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“Dahlias,” Eve insisted.
Lorna smiled, the sound of the Aunties’ incessant quarrels as familiar and comforting as a mother’s kiss.
It was heading toward the day’s darkening hour when the aunts said their goodbyes, Eve adding admonishments and Birdy shiny eyed, looking at Lorna with silent entreaty. Lorna kissed them both, promising to see them soon, and hurried back to the house. She’d find her new employee after she figured out what she would do about supper. Foreman. What had possessed her? He’d want a raise now before he did a day’s work. Well, he’d just have to be satisfied with the title.
She opened the yellowed refrigerator. Maybe if she cooked him a great meal, he’d forget about wages. But what could she cook him? She’d taken nothing out, not expecting to have to feed anyone except herself and her appetite tending toward the odd lately. She looked in the small freezer. There was a steak—not T-bone but not chuck either. She could add some fried onions, perhaps a potato or two if they hadn’t gone and sprouted in the pantry closet bin. And there was that bread-making machine she’d bought on sale right after her elopement. Six weeks later she’d been a widow. Never even had time to get the machine out of the box.
She bent down to the bottom cupboard and found the bread maker behind the stacked bowls and glass casserole dishes. She slid it out, took it from the box and set it on the speckled counter. It was so white in this old kitchen. She stepped back. She should rough up those cupboards, paint them cantaloupe. She could already picture the faux wood doors gone, their dark surfaces replaced with an orange good enough to eat. She lay her palms soft to her stomach. Her late husband had been a cad, and she’d most definitely been an even bigger fool, so starved to hear the words “I love you,” she believed the first man who’d uttered them. Yet, as she’d told her aunts, her mistakes had brought her here. Now she just had to remember the lessons she’d learned, the vows she’d made. She moved back to the counter to start supper. One glance at Julius Holt with his cocksure grin and easy laughter in his eyes and she’d remember just fine.
THE BACK OF THE HOUSE SAGGED and wood showed bare where a piece of siding had ripped off and never been replaced. Julius stomped up the stairs, noting with disgust the second and third ones were loose. Enough work around this sorry place for ten men. But as he reached the back door, he smelled a bakery. Through the door’s window, he saw Lorna standing at the stove, her stern gaze turned to the sound of his heavy steps. Still surprise flashed in her eyes, as if she hadn’t expected him. He understood. He was just as surprised to find himself still here. With a queenly wave, she motioned him to come in.
He opened the door into a kitchen that smelled of sweet heaven, the aroma of baking bread as thick as hay ready for cutting. He stood at the entrance on a brightly woven square of rug that he knew had to be Lorna’s touch.
“Your company’s gone?” He noted the linoleum was lifting in one corner.
She nodded and glanced at the clock over the refrigerator. “Supper’s at five-fifteen. You’re early.” There was no surprise in her eyes this time. Only a scolding in her voice that made him smile. She turned her narrow back to his grin. She was a prickly one, all right. Man could hurt himself on all those sharp bones and hard lengths.
“So you meant it when you said I was the new foreman?”
“I always say what I mean, Mr. Holt,” she told him without turning around.
“So that’s the secret of your charm?”
She moved briskly from the stove to the sink, her profile unsmiling. “Might be a good time to bring your things into where you’ll be staying. Did you see the trailer not far from the barns? It’s open, been aired out. The water’s turned on—”
“Hold up there. I don’t remember exactly taking the job.” His investigation had revealed the farm was in a sorrier state than he’d thought—broken equipment, a rusting tractor, roofs that looked like they leaked, apple boxes so old the pine was splintering away from the nails. It’d be backbreaking hard work getting this place up and running again with no help except for a woman with a hard spine and soft gray-green eyes who thought she could become a farmer by sitting in her front parlor reading.
Lorna turned on the water. “It was my impression we came to an agreement, Mr. Holt.”
“It was my impression you hired me, then fired me faster than rabbits reproduce.”
“Then I hired you again.” Her voice was calm as a country morning, but she was scrubbing her hands too hard, too long.
“This place is in pretty sad shape.”
She turned off the water, shook out a towel, swiped at the water splatters on the sink’s edge. “Are you afraid of hard work, Mr. Holt?”
“No, ma’am. Work hard, play hard. That’s my belief. Keeps life interesting.” It also kept a person from thinking far into the night, remembering things better off buried.
