The clank of metal told her Mr. Flint had finished and was returning the shovel and the pitchfork to the rack against the wall. She started across the yard, heard him shut the barn door and tramp after her.
“Tired?” His voice jarred her concentration.
“Yes. More than I thought I’d be.”
He caught up to her and slowed his steps to stay by her side. “It’s hard work, learning a new way to walk.”
Ellen shot him a glance. “Is that what you had to do?”
“Up to a point. My leg didn’t heal right.” A tightening of his lips alerted her to an unease he kept well hidden.
“Where were you when you hurt your leg?”
“In a Confederate prison. Richmond. I escaped, but I had to rip the plaster off my leg to do it.”
“Was it worth it? Your freedom in exchange for a crippled leg?”
His face changed. “Wasn’t a choice, really. Grew me up damn fast.”
“It must have been painful.”
“Yeah. But if I’d stayed, they’d have broken the other one, too.”
Ellen’s insides recoiled, but she said nothing. Instead she focused on keeping her balance as she lurched toward the back porch. Mr. Flint stayed at her elbow, but he let her negotiate the steps on her own. By the time they reached the kitchen, she was out of breath again.
She sank onto a ladder-back chair, closed her eyes and fanned herself with her apron. Mr. Flint leaned over her.
“You all right?”
“Oh, right enough. Just winded.” When she opened her eyelids a glass of water sat on the table before her, and he had settled his long frame onto the chair across from her.
At first she tried very hard not to look at his bare chest. After an awkward silence, she gave up. She liked looking at his tanned, well-muscled torso, even slicked with perspiration and smudged with dirt. It would be an experience to bake her cake with a half-dressed helper.
“I’ll go wash up and get my shirt off the clothesline. Should be dry by now.”
“I would offer to iron it for you, but…”
“Doesn’t need ironing, Ellen. Don’t need to get fancied up to make a cake.”
A flicker of regret teased at her.
At the back door, he turned and held her gaze with an expression she couldn’t read. Not concern, exactly. Just a kind of awareness. Recognition.
Ellen swallowed over a lump the size of an egg and stood to fetch her blue mixing bowl.
Chapter Six
I nside the consulting room in his office, Dr. James Callahan set his hat on the shelf, shed his summer linen jacket and loosened his tie. Part of him hated getting gussied up just to walk past the boardinghouse each morning. But another part of him, the part that had tumbled head-over-coattails in love twenty-five years ago, wanted to see her again.
He had watched Iona Everett since the year she had turned seventeen, the year he had come out to Willow Flat at his sister’s request. Iona had grown from a shy, soft-spoken girl into a lushly beautiful young woman who played the piano and taught Sunday school. Then, at twenty-two, she had married town banker Thaddeus Everett, and Doc Callahan’s heart had slowly turned to stone. Not even doting on his sister’s surviving child, Ellen, over the years had assuaged the hurt.
Twelve years later, Iona had been widowed, and Doc resumed his morning walks past the tree-shaded, three-story home she’d turned into a boardinghouse. Today she had been sitting in a white wicker chair on the wide front veranda, a vision in lavender dimity. She must be in her early forties now, Doc thought. She looked no more than thirty, her skin still satin-smooth, her amber-colored hair kissed with silver.
He’d tipped his black top hat, and when she slowly inclined her head in response, as she always did, he had hurried on by, his tongue too tangled to speak.
Now he hung his jacket on the hook behind the consulting room door and closed his eyes in disgust. What ails you, man? You’d think you’d never seen a pretty woman before!
Oh, that he had, many times. Always the same pretty woman. Iona. Even her name was beautiful.
With a sigh Doc straightened the stack of medical journals on his crammed desk and readied his office for the first patient of the day. Physician, heal thyself!
All afternoon he would rehearse what he would say to her, and tomorrow morning, he resolved, instead of just tipping his hat and striding on down the street, he would muster up his courage and speak to her.
Jess dangled the ruffly white apron from one thumb and faced Ellen. “Last time I wore an apron, it was waterproof linen and I was taking off a man’s leg. I feel ridiculous in this frilly little bit of—”
“Put it on,” she ordered. “Unless you like getting flour dusted all over your front.” Against her will, her gaze flicked to his well-worn jeans. The thought of his lean, hard body encased in her soft feminine garment made her grin. “’Course, you don’t have to.” She tried hard not to laugh.
“What’s so funny?” he demanded.
She raised her eyes, worked to keep them riveted on the second button of his shirt. She couldn’t tell him. Putting her apron on a man like him was like spreading frosting on a tree stump. “Your shirt is still damp,” she improvised.
“Bet it’s cooler than yours. It’s hot in here, and it’ll be worse when we stoke up the fire in the stove.”
He slipped the neck band over his head and tied the apron strings behind him. “Look at me.” He shook his head in disbelief at what he was doing. As a final gesture he fluffed out the ruffled hem.
Ellen laughed out loud. “You look quite fetching.”
“Feel damn silly if you want the truth.”
“Who’s going to know, Mr. Flint? We’re private. You said so yourself not ten minutes ago.”
He shot her a withering look. Ellen’s heart doubled its beat until she saw the corners of his lips twitch. When the telltale twitch blossomed into a real smile, her heart skittered again. His sharp, hawklike face relaxed when he smiled. And those wary, dark blue eyes lost the hungry look that made her so curious about him. When his eyes softened, something different shone in their depths. Something arresting. She liked his face when he smiled.
She grabbed her red painted receipt box and thumbed through the slips of paper. “You will find butter in the cooler. Sugar’s in the small barrel, flour in the big one.”
With a sideways look he eyed the swinging door she indicated, then returned his gaze to her. “How much of each?”
She pretended to read the recipe, though she knew the ingredients and the measurements by heart. For some reason she needed to be doing something with her hands. A smiling Jason Flint made her even more uneasy.
“One teacup-size lump of butter, two of brown sugar, three of flour. Take two bowls. Put the butter and the sugar in together.”
He gathered up two china mixing bowls from the shelf next to the stove and disappeared into the pantry. She heard him open the sugar barrel, then the flour barrel, which had a cover so tight-fitting it squeaked. He emerged with a bowl in each hand; in one, a glob of butter the size of his fist rode on a mound of brown sugar.
“What next?” he said as he plunked the bowls on the table.