It seemed the promise of cold, hard, cash appealed to all levels of society. The war had left a great many destitute widows and orphans in its wake. Many of them, Faith was sure, were much better qualified than she to care for an infant in the Wyoming wilderness.
The woman in line ahead of Faith turned and issued an order: “You might as well take a seat like the rest of us. It’s been like this since eight o’clock this morning. He’s taking his own sweet time about deciding. It?
??ll be a while.”
Faith nodded in mute affirmation, then looked around for an unoccupied seat.
The chairs lining the corridor were all taken. Many women sat on the floor, talking quietly among themselves, their skirts modestly arranged around them. Faith followed suit and sank to the floor, standing occasionally and advancing several steps as the line moved slowly, steadily, forward.
* * *
Three hours later, Faith had made little progress up the line. She was cold, tired, and cramped from sitting on the hard floor with her legs tucked beneath her. Her empty stomach rumbled hungrily.
The noon dinner hour arrived. Faith’s spirits rose as many of the discouraged job seekers left their places in line, and headed down the corridor, grumbling to themselves. Faith stumbled to her feet as the line surged forward. Several women hurried to claim the coveted spaces. She had hoped the dinner hour would force more of the competition to vacate the corridor, but she was disappointed.
All around her, women reached into their belongings and produced bundles of food. Faith swallowed a groan of dismay and settled into a more comfortable position against the wall, determined to ignore her stomach’s angry protests. The competition had come prepared. She sat in miserable silence.
Mr. David Alexander continued to work through dinnertime. Faith hungrily eyed the tray of roast beef, biscuits, garden peas, and mashed potatoes with gravy that the hotel staff delivered to his desk. Her mouth watered, and her empty stomach knotted up as the enticing aromas slipped past her nostrils. She even detected a whiff of apples and cinnamon on the tray—an apple cobbler maybe, or a slice of pie. And coffee. Hot steaming coffee. It was almost too much for her. She pulled her legs up in front of her, and locked her arms around her knees to keep from marching up to Mr. Alexander’s desk and drooling all over his meal. She glanced around at her neighbors on the floor, hoping for a handout, but not one of her neighbors on the floor offered to share her meager meal, and Faith was much too proud to ask. She’d come to Washington unprepared. She had allowed her family’s optimism to affect her judgment. They had assured her she would march into Mr. Alexander’s office and come out with the job in a matter of minutes.
At last, the crumpling of oil cloth and newspaper signaled the end of the dinner hour. Hope surged within her. Surely, it wouldn’t take all afternoon to complete the interviews. She stood up to stretch her legs and looked around, gauging the length of the line and the strength of her competition. Around her other women rose and stretched their cramped limbs, some of them carefully moving softly snoring toddlers from their laps to the floor. Others, tried to soothe infants and tired cranky children, who loudly wailed their displeasure at the exhausting wait. Faith breathed a silent prayer of thanks that she hadn’t brought Joy along as Aunt Virt suggested to “help sway Mr. Alexander.”
Faith had reached the limit of her own patience, and Joy would have lost it hours ago. She was afraid she might burst into tears at any moment and wail right along with the children.
She looked around and saw on the faces of all the women in line the same look of hope, tempered by desperate need. They needed work just as desperately as she did. Many of them had probably been needier for a far longer time and had lost as much as she. Perhaps, more. Although, Faith had lost parents, brothers, cousins, and a comfortable wealth, she had never known the loss of a child, or of a husband or lover.
A low buzz of anxious whispers surrounded her, and she heard the rustle of fabric as women smoothed the creases from their dresses, straightened their bonnets, and patted their hair into place. Some of them even pinched their cheeks and bit their lips as if preparing to greet a beau. Faith wondered what had prompted this display of feminine energy and wiles until she spotted Mr. Alexander in earnest discussion with another man in the doorway of one of the suite’s sitting rooms.
“Who is he?” Faith asked the woman ahead of her, awed by the sight of him.
“He’s the one.”
“The one?” Faith asked.
“The one doing the hiring.” The woman removed her gloves, discreetly licked the palms of her hands, then patted her brassy blond hair into place. “You wouldn’t happen to have any rouge, would you?”
Faith shook her head, watching in fascination as the woman adjusted the lace-trimmed bodice of her bright pink gown to display a scandalous amount of flesh. “I thought Mr. Alexander was hiring.”
“Oh, no, Mr. Alexander is the one at the table taking down all the information. He’s a handsome devil, too. But not like the other one.” She bit her lower lip. “If Alexander approves you, you get to go in and talk with the other man. And I’m looking forward to that!”
“Who is the other man?” Faith asked again.
“I don’t know,” the woman replied. “But Mr. Alexander is just his agent. The other man is the boss. Take a good look. Have you ever seen anyone like him?” she gushed.
Faith looked up. The answer popped into her brain. No. She had never seen anyone like him. He was beautiful. There was simply no other word to describe him. Faith let her gaze wander over him from the top of his head, across the wide expanse of chest, down the seemingly endless length of hard-muscled thighs and calves, to the toes of his gleaming shoes.
She had to force herself to look away from him. Just the sight of him was enough to make her pulse race. Faith slowly closed her mouth. If he possessed flaws, they had to be on the inside, because the outside of him was perfection. No wonder the room was crowded with females seeking employment. Word must have gotten around.
Faith wondered if he realized he was the drawing card, the main attraction, that the amount of gold he offered for the job of caring for an infant paled in comparison.
It seemed to Faith that she stood mesmerized by the man for hours, but it could not have been more than a minute or two before he lifted his head from his conversation with David Alexander, and straightened up. His midnight-black hair touched the top of the doorframe. Faith could see it was long and silky. He smiled at something Alexander said, then casually scanned the corridor bustling with anxious women and children. Faith’s gray gaze locked with his.
The sudden eye contact sent a shiver of pure excitement racing across her nerve endings. His eyes were brown, she noted, a delicious chocolate brown, flecked with gold and framed by black lashes and brows. Her breathing quickened. Her face felt warm, flushed. She moved back against the wall, and busied herself by studying the tips of her battered shoes.
Reese Jordan stood unmoving as the young woman seemed to disappear before his eyes. One minute she was there staring at him and in the next instant, she had faded into the milling crowd and become hidden from view.
“Who is she?” he asked Alexander.
David Alexander glanced down at the paper he was holding in his hand. “Mary Stephens, nineteen years old, three-year-old son named James. Husband killed five months ago in a tavern brawl. She’s next.” David indicated the girl waiting patiently in front of the table, holding a blond toddler anchored to her hip.