Harmony (17 page)

Ah, damn. He wasn't any advice columnist. Let Shay take his own falls and learn from them. But just the same, Edwina Huntington wasn't the right girl for him.

Dropping the ball into Edwina's hand, Tom replied woodenly, “He just got into town. He doesn't work
that
fast.”

The smile of relief she tried to contain accentuated the twist in his stomach. He grew instantly irritable, his eyes hardening.

As she wound her arm back for another throw with that pliant curve still on her lips, he ground out seconds before the ball left her hand, “You aren't exactly the kind of woman he normally goes for, but I can tell him you're interested.”

The ball missed Buttkiss by a mile and whacked the beaver in the snout. A crack of grass rent the silence as the clock's dial splintered while two buck teeth flew off the rodent's mouth and dropped to the floor.

“Dammit all!” Tom swore, and charged over to assess the damage. The beaver's nose was cockeyed, and the hands on the clock had both drooped down to read six-thirty. Crouching, he swiped his fingers beneath the counter to feel for the missing teeth.

Edwina came up to his side, her skirt grazing his arm. “I didn't mean to,” she hastily apologized. “It's just that when you said what you said about me and Mr. Dufresne . . . well, you distracted me. You've got it all wrong—”

“Move back,” he said, fuming.

She did so with a slight hop. He expanded his search and came up with both teeth. Rising, he examined them in the palm of his hand.

Edwina inched forward and ventured to say, “I truly
am sorry. They're repairable, right? Can't you rubber-cement them back on?”

“Rubber-cement?” The dubious lift of one side of his mouth shut her up. It had taken him a full winter to assemble the clock. It had taken Edwina less than a minute to bust it up. “What the hell happened to your concentration?”

Her breasts thrust out, and her chin shot up. “I was concentrating until you had Mr. Dufresne and me coupled off. I'm not solicitous for him. I was inquiring on behalf of someone else.”

The heightened color on her cheeks did little to convince him. Depositing the beaver teeth in an empty beer bottle beneath the counter, he turned the tables on her with the first woman that came to his mind. “That Crescencia Stykem isn't a bad-looking woman when she's not fidgeting.” Short of what he'd just declared, he didn't know what else to say about the ink-happy secretary. He hadn't really paid any attention to her looks other than that first cursory glance in the lawyer's office, so he stole Shay's words and used them to his advantage. “That red hair of hers reminds a man of a desert sunrise after a night of rain.”

She stood there with a hot stare on her face. “Are you inquiring after her?”

“Nope. Just asking for someone else,” he retorted, giving her some of her own medicine. “Not that I wouldn't be thinking of her for myself . . .”

When she didn't bite and run with the bait, he gave the line a little more reel and switched lures. “That Kennison girl . . . what's her name?” A smile of sinful delight lit his face. “Camille.” Absently, he went for the dish of walnuts he kept for the customers' enjoyment and grabbed a nut. “She's enrolled in your school. Don't know what for. She doesn't need any finishing, from the looks of her.” Using the butt of a hollowed-out pistol, he crushed the nut and sifted through the shells. “She's a beautiful girl.”

Edwina cringed and pursed her lips. “I agree. She is a beautiful
girl.
She's only nineteen.”

Trickling some of the nuts into his mouth, he shrugged. “So?”

“So? You're too old for her. You've got to be at least thirty.”

“Thirty-two.” His brows fell in a line. “How old are you?”

She started up that damn business of dusting herself off—the invisible lint routine. He hated that. “Not that it's any of your affair,” she said, plucking at a spot on her sleeve. “Twenty-four.”

“Twenty-four and never been married.”

“Have you?” she shot back, clearly out of sorts.

“Nope.”

Her voice grew gentler. “Do you aspire to?”

“Absolutely.” He crushed another walnut. “Don't you?”

“Absolutely not.”

Tom thought this strange. All women wanted to get married—even the ones who worked in the saloons. “Why don't you want to?”

For an instant, wistfulness stole into her expression. “The aspirations I have wouldn't conform to marriage.”

“Why not?”

She tilted her head and gazed at him as if he were dense. “What man would want his wife to be employed?”

Tom had never given that any consideration. His wife would stay in the house and raise their kids. Bake cookies and sew junk for the tabletops. Hell, that's what wives were supposed to do. This working thing . . . it was too modern for him.

“I don't know what kind of man would want that. Because I'm not the kind of man who would allow it.”

“I see. How do you feel about unmarried women being employed?”

She was baiting him for some reason; he could see it in her eyes. He had to ask himself if he was going to be
a smart bass or a stupid trash fish. The bass wouldn't bite; the trash fish would feed on anything. Wary of the unidentifiable lure she used, Tom replied, “It's all right, I guess.” Satisfaction marked her expression; he didn't want her to think he wholeheartedly approved, so he added, “If the woman's got nothing better to do.”

They stood there for a few seconds, a standoff of sorts. It seemed that all that needed to be said had been said—for a lifetime—between them.

Edwina left his side of the counter and went to the other, where she collected her gloves. Tom had been littering shells across his accounting papers, causing her to give them a furtive glance. In her expression, he could see her brain working—a no-nonsense clicking inside her head.

