Promises Reveal (23 page)

“Hey there, Nidia,” Millicent called, coming out of the kitchen, plates of steaming food stacked up her capable arms, “don’t often see you here twice in one week.”

At Millicent’s call, every male head in the room turned. If Evie hadn’t been watching Nidia so closely, she would have missed the other woman’s stiffening. In anyone but a notorious madam, she would have called the shiver that took her . . . distaste.

Head up, shoulders back, a look as haughty as that of any queen on her face, Nidia moved farther into the room. “I have a wish to speak to you.”

A few of the men stood as she approached. Off-colored comments followed. Millie bonked the man closest to her on the head with her big wooden spoon. “Find some respect.”

“What the hell for? She’s just a goddamn wh—”

This time Millie’s spoon smacked across his face. “To keep some teeth in your head.”

“Darn, Chuck, watch your mouth.” The speaker—Chuck’s tablemate—cuffed Chuck on the back of the head. “I don’t want to get banned from the best eats in miles because you don’t have the sense God gave a goose.” He looked up at Millie, his face all but obscured by facial hair and his hat. “Chuck’s real sorry, Millie. It won’t happen again.”

Millie huffed and folded her arms across her ample chest. Everything about Millie was . . . ample. Her personality, her taste in clothes, her build. Her generosity. “I don’t like the look of him.”

Chuck looked up, wiping his mouth, “I’m sure not that fond of the look—”

The wrangler on the other side of Chuck, the one shoveling food into his mouth as if he hadn’t seen it before, elbowed him in the side hard enough to knock the wind out of him.

The door jangled again. A mean-faced man with his hat pulled down low over his sandy brown hair came in to stand behind Nidia. In the last year Elijah had become Nidia’s champion for reasons Evie didn’t understand.

All it took to have men sitting back down and the risqué murmurs ending was one glance from his dark green eyes. Sometimes it was very hard for Evie to remember Elijah as the gentle man who’d loved Amy so much and worked their farm with such peaceful enjoyment.

It almost seemed like that was the illusion, and this hardfaced, deadly shell of a man, just looking for an excuse to release the rage inside him, was the real thing. It was almost as if Amy’s death had ripped the mask from his soul.

The door slammed behind Elijah as another patron came in, startling her. Evie dropped the glass she’d been using to cut the biscuits. It rolled across the counter. Elijah caught it before it could roll off. His eyes met hers. “Careful.”

The banked anger in his gaze made her shiver. “Thank you.”

Millie rapped her spoon on the counter. “Everyone, this here’s the Reverend’s new bride, Mrs. Swanson. She’s here to learn how to cook. I don’t have to remind everyone how good things have been since we got Reverend Swanson to come here—”

“The preacher don’t make no never mind to me,” a man called from the packed doorway.

Millie slammed her hands on her hips. “You just never learn when to shut that yap of yours, do you, Red?”

“I came to eat, not socialize.”

“That’s as plain as the hair on your face.”

Red was a bear of a man with a big handlebar moustache, which was the only kept-up thing about his otherwise sweat-stained, smelly appearance.

“Seems to me you should have learned that lesson a year or so back when Cougar knocked your front teeth down your throat.”

This was the man Cougar McKinnely had kicked through the window of Millie’s last summer? The man who’d called Mara a whore? Obviously, he was short on brains as well as teeth, because everyone knew better than to touch, with word or hand, what belonged to a McKinnely. They were a very proud family and fiercely protective of their women. That also explained the strange enunciation of his words.

“I’m not eating with a fucking whore.”

“That tears it!”

Millie came around the table, spoon raised. As big as Millie was, and she was a big woman in both height and girth, she was no match for Red, who was large enough to make her look small. But Millie didn’t seemed to grasp that. She just bore down on the man as if through sheer force of will, she’d eject him. “You get the hell out of my establishment.”

Red’s chin came up. “I’m not going anywhere without my dinner. I’ve been waiting fifteen minutes for a seat.”

Evie grabbed the stone rolling pin and quickly moved behind Millie. A hand on her arm stopped her. Elijah met her gaze and shook his head. She yanked her arm free. She wasn’t leaving Millie to fight this unequal battle by herself. Another hand, much smaller, caught her wrist.
Nidia
. The shock of the woman touching her froze her in place.

