Janet Dean - An Inconvenient Match

Betty Jo Weaver, the object of the boys’ hostility, sashayed over, dainty hands planted on hips, lips flattened in a disapproving line. “I wouldn’t share my lunch with either of you blockheads, not for all the tea in China!” She spun away, petticoats and blond curls flying.

“As you can see, gentlemen, the way to a lady’s heart isn’t through your fists.”

“Now look what you’ve gone and done,” Paul groused to Seth then took off at a run. “Betty Jo, wait up!”

With the fight over before it started, bystanders lost interest and dispersed.

Abigail took in Seth’s familiar faded shirt, the elbow she’d patched one afternoon after school. Motherless with a father who drank, the boy didn’t have an easy life.

“You need to watch what you say to Paul. You know his temper.” She smiled to soften her words. “Plenty of other girls would like to share their lunch with you.”

“Maybe,” Seth said but didn’t look convinced.

Did he really care about Betty Jo? If so, he was bound to get hurt. Betty Jo Weaver had bigger pickings in mind. Already she’d joined the circle of Wade Cummings’s ardent admirers.

Foolish girl.

Off to the side, face downcast, Paul stood watching. Young love hurt, she knew, but dismissed the thought and turned away from such silliness.

“Seth, the school board agreed to pay someone to stoke the schoolhouse stove this winter. Would you like the job?”

His eyes lit. “Yes, ma’am, I sure would.”

“It’ll mean getting up early.”

“I can manage.”

“I know you can. Now have a good time today. And no fighting.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said then trotted off.

Seth was a good kid. A bright kid. And weighted down with responsibility. With a father who saw any act of kindness toward him and his son as interference. The best way to help Seth was to get him out from under his father’s influence and into college next year.

“This box social reminds me of a meal we once shared.”

At the sound of his voice and the implication in that tone, the hair on the back of Abigail’s neck rose. She whirled to face the speaker, tripping on her skirts, and stared into the eyes of Wade Cummings.

He steadied her, his touch firm and warm through her sleeve. A lazy grin rode his chiseled features, as if he found her reaction amusing. When he knew perfectly well she wouldn’t share a meal with him if he were the last person on earth.

She jutted her chin. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Are you saying you’ve forgotten the school picnic? I’ll never forget the strawberry pie you brought.”

A flash of memory of Wade capturing a speck of filling with his tongue, then declaring the pie the best he’d ever eaten as her stomach had roiled. Not from the dessert, but that he’d spoken to her at all, considering the trouble between their families. Worse when he’d asked to join her on the blanket, she’d nodded, unable to refuse the allure of those deep-set indigo eyes. That afternoon they’d strolled through the park, talked for hours. For weeks they’d spent every minute together they could. Not easy when her family adamantly refused to let Wade come calling.

That had been a long time ago. Before Wade dumped her like a sack of rotten potatoes. Before Pa died. Before she fully grasped the Cummings family treachery and suffered the consequences. She dealt with them still.

As she pivoted on her heel to avoid him and the heartache those memories awakened, Wade stopped her with a gentle hand on hers. “Did you make strawberry pie for today’s lunch?”

“No.” She shook off his touch, grateful she spoke the truth, but if she had prepared his favorite dessert, she’d never admit as much to Wade. “Leave me alone.”

Oscar Moore’s brother Cecil, self-proclaimed mayor of New Harmony, sidled up beside her. Long-faced and tall, the exact opposite of his rotund brother, Cecil lifted a brow. “From the looks of it you two could use a referee. My rheumatism’s been acting up but I ain’t too feeble to handle the job.”

“No need, Cecil. Mr. Cummings was just leaving,” Abigail said with a finality Wade couldn’t miss. And from the stubborn set of his jaw, he hadn’t.

“Well, in that case I’ll mosey on back to my post.” Cecil shook his head. “Too bad you two mix about like oil and water. Cause you look right well together. Better’n Pastor Ted’s matched team of Percherons.”

With a jaunty wave, he hobbled off, leaving Abigail with flushed cheeks.

Wade chuckled. “Hope you don’t mind being compared to a horse. In Cecil’s view there’s no higher compliment.”

“He’s mistaken. Nothing about us matches.”

“Sometimes an unlikely pair works well as one.” Wade’s gaze drilled into her. “I noticed how you stood up to those young troublemakers looking for a fight. I’d like to discuss—”

“We have nothing to say to each other.”

“Please, hear me out.”

“Why should I? Hasn’t your family done enough damage?”

Wade gave Abby a long lingering look, letting his eyes roam her blond hair, the color of honey, worn in a pouf around her face in what he’d heard called the Gibson Girl look. Her dewy peaches-and-cream complexion, flawless except for a pale birthmark near her left ear, flushed with anger. At his perusal she lowered her gaze, the sweep of her dark lashes leaving shadows on her cheeks.

For a short time that face had occupied his dreams.

Truth be told, he’d never managed to purge her from his mind. “Can we get past the trouble between our families even for a moment?”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

Under slim brows, her arresting eyes, a luminous blue, blazed with antagonism, no doubt the same look that had halted those hot-tempered adolescents in their tracks.

Abby had spunk.

Clearly, she despised him.

What difference did it make? Wade didn’t seek a relationship with Abigail Wilson. Or anyone for that matter.

But after witnessing the feisty schoolmarm rebuke Seth and the Rogers’ kid, even whack Paul with her parasol, Wade knew he’d found the perfect candidate for the job. If he could get her to listen to anything he said.

Well, he wouldn’t create a scene by insisting, not with everyone gawking. He tipped his hat. “You look mighty pretty in blue.”

Though her eyes narrowed, her hand sought her hair, fiddling with a strand near her ear. Whether she’d admit it or not, he affected her.

As he sauntered off, those within earshot put their heads together, no doubt wondering why a Wilson and a Cummings had exchanged words.

How could he make his offer if she wouldn’t talk to him?

The solution came. A solution so simple he wondered why he hadn’t thought of it sooner.

A soft chuckle rumbled inside him. He wasn’t a schoolboy she could intimidate. She didn’t know it yet, but Miss Abigail Wilson had met her match.

Heart-pounding memories tore through Abigail. Memories of Wade sitting beside her in Sunday school, walking her home from class, always parting before they reached Cummings State Bank and the Wilson apartment overhead. One day he’d given her a pink hair ribbon, a memento of his affection, he’d said.

Why had she believed him?

Refusing to give the scoundrel another thought, Abigail moved through the park, pulling into her lungs a faint whiff of smoke. The acrid odor sparked memories of the fire that had swept through New Harmony two weeks earlier, leaving behind destruction and suffering.

As she recalled the unbearable heat, the thick smoke, the terror of that night, her stomach knotted. But then the underlying scent of fresh lumber reached her nostrils and its promise of new beginnings eased the tension inside of her.