Chapter 5

"W hoa!"

The sound of a wagon creaking brought Merritt's head up from the checklist she held in one hand.

The sky was clear and she smiled at Will Chittim, who drove the empty wagon down the rutted street and into place just beside where she stood.

She glanced over her shoulder to see Jack in the open doorway of Mrs. Steele's restaurant. He was already carrying two straight-backed chairs, one in each arm, and moving through the doorway. His gaze glanced off hers, not holding.

There had been a few moments this morning as she'd been readying for the day when she'd feared that Jack wouldn't meet her for breakfast. Even so, she'd spent a few extra minutes getting her hair just right in the looking glass.

He'd seen her a crying, sooty mess just the night before. Certainly that wasn't the put-together, well-mannered woman he'd come here to find.

She'd woken from a deep sleep—a dream she couldn't remember—with the terrible cramp in her stomach telling her he was gone. That he'd decided against marrying her after all.

But when she'd opened her front door to walk down to the café as they'd planned, he'd been there, standing on the path with his back turned to her door, staring at the house across the street.

She'd felt such a shock of joy at seeing him—and attraction when she'd realized he'd shaved the scruff from his handsome jawline—that she'd covered it by ducking her head shyly.

Their breakfast had been interrupted by Cody Billings, one of her students, who'd apparently been all over town looking for Merritt. The boy had rushed into the café, his hair windblown and mittens flying, to tell Merritt that the restaurant owner wanted her to use the tables and chairs for the interim school until the kitchen stove in the restaurant could be repaired.

Merritt and Jack had cut their breakfast short so that Merritt could oversee everything being moved into the dance hall. That had been about two hours ago.

Jack shuffled past her now with his arms full of chairs. Behind him came Mr. Carson, the preacher, also with his arms full, and the man's two teenaged children, each with a chair.

Will had hopped from the wagon seat into the back and was reaching for each chair as it was handed up to him.

Jack was the first to give up his burden, and he came to stand next to her, arms crossed over his chest.

"This is the last load," she told him. The morning had been spent wrangling wagons and moving furniture.

"If Mrs. Quinn and Mrs. Billings are finished sweeping out the dance hall, I can arrange the tables and chairs and perhaps I could feed you lunch at my house. I can meet you there—it's not necessary—I'm sure you have other things to do than carting around furniture."

He didn't look away from where Cyrus Carson was handing his chair into the wagon. "It'd be better if we ate at the café." Jack slid a glance her direction. "Better for your reputation."

She flushed. "We're to be married in a few days. Surely having lunch together isn't inappropriate."

His eyes shadowed and a muscle in his cheek jumped.

The Carsons excused themselves. Merritt waved as they moved down the boardwalk.

"You want a lift over to the dance hall?" Will called out.

She thought she would rather walk next to Jack for the few blocks.

"Love one," Jack said before she could decline. He extended his hand for her to go first, and she didn't want to be rude.

She accepted his hand up into the wagon seat. With her next to Will, there was nowhere for Jack to sit.

She was prepared to get back down, not wanting to leave her fiancé behind. Jack seemed to read the intention in her expression, because he shook his head slightly. "I'll walk."

Will leaned forward and spoke to Jack. "You can step up on the brake bar and hold the side of the box. It isn't far."

Jack took a step back and jumped up onto something she couldn't see beneath the wagon box, clinging to the side.

Will was already clucking the horse into motion.

"Isn't that dangerous?" A gust of wind blew her papers, and she pressed them to her bosom to keep them from flying away. Her seat felt precarious as she twisted to try and see Jack.

"Only if he falls," Will said from behind her.

Her heart thumped, but it was the pirate's grin Jack sent her that made her pulse begin to race.

"I used to do this all the time when I was a boy. With my brother."

There was a look of boyish joy in his expression. The wind ruffled his hair, and she remembered that he'd given his hat away yesterday.

The wagon wheels must've hit a rut, and she bounced on the spring seat, one hand letting go of her papers to clutch the bench beneath her. Jack whooped with delight.

She shook her head.

"Almost there," Will murmured.

They pulled up in front of the dance hall, and Will set the brake.

Jack was already there to help her down. She'd climbed in and out of wagons her entire life, but today her foot slipped on the wheel spoke as she used it for a step down.

Jack's strong arm banded around her waist as he caught her against himself.

"All right?"

She was caught in his dark-eyed gaze, trapped in the intensity so that she couldn't breathe?—

"All right, Miss Harding?" That was Will's voice, and it broke her from the frozen state.

She stepped back from Jack, brushing off her skirts with one hand while still holding her papers with the other. She cleared her throat. "Yes."

Jack was still, his eyes hooded.

"I didn't know you had a brother," she blurted. "You didn't write about him in your letters."

His expression went carefully blank. "He passed away years ago."

Will had jumped into the back of the wagon, and Jack brushed past Merritt to reach for one of the chairs the young man was handing down. Jack placed it carefully on the boardwalk and then reached for another one.

Merritt rushed inside and dropped her papers on the nearest table, then went back outside to help.

She bumped Jack out of the way to take the next chair from Will.