“I could be persuaded to escort Red out for a piece of strawberry-rhubarb pie.”

The drawl cut across the tense silence. Millie snapped around, scanning the waiting crowd beyond the door. “That you, Jackson?”

“Yup.”

Men and women stepped aside. It had become fashionable on Saturday afternoon to take lunch at Millie’s II, the wait for a table a time to socialize. Jackson strolled forward, the easy smile he was known for on his handsome face. He pushed his hat back. “Lunch sure smells good, Millie.”

“When did you get here?”

“About two pies ago and I’ve got to admit I’m a bit worried you’ll sell out before a place opens up for me.”

The one thing Millie never ran out of was food.

“Hrrmph!”

Evie noticed, for all the casualness implied byhis pushed-back hat and nonchalance, there was tension in Jackson’s body as he came up beside Red. “For a piece I’ll move this one along.”

“You aren’t going to do shit, pip-squeak,” Red snarled, his temper obviously fraying.

While not huge like Red, Jackson was hardly a pip-squeak. He was easily six feet, with a lean musculature that promised strength. Half turning, Red shifted into Jackson’s space. “Now get.”

Evie tightened her hand on the rolling pin. Jackson just smiled casually at the bigger man. “I’d do a hell of a lot for strawberry-rhubarb pie, including removing that one ball Cougar left you last summer.” He glanced at the ladies as Red’s jaw worked. “My apologies for the language.”

The acceptance was automatic. Most of the ladies were enthralled with the drama unfolding, Evie included. Despite all her efforts, she’d been pretty sheltered from encounters like this. She always heard about them secondhand, but now she was in the middle of one. She shifted her grip on the rolling pin, excitement sweeping through her blood. She met Elijah’s gaze with a lift of her chin. He snorted and shook his head, stepping between her and the confrontation, to the point he blocked her view. Men were so exasperating.

“Putting a gun in my privates isn’t fair.”

“I’m not interested in fair. I’m interested in pie, and if shooting off what’s left of your manhood will get that for me, I’m easy about it.”

The statement was delivered with the lightness of a joke, but leaning around Elijah provided Evie with a different view of the situation. Jackson did have a gun barrel wedged in the other man’s privates and a glance at his face was enough to convince her he meant every word. If Red pushed this, Jackson would shoot him.

“Heck, Jackson, either shoot or get out of the way,” a man called from beyond the door. “You’re not the only one who wants pie.”

The order was picked up by the other patrons. There seemed to be more calls for shooting than anything else. Red was not popular.

After another tense silence, during which Evie couldn’t see a thing, thanks to Elijah shoving her back behind him again, there was the unmistakable sound of an angry stomp down the walk.

“Show’s over, folks,” Millie called. “Get back to eating. If you let my food get cold, I’ll take it personally.”

Elijah stepped aside in time for Evie to see Millie turn around. The older woman’s gaze fell on the rolling pin in her hand. “Now what in the world were you going to do with that?”

The way Millie said it made Evie feel ridiculous. “Knock some sense into whomever needed it.”

Millie’s bright red eyebrows shot up in her garishly painted, yet strangely attractive face. “Didn’t you just hear me get done telling everyone that we want the Reverend happy?”

“So?”

She plucked the rolling pin from her hand. “He’s not going to be happy if his wife is hurt in a brawl.”

“Elijah would not let that happen,” Nidia murmured.

Millie glanced at the man as if just noticing his presence. Her glance cut to Nidia and then back to him. “Still playing the fool, I see.”

Elijah didn’t respond, just held her gaze for as long as Millie chose to extend the confrontation. Nidia was the one to break up the stare down. To Evie’s surprise, a hint of color touched the madam’s face as she snapped, “You will not speak to him this way.”

“Little lady, you’ll have to grow some inches and some muscle before you can tell me what to do.”

“Nonetheless—”

Millicent cut her off. “I don’t have time for this nonsense. Bellies are going empty. Elijah, sit yourself at that table yonder and I’ll get you some pie, too.”

