Ruby's eyes shoot wide open. "Don't even say that, Miss Bainbridge. My father would kill me dead right where I stand if he thought I was even imagining it."
"What? You might make an honest man out of him."
"I'm sure someone could," she says. She steps away from the window as Christopher comes back out. "But I'm not the one to do it."
Marie notices with a heavy disapproval that he's still got that pistol hanging on his hip, even as he works. It reeks of the wrong sort of person. Nobody in New Orleans needed to carry a gun with them all the time.
Marie circles around through the door, the spell of idleness broken. "Don't tell me you haven't thought about it, though," Marie calls out, just loud enough. "I saw the look on your face."
The schoolteacher sidles up to the counter with her list of supplies and pushes it across the counter. Marie leaves it.
"I won't deny that the Lord put the man together properly, but me an' him? Not in a hundred years. Not if he owned half the land in the Oklahoma territory."
"What's the story with him, anyway?" Marie leaned in on her elbows and spoke in a conspiratorial whisper. "Can't tell me there's no story. I know there is."
"I wouldn't tell you no such thing. Only a couple years back, he comes into town—" The sound of footsteps from behind her shuts her mouth up. "What was it you'd be wanting, Miss Bainbridge?"
An instant later, a man a couple inches shorter and Marie steps through the door. He's broad enough at the waist to strain his belt, and he hasn't shaved in at least three days.
"Mornin', Miss Bainbridge. My Ruby giving you proper assistance?"
"Sure enough," Marie answers. She glances down at the list to make sure she remembers it all before rattling off the list quickly. Ruby moves fast, grabbing where she can without waiting around to look for every little thing. The way she moves, she might be able to do it blindfolded.
As she drops a three-pound bag of flour on the counter, Marie can see Ruby's face screw up a little trying to get the figuring done in her head. Her father finally steps in and growls, "that'll be a dollar twenty cents, ma'am."
Marie counts out her money and drops it on the counter. "Thank you, Mr. Gardiner. Have a good afternoon, Ruby."
The schoolteacher tips her wide-brimmed hat as she steps back out into the summer heat, the warmth beating down on her, the same as it does onto everyone. Same as it does onto Chris Broadmoor, she notes, who stands by the wagon with one barrel left to move.
She can't tell if it's only her imagination that he watches her as she walks by, her arms full of groceries for the week. But she can't shake the feeling of eyes on her, and she doesn't know whether or not she likes it, coming from a man like him.
Looks like an angel, she thinks. But his reputation is, he's anything but. She starts up the steps to the room over Owen Maxim's restaurant, and the shade hits her. He can't see her any more, she knows. There's no way.
But she still feels his eyes, lingering on her, until she gets through the door. She may not be the talk of the town any more, but it hadn't done one thing to get rid of the feeling of being watched.
This time, though, it might just be from the one person in town she might have to be worried about. A shiver runs down her spine, and then a soft blush on her cheeks. A man who'd looked like that back east, and she'd have let him look all he wanted.
Something about Chris Broadmoor made things a little different when it was out here. But if she was going to attract that kind of attention, well, maybe that wasn't so bad.
Two
Christopher Broadmoor hadn't seen his brothers in five years. They were family, and he ought to make the trip out to see them, now that he had a stable enough life to afford trips like that.
Last he knew, they were sitting in the panhandle, only a week's riding. He could take the time off, if it were for family. Nobody would begrudge him it.
He told himself that he hadn't done it because he was busy. Because he had to make enough money to really settle in. To get a place that was really his own, not just working for another man in a town where he didn't know anybody all that well.
A little part of Chris, a part of him that he didn't often want to deal with, suspected that there was more than a little part of him that didn't want to go back, because it would mean having to deal with everything that had happened when they'd gotten separated.
He steps outside the doors. There were a few people sitting at one of the tables, playing a game of cards. The fact that one of them was the owner, and another was a deputy Sheriff, eased his worrying.
Applewood Junction was a small place, but somehow they had enough population and enough people coming through on the stage that they could support a saloon and a separate restaurant. So he hadn't stumbled into some little hick town, at least, Chris thought.
He'd been here almost five years now, and he still didn't think of the place as his home, not really. Yet, he showed no particular signs of moving on. 'Maxim's' was written in vibrant blue paint on the sign over the door. They cut a great steak. There should have been some loyalty to Cookie over at the saloon. She could fry up some delicious eggs, and often did fo
r Chris, first thing every day.
But when it was steak, Owen couldn't be beat, and sometimes a man wanted a cut of steak, right or wrong. The smell hit him first thing when he walked in. The eyes that turned to look at him didn't surprise him any more. Didn't even really bother him, any more.