Chapter 7  

A thousand wishes and as many prayers, hundreds of dreams that stretched through the days and nights, years and years of wanting and wondering, and now he finally was where he’d longed to be, standing with Hannah in his arms, kissing her.

He’d longed to kiss Hannah Taylor since the first time he’d laid eyes on her at school when he and his family had moved to town.

He’d been eleven at the time.

Back then, just as he’d been working up his nerve to talk to her—he’d been working at it for almost four years—she started going around with Charlie. It had broken Mark’s fifteen-year-old heart, but he knew that Charlie was the better man. Charlie was handsome and charming and one of the nicest guys Mark knew.

Then Charlie died.

Mark had left Hannah alone to grieve.

Then he’d left her alone because her ma was ailing.

Then he’d left her alone because her ma had died.

Then he’d left her alone because she was busy with her little brothers.

Then he’d seen her quiet, hurt expression when she’d been as good as thrown out of her own home to live in the tiny room over the diner, and he’d left her alone to get over that.

He’d been hauling the school’s firewood. He lurked by the bank window like a cowering hound and watched her leave school so he could stumble outside and have a two-minute walk with her every day. He greeted her after church each week. Once he’d offered to carry her groceries.

He admitted his attempts had been pathetic, just like everything about him was pathetic.

Then today, at his ma’s prodding, even though he was in the middle of the bank audit late on a Saturday afternoon, working in the safe and filling cash bags, which took time to close up, he’d rushed out to lend her a hand hauling furniture. He’d offered earlier, but Mark suspected that if it hadn’t been for his ma fussing at him to go help, Hannah would have handled the furniture herself and he would have let her.

And now . . . now he was kissing her, and not only had she not slapped him but she was kissing him back!

Her arms settled around his neck, and Mark almost lost his mind from the sweetness of it. He wanted to break off the kiss and beg her to marry him, but that would require talking, and somehow when he was around Hannah something jammed up in his chest and words were close to impossible.

So instead, since it was going well, he kept kissing her. He wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her closer and she came to him. She willingly, even eagerly maybe, tightened her arms on his neck.

He slid one hand into her hair and tilted her head to slant his mouth over hers and deepened the kiss. She stayed right with him.

The whole world seemed to go away as Marcus poured all his years of longing into one endless, perfect kiss.

Marcus never wanted this moment to end.

A sharp rap at the door made Hannah jump out of his arms.

“Hannah Taylor, have you got a man in there?”

Rosella Bindle’s nasal north-Texas twang made both of them whirl toward the door as if they’d been caught doing something wrong, which they most certainly had.

Mark felt his cheeks heat up in the blush he so despised. Going to Hannah’s room and shutting the door, a single man and woman—it was scandalous.

He glanced sideways at Hannah just as she looked frantically at him. He saw more than guilt on Hannah’s face, though. He saw shock, as if she’d just now realized she’d been kissing worthless Mark Whitfield.

Mark couldn’t stand to be alone with that expression another second. He hurried to the door and turned the knob. It was locked.

Mark looked at Hannah. “Did you lock the door?”

“No!” She grabbed a key hanging from a nail and reached for the lock. In her rush to escape him, she dropped the key with a loud ping, which was as good as a confession that they’d locked themselves in the room on purpose.

Mark swooped to pick it up at the same time she did, and they almost cracked heads.

Mrs. Bindle hammered louder. “You make yourselves decent and get this door open.”

Hannah looked at Mark and said, horrified, “Make yourselves decent?”

Mark’s face felt so hot it would likely ignite any second. He jammed the key into the lock and quickly got the door open. Mrs. Bindle marched in.

Essie was right behind her, looking upset. Mark’s mother stood one step behind Essie with the look of a woman whose son had just been sentenced to hanging. In fact, Mark thought his ma, a very calm woman, looked a bit overly—perhaps even theatrically—upset.

Short and brusque, Rosella stormed straight into the middle of the room, all of three steps, as if she were charging to the rescue. “Now see here, Hannah, I made the rules absolutely clear when you moved in.”

“Mrs. Bindle—” Hannah started politely.

“There were to be no gentleman callers of any kind.”

“It’s not like it seems,” Hannah argued.

“It seems,” Rosella said, “like you and Mark were alone together in your bedroom with the door locked.”

“Well, then it’s exactly like it seems, but I can explain—”

“I run a respectable business downstairs,” Rosella said, cutting Hannah off.

Mark thought respectable was a little much. She ran the only diner in town, so it kept fairly busy serving tough beef and overcooked beans, with biscuits that veered erratically between doughy and rock hard, never finding a middle ground. It wasn’t overly clean, and Rosella was known to keep the boisterous crowd of customers in gales of laughter with her insults. Her customers were mainly single cowboys, because anyone with a wife ate at home.

“Mark, what is the meaning of this?” his mother demanded. She sounded distraught.

“He was helping me carry,” Hannah tried to explain.

Rosella narrowed her eyes. “Helping you carry on, it seems to me.”

“You’ve been up here quite a while actually,” Mrs. Whitfield said.

For one awkward moment Mark wondered how long he and Hannah had spent kissing. True, it had only seemed like a minute, but Mark had lost track of time.

“Essie,” Hannah said, turning to her stepmother, “you know I only left the store a few minutes ago.”

Mrs. Claasen chose that moment to yell up from the street below. “Are you coming back, Hannah? We’d like to lock up the store now.”

Mark knew he should jump in and defend Hannah’s honor, but he was still stunned from the kiss and how Hannah had responded to him. And talking never came easily to him at any time, but especially not under duress.