While shoving her fingers into the prim white of her gloves, she commented, “You should hire yourself a bookkeeper. Your debit and credit columns are reversed, and you don't have a clue as to what your assets and liabilities are. The numbers are all wrong for what you've stated they represent.”

Thoughtfully chewing his walnuts, he asked, “What do you know about it?”

“I have a certificate from Gillette's Business College for Ladies in the classification and analysis of financial statements. Do yourself a favor—get someone who knows what he's doing or you'll be out of business within the week.”

It rankled him that she seemed smart about something about which he wasn't. Men had the God-given right to know everything; women only learned the leftovers from what men wanted to show them.

As she tucked and fluffed herself to order, she said briskly, “I'll be hosting a tea party on the lawn in back next Tuesday. I wanted to inform you so that you could show some consideration and not use the area.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he mumbled, pulverizing another nut.

“And I would greatly appreciate it if you kept your dog locked up somewhere. I don't need him traipsing
between the tables, begging for cake.” She picked up her handbag, then said sincerely, “Please bill me for the damages done to the clock. I hope you can have it repaired.”

“Forget it.”

After she left, he gazed dejectedly at the beaver. Then his eyes lowered to the calendar and what he'd penned on Tuesday's square.

Mayor Heston King and constituencies . . . from Big Horn . . . coming in to try out the new Flightmaster.

He'd forgotten about the mayor. If King liked the clay pigeon thrower, Tom could sell enough of them to put a nice sum away in the bank toward purchasing a house. He'd been thinking about real estate lately. A man couldn't expect a wife to live in a room on top of a livery. If he ever got serious enough to propose, he had to have roots. Be stable. Give a woman a place to nest.

So he couldn't cancel the mayor's visit. No way, nohow.

“Ah, hell,” he grumbled.

How long could a tea party last?

7

E
dwina stood at her dining-room table alongside Crescencia. The pair of them arranged flowers for that afternoon's tea. Actually, Edwina could have done the centerpieces herself, but she wanted to converse privately with Crescencia.

Selecting a long-stemmed white zinnia, Edwina asked, “Dear, have you been reading the book I loaned you?”

“Yes, Miss Edwina. I read the whole thing.” Seriousness was reflected in the lenses of her spectacles. “Twice.”

“And what did you glean from the chapter titled ‘Introductions'? Specifically relating to gentlemen?”

Crescencia poked a sprig of baby's breath into her arrangement. “I thought it was well intended.”

“You didn't gain a sense of direction? A little insight into the correct forms of greeting between ladies and gentlemen? How to be yourself with confidence?”

“Not exactly that last part . . .”

Edwina reached for a daisy. “I think you can if you put forth your best effort.”

“Oh, but I do try. It's just that when a gentleman talks to me, I can't seem to keep my words straight. I get all bothered.”

“Why is that?”

“I don't know. . . . I wish I did.” Crescencia finished her centerpiece and began work on another one. “I'm just not keen on how I look, I suppose. Nobody wants a girl with hair my color . . . or one who wears glasses.” A hand went up to adjust the offending eyewear. “Papa says I'm no parlor ornament. That's why nobody ever asks me to have an ice cream with them.”

Crescencia's discouraged tone aroused anger in Edwina. Mr. Stykem wasn't being fair to his daughter by uttering such things. “Cressie, don't you believe what your father says. He doesn't know everything.”

Her eyes widened. “But he's my papa. I always listen to him.”

“I think it's time you stopped listening to him and made up your own mind how you feel about yourself. I like your red hair, and I happen to think your glasses make you appear very intelligent.” Edwina placed a stem of greenery in her arrangement, then stood back. “Parents don't always know everything. Mine were no exception.”

“But you listened to your mother when she asked you to come home from Chicago.”

She sighed. “Of course I did. She was ill and needed me to take care of her. But had I taken to heart what she told me about going to the school, I never would have left here at all.”

Edwina's thoughts momentarily drifted back to the day she and her mother had argued about her applying to Gillette's. Her mother had said her character would be ruined should she go to the city alone. In that instant, Edwina had known that if her courage failed her, she would have meekly bowed to her mother's wishes. It had been with supreme effort that she'd shouted she didn't care what people said about her. She had a right to live her own life, to improve herself, to learn more than what could be taught her in Harmony.

Although she'd argued she didn't care about talk, she had. She still did. It was important for her to present
herself with flawless deportment . . . an untarnished character—unlike her true one. But when she'd told her mother she didn't care, it had been liberating. She only wished she could feel that way now. Instead, she was trapped. . . .

After sobbing into her lifted apron and lamenting how hurtful Edwina was for wanting to leave her, her mother had relented. Edwina had won. She would go to business college. Her life was her own.

And it would never be the same again.

“Dear,” Edwina said, letting go of a past she couldn't change, “perhaps if you told me what you want to do with yourself, I could help you.”

Crescencia's eyes misted. “What I want will never happen.”

Edwina set down her scissors and put a hand to the other woman's. “What is that?”