Conor's Way (20 page)

After the girls were in bed, Olivia took her
own bath, donned her nightgown and wrap, then went down the back
stairs into the kitchen to check on his progress one last time
before going to bed. She found him looking through the dictionary.
"How's it going?" she asked.

He looked up, glaring at her in exasperation.
"This dictionary doesn't have 'kitten' in it."

"Yes, it does," she said,
smiling. "You'll find it under
K
."

"That doesn't make sense."

She laughed and sat down across the table.
"Mr. Branigan, you'll find a lot about the English language that
doesn't make sense."

"Knowing the British, that doesn't surprise
me."

"No political discussions,
if you please," she admonished sternly, tapping the table with one
finger. "Think of words that start with
C
."

Conor bent back over the
paper again. "If 'cat' starts with
C
, 'kitten' ought to start
with
C
," he
grumbled.

Olivia choked back another bubble of
laughter. Trust Conor always to have an opinion. She studied him as
he wrote on the slate, his handsome face serious and intent, his
attention focused on his task.

Though he'd been reluctant to learn to read
at first, once he'd committed himself to the task, he was
relentless. He asked innumerable questions, and he never seemed to
forget the answers. But he also tended to be impatient and overly
critical of his own efforts.

Though he was dissatisfied with his progress,
Olivia knew he was progressing quite rapidly. In less than a week,
he had memorized all the consonants and vowels and had begun
learning simple words. A week from now, he would begin reading and
writing simple sentences. A month from now—

In a month, he would leave. The peaches would
be in, and he would go away. She was truly grateful that he was
staying long enough to help her with her harvest, but as she
studied him across the table, she wondered what it would be like
when he no longer sat here with her in the evenings, when he had
gone, and all she had was the memory of his presence.

Desolation suddenly swamped her, and she
realized she would have nothing tangible to show he had been here
at all. Like the Cheshire Cat in Carrie's story, he would vanish,
and only the memory of his smile would remain.

He straightened in his
chair with a sigh, bringing Olivia's attention back to the matter
at hand. "Give me all the words starting with
C
that you have," she
instructed.

He set aside his pencil. "'Cat,'" he said,
reading from the slate before him. "'Cot,' 'cut,' 'call,' 'cost,'
'corn,' 'cold.'" He paused a moment. "'Kiss.'"

He looked up at her, and their gazes locked
across the table.

"'Kiss' starts with
a
K
," she
whispered.

"Does it, now?" His gaze lowered to her lips.
"Fancy that."

Olivia felt a sudden rush of anticipation and
denial, pleasure and panic. Her pulse beat frantically in her ears
like the rhythm of a runaway train. She lifted her hand as if to
touch her mouth, then jerked it back.

The corners of his mouth lifted in a ghost of
a smile, and he did what she'd almost done; he reached out and
traced the line of her lips with the tip of his finger.

A quivering began deep inside her. Her lips
parted, and she knew she should speak, should protest, should pull
away. But she remained motionless and silent, awash in the
sensation of his feather light caress.