Liz Ireland - Prim And Improper

When she finally did look, he sent her a broad wink. “I thought you might see things my way eventually, Miss Livingston.”

He smashed his wide-brimmed black hat on his head and strode out the store, leaving Louise awash in a sea of anger, desire and dread.

An entire week!

While Caleb attacked the kitchen with a broom, Ty reclined in a woven-back chair, stretching his legs out across the already sparkling clean kitchen floors. He’d scrubbed them himself the night before, but Caleb insisted on sweeping them this morning, just to make sure the house looked especially pristine for Louise’s impending arrival. All Caleb had done for the past day and a half was clean, clean, clean.

Ty took a leisurely sip of coffee, watching his brother skitter nervously across the room in a pinafore-style apron, his knobby elbows sticking out from the broomstick. Cal was tall, but a bit on the gangly side, with a boyish charm and genuine kindness that attracted women. Certainly Sally had fallen for those qualities, but Ty worried that Louise wouldn’t appreciate Cal. Beneath that armor of modesty and refinement, Louise seemed like a woman who might be more attracted to someone more controlled, more masterful, someone…

Well, someone like himself.

Cautiously he cleared his throat. He didn’t want to get his brother more nervous than he already was. “It’s not exactly housekeeping skills that impress a woman, you know, Cal.”

His brother looked up, an expression of sheer panic on his face. “But I thought you agreed that we should have the house as nice as we could, so Louise would think we were civilized.”

Ty nodded. “But if you really want to impress a woman, you have to be manly, as well as conscientious.”

“Manly?” Cal asked, leaning on his broom. “How?”

Ty stood. “First, get rid of the apron.”

“But I just washed this shirt!”

“Men get dirty,” Ty instructed, freeing his brother. “Now, when you walk, try not to bob up and down so much. Keep your head high, your shoulders back, your chest out—like the old rooster out in the yard.”

“He bobs up and down,” Cal countered as he tried to assume the same position and took a few stiff steps forward.

Ty sighed. The results of his efforts were far from impressive. Holding his head high seemed to make his brother’s neck look even longer than it was, emphasizing the huge Adam’s apple in residence there. Keeping his shoulders back did look better, but Cal’s bony chest was best left on its own.

“Forget the rooster,” Ty said. “Think of it as more of an attitude. You have to assume an air of detached superiority for women, let them know that you’re in charge.”

Cal deflated from his rigid stance. “That wouldn’t work with Louise Livingston. She likes to be in charge of things herself.”

How true, Ty thought. He sank back down in his chair. “Oh, just be yourself. You certainly seem to have impressed Sally. When I spoke to her the other day in town, she couldn’t stop asking about you.”

A dreamy smile broke out across his brother’s face. “I can’t believe she lied to her own sister, just to protect me.” Just as suddenly, his smile vanished. “We can’t go on lying to Louise, Ty. I’ve got to tell her the truth about Sally and me.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Ty said. “I’ve got Louise here for a week, and for that week we’re going to show her a study in contrasts. By the time she leaves, you’ll look like a saint compared to me. She’ll probably go home and beg Sally to marry you.”

“Wouldn’t that be wonderful?”

“It certainly would,” Ty agreed. At this point anything sounded better than having a moonstruck brother. “So don’t muck up our plans by worrying about the truth.”

Caleb frowned. “I hope Louise doesn’t leave disliking you too much, Ty.”

“What difference does that make?”

“Well, if Sally and I married, we’d all be in-laws.”

Ty grunted.

“And besides, I kind of get the impression that you like her.”

“Like her!” Ty shot up out of his chair. “That persnickety old maid? Where did you get that crazy idea?”

“You haven’t stopped talking about her for days, Ty. Every meal, you’ve rehashed each word she said to you.”

“That’s because I can’t believe a woman like her can be so prejudiced, so snippy—”

Cal interrupted his tirade. “By ‘a woman like her,’ do you mean you think she’s pretty?”

Ty scowled, then admitted, “Well, of course she’s pretty. But I prefer women to behave more like females than shrews.”

“Then why didn’t you marry Vera Calloway all those years back when we lived in Kansas? She was pretty and sweet, just exactly what you say you want.”

“Maybe I should have,” he replied defensively.

“You said then that if you married her you would be bored to death.”

“I was young and foolish.”

Cal shook his head pityingly.

“Now don’t go getting any more crazy notions,” Ty warned him. “Just because you’re in love doesn’t mean the whole world is. And certainly not me.”

As he spoke, the sounds of a horse trotting up their hill reached them, and they both stood for a moment in the middle of the kitchen, listening. Ty felt a tightening in his chest at the thought of seeing Louise again. Dread, he assured himself. But dread couldn’t be the cause of the smile he felt pulling at his lips. Or the way his pulse picked up. He tamped down the uncomfortable sensations with a low growl.

Suddenly, unable to contain himself any longer, Cal bolted out the door, only to run back in a second later and drop the apron in his hand onto the table.

Taking a deep, fortifying gulp of air, Ty snatched his hat off a peg near the door and jammed it on his head. “This had better work,” he muttered to himself as he went out to greet their guest.

Louise slowed her horse to a walk as she neared the Saunders’s little house. A million worries battled in her mind. She wasn’t sure what the next week would bring, isolated as she would be with two ruffians. But she was equally worried about the people she was leaving behind. She hadn’t liked the gleeful, secretive smiles she thought she’d spied on the faces of her siblings as they’d pushed her out the door.

“Hello, Miss Livingston!”

Caleb Saunders was loping toward her, which made Louise—and Blackie—nervous. The horse pranced uneasily beneath her, and Louise gripped tightly to the saddle, prepared for the worst. At least the ground was drier than it had been the previous week.

“Let me help you down, ma’am,” the young man offered, grabbing the reins near Blackie’s bridle with one hand and holding out the other toward her.

“I can manage just fine myself,” Louise replied. She swung down as quickly as she could and dusted herself off.

“I’ll get your bag for you, Miss Livingston.”

Caleb took her traveling bag off the back of her saddle right away. His overtly polite manner gave her the feeling that she was checking into a fine hotel, not the week of servitude she would have done anything to avoid.

“It’s about time you showed up.” The words were barked out in a loud, obnoxious voice. Louise pivoted and found herself staring into Ty Saunders’s dark, glowering face. “It’s midmorning already.”

“You didn’t stipulate the hour I was supposed to arrive,” Louise retorted primly. She was not going to start off on the wrong foot by letting this man believe he could ruffle her feathers.

“I said morning.”

“Ty…” Cal said, his voice anxious.

“Which, as you said, it is,” she replied coolly. “Now if you’ll just show me where to go, I’ll be happy to begin my week of enslavement.”