"What was he like?" she asked over her shoulder. "Your brother? What was his name?"

He didn't meet her eyes as they changed places. She couldn't help but notice the way the muscles of his shoulder rippled beneath his coat.

He didn't answer, and she reached for the next chair.

"Jack?" she prompted. Perhaps she bumped his arm on purpose when she next passed.

He shook himself, as if he'd been lost in his memories. "His name was Dewey. He was only eleven when he died."

His voice had gone gruff, and her heart squeezed to hear the grief in his tone. He obviously still missed his brother.

"What was he like?" she asked again. "What kind of person was he? Charming and kind, like you?"

His eyes flicked to hers and held for a moment before he took the last chair from her hands and added it to their haphazard stack on the boardwalk.

"He was an old soul. Could sing or hum a tune even if he only heard it once. He was always whistling something. Used to drive me crazy."

But the affectionate tone in his voice belied the statement.

"You want help carrying them in?" Will asked from the wagon box.

She realized he was waiting to go. "We can do it," she told Will. "You've been a big help this morning. I'm sure you're hungry."

He nodded and hopped back onto the wagon seat.

Jack had already started carrying two of the chairs toward the open door of the dance hall.

She tried to pick up two but found it cumbersome with her skirts, so she grabbed one with both hands and began to follow him.

"What about your parents?" she called out after him, huffing a bit as she attempted to keep up with his long-legged stride. "I know your mother passed away. Is your father well?"

He dropped the two chairs to the floor with a clatter, though they didn't fall.

The window of the dance hall sent a rectangle of light against the shadows inside. Jack stood just behind it, his face in shadow. "I don't want to talk about my family."

She was trembling a little as he brushed past her, and she was left to put her chair around one of the round tables that had been moved inside.

She hadn't meant to pry, and she told him so as he met her in the doorway, already carrying two more chairs through.

"I thought…I just wanted to get to know you better," she said softly. "We've only exchanged the few letters. I-I'm sorry if I pushed too hard."

She couldn't read his expression, but he didn't quite meet her eyes. "We'll talk. Later."

She ducked outside, the bright sunlight stinging her eyes in contrast to the darkened inside of the building.

When she passed back inside and he grunted that he'd get the last two chairs, she was left to look at her list. But her eyes were watering and she couldn't quite focus.

She wanted to know Jack. She'd thought he would want that too.

But perhaps she was being too forward. She hadn't expected this prickly side of him.

She didn't know how to smooth things over.

* * *

"We brung lunch!"

The childish voice called out just before the noise of several pairs of feet tromped through the door.

Jack looked up from where he'd stationed himself in the middle of the tables. Merritt was standing near the door, poring over several papers in her hands.

They'd passed several minutes in silence.

He'd hurt her with his curt response to her question about his parents. She was too easy to read—wasn't hiding her emotions at all—and he'd seen the quick blink and the hurt in her eyes before she'd ducked her head over those papers.

He was sorry for it.

There was a part of him that wanted her to look at him the way she had yesterday, like he was some hero.

Except he wasn't.

And he'd realized, when she'd mentioned the letters, that he didn't know what the real John had told her about himself. Jack was already deceiving her, letting her believe he was the groom she'd been waiting for. He didn't want to lie to her face.

And talking about Dewey had brought back the rawness of his memories of that time. Jack's childhood was something he'd rather forget. Not talk about. He'd been raised in an orphanage in Chicago and put on a train at the age of eleven. The benefactors from the big city had hoped that the children they'd sent west would find loving homes.

But that hadn't happened for Jack. He would never call the people who'd taken him in Ma and Pa.

And he was certain Merritt didn't want to know about them.

The interruption was welcome. Merritt glanced his way with a guarded gaze before turning to greet the handful of children that scampered inside followed by several mothers and a woman in pants with a silver star on her chest.

Jack hid a scowl. He might be telling a white lie by letting Merritt believe he was her intended groom, but he'd never had an affinity for the law. Not after a small-town deputy had refused to help him and Dewey.

"Nothing is clean," Merritt protested as the children displayed picnic baskets they'd brought with them.

"We brung blankets!" one of the boys said gleefully.

"Brought blankets," Merritt corrected idly.

"C'mon and eat, Mr. Jack!" The same little girl who'd been so upset yesterday morning, the very one he'd given his blanket to, waved him over.

How could he say no? He found himself kneeling on the edge of her blanket. Another girl had tugged Merritt over by the hand. Merritt glanced warily at Jack before she sat beside him, then arranged her skirt around her legs. Was it to keep from looking at him?

"Sorry for the interruption," the young mother muttered aside to Merritt as the two girls dug in the picnic blanket. "I know you're trying to clean up and arrange things, but they were going stir-crazy, and we wanted to find out whether we could help."

"It's fine," Merritt said graciously. "I'm not sure how much more I—we—can do without books or slates."

"How're we going to rehearse for the pageant without our lines?" a boy of ten called out from another blanket. He had a chicken leg in one hand, and his chin was smeared with grease.

"Miss Harding has the whole thing memorized," the older of the little girls on Jack's blanket piped up, sounding exasperated. "She wrote it, anyway."