“Dang it, Millie,” Jackson protested. “He didn’t do anything, and you’re giving him my pie!”

“No. I’m giving him his own pie. Now hush and find a seat.”

Elijah looked at Nidia. Though the woman made no visible response by word or expression, he said, “I’ll take my pie to go.”

“There are more appreciative women you could tie your loyalty to, wrangler.”

“More decent ones, too,” one of the women muttered.

Nidia did not even acknowledge she heard the insults. Neither did Elijah, but Evie thought he moved a little closer to the small woman. Then again, it might have been the press of the crowd.

“I came to ask if you had more of that rice pudding you sent over the other night,” Nidia said.

“Liked that, did you?”

“It was very good.”

“I told the Reverend it’d do the trick.”

Nidia jumped and cast Evie a startled glance. “Thank you.”

That look put Evie’s nerves on edge.

“I don’t have any right now”—Millie grabbed a plate—“but come back in an hour and I’ll have it ready.”

Nidia glanced around at the ogling men and the disapproving frowns of the ladies. Once again Evie thought she saw something vulnerable in her gaze, and then it was gone. Her chin came up. “I will be back.”

“I can—”

She glared at Elijah. “I have said I will pick it up.”

Elijah’s lips tightened. “I told the Reverend—”

This time it was Evie’s turn to grab Nidia. “You were with Brad two nights ago?”

“I had need of him.”

Brad had left her bed on their wedding night to go to this woman? “He won’t be coming to you again.”

Of that she was sure. Even if she had to castrate him to assure it.

It was a toothless statement. She had no control over Brad’s comings and goings. The pitying smile Nidia gave her said she knew it.

“If I call him, he will come.”

With sick acceptance, Evie didn’t doubt her.

Elijah gabbed Nidia’s arm. “Enough.”

“I merely responded.”

“Lashing out is not a response.” He pushed her through the crowd. “And you’re a better person than that.”

“I’m a whore.”

Elijah propelled Nidia through the door. Evie never got to hear his response. She didn’t care to. Her mind was still stuck on the confidence with which Nidia had said Brad would come when she called. Only one thing gave a woman that much confidence—the certainty of her claim.

“It’s probably not safe for you to have that any longer,” Millie muttered.

Pain in her fingers alerted Evie to the fact that she clutched the rolling pin so tightly her knuckles were white. “What did she mean?”

Evie wished the words back as soon as she uttered them. The last thing she needed was a public discussion of where her husband had spent their wedding night.

The rolling pin was pried from her fingers. “She was likely just trying to get your goat. Occasionally, Nidia gets a need to lash out.” Millie slapped the rolling pin down on the counter. “She hasn’t had an easy life, you know.”

Evie didn’t suppose she had, but that didn’t give her the right to make comments about her husband.

Millie shoved a pie plate into her hand. “Take this on over to Jackson. He’s waiting.”

“I thought he wagered for a piece of pie.”

“The boy bought himself a peck of trouble, taking on Red like that. He gets the whole thing.”

Evie was beginning to understand that Millie coddled those she loved through food. She weaved her way through the tables, avoiding the groping hands of a tipsy cowboy and arriving at Jackson’s small table unscathed. He was frowning back over her shoulder at the wrangler who’d now broken into song. “I don’t think it’s a good idea, your working here.”

“I’m not working. I’m learning.”

He reached for the pie. “I’ll have a talk with the Reverend.”

Being here was the most excitement she’d had in months. “Don’t you dare!”

“You giving me orders?”

She snatched the pie back. “Yes, I am. If you want the whole pie, then you can’t talk to Brad.”

“The whole pie is already mine.”

She shook her head. “You only wagered for a piece.”

“I could take it from you.”

She held it way back, off her shoulder. “I’ll throw it to the floor.”

He blinked. “You’re that serious?”

“I’m that serious.”

His chair came down on four legs, and in a move so fast she didn’t have time to react, he snatched the pie from her hands.

“Then I guess I’ll keep my mouth shut.”

“Because I threatened you?”

“Well, that was amusing.” He cut into the pie with the side of his fork. “But also because I think it’s going to be darn entertaining seeing the Reverend’s face when he finds out what you’ve gotten into.”