Chapter One
Guthrie, Oklahoma
June, 1906
The brown-haired young boy rounded the corner, smacking his arm on a counter, bouncing off the display. With a yelp, he crashed into Rusty McIntyre. “Oomph.”
Rusty was shoved back into another counter filled with thread. Dozens of spools crashed to the ground, rolling in every direction. He straightened up and glared at the child who had finally come to a halt. “What’re you doing, boy? You can’t run around like that in a store. Where’s your mama?”
“Um, she’s—”
“Never mind, just get down on your knees and pick up all these threads.” Rusty knelt and started to gather them up. The boy hesitated for a moment, then joined Rusty on the floor, scooping up threads, then dropping them just as quickly.
Rusty leaned back on his heels and used a fistful of thread to push back the brim of his hat. “I’ll get these.” He waved in the direction of the shelves stacked with canned goods. “You go fetch the ones that rolled over there.”
The boy scooted away just as a woman hurried up the aisle. “Will, what in heaven’s name have you done?”
“Nothing, Mama. I was just going to look at the candy barrel.”
Rusty stood, his hands full of thread. He deposited his load onto the counter and fixed the woman with a stare. “Is that your boy?” He nodded in the direction of the kid trying to hang onto the spools.
At the tone of his voice, the woman’s face went from anxious to surprised in a split second. She straightened her shoulders and offered him a cool glance. “Yes. That is my son.”
Rusty rested his hands on his hips. “Ma’am, I don’t mean to criticize, but you need to take better notice of what your boy is doing.”
“Indeed?” Her eyebrows rose to her hairline.
“He came barreling around that corner like his feet were on fire. Crashed into me, which caused this entire counter of thread to land on the floor.”
The woman turned to the boy. “Will, please apologize to the—gentleman.”
Rusty almost grinned at her hesitation to call him a ‘gentleman.’
The kid hung his head. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s not me you have to apologize to, young man. You have to go on up there to the front of this store and tell that woman behind the counter that you’re sorry. Then you need to fix up the display that you—”
“Wait just a damn minute!”
Rusty jerked and glanced from the boy to the woman. She was so red in the face, he wouldn’t be surprised if her cheeks caught fire. Her eyes snapped, and she worked her mouth as if she wanted to say something, but was too agitated to get it out.
“How dare you presume to tell my son what the proper thing is for him to do!”
She surprised the hell out of him by poking him in the chest. Not once, or twice, but several times until he had backed up and was pressed against the counter with the thread all piled in the jumble in the middle.
Despite her agitation, he couldn’t help but notice her smooth skin, dark blond hair and crystal blue eyes. And when she’d come racing down the aisle after her child, he’d taken in her curves. Yep, a fine-looking woman.
“He is my child, and I am perfectly capable of instructing him on proper behavior.”
Rusty leaned in toward the woman. “If that’s so, then this disaster would have been avoided.”
“Oh, how dare you! Have you never been a child, anxious to get somewhere? Or were you born old and crotchety?”
“Old?” He narrowed his eyes at her.
“Yes. Old. You are a grouchy old man.”
The blood rushed to his face at the audacity of this incompetent mother defending her recalcitrant child by calling him names. “Ma’am, I hate to add to the misery you already have by being saddled with this unruly child—”
“How dare you!”
“—but you are addled, and I am not old.”
“It doesn’t matter. You are grouchy, and mean to children.”
“Mean?”
The boy had been watching them go back and forth, his eyes wide. Finally, he walked up to his mother and tugged on her hand. “Ma, can we go home now?”
She took the boy’s hand as all the air seemed to go out of her body, and looked down at the kid. “Yes, Will. We’ll go home now. But first we must straighten up this counter so Mrs. Wells doesn’t have extra work to do at the end of the day.”
He nodded.
“And, I’ve told you many times not to run in stores, haven’t I?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The woman turned to Rusty and looked down her nose. “Is there something I can help you with, sir?”
He almost laughed at her dismissal, but instead, tugged on the brim of his hat. “No, ma’am. Have a pleasant day.” With lengthy strides he left the store.
***
Rachel Stevens glared after the man. Of all the nosy, mean-spirited, rude people she had ever encountered in her entire life, that—that man was by far the absolute worst. How dare he chastise Will? She was a good mother. A very good mother, and he had no right to insinuate anything different.
“Ma, you’re crushing my hand.”
“Oh, sorry.” She released Will’s hand and began to sort out the threads. “Go on over there and check the floor to make sure we have all the threads.”
After about fifteen minutes of sorting and straightening the counter, she chose the last few items on her list and brought them to Mrs. Wells to add up her bill.
“What was that all about?” Mrs. Wells nodded toward the back of the
store as she tied a string around the fabric Rachel selected for a new dress.
“Oh, nothing, really. Will was disobedient and dashed around the corner and knocked into a grouchy man who took it upon himself to chastise my child.”