Printer In Petticoats

Bedfellows, he almost blurted. “Libel,” he said instead.

She pushed away from the table and stalked out, her behind twitching enticingly.

* * *

At the choir rehearsal that evening, Cole appeared with a bandage wrapped around his hand and an odd gleam in his blue eyes. Jess smothered a stab of regret over her impulsive act at breakfast and concentrated on not biting her lips.

The director clapped her hands for attention, and the singers rose to begin their vocal warm-ups.

“You’re dangerous, you know that?” he whispered when he and Jessamine stood side by side.

“And you,” she murmured, “are insulting.”

“I meant the word bedfellows figuratively speaking,” he intoned.

Jessamine turned away, but she wondered at the niggle of unease that burrowed under her breastbone. 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.

Chapter Seven

“Mr. Sanders?”

Cole kept his gaze on the page proof spread out on his desk. “Hmm? What is it, Noralee?”

“How do you know when you fall in love?”

“What?” His head jerked up. “What did you say?”

Noralee scuffed her leather heels against the bottom rung of her stool. “I said,” she repeated, annoyance coloring her voice, “how do you know when you fall in love?”

Cole stared into his typesetter’s guileless brown eyes. “Well, uh...”

“My sister, Edith, she’s my twin, she says your head goes all fuzzy and your heart doesn’t beat right.”

“She does, does she?”

“Yeah. And she says your hands shake and—”

“Noralee, you shouldn’t believe everything your sister tells you. Just ask yourself, how would she know?”

“Oh, Edith says she knows everything.”

“You believe that?”

Noralee studied the type stick cradled in her palm. “I dunno. That’s why I asked you.”

Cole studied the girl’s earnest face, then let his gaze drift out the front window. How did you know when you fall in love? Talk about a punch straight into his gut. Oh, shoot, he didn’t want to remember.

“Mr. Sanders?”

“Well, um...”

“And don’t tell me you just know. That’s what Ma always says, but I think she says that cuz she doesn’t really know.”

“Why wouldn’t your mother know? She married your father, didn’t she?”

“Yeah, but... But I think she did it just cuz Pa kept askin’ her. Not cuz she was in love. And that’s what Pa thinks, too.”

“Noralee, usually when people get married they care about each other. It might not be all flutters and blushes, but it’s real all the same.”

“How do you know, Mr. Sanders? You ever loved anybody?”

Cole shut his eyes. God yes, he’d loved somebody. And his heart had pounded and his head had gone fuzzy and all the rest. It had been the most earth-shaking thing that had ever happened to him, and he knew right down to the bottom of his boots that he would never, ever forget it.

Or her. He swallowed over a sharp rock lodged in his throat and opened his eyes.

“Well,” he said. He cleared his throat. “Well, I think that, um, you should be sure to take your pulse every morning to check your heartbeat and see if you can remember your multiplication tables to check your brain.”

“Oh.”

“You any good at math?”

“Well, yes, but...”

“Okay, figure me this—how many articles can you typeset in an hour?”

“Depends on how long the articles are.”

“Right. Now, about—”

“You gonna answer my question, Mr. Sanders?” She poked out her lower lip and swung her heel against the stool rung.

“Look, Noralee, I’m not going to lie to you. When you fall in love you’ll feel it in every single part of you, your head, your heart, right down to your big toe. You won’t be able to miss it.”

Her brown eyes widened. “Really? Really and truly?”

“Really and truly.”

“Does it ever go away?”

“No, honey, it doesn’t ever go away. So be careful who you fall in love with, you hear?”

He had to clear his throat again, but it didn’t help. He could see Maryann in that blue gingham dress he loved, coming through the apple orchard as she always did when he worked late on the newspaper, and a sharp ache knifed into his belly.

He wondered if he’d ever be able to think of her without feeling as if he’d been hit over the head with a spiked shovel. Two spiked shovels.

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