The Hired Man

She watched with misgivings. Piecrust was hard to get just right. Adding too much water made it tough; adding too little made the crust crumble into nothing when you tried to roll it out.

Cord scooped two cups of flour out of the barrel and dropped in a palm-size lump of her just-churned butter. She didn’t really believe he knew what he was doing, but his motions were decisive. He was even humming! Well, maybe he did know and maybe he didn’t, she sniffed. The proof would be in the pudding. Or the pie, she amended.

Part of her hoped he would fail, that his crust would turn out tough and the apples mushy. Another part of her admired him, a rugged-looking man too tall for her low-ceilinged kitchen, for even attempting to bake a pie. And, she thought, studying her two children absorbed in their apple peeling and slicing, Molly and Daniel were certainly learning something new! Not only that, she acknowledged, they weren’t squirming or whining to go play outside.

Cord must have threatened them with something. In just two days, this man who’d ridden in from God knows where, and about whom she knew absolutely nothing, had tamed her over-curious son and her lively daughter, and that was a miracle if there ever was one.

She trusted Cord Winterman, and she had to wonder why. She was no green girl, one who was easily bowled over by a handsome face and skill with a hammer. In all the years she’d been alone, she had never hungered for male company. She knew this was a source of gossip and speculation on the part of the townspeople, and it was definitely cause for frustration on the part of the parade of men who brought supplies and mail and news from town and dropped broad hints about staying for supper. None of them had ever set foot in her kitchen, or sat at her supper table, or anywhere else inside the house. She wasn’t interested, and until this moment she had never wondered why.

Isaiah, the old hired man she’d had for years, had rarely even spoken to her children, let alone taught them anything. Isaiah had been lazy and inept and dull-witted, but she’d been desperate for help and for all his shortcomings, she had trusted him around Danny and Molly. When the crotchety old man had moved on, she wasn’t sorry, but then she’d fallen ill.

But this man, Cord Winterman, was a different kind of fish. He made her children sit up and take notice. He made her sit up and take notice. He made her wonder about things. Why, for instance, was he content to work as just a hired man when it was plain he was capable of so much more? Where had he come from? Where was he going? She should have demanded answers to these questions, but somehow when he had appeared at her front door, all the questions had flown out of her head.

She watched him sprinkle flour over the breadboard, divide his pie dough into four equal parts and search for her rolling pin. So he was making not just one but two pies!

The man knew his way around a kitchen, and she couldn’t help but wonder whose kitchen it had been in his past.

He let Danny and then Molly try their hand at rolling out the crust. Then he took over, rolled it thin and expertly laid it in the tin pie pan. He showed Danny again how to roll out the next bottom crust, and then they all heaped in handfuls of sliced apples and brown sugar. Brown sugar? She never used brown sugar in apple pie! And then he added bits of butter and...cheese? Cheese! Whatever was he thinking?

When he slashed the top crusts and slid the filled tins into the oven, the children clapped their hands and Cord half turned toward her. A flour smudge marked one cheek and his apron was spotted with something, but he sent her a grin that curled her toes. Even from here she could see the triumphant light in those unnervingly blue eyes.

Suddenly she wished she had some whiskey in her coffee cup.

Chapter Five

Cord knew she was watching his every move, assessing him, judging him. Eleanor resented his presence in her kitchen, rooting around in her pantry and in the cutlery drawers. But she wanted an apple pie, didn’t she? If there was one thing he’d learned in this life, it was that you don’t get something for nothing. No rooting around in a pantry, no apple pie.

He worked on, trying to ignore her, and trying to ignore the undercurrent of pleasure he felt knowing that her eyes were following every move he made. It made his chest feel as hot inside as he felt outside in the stifling kitchen with the roaring fire in the stove heating up the oven.

While the pies baked, the children drifted out the back door to play in the yard and Cord warmed up the coffee, poured two cups and carried them into the parlor, where Eleanor sat.

She looked up at him with a strange expression on her pale face. He sucked in his breath and waited.

“You’re not just a hired man, are you?” she said. “I mean, that’s not what you did before I hired you, is it?”

“I’m a hired man here,” he said carefully. “I’m not sure what I’d be somewhere else.”

She reached for his offered cup of coffee, then glanced up again. “Do you have plans for ‘somewhere else’?”

He gave her such a long look that she lowered her eyes.

“I 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 sent Eleanor an inquiring look, and she nodded.

“Then later I’ll measure you again, and you can see how much you’ve grown. How about it?”

Molly’s eyes sparkled. “Can we do it right now?”

“Sure.” He caught Eleanor’s eye. “You got a tape measure handy?”

“It’s upstairs in my bedroom. But—”

“I’ll get it,” Cord said. Eleanor had looked peaked all afternoon and during supper she’d seemed short of breath. “Where is it, exactly?”

“It’s in my top dresser drawer. Molly can show you, but she’s too short to reach it.”

Cord followed the girl as she scampered up the stairs. He’d been in Eleanor’s bedroom only once, the day she’d almost fainted and he’d carried her upstairs.

