Loner's Lady. Lynna Banning
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tip onto the floor and lurched toward him. Again he steadied her, but this time she was closer. So close he could smell her hair, a fragrance like roses and something spicy and clean. He loosened his grip at her waist, but kept his hands in place so she wouldn’t fall.
She stumbled into him, then righted herself, breathing heavily. His own breathing was none too steady, he noted. The brief touch of her forehead against his chin, the smoky-sweet scent rising from her skin slammed into his gut like a 50-caliber bullet.
Instantly he lifted his hands from her body, but too late. He wanted to smell her, all of her. Taste her.
And more. His groin tightened.
Jess let out an uneven breath. What the hell was he thinking? There was something he had to do here, and the woman didn’t matter. She damn well couldn’t matter.
Chapter Five
I t took Ellen a quarter of an hour to maneuver herself down the stairs using the crutch Mr. Flint had contrived for her. Settling one leg on the lower step and swinging the curved oak staff down to meet it, stair by stair, she managed a noisy descent, terrified that at any second she would land off balance and tumble to the bottom. But not even the ache in her injured leg dampened her determination. She had chickens to feed. She had herself to feed as well.
Moving around on only one good leg made her heart pound with exertion. By the time she reached the landing, her breath was heaving in and out in hoarse gasps. Now she knew why old Jeremiah Dowd, who had lost a leg during the War of the Rebellion, spent so many afternoons sitting under the leafy oak tree in the town square.
The first thing she saw when she stumped into the kitchen was her blue speckleware coffeepot on the still-warm stove. She lifted the lid and peeked in to find an almost full pot of rich-smelling brew. Four fresh eggs nestled in a china bowl, and the frying pan waited beside it. Thoughtful of the man. Either he was more civilized than she’d thought or he was after something.
But what? What would make a man like Mr. Flint take interest in the tiny farm she was working so hard to hold on to?
She broke the eggs into the bowl, whipped them into a froth with a fork and had just poured them into the butter-coated pan when she glanced out the window. Her hand froze on the spatula.
Mr. Flint stood in her yard, stirring something in her washtub, which sat over a fire pit he’d dug. With his shirt off he looked younger than she had supposed, his chest well developed, his back lean and tanned. She gazed at his smooth, bronzy skin and the V of fine dark hair that disappeared beneath his belt buckle until she felt her cheeks flush. With every movement of the peeled branch he used to stir the tub contents, sinewy muscles rippled in his shoulders.
Ellen slid the frying pan off the heat and clumped out onto the back porch. The hole in the screen door had been patched with a scrap of wire mesh. She didn’t need reminding that there were zillions of such chores waiting to be addressed. Annoyed, she pushed the screen open with a slap. “What do you think you’re doing?”
He poled the sudsy mass of pale-colored garments around the tub without looking up. “Washing clothes.”
Steam rose into the hot morning air, making Ellen more acutely aware of the heat in the pit of her stomach. Heat she hadn’t felt since Dan left.
“I usually do that in the shade. Yonder, by the pepper tree.” She flinched at the accusatory tone in her voice. What was the matter with her? The man was doing her a favor, taking on work she couldn’t manage at present.
He looked at her, shading his eyes with one hand. “Wasn’t any sun when I started. Real pretty sunrise, though.”
He’d started washing clothes at dawn? Ellen moved closer and peered down into the tub. She recognized the blue shirt he’d worn the day before, then the petticoat she’d muddied in the creek and the underdrawers he’d cut off her when he’d set her leg. Then another pair of what looked like men’s drawers. No, two pairs.
His mouth quirked in a lazy, off-center smile. “Been awhile since my duds have seen hot water. I’m washing everything I own except the pants I’m wearing.”
Heavens, did that mean under his tight-fitting jeans he wore no…no underwear? She stared at his crotch for an instant, then flicked her gaze to his mouth. Unlike his eyes, which revealed nothing, his mouth was extraordinarily expressive. She could practically read his mind from the position of his lips. At this moment, he was not thinking of his tub of washing; he was thinking of her!
Ellen swallowed hard. “Save the water. The creek’s getting low, and my tomatoes are drying up.”
“Got lye soap in it. You still want—”
“The tomatoes are over there, trained up on the chicken wire.” Again, the words came out harsher than she intended.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“The rinse water,” she snapped. “Not the soapy. Pour the soapy water on my honeysuckle vine next to the chicken house.”
He studied her a moment longer than necessary, then shrugged his shoulders and resumed stirring the tub contents. The flush of heat in Ellen’s face traveled down her neck and into her chest, as if a rush of hot, wet wind had curled about her.
She pivoted so fast the crutch under her armpit wobbled. “Excuse me, Mr. Flint. I have quite forgotten something.”
Jess chuckled as she stumped away across the yard. “Call me Jess, why don’t you?” he said to her back.
She kept moving. “Why should I?”
“Because it looks like I’ll be here for a while.” He chuckled again as the screen door snapped shut. He could tell she didn’t like the idea much.
That was fine with him. In a funny way he didn’t much like the idea, either, even though it was what he’d planned. It wasn’t that he didn’t enjoy her company, because he did. She had a crispness about her, a strength he found intriguing. She worked hard. The vegetable garden flourished, the cow was healthy, the horse well cared for. She even had a well-scrubbed kitchen floor. It could not have been easy for her alone all this time, but it sure was plain she wasn’t a quitter. She had courage and she had grit. He wondered if husband Dan knew what he’d thrown away when he rode off.
Ellen O’Brian had two other things Jess would give his right arm for—the respect of the townspeople and the ability to laugh at herself. Rare qualities for a woman in these circumstances. Downright admirable. He wished he didn’t have to hurt her to get what he wanted.
For a moment he considered stripping and tossing his jeans into the tub, then discarded the idea. It might spook her so bad she’d run him off, and no matter how dirt-encrusted or sweat-sticky his trousers, he couldn’t take the risk.
He watched the soapy water bubble around his underdrawers and her petticoat. Entwined together in a sudsy knot, the garments writhed in a sinuously suggestive dance, and suddenly he remembered the satiny skin of her thigh when he’d cut her lace-trimmed drawers away. His fingers tightened on the stirring pole. Better keep his mind on her tomatoes.
And on his most important task of the day—searching another small area of O’Brian land.
When the clothes looked reasonably clean, he dragged the tub of water off the fire and over to the chicken house, tipping it out where the honeysuckle vine wound up the wall and spilled over the roof. A honeysuckle vine on a chicken house, of all things. On the privy, too, he noted. He’d save a gallon or so of water for that one as well.
Rinsing was easier. And cooler. He pumped fresh water into the tub, and after he’d kicked dirt over his coals and wrung out all the rinsed garments, he scouted for a clothesline hook. On his circuit around the yard he glimpsed a blur of blue through the kitchen window.
She wore another one of her husband’s shirts, a plain blue chambray. Most women would look dowdy in such a getup, but even though the shoulder seams drooped off her slim form and she’d rolled the sleeves up to her elbows,