She twisted the towel. “All right, seven thirty-five an hour.”
“Ten dollars.”
She wrung the towel. “Seven-fifty.”
“Eight.”
“Seventy seventy-five but not a cent more, and be sure you’ll earn every penny of it.”
“Plus the bonus at the season’s end,” he reminded.
She slapped the towel onto the counter. He smiled.
“Plus the bonus at the season’s end. That’s my final offer, Mr. Holt.” She flung up the lid of a bulky-shaped, bright white appliance. “If you prefer to pursue opportunities elsewhere, that, of course, is your prerogative.” She lifted out a loaf of perfect bread, brown, smooth crowned, the smell alone enough to make a man give thanks. She set it on a wire rack. “I wish you good luck and Godspeed.”
That loaf of bread. His grandmother had made bread like that. And pies. Oh Lord, his grandma’s pies. He could still see her, standing in a kitchen as old and dingy as this, her hard-knuckled hands cutting the lard into the flour, giving the bowl a quarter turn, cutting straight in again until the dough formed into soft crumbs. In late spring, there’d be rhubarb. Blueberry and peach would follow in the summer; apple and squash in the fall. His mother had been warned early in her marriage to stay out of her mother-in-law’s kitchen, which suited her just fine since she had never been one much for cooking anyway. When they moved out West, whenever his father had mentioned pies, his mother had always declared she’d go to her grave without ever making a pie. She had, too. After his father had died, she’d pretty much stopped cooking altogether.
“Do you make pies?”
“This isn’t a diner, Mr. Holt.”
He smiled, the smell of the fresh bread sweet as a woman. He looked at Lorna, drawn up tight beneath her loose clothes. Even her high-and-mighty gaze couldn’t take away the pleasure of that fresh bread. He breathed in deeply.
She paused a moment before turning back to the counter. “I’ll get you clean sheets after supper…if you’re staying.”
Out the window the sun was making its way home. He smelled the bread, could feel those clean, fresh sheets. He would stay tonight. What he would do tomorrow, he’d decide, as always, when tomorrow came. “I’ll stay.” He turned to go.
“Did you mean what you said earlier?”
He looked at her over his shoulder.
“About the soil being rich, and our yields being the envy of other farmers? Or were you just saying that for the Aunties’ benefit?”
Her expression stayed neutral, but beneath the careful tone of her voice, he heard the low leavening of hope. He remembered the hurt in her eyes earlier when she talked of the gossip about her. Yes, he’d said those things then for her aunts’ benefit, but for her benefit also. Now he saw she needed to believe. And maybe, just maybe, he needed to believe a little, too. For both their benefits—hers and his—he said, “Seeds are no more than possibilities, Mrs. O’Reilly. Plant them, and anything is possible.”
He opened the door. She cleared her throat. He glanced back once more.
“Thank you.” The gratitude was so quiet and right in her voice, she turned away to the counter.
“You’re welcome,” he replied, his voice without overtones. He was still shaking his head when he reached his truck. A raise and a thank-you. Beneath that buttoned-up, tight-lipped exterior, the widow wasn’t going soft around the edges on him, was she?
“Naw,” he told the listening land. It’d take a lot more than an extra seventy-five cents an hour and a weak moment to prove the widow wasn’t wound tighter than a fisherman’s favorite reel. He gave a chuckle as he gathered his duffel bag. He left his sleeping bag stored in the narrow space behind the front seat. Tonight he’d have clean sheets, the thought alone bringing him enjoyment.
He started back across the yard. He couldn’t say what tomorrow would bring, never could, but tonight he’d have a roof over his head, smooth sheets, a belly full of warm, fresh bread…and a promise of land. He looked at the fields’ gentle curves, the trees waiting for new growth, the light coloring the sky. All was possibility.
No, he couldn’t say what tomorrow would bring but, for tonight, he was here in Hope.
Chapter Three
Hell, he was late. He had gone to the trailer. Its rooms were narrow, and his head just missed the ceiling. But the bathroom boasted a stand-up shower with a Plexiglas door, and the bed on a bare metal frame was a double, not long enough for his length but big enough for his width. He’d dumped his bag next to the bed. A tall, plain dresser stood against one wall, but he didn’t unpack. He never unpacked. He’d stretched out on the mattress, finding it surprisingly, pleasantly firm. He had closed his eyes, enjoying the support of the mattress, the ease of his muscles. He hadn’t meant to take a nap. Now it was six thirty-five. He was an hour and twenty minutes late. Hell.