Molly banged the door open and streaked toward the walnut chest standing against the far wall. “Up there.” She pointed to the top drawer.

Something about being here made him nervous. Too private, maybe? Too...female?

Carefully he pulled the drawer open. Her possessions were all neatly arranged, lacy handkerchiefs, a red knit hat and two blue silky-looking scarves. No jewelry, he noted. He wanted in the worst way to open the second drawer. Maybe he’d find some of her smallclothes, drawers or chemises, or a sheer nightgown. Nah. Eleanor wouldn’t wear a sheer nightgown.

Or would she?

Concentrate on the tape measure, man.

He gingerly laid one finger on the tumble of scarves and pushed one aside, looking for the tape. But what he uncovered instead was a framed daguerreotype. A man and a woman, apparently on their wedding day. A long veil fell below her slim shoulders. She was not smiling.

His gut clenched. What made a woman not smile on her wedding day? He wished he hadn’t seen it.

Molly danced at his side. “Didja find it?”

He pushed the photograph to one side and there underneath it lay a neatly coiled measuring tape. “Got it.” Reluctantly he pushed the drawer shut.

Molly darted out the door and down the stairs. “Measure me! Measure me!”

While Eleanor and Danny washed up the supper dishes, Cord lined Molly up against the door frame and made a pencil mark for her height. “You’re thirty-two inches tall,” he announced.

“Now do me,” Danny insisted. He dried his hands on the dish towel, marched to the back door and stood at attention. Cord dutifully marked his height and turned to Eleanor.

“How tall are you, Miz Malloy?”

“Why, I have no idea.”

“Shall I measure you?”

“Oh, I don’t think—”

“Aw, come on, Ma, do it!” Danny ordered.

Obediently Eleanor moved to the back door and straightened her spine against the frame. She sent him a self-conscious look and closed her eyes.

Closed her eyes? Why in hell would she close her eyes?

He snapped the length of measuring tape in his two hands, moved toward her and stopped. He couldn’t lay the tape against Eleanor’s body. He didn’t trust his hands anywhere near her. They were already shaking and he wasn’t anywhere close to her.

“You’d better hurry up, Cord,” she said. “You and Molly have to dry the dishes.”

He swallowed. “Right. Open your eyes and turn around, Eleanor. Face the door and put your nose right up against the wood.”

She obeyed, and he ran the tape from the back of her work boot, over the curve of her hip and along her upper spine to the top of her head. “Okay, now step away.”

She ducked under his hand and moved back a step while he made a pencil mark on the door frame. Next to it he inscribed her initials. E.M.

“Now you!” Danny insisted.

Before he could refuse, Eleanor snatched the tape measure out of his hand. “Stand up against the door,” she ordered.

“Front or back?” he asked. Wait a minute. The thought of her touching him anywhere near his groin was unnerving. He turned toward the door and put his back to her.

He felt her touch his ankle, felt the tape slide along the back of his jeans and then over his butt. He stopped breathing.

Then her hand skimmed up his spine to his neck, and he couldn’t help the shiver that shook him.

Suddenly she stopped. “The tape measure’s not long enough,” she announced.

Cord said a silent prayer of thanks. Her every touch was arousing. Actually, he didn’t dare turn around just yet because his groin was engorged and...well...active.

“How tall is Cord?” Molly asked.

“Over six feet,” Eleanor said.

“Golly,” Danny breathed. “Do you think I’ll be that tall when I’m all growed up?”

Eleanor wound the tape into a tight coil and slipped it into her apron pocket. “I don’t think so, Danny. Your father was...” She stopped abruptly. “Shorter than Cord,” she continued. “So chances are you will be—”

“Tall enough,” Cord interrupted. “Tall enough to be a really good rider.”

The boy’s gray-blue eyes widened. “Really honest?”

“Yeah, really honest.” He caught Eleanor’s gaze. She was shaking her head no.

“I don’t want Danny riding a horse yet. There’s been no one to teach him, and besides, he’s too young.”

Cord stepped away from the doorway and surreptitiously adjusted his jeans. “He’s not too young, Eleanor. I’ve been riding since I was five years old.”

She bit her lip. “I still don’t think—”

“Please, Ma?” Danny yelped. “I’ll do all the dishes every night for a month, I promise.”

Cord laid his hand on the boy’s shoulder and squeezed lightly. Then he turned to Molly.

“Come on, Molly. I guess it’s up to us to dry the supper dishes.”

Chapter Six

“You ever think you’d like to eat pie for breakfast?” Cord asked the next morning.

“Yes!” Molly and Daniel shouted in unison.

“No,” Eleanor said decisively.

Cord shrugged and watched her crack eggs into the skillet. “Apple pie is not a proper breakfast for growing children,” she pronounced in a no-nonsense tone.

“Aw, Ma,” Danny moaned. “I’m sick of eggs.”

“Eggs,” their mother said with an edge in her voice, “are what civilized people eat for breakfast.”

Both children dawdled through the meal of fried eggs and bacon, and suddenly Cord realized why they were eating so slowly. It was Monday, a school day for Danny.

