If Abigale Millerton kept stealing his breath every time Seth looked at her, he’d have no breath at all by the time they got to town.
She’d changed her britches and boots for the fancy dress upstairs, and he thought he knew where she’d put that funny contraption he’d seen on the chair in her room. She’d also piled her hair under the little hat and looked like something out of a magazine he’d once seen his ma reading.
He was still wearing Pop Millerton’s clothes and hadn’t shaved in a week.
Abigale accepted his offered hand and climbed to the seat.
His tongue wrapped around his eye teeth and he couldn’t see what he wanted to say about how she looked. And smelled. She’d done something that shoved hay and horsehair to the background and brought spring flowers to mind.
Lord, have mercy on his cowboy heart.
He flicked the reins and the mare started out.
“Thanks for hitching up Tess.” She smoothed her skirt over the high-topped shoes, and their pointed toes peeked out under the edge. “How’d you know she was the one?”
Well, maybe that’s because I recognized Pop’s two broken-down saddle horses and Ernestine doesn’t hitch well to a wagon.
Hardest thing in all the world was keeping those words to himself. Temptation always hooked him by the jaw, and words got him in more trouble than whiskey or cards ever could.
“You not talking to me?” She looked over at him with her big brown eyes, double daring him to speak his mind.
“No, ma’am.”
“You’ve said that more than once. Since when am I a ma’am? I’m as unmarried as Ernestine, and you’ve known me nearly all my life. What’s wrong, cat got your tongue?”
“You’re looking mighty fine this morning.”
She patted the back of her hair and glanced away from him, like she was checking the pastures. “Thank you.”
If she dressed like that in Denver, why wasn’t she married? Or didn’t those gals see many menfolk at that fancy school?
And what would someone as fine as Abigale Millerton ever see in him?
Rancher’s son and cow puncher.
Eighth-grade graduate.
Repairer of barn roofs and splitter of firewood.
She let out a sigh. “I’d forgotten how beautiful it is up here. So clean. Not at all like Denver.”
He looked around too, taking in the grassland and the way the timber and aspens trickled down from the slopes and creeped in at the edges. “It’s easy to take for granted what we’re used to seeing.”
“Why, Seth Holt.” Her gaze swept him with something near to admiration. “I do believe there’s a poet hiding somewhere inside you.” The corners of her mouth bowed up.
She was mocking him.
Liable to say something fight-worthy any minute, he slapped Tess into a brisk trot. He and Abigale had ridden horseback all over this valley, up into the timber, and over the lower slopes. They’d fished and tracked deer, trailed maverick steers, and found the waterfall. But he’d never sat beside her like this, isolated right out in the open together.
“Where’d you get this wagon?”
She fussed with a little bag on her wrist and scooted back more on the seat. Her right leg, flush against his left one, warmed that side of his body and all of his brain.
“I made arrangements with Pastor Meeks when I was here for the funeral. He said I could borrow it as long as I needed. Tess too.”
So she’d planned to come back. The thought stoked a slow-burning fire inside him.
As they rode into town, a few folks stopped and watched them pass, probably wondering what he was doing with such a fine-looking woman on such a muddy morning.
He stopped in front of the mercantile and helped her down to the boardwalk. “You sure you don’t need money?”
She puffed out a little sound that meant he’d wasted his time. “No, thank you.”
Like an afterthought, she hesitated and searched his face, hunting something important. “But it was kind of you to ask.”
Whoa.
He reset his hat and glanced at the storefront. “While you’re inside, I’ll ask around about Blackwell and where he mills his timber.”
With a gloved hand she touched his arm, her fingers warm and firm. “Be careful. Don’t start anything.”
He covered her hand with his and gave it a little squeeze. “Don’t worry about me. I can take care of myself. I’m a grown—”
“Yes, you are.” She nailed him with a pointed look. “That’s why I said what I did.”
Now that was the pot talkin’ to the kettle.
She lifted her chin and headed into the store, leaving him watching her like an orphaned pup.
Bootsteps sounded behind him. “Mornin’ Seth.”
He turned to Hoot Spicer’s rowdy grin. A grin Seth would just as soon wipe off the man’s bushy face, but he thumbed his waistband instead. “Mornin’, Hoot. Business been good?”
The old man stroked his whiskers, sharp eyes gleaming. He owned one of the biggest mills around and just might know the answer to Seth’s most pressing question.
However, Seth started with another one. “Café still serving?”
Henry “Hoot” Spicer was wealthier than anyone else in town, but he liked to eat and never turned down a free meal.