Still he forced himself to stop, catch his breath before he rounded the corner and reached the long length of yard where he could be seen from the house. He crossed the lawn, walking fast but not fast enough to show he was worried. He climbed the steps two at a time. Through the back-door window, he saw Lorna standing at the sink. She didn’t look happy as she scrubbed an iron frying pan. He debated the wisdom of facing an angry woman with a weapon in her hand.
He chuckled low. He was the one going soft around the edges. He was late. That’s all. It wasn’t a felony.
He rapped on the glass, then opened the door without waiting for permission.
Her gaze shot to him, went back to the frying pan. “Dinner was at five-fifteen, Mr. Holt.”
Whatever sliver of favor Lorna had found with him earlier was gone. “I had good intentions of—”
“The road to hell is paved with good intentions, Mr. Holt.” She gripped the frying pan, scrubbing so hard her entire body twitched. He watched her scrubbing and twitching, her chin thrust out, her lips taut. He burst out laughing.
She spun around, soap bubbles and water spraying, and glared at him. “You find rudeness and complete disregard for rules amusing, Mr. Holt?”
Lord, she was more rigid than a cold corpse. Such control when she was about to split at the seams any second. Grinning, he stared at this ramrod of a woman. Was it the sheer challenge of her or the surprising glimpses of softness he’d witnessed earlier? Maybe it was her ironclad control that fascinated him—a man whose own lack of restraint had ruined his life…and taken another’s. He wasn’t certain, but he had to admit that this woman with her odd affections and strict routines and hints of humanness intrigued him as much as she chaffed at his well-developed good nature.
He let his smile go soft and lazy. “Call me Julius, darling.”
Anger drained what little color she had. Her lips pressed into a hard white line. “Supper is over, Mr. Holt. Breakfast is at five.”
He noticed the loaf of bread now wrapped in cellophane on the counter. When he looked back, he saw a thin triumph in those eyes gone the gray of thunderclouds. He would listen to his stomach rumble all night before he asked her for so much as a crust.
Then, as she was apt to do right when he thought he had her all figured out, she sighed and said, “Would you like a slice of bread, Mr. Holt?”
She was a puzzle all right. He glanced again at the bread. His stomach said yes but his pride said no. He didn’t need Miss High-and-Mighty’s charity.
He patted his flat stomach. “Actually I’ve been trying to cut back on my carbs.”
Maybe it was the ridiculousness of his reply. Maybe it was the recognition of his pigheaded pride, as stubborn and strong as her own. Again Julius didn’t know, but then, if he wouldn’t be darned, Lorna’s tightly pressed lips relented and a genuine, amused laugh came from between them. His prediction had been right—Lorna O’Reilly’s laughter did sound pretty. He stared at her. This lady was a complete mystery.
She picked up the dishcloth again. “Kitchen’s closing, Mr. Holt. And I have some reading I’m anxious to get to.”
“On how to be a farmer, Mrs. O’Reilly?” He couldn’t resist.
She rinsed the frying pan and set it carefully in the drainer. She unplugged the sink, wrung out the striped dishcloth and folded it neatly. Finally she faced him, her hands clasped at her waist. “I intend to make this farm a success, Mr. Holt. With or without you.”
“Well, Mrs. O’Reilly—” he scratched his chest as he stared at her “—the jury’s still out on that one.” He turned and left.
AS SOON AS THE DOOR CLOSED, Lorna marched over and locked it. She told herself not to watch him, but she stood there even after his broad, tall figure disappeared around the corner. Inside her, she still heard his rich laughter. Her hands tightened on the door-knob. She looked down to their betraying grasp. They were raw knuckled, red and dry from the dishwater. A spinster’s hands, she thought. She had been married, widowed, but her heart had turned cold in the process. Now she had a spinster’s hands…and a spinster’s soul. She pushed back the sadness that tried to creep in.