An hour later the grumbling boy hoisted his satchel over his shoulder and plodded out the front door. Molly moped around the yard petting the chickens until her brother trudged back through the gate late that afternoon.

“Danny, you know maybe you could ride my bay mare to school,” Cord remarked casually. “I could teach you to ride.”

“Nah. Ma won’t let me. You heard her. She says a horse is dangerous. Besides, you said it was too much horse for me.”

“It is dangerous if you don’t know how to handle a horse. You ever been on a horse?”

Danny shook his head.

“How long does it take you to walk to school?”

“Most of an hour. It’s over three miles.”

Cord nodded. He’d like to see the boy get to and from school faster, if only because Molly was always underfoot when her brother was gone. An extra hour morning and evening could be well spent if Danny was around to entertain the girl.

After supper that night Cord again raised the subject with Eleanor.

“Absolutely not,” she said shortly. “He’s too young to manage a big animal like that.”

“He’s not too young, Eleanor. I told you I learned to ride when I was younger than Molly.”

“Then your mother was a fool.”

“My mother was dead. My father was the fool, but he taught me to ride anyway. And hunt and read and write. He even taught me to dance a Virginia reel.”

Eleanor’s face changed. “Did he really? How extraordinary!”

“He also taught me how to repair a barn roof, which is what I’m going to do tomorrow. Unless,” he added, “you have something else that needs doing.”

“Does the barn roof really need fixing?”

“It does. The holes are so big, at night I can look up and see the stars. Come winter it’ll leak like a sieve.”

“I take it that you are sleeping up in the loft?”

“Yeah.” He sighed. “Along with Mama Cat and her kittens.”

“I think Isaiah slept in one of the horse stalls. He wouldn’t climb the ladder up to the loft. He said it made him light-headed.”

Cord chuckled. “Then he never knew about the holes in the roof, did he? Or about Mama Cat?”

“Oh, very well,” she said with a laugh. “Fix the barn roof. I certainly wouldn’t want a wet cat and kittens when the winter rains come.”

She stood up, untied her apron and hung it on the hook by the stove. “Thank you for making those pies, Cord.” She hesitated. “A man who can not only bake a pie and dance a Virginia reel but repair barn roofs is certainly rare in my book.”

Cord thought about her remark all the rest of that day. Rare, huh? He’d been called a lot of things in his life, but “rare” wasn’t one of them. Still, he thought with a smile, a man liked a compliment now and then, didn’t he?

* * *

It was Saturday, Danny’s School Night. All day the boy moped around the yard with such a long face Eleanor wondered if he was sick. Finally she couldn’t stand it any longer and set aside the basket of green peas she was shelling and stood up on the back porch step. “Danny, are you feeling all right?”

“Sure, Ma. I guess so. Got something flutterin’ around in my belly is all.”

Cord looked up from the chicken house, where he was nailing a new roost in place. “Butterflies, huh?”

“Guess so,” the boy muttered.

“You have to give a speech or something? That can make a man plenty nervous.”

Danny perked up at the word man and sent her hired man a pained look. “Yeah. I gotta recite the Bill of Rights from memory and give a speech about it.”

“Hey, just yesterday you wanted to be ‘all growed up’ so your ma would let you ride a horse,” Cord reminded him. “Part of gettin’ there—” he shot Eleanor a look “—is, uh, standing up to those things that are hard.”

“Like giving a speech?” Danny muttered.

“Yeah, like giving a speech.”

Eleanor sat back down on the step and again started shelling peas. Cord made a good deal of sense at times.

And then her hired man opened his mouth and spoiled it. “Believe me,” Cord called from the chicken house, “you’re gonna find ridin’ a horse easy after makin’ a speech in public.”

Her son’s eyes lit up. “Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Cord said.

“No,” Eleanor countered. “No horse-riding. Not yet.”

Cord pounded another nail into the chicken roost, tossed the hammer to Danny and strode across the yard toward her. But instead of starting an argument with her, he asked about her daughter. “Where’s Molly?”

“She’s in the barn, playing with those kittens.”

“She’s not near the horse stalls, is she? Or up in the loft?”

“She is not allowed up in the loft, Cord. I don’t want her falling off that narrow little ladder. And she’s scared to death of horses.”

“But you trust her, right? She’s sensible enough not to get hurt.”

“Well, yes. But...”

“Ma,” Danny called, his voice plaintive. “Do I really have to go to School Night?”

“Yes,” both she and Cord said together. “You really do. Now, go find Molly and both of you wash up for supper.”

Thankfully, Cord kept his mouth shut about horses and riding all through her supper of creamed peas on biscuits. When she shooed the children upstairs to put on clean clothes, Cord went out to the barn to hitch up the wagon.

Upstairs in her bedroom, Eleanor quickly sponged off her face and neck and donned her blue gingham day dress. She was the last to descend the front porch steps.

She felt as nervous as Danny. All her life she had disliked public gatherings. Her mother had criticized her for being shy, but Eleanor knew better. She was not just shy; she was frightened of people, especially crowds of people. Somehow she felt she never “measured up,” in her mother’s words.