Jack slanted a glance at Merritt. "You wrote the pageant script?"

Here was another stark difference between them. She was whip-smart, while he could barely read, and that had been self-taught.

Pink roses appeared high on her cheeks. "It's mostly from the Bible."

The mother from the next blanket teased, "I don't remember a talking donkey in the biblical account."

Merritt pulled a face. "Every child needs at least a few words."

"Oh, I understand. My Tobias is thrilled to have a speaking part."

The mother from Jack's blanket stopped her littlest girl from putting a glob of mashed potatoes on her sister's skirt. "Do you remember when Merritt wrote that serial story when we were…oh, I was ten. You must've been thirteen."

Now Merritt had ducked her head. He couldn't seem to look away from the two women.

"She won the county spelling bee two years running," the other woman said.

"Can't forget the time she wrangled all four of her cousins into that Easter play," one of the mothers farther away in the cavernous space called over. "Remember Isaac as the ox, pulling that pony cart?"

"Nothing to be embarrassed about," the mother on his blanket said, patting Merritt's arm.

Merritt looked up and that wrinkle above her nose was standing out. "I'm not embarrassed," she said coolly.

"God made you to be a teacher. And a fine one," the woman said.

But he felt the stillness that had come over her.

"Are you gonna have kids after you get married?" the young girl asked.

Jack coughed up the bit of biscuit he'd just swallowed.

Merritt didn't seem to be paying attention to him as she answered calmly, "I've always wanted a big family." She cut a glance to him. "Of course, you already know that."

John did, wherever the man was. But Jack simply stowed the knowledge away.

Not for you , Jack's mind whispered.

Here was another obstacle that meant they were never supposed to be a pair in the first place. He'd always known he'd have a solitary future—moving from one town to the next, setting wrongs to right.

Merritt was obviously a fixture in this town. She'd grown up here. Had roots. And she wanted a big family.

He had no idea what it meant to be a good father. He'd had no example of one growing up.

It was good that he was leaving. The sooner, the better.

A shadow passed through the open doorway, and he looked up to see a young woman and a twenty-something man enter. He recognized the young man, Albert Hyer. Jack had met him at the general store, working behind the counter earlier this morning when Jack had knocked on the still-locked doors just after sunup.

A little girl got up off one of the farthest blankets and ran to embrace the young woman. Hyer's wife?

"We brought some supplies," Hyer announced. "They're just outside."

There was a stampede as most of the children abandoned their blankets and food to go see.

Merritt stood up and moved to talk to the young woman. A loving glance passed between Hyer and his sweetheart before he moved in Jack's direction.

Jack stood up and moved away from the blanket—and ears that might be listening.

The young man stuck out his hand for Jack to shake, and Jack took it. "We had everything you wanted except for the blue paint."

Jack shot a look over the kids' shoulders, trying to make sure they weren't in earshot. "It's fine. I told you?—"

"Oh, yeah." Hyer looked sheepish.

"Miss Harding! It's supplies for the pageant backdrops!"

Children were filing in. Some of them were dragging a bolt of white canvas, some carrying paintbrushes or jars of paint.

The boys and girls were beaming, each face lit up like it was Christmas morning. Or at least, what Jack imagined a Christmas morning would be like.

He found himself idly ruffling the back of his hair before he dropped his arm.

"They sure are happy about it. How come you want it to be a secret that you bought all that stuff?" Hyer asked. Jack had spent the two bucks he'd won at the poker table last night but felt lighter.

Jack turned a serious look on the kid. "Because that's the way I want it."

Merritt was squatting down, nodding along with a girl who was speaking animatedly. Her face had lost some of the worry lines bracketing her mouth.

That was all the thanks he needed.

"You know Ernie Duff?" he asked the kid.

"Uh…he works for the land office." Hyer shrugged and moved off to join his young wife. Jack hoped the kid hadn't told her.

"You looking to buy a parcel of land?"

Jack turned his head, trying not to show his surprise as the marshal sidled up next to him. He hadn't realized she'd been that close. His chest locked up a little, but he worked to maintain a calm exterior.

"No," he said. The saloon owner had said Duff could interfere with the land deed for the parcel of land the school was built on. Jack needed to know more about the man. Did he take bribes? Pocket Watch was his cousin.

"Buying a house, then? Or got your eye on a farm nearby?"

The marshal was sharp. He could tell by the intelligent look in her eyes that she didn't miss much. She stood with hands casually on her hips, but alert and watchful.

"No. I just heard the name. Trying to make sense of who's who in town."

She didn't call his bluff. Her eyes skittered to Merritt and back to Jack.

"She's independent, but she's got a tender heart. You'll do well to treat her right."

His hackles went up. Was the marshal threatening him? Or simply trying to protect her friend?

"I would never want to hurt her," he said, gaze drawn back to Merritt.

Merritt was directing the children where to stack the supplies, and for a moment, he caught her looking back at him. She was smiling, and a wisp of hair had fallen loose from her bun, lying against her cheek.

I would never want to hurt her.

So what was he still doing here?