She knew Julius Holt, with his deep laughter and easy ways, saw only a dried-up shell of a woman. But she hadn’t always been so self-controlled, so inflexible and rigid that she ground her teeth in her sleep. For a long time, she’d had no will at all and such a low sense of self, she’d done whatever her father deemed best. Then, for a brief time, she’d smiled all the time and walked with such a dance in her step, she’d barely felt her feet hit the ground. She’d been as foolish then as before, letting sweet lies and skilled kisses turn her silly though she’d known she was too tall and rawboned to be called pretty, too brash and efficient in manner to be alluring. Still she’d actually believed her handsome late husband had married her for love instead of the McDonough money. Her father had snorted she had acted just like a “woman.” She’d been doubly humiliated when he’d been proved right.
The darkness was becoming heavier, blending shapes and shadows. But, in her mind, she still saw Julius with his heavy-lidded, dangerously blue eyes that seemed to look straight through to her soul—her spinster’s soul—as if he too knew the longing and loneliness that lived there. The day hadn’t even been done when the low roll of his laughter had caught her with a wash of warmness.
Already he made her feel something other than wariness and fear and vigilant control. He made her feel what she’d vowed she’d never let another human being make her feel again. Vulnerable.
She closed her eyes, leaned her forehead to the cool glass. The hell of it was Julius Holt was perfect for her purpose. Not only was he a larger-than-life reminder of her past foolishness, but he also had the knowledge, the experience and the sheer brute strength she needed to succeed. She pressed her hand to her middle. She had to succeed.
She’d cut out her tongue before she’d admit it, but she needed Julius Holt.
Behind her closed eyes, she once more saw Julius’s infuriating smile, those eyes like a starry night. And even as she gritted her teeth and fisted her hands, she heard the tiny prayer inside her. Please stay.
JULIUS WAS ON the back steps at four-thirty the next morning, smiling smugly as he enjoyed the gray ice sky of pale stars. He didn’t know if it was his empty stomach or his need to show up the schoolmarm that’d led him here at this ungodly hour, but whatever it was, now that he was here, surrounded by the dawn’s brittle dreamscape, he was glad.
He glanced at his watch. Four forty-five and still the house behind him was dark and silent. Wouldn’t that be something if Mother Superior was late? He smiled, even though he knew it was an impossibility.
He was waiting for the sky’s first streaks of blue, although the throbbing in his knee told him today’s weather would be contrary, when he saw Lorna come out of the woods. She walked along the outer boundary of apple trees leading to the house. What’d she do? Stand sentry all night?
She was a bright spot as she moved through the morning, her coat opened, revealing a vivid orange T-shirt and high-perched breasts. The straight-legged denims she wore showcased a slim waist, nicely rounded hips and long, lean legs that scissored smoothly as she walked. She twisted her head side to side, then up toward the stars as if trying to work out a kink in her neck, and he saw her hair loose and soft in the vague light. She moved through the morning, determination and purpose in her every step and a solitariness about her that made him watch her and wonder. She was still some distance away and before she looked to the back porch and saw him, he watched her and thought her beautiful.
She spotted him. Her surprise was instantly replaced by vigilance, her stride checked by tension. Still she favored him with a closemouthed smile as she approached. “I see you’ll not miss breakfast.”
“I was beginning to worry it might be you who overslept this morning.” He cocked an eyebrow. “Patrolling the grounds, warden?”
“Weather cooperating, I usually take a walk at this hour.” She propped a sneakered foot on the bottom step and bent over to refasten a lace. “I find it clears the mind and quiets the heart.”
A thousand teasing retorts were on the tip of his tongue as she raised her head. Their gazes met and for a breath, before she sharply turned, he saw in those still gray-green waters what he himself had known his whole life—faceless, nameless longing.
She straightened. He wasn’t sure he hadn’t imagined the moment in the dawn’s crisp dream. Still he didn’t speak. She mounted the stairs. “Last night you were late.” She unlocked the door. “This morning you’re early. Do you ever follow the rules, Mr. Holt?”
His soft laughter followed her up the stairs. “What do you think, Mrs. O’Reilly?”
She paused at the door, her back to him. “I think you wonder what good are rules if you can’t break them?” She disappeared inside the house, his low, heated laughter following her. He sat smiling, enjoying the morning’s beginning a minute more, when her lean shadow stretched across him. He turned to her long figure above him.
She cocked her hips, her hands on their pointy angles. “Are you planning on sitting out there all day?” She spun around before he could answer.
Julius chuckled. “Guess not,” he said to the morning. He moved up the steps and into the kitchen to begin his day with Mrs. Lorna O’Reilly. His smile widened as he smelled the welcome call of coffee and the lingering traces of yesterday’s bread.