“As the only teacher in Dry Gulch, you have an obligation to uphold the very highest moral standards.” Rosella sounded lofty for a woman who slung hash for a living. “You think the minute my back is turned you can ride the whirlwind?”

Mark almost smiled at that image. It had been a little bit of a whirlwind. Mrs. Bindle was hitting the whole situation just about exactly right. Except how in the world had the door gotten locked?

“Mrs. Bindle, except for a few brief visits from my family, I’ve never had so much as a visitor. How can you think so poorly of—”

Mark finally found his tongue. “If you were watching us, you saw us come up those stairs only minutes ago.”

“Now, Mark,” his ma said, “it was more like—”

“Let me finish!” He’d never spoken to his mother like that before.

She arched a brow at him that threatened reprisal later, yet Mark went on talking. “I carried that chair. I set it down and then moved the other out of the way. Neither of us swung the door shut and neither of us locked it. It must’ve jammed somehow when it closed.”

“By itself?” Essie asked with quiet skepticism. “Closed and locked by itself?”

Mark ignored the interruption. “We’re on our way right now to collect the other pieces of furniture that Hannah purchased at Claasen’s. Now, would we stay in here when we know Mrs. Claasen is waiting to close?”

“I really do need to hurry, Hannah,” Mrs. Claasen sang out from below.

Mark soldiered on in the face of some of the more formidable women he’d ever seen, most especially his ma. “Would we leave that furniture while we—as you so rudely put it—carried on? If you don’t trust Hannah and me to do this chore, then I suggest you all come along and grab a piece of furniture.” He looked at Essie, then his ma. “I will not hear a word against Hannah. Do you understand me?”

His mother narrowed her eyes a bit. Essie looked more amused than chastised.

Rosella said, “I’ll be watching you, and I want this door left open even if you have to prop it!” With an indignant huff she stalked out of the room.

Mark met his ma’s eyes next. “We’ll talk about this later, Ma.”

“I’ll go in just a moment,” she said, every inch the wealthy banker’s wife. She turned to address Hannah. “You, young lady, might want to straighten your hair. It seems to be quite a bit messier than when you were buying furniture a half hour ago.”

Mark winced. A half hour? Had they really been up here for a half hour?

Hannah reached for her hair, and only then did Mark realize it was hanging free. He was shocked at how much he wished he remembered doing that.

Ma plucked a long blond hair off Mark’s collar, and with a quick rub of her thumb and two fingers she opened her hand to let the hair float gently to the floor. “Your hair could stand straightening, too, son.”

He wondered what it looked like. He seemed to remember Hannah’s fingers there.

“You can be sure we will talk about this later.” Ma jerked her head with the attitude of a woman who was not easy to fool, then turned and stomped with unnecessary firmness down the stairs.

This was not the first time Mark was glad he had his own home.

That left Essie, the closest thing Hannah had to a ma. “Essie, I respect Hannah too much to ever hurt her or harm her reputation. And you know Hannah well enough to know she’s completely honorable. Please, head on down now.”

With a smirk Essie said, “Her pa’s gonna hear about this.”

Silently, exchanging not so much as a glance, Hannah hurried out after Essie. Mark made a halfhearted attempt to stop her, but Hannah dodged his outstretched hand and scurried along after her stepmother. Mark could do nothing but follow.

They finished toting the furniture, getting separated as Hannah practically ran back and forth between Claasen’s and her room. Mark hustled to keep up so she wouldn’t do it all herself. Rosella watched them from the bottom of the steps the whole time.

Hannah got so far ahead of him that they were meeting on the street, and each time they did she’d give him an insincere smile. It was more than their getting caught “whirlwinding” by Rosella. Mark could tell she’d had time to think things over and was horrified that she’d let him kiss her. Hannah had always been perfectly polite to him, but she had sent out clear signals that she wasn’t interested. Now she’d had a weak moment and was shamed by her behavior. Mark hurt for her discomfort at the same time he felt like his heart was breaking.

It was worse than all the years of not knowing. It was worse than all the frustrating dreams he held in his heart. At least he’d been able to lie to himself and think somehow, someday, God would open her eyes. Well, now her eyes were wide open, and she was horrified at what she saw.

His steps slowed as he carried the table to the bottom of her steps. He didn’t want the job to be over because he was sorely afraid it was the first and last time he’d ever do anything with Hannah. He got to the alley door of the diner just as Hannah came down the stairs dragging the ugly chair that had been in the room when Mark had first entered.

He said in a voice that sounded pitiful to himself, “I’ll bring the old bed down and haul it and the chair for you.”

She nodded without looking up and passed by him wordlessly. He hefted the table upstairs. He lingered a moment, hoping she would follow him up and he could say something, anything, to put her at ease. Forget what happened between us, Hannah. It’ll never happen again. I know you think I’m a poor excuse for a man. Please, can’t you love me anyway, like I love you? Marry me . . .

But she didn’t come, which was probably just as well. He finally left and found her standing on the landing near the alley door—along with Rosella, who was standing like a watchdog at her side.

Mark walked down the steps and faced her. There was no possible way he could have even the briefest private word with Hannah.

“Thank you for your help, Marcus,” Hannah said primly, staring at her feet.

“I was glad to be of service,” he replied.

Hannah looked up and their eyes locked for a moment. Mark searched for some indication she wanted to spend more time with him. He only saw that she’d risked her respectability and her livelihood for a kiss she regretted with all of her heart. It was too much. He walked past her without another word.