LITMIR.BIZ

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was planning to go to California, to the gold fields.”

      “What stopped you?”

      He didn’t answer for a long time, just focused his gaze out the window on the apple orchard. “To be honest, I wouldn’t have stopped here if I hadn’t been so hungry, even though I’d seen your advert in town. But then I came up on that little hill and saw all those apple trees covered with lacy white blossoms. Kinda made my heart feel funny, so I stopped and...well, you know the rest.”

      She paused with her cup halfway to her mouth. “How long will you stay?”

      “It’s April now,” he said slowly. “I thought I’d give it five months, say ’til August, before I move on.”

      “Very good. Doc Dougherty tells me I should be completely well and strong long before August.”

      “Yeah? You gonna chop wood and hitch up the horse and drive that wagon to town and muck out your barn by yourself? You need some help out here, ma’am. Even if I’m not going to be here, you should have a hired man to help out.”

      She gave him a half smile and sipped her coffee for a full minute before she spoke. “I chopped wood and mucked out the barn before I fell ill, Mr. Winterman. I have been on my own here for almost seven years, ever since Molly was born.”

      Cord studied her. Her cheeks were getting pink. “It’s too hard for a woman alone. That’s most likely why you got sick.”

      “That is pure nonsense. I got sick because I fell in the creek while I was chasing the cow and took a chill. A week later it turned into pneumonia.”

      He stood up suddenly. Dammit, he didn’t want to concern himself with her well-being. He didn’t want to like her kids, and he didn’t want to like her. But he did. And he had to admit it scared the hell out of him.

      “Think I’ll check on the pies,” he growled. He moved into the kitchen and bent over the oven door, and when he returned he brought the coffeepot and filled her cup. He didn’t look at her. But he did ask the question that had been niggling in the back of his mind.

      “Do you and your husband own this place free and clear?”

      “I own it. I removed Tom’s name from the deed when he...when he left home to go off to war. It’s been seven years now, and he is considered legally dead.”

      “You said you had a hired man before you hired me.”

      “Yes. Isaiah. As I told you, he didn’t do much.”

      “Why’d you keep him, then?”

      “He needed a place to stay and I needed someone to help about the farm. Molly was just a baby then, and Danny was too little to be much help.”

      “How’d you manage after this hired man, Isaiah, left?”

      “I managed,” she said in a quiet voice.

      “And then you got sick,” he observed dryly.

      She took a swallow of her coffee. “Well, yes I did. Doc Dougherty came, and he sent a woman out from town, Helen, I think her name was, to nurse me and take care of Molly and Daniel. She stayed until I was strong enough to get out of bed. I am growing stronger with every day that passes.”

      “Mrs. Malloy. Eleanor,” he amended. “Seems to me you’re just hangin’ on by a thread. You’ve got two kids. You owe it to them to take better care of yourself. That means no more milking and no chopping wood.”

      She pressed her lips into a thin line but said nothing.

      Cord studied the rigid set of her shoulders and the white-knuckled grip she had on the handle of her china cup. “I get the feeling you don’t take orders too well.”

      She gave him a wobbly smile. “You are most likely correct. I was a great trial to my parents.”

      That made him laugh out loud. “I bet you’re still plenty stubborn when it comes to doing things your own way.”

      “Oh, maybe just a little.” Her cheeks turned an even deeper shade of rose.

      “Maybe you’re more than a little stubborn,” he said. “Maybe a lot stubborn.”

      “Oh, all right, maybe I’m a lot stubborn.” By now her cheeks were flushed scarlet. “Now that you’re here, I will take better care of myself. Especially,” she said with a little bubble of laughter, “since you can bake an apple pie. Which,” she added with an impish grin, “you have quite forgotten is still in the oven.”

      Instantly he wheeled away from her and strode into the kitchen. The pies were not burned, as he had feared, just nicely baked. He grabbed potholders and lifted them out of the oven. Oh, man, they looked just right, golden brown on top with rich juice bubbling out the vents he’d slashed in the crust. They smelled wonderful! He was damn proud of them.

      Eleanor followed him into the kitchen, cup and saucer still in her hand. “Who taught you to make a pie? Your mother?”

      “No,” he said shortly.

      She looked at him with another question in her eyes, but he ignored it. Best not to dig around in those long-past years. No good ever came from opening a wound that had healed over.

      He set both pies on the open windowsill to cool and stacked the mixing bowl and the paring knives in the sink for the kids to wash up after supper. Eleanor returned to the parlor, where she curled up on the settee and gazed out the front window.

      “You don’t like talking to me, do you?” she asked suddenly.

      Whoa, Nelly. How’d she figure that?

      “Why is that?” she pursued, her eyes on his face.

      “Guess I haven’t been around many ladies lately.”

      “Silence is perfectly all right with me,” she went on. “I spent years and years not being talked to.”

      She closed her eyes against the late-afternoon sun’s glare, and that gave him a chance to really look at her. Her lids were purplish with blue-black smudges shadowing her eyes. She might not be sick anymore, but she was obviously exhausted.

      So even if she was as stubborn as three ornery mules, now she had a hired man to help her. He drew in a long, quiet breath. For the first time in longer than he could remember he felt needed.

      And that, he thought with a silent groan, made him nervous.

      * * *

      The kids raced through their supper of biscuits and something Eleanor called bean stew, which as near as he could figure out was last night’s baked beans with cut-up carrots and potatoes added. Tasted good, though.

      His apple pie was received with oohs and aahs. Even Eleanor wanted a second piece.

      “Ma, Miz Panovsky says we’re gonna have Student Night at school on Saturday.”

      Eleanor looked up from the table. “Oh?”

      “You gonna come? You were too sick the last time.”

      “Well, yes,” she said quickly. “Of course I’m going to come, Danny. I’m much stronger now.”

      Cord thought the boy looked somewhat unsettled at that.

      “What about me?” Molly wailed. “When do I get to go to school?”

      “As soon as you’re big enough, honey.”

      “But I’m big now!”

      “Molly, you’re still too young to walk three miles to town and then three miles back home, and you’re too little to ride a horse.”

      Her face scrunched up. “When will I be big enough?”

      Cord stood up suddenly. “How ’bout I measure you, see how tall you are? We can make a mark on the back door frame.” He

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