“I started the coffee before I went for my walk.” Lorna nodded in the direction of the coffee machine on the counter. “There are cups and spoons there. Creamer’s in the refrigerator. Sugar’s on the counter. I won’t wait on you.”
His eyes followed her as she moved about the kitchen, grabbing the skillet from the drainer, butter and eggs from the refrigerator. With aggravated breaths, she brushed at her hair as it fell from her shoulders and curved around her face, framing her sharp features. He poured a cup of coffee, leaned against the counter, and took a sip. “I like your hair down.”
She cracked an egg against the skillet’s rim. He waited for a stinging reply as she scowled down at the sputtering egg. But then her shoulders sagged. She glanced at him but didn’t say anything.
He was almost disappointed. “Can I pour you a cup of coffee, Mrs. O’Reilly?”
“You don’t have to wait on me either.”
“It’d be my pleasure after all your warm hospitality.”
She shot him a cool glance, but again said nothing. She reached and opened a drawer near the stove, fished out a rubber band and slammed the drawer shut. She flipped the eggs, moved the skillet off the burner, then marched into the hall. When she came back, her hair was secured into a low ponytail.
He chuckled and offered her the cup of coffee he’d poured. “Cream and sugar?”
Unsmiling, she shook her head as she took it from him and set it on the table, but as she moved back to the stove, she muttered, “Thank you.” She slid the eggs onto a plate, angled the toast beside them and set the plate on the table. “I’ll be going into town later to do some shopping. Tomorrow there’ll be bacon or ham.”
“Why, this is just fine,” Julius assured her in his exaggerated way. She regarded him as if trying to determine whether he was sincere or sarcastic.
“Sit,” she ordered, and turned back to the stove as if she’d reached a conclusion.
He sat down in the worn but clean kitchen smelling of coffee and baked bread on this clear, cool morning with sudden promise. He stared at the butter melting across the freshly toasted bread. It’d been a long time since anyone had cooked for him. He never stayed for breakfast. He looked up at the stern-faced woman. A few strands of hair had missed the rubber band and hung free and delicate along her elegant neck. “This is just fine,” he said once more, softer.
She faced him, arched a brow. “You’re not cutting back on proteins, too, are you, Mr. Holt?”
He grinned at her, then dug into his breakfast like a starving man. From the corner of his eye, he swore he saw a small smile on her face before she turned away.
“Aren’t you going to join me?”
“I think not.” She looked at the cup of coffee he’d poured her. Usually she had two to three cups, black, strong, relishing the bite of the bean. Now just the smell made her queasy.
He shoveled half an egg into his mouth. She felt her stomach roll. He waved his fork at her. “You’d better eat something or you’ll be swooning in my arms once more.”
“Excuse me.” She bolted from the room. He chewed thoughtfully, then shrugged his shoulders and picked up another piece of toast.
He wiped traces of egg clean from the plate with the last triangle of toast, pushed the plate away, leaned back and sighed happily as he lifted his coffee cup. He’d had dreams as great as most men once, but he’d learned the luxury of a good meal and the freedom to get up and go when it was over was great happiness. Lorna still hadn’t returned. He carried his dishes to the sink, considered them a second, then shrugged and washed and rinsed them. He grabbed the frying pan off the stove, filled it with soapy water but left it to soak. Can’t make her completely happy, he thought, drying his hands on a paper towel. He considered pouring a second cup of coffee, but with his stomach full and the early morning contentment still flush upon him, he was anxious to get out to the land with its kind old roll. He looked to the doorway through which Lorna had fled, waited another second, then went to find her.
He walked down a hallway of scuffed bird’s-eye maple to the first closed door. Beyond he heard labored breaths, then, with surprise, he recognized the liquid spill of retching.
“Mrs. O’Reilly?” He rapped on the door. “Are you all right?”
There was only silence, punctuated seconds later by another attack of illness. He winced, laid a hand to his own full stomach. He’d known such moments himself, but they were always preceded by a worthwhile night of hard drinking. He knew Lorna didn’t at least have the satisfaction of a good night’s drunk to take away some of the current situation’s unpleasantness. He doubted Lorna had ever had a drink in her life, let alone gotten drunk. He doubted she’d danced much either or rolled in the hay for no reason other than she liked a man’s look. He listened to her retching and couldn’t help but feel bad.