Ana Seymour - Lucky Bride

“I don’t believe Miss Susannah has a very high opinion of your Mr. Dickerson,” he said, making no mention of his accommodations.

Molly hesitated for another minute, then sighed. “He’s not my Mr. Dickerson. He’s just a neighbor who is good enough to help us out now and then. Susannah thinks he’s a little overbearing at times.”

“I think I might learn to agree with her.”

She backed up to the door and grabbed the latch behind her. “Mr. Prescott… Parker,” she began firmly. “When I agreed to your employment, you said you were willing to learn. Perhaps your first lesson should be to remember that you are now a hired hand. You’re on this ranch to work. It’s not your job to have opinions about our neighbors, or our friends, or my sisters and me, for that matter.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said mildly. “Anything else?”

“No.” She looked around the room. “Smokey will bring you out some breakfast in the morning.”

“Much obliged.”

She gave a brisk nod, then opened the door and left. Parker grinned at her back. The oldest Hanks sister talked a tough game, but she wasn’t as hard as she looked. She hadn’t come out here to see that he was settled. She’d come because she was worried about him. There’d been genuine concern in her eyes when she’d checked on his ears. Oddly enough, he could still feel the traces of her fingers in his hair.

He pushed himself away from the table and headed for the stove. Wincing at the stiffness in his joints, he knelt beside the woodpile and began to stuff logs into the iron potbelly.

He found a box of matches on top of the stove and lit the fire. The dry wood took immediately, snapping warmth out into the room. Parker began to hum a little tune. It was an interesting discovery. Miss Molly wasn’t so tough after all. When she’d opened the door to leave, her hands on the latch had been trembling like a frightened rabbit.

Parker finished off the last of the flapjacks Smokey had brought out to him, then gulped his coffee. It had already grown cold in its tin cup. He hadn’t bothered to stoke up the stove, which had gone out during the night. The mild weather appeared to be holding and the temperature in the bunkhouse was tolerable. In fact, the cold night seemed to have done “him some good. His body was almost back to normal, and for the first time since he’d started down into Copper Canyon his head felt clear.

He’d awakened at dawn and unpacked his gear, stowing it neatly in the big, empty cupboard. Then Smokey had shown up with the food, grumbling that he saw no reason why Parker shouldn’t just come on up to the house and eat with the rest of them.

“It was different when Mr. Hanks was around. This place was full up back then,” he’d said, looking around at the empty bunks. “The cowhands ate at the cookhouse out back. Charlie liked to keep them away from his three treasures, you know.” Smokey looked older suddenly as his eyes softened in memory of his boss and friend. He paused for a minute, then continued briskly, “Can’t say as I blame him. About the hands, I mean. Some of them galoots I wouldn’t invite to my privy, much less my dinner table.”

He’d stayed to reminisce a few more minutes about “those days” before finally moving stiffly out the door, shaking his shaggy gray head. Parker had the feeling that Smokey, as much as he cared for his old boss’s “three treasures,” had no more belief than the townsfolk that three young women could run the Lucky Stars. Parker didn’t share his pessimism. Growing up surrounded by female suffragists and temperance crusaders, he knew a woman could be as bright and as strong and as stubborn as a man. Hell, one look at Molly Hanks should be proof enough of that. But it didn’t seem as if anyone was willing to give her a chance.

He pushed aside the breakfast dishes and stood. He’d do what he could to help, at least through spring, though he wasn’t at all sure just how much help he would be. He’d made it clear to Molly that he wasn’t an experienced cowhand, but he hadn’t dared tell her the whole truth—that he’d never so much as been near a cow. A steer. Whatever the hell they called them out here. With a sigh he reached over to the bunk and snatched up his hat. He supposed she’d find out soon enough.

Molly knew that she had not been in the best of tempers at breakfast that morning. She’d snapped at Susannah and even had a harsh word for Mary Beth when both her younger sisters had argued that their new hired hand should be invited to take meals with them in the house.

“It’s downright silly to try to have a mess for one cowboy,” Susannah had said with a slight pout.

And Molly had to admit that her sister had a point. But she just wasn’t ready to sit down at a table with Parker Prescott. For one thing, she didn’t trust the way he looked at Susannah, his brown eyes lit and dancing. And then there were the odd sensations Molly herself had been having. Scary feelings, like a sudden chilly wind in a mountain pass. She’d had one yesterday when she’d seen Parker’s arms around her sister up on the balcony. And again last night, after weaving her fingers through the soft waves of his hair. She’d lain awake for what had seemed like hours last night trying to figure out what was wrong with her. Which undoubtedly had not helped her crankiness this morning.

The meal had ended without resolving the issue. Molly supposed that eventually she’d invite Parker to eat with them, but she’d like to feel a little more in control of things before she did. Part of the problem was the unavoidable intimacy of their first few meetings. She’d scarcely seen the man dressed, for pity’s sake. It would undoubtedly be easier once their roles as boss and hired hand were firmly established.

She gave a last swipe to the breakfast platter and hung the dish towel on the rack. The sooner the better, she reckoned. Of course, if Parker was still feeling poorly, she couldn’t put him to work yet. But if he was recovered enough, she might as well get him started. It was a nice warm morning. They could get a lot done. And they could establish once and for all just exactly who was the boss.

Parker could tell that his bout with frostbite and fever had taken a toll. Back in the Black Hills, when he’d been at his most enthusiastic about the mine, he’d worked for sixteen hours or more without a break, well into the late-summer twilight. But right now he felt much as he had when he’d been beaten up by Big Jim Driscoll’s thugs after Claire’s death. Every muscle was screaming.

He and Smokey had spent most of the morning baling, with Molly appearing every now and then to check up on them and add one more chore to their list. At noon Smokey had left to get dinner started, leaving Parker glumly eyeing the endless mound of hay left to bale. According to his new boss lady, after finishing with the hay, he was to shore up the timbers around the pigpen, then repair the chute at the end of the corral, put a new set of hinges on the bunkhouse door, clean the stable…what else? Parker plunged his baling fork into the ground and leaned backward, stretching out the muscles of his long back.

“Getting tired, cowboy?” Molly asked from behind him.

He turned around in annoyance. One of these days he was going to figure out how to hear her coming. “You part Indian or something?” he asked her.

She frowned. “No. Why?”

“’Cause you sure do know how to sneak up on a person.”

“That’s what you get for daydreaming on the job. I suppose you were pining away for whatever fancy pen-and-paper job you used to do back in New York City.”

“I worked in a bank.”

Molly gave a little laugh of triumph. “I suspected as much. Kind of hard to build up a sweat adding up numbers, isn’t it?”