’re the one that’s poleaxed. What were you thinkin’ of, fer God’s sake?”
Rydell shifted on the hard wooden chair, the only available seat in the tidy one-room cabin Lefty Springer called home. The older man occupied the neatly made-up cot on the opposite wall.
“I wasn’t thinking.”
“Well, I guess not, son! Like I said, all you have to do is stand still and wait. Don’t push her—ladies like Miz Jane may look soft, but they can be stubborn as a mule and twice as skittish.”
Rydell sipped the black sludge his friend called coffee and nodded in silence.
“Somethin’s eatin’ at you, Dell. I seen it right off.”
Again Rydell nodded. He’d fought his way to acceptance, and then respectability, in this small, close-minded town, overcome his background, his lack of education and polished manners.