“I do believe they are.” He slapped Seth’s shoulder. “Haven’t seen you in a while, son. Your folks doin’ well?”
Before Seth could answer, he continued, “How ’bout you buy me a cup o’ coffee and we swap lies.”
Seth relinquished a full-blown laugh. “Suits me right down to the ground.”
If only he could read Abigale as easily as he read Hoot Spicer.
~
“Morning, Miss Abigale. I didn’t expect to see you again quite so soon.” Thomas Briggs pushed his spectacles to the bridge of his nose and dipped his head politely. “Sorry about your grandfather.”
“Thank you, Mr. Briggs.” Abigale drank in the familiar mix of leather goods and soap, tobacco and wood smoke. Nothing in Denver had ever smelled as welcoming as Briggs’ Mercantile and Dry Goods, in spite of her attendant grief.
“I’m out of nearly everything at the ranch, and after last night’s storm, I fear we may be in for a hard winter.”
His spectacles had slipped again, and he regarded her over their rims. “You staying on?”
She bristled against the ill-concealed worry in his voice.
“Is there a reason I should not?”
“Well, uh …” He glanced out the window and tugged at his bibbed apron. “No, I suppose not. But it is a ways out to your place and, uh, there’s been a lot of activity at the mills lately.”
She left the cracker barrel and faced him across the counter. “Just spit it out, Mr. Briggs.” Miss Butterfield would suffer the vapors at such a brash remark, but Abigale’s days of proper deportment were behind her. Now it was about surviving.
The man returned his spectacles to their intended perch and cleared his throat. “Not that I know anything for certain,”—he glanced out the window again—“but I’ve heard that some fine timber has been running through the Windsor Mill. Lodgepole. Like grows up at the base of the mountain.”
Around here, everyone knew her grandfather’s land skirted the north face of Pikes Peak where a thick patch of lodgepole pine grew. Between that stand and the rich grassland, it was a coveted area.
She pushed at the back of her hat and flinched, forgetful of the knot on her head. “I’ll take two fifty-pound bags of flour, ten pounds of sugar, twenty of Arbuckles’, butter if you have it, and whatever canned or dried fruit is available.”
Surely Seth’s parents had some beef they’d sell her. “A can of baking powder, if you have any.” She leaned to the right, eyeing the shelf behind the storekeeper. “I also need some cinnamon and nutmeg. And do you have confectioners’ sugar? The fine, powdery kind?”
Mr. Briggs blinked a couple of times.
“Do you have these things?”
“Yes, Miss Abigale, I do.” He cleared his throat and relocated his spectacles once more.
She was tempted to suggest he tie a string from one side of the eyeglasses to the other and loop it around his head. “I have the cash, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
His shoulders relaxed.
So that was it. He expected her to ask for credit.
“Excuse me, Mr. Briggs, but if I did not have the money, would that have been a problem, considering my grandfather’s pristine reputation where credit was concerned?”
The storekeeper stooped behind the counter and retrieved a crate for her purchases, planting it between them as if to shield himself from her questioning.
She shoved it aside and leaned slightly forward. “How long have you known us, Thomas?”
His brows creased at her use of his given name, and he turned to the shelving behind him. “Several years, miss.”
In all those years, she’d never seen Thomas Briggs so jittery. “What are you not telling me?”
He began filling the crate, rather hurriedly. “Things have changed in the two years you haven’t been here regular.”
Dread slid up her back and snaked along her neck. “In what way?”
“Land is at a premium. Especially timbered land. With the railroad coming this way and glory holes pocking the countryside, sawmills are barely keeping pace with demand. Some ranchers are eyeing neighboring land and putting pressure on folks to sell. Them that aren’t doing so already, like yourself.”
Little beads of sweat appeared on the man’s forehead, and he mopped them with his apron. “And some are just cutting the trees without buying. Mind you, I’ve just heard such talk.”
Abigale gripped the counter’s edge for balance, the back of her head throbbing like a drum. Based on Thomas Briggs’ demeanor, putting pressure on was his cautious substitution for threatening.
“And is some of that pressure applied to merchants offering credit to said landowners?”
He dabbed his forehead again.
Opening her reticule, she was distracted by a folded square of silky green displayed in the glass-topped case and thought at once of Seth. She hesitated only a moment before withdrawing enough money to pay for her supplies.
With eyes on the silk and voice lowered to a hush, she tucked Mr. Briggs’ receipt in her bag. “We did not have this conversation, sir, and you have told me nothing.”
She glanced up with a final whisper. “But I thank you.”