Carolyn Davidson - The Texan

“You’ll need roosts and nesting boxes,” Cleary told her. “A henhouse with a sloped roof, a door, a couple of windows and a small exit for the hens to get out into the yard.”

She dug into her pocket and brought forth a tablet and a pencil stub, kept handy for just such a purpose. With a glance, she tore off the top sheet, folded it and placed it back in her pocket, then offered Cleary a speaking look. “List what we need, and I’ll make note of it,” she said.

He did, itemizing two-by-fours and wooden siding, nails and hinges, chicken-wire fencing and upright posts. And then he had her read it back to him. “They’ll need to cut some of the two-by-fours in half and you’ll need about twenty feet of dowel rod for the roosts.”

“Dowel rod.” She wrote it down, then glanced up. “What’s dowel rod?”

“Same thing you’re going to need to hang curtains on in the parlor,” he said. “Have you already bought them?”

“I’m ordering from the catalogue,” Augusta said. “Surely they must sell rods also.”

“You’ll do better to buy it from the lumberyard and paint it yourself. Costs a lot less than ordering it cut to size from Sears, Roebuck. And we’ll need to have paint for the henhouse, too.”

“You must think I’m awfully dumb,” she said quietly. “I just assumed it would be so easy to put things together, and the further I go, the less I know what I’m doing.”

“Well, aren’t you just fortunate I came along?” he said slowly, his grin matching his droll manner of speech. “I happen to know a lot about such things. I think what you need, ma’am, is a man around the house.”

“Oh, I can’t have that,” she said quickly, looking back at the kitchen door, where shadows moved within the room. “I think they’re watching me.” A flush climbed her cheeks, and she turned away from the women who were no doubt straining their hearing as they tried to listen in on the conversation their benefactress was having in the middle of the yard.

“Well, maybe a man who’d come and go on a regular basis. Not a fellow who’d expect to stay nights.”

“Did you have anyone in particular in mind?” she asked, looking stalwartly toward the back of the lot.

“I think you’re a fine lady, Miss McBride, who’s bitten off quite a mouthful. If I can be of assistance without jeopardizing your reputation in this town, I’d like to help.”

“And what of your own business?” she asked, shooting him a look of inquiry. It wasn’t likely he’d divulge his method of livelihood to her, but curiosity bade her ask.

“I’m on hiatus right now,” he said. “Sort of between assignments. Which means I have time on my hands, and enough to live on very comfortably, so you wouldn’t have to pay me a wage.”

“Assignments.” She repeated the word that had caught her attention. “Who do you work for, sir?”

“I’m not at liberty to discuss that, Augusta,” he said reluctantly, offering her no excuse, only the firm refusal that halted her questions before they could be given voice.

“All right,” she said. “If you want to spend your time working at a thankless task, with no chance of monetary gain, I won’t attempt to stop you. I can only tell you that God will surely bless you for your interest in the shelter.”

His smile was quick, and his eyes lit with humor as she spoke. “Thank you, Augusta. I may be so bold as to call you that, I hope. After all, if we are to work together, I think we should consider ourselves good friends, don’t you?”

He’d almost blown the whole thing. Almost burst out in laughter when she’d so sweetly told him he could be expecting the Almighty’s blessing for his interest in her work. What he was expecting was a chance to spend time with a woman who appealed to him in a mighty big way.

A female like Augusta McBride was not what he’d ever thought to consider as the most important woman in his life. He’d had in mind a more independent creature, a woman who knew her way around in the masculine world and was able to fend for herself. And then he’d taken one good look at the creature on his front porch and rearranged all of his opinions as they related to females.

He’d spent more years on top of a horse than he wanted to count, and the past eight months had taught him that he wasn’t getting any younger. The shoulder wound he’d suffered in Wyoming ached at night, and various and sundry places on his thirty-four-year-old frame proclaimed that youth had passed him by and left him with scars and wrinkles galore.

If ever a man wanted to settle down and have a family, his name was Jon Cleary. And Augusta McBride was the likeliest candidate he’d met up with—at least the most available woman who’d ever appealed to his instincts.

“I don’t mind if you call me Augusta,” she said now, only a bit of reservation tingeing her words. “Not in front of my ladies, of course, but in private. And I’ll call you…” She turned up an unblemished face, and his gaze swept the vision before him.

“Cleary will do just fine,” he said. “Did anyone ever tell you that you have—”

“Yes, I know,” she said abruptly, interrupting him mid-thought. “I have blue eyes and yellow hair and my features are nicely formed. But that’s not the part of me that’s important, Cleary. Don’t give me compliments. They make me very distrustful.”

“Wouldn’t think of it,” he said hastily. “Wouldn’t even consider the idea. What I was about to say was that you have a fine mind, with a bent toward organization. Why, just the way you gave orders for the day was enough to let me know that you have things nicely under control here.”

And wasn’t that a lie, if he’d ever told one. She was a female knocking herself out for the benefit of a string of ponies who’d come in last. He could only hope that those female creatures she’d taken under her wing were appreciative of the effort she made in their behalf.

“Thank you,” she said, writing furiously on her pad of paper. Then she looked up at him again, and he lost track of his thoughts. “What else do I need to list? For the henhouse, I mean?”

“I think we’ve got it about covered,” he told her. “Now let’s head for the lumberyard and the general store and see how much money we can spend.”

Harriet Burns had two boarders looking for work, and they were pleased to find a job at which to show their talents. Their quick looks in Augusta’s direction were squelched with one glance from Cleary’s dark eyes, and he pointedly told them they were under his direct supervision, no matter that Miss McBride was paying their wages. They agreed to show up after dinner to lay out the chicken yard, and Cleary told them he would be there to set the four corners of the henhouse.

“Now for the lumberyard,” he said, satisfied at the progress gained at their first stop. In half an hour, he’d ordered the wood and tar paper for the roof, then they’d gone on to the general store. Hardware was heavy stuff, he told Augusta, not allowing her to lift the box of nails and hinges.

“Can we stop at the post office?” she asked. “I think it’s about time for my catalogue order to come in.”

He obliged her by lifting her from the buggy and waiting patiently outside the barbershop, where the postmaster shared space with haircutting equipment. She emerged with a large bundle in her arms, and he quickly lifted himself from the side of the buggy as she appeared in the doorway.

“Why didn’t you call me? You shouldn’t try to carry such a heavy load by yourself.” His hands were careful lifting the bundle from her arms, aware of the soft curves of her breasts that tempted his touch. The backs of his knuckles brushed against her dress fabric, and he was nonchalant as he relieved her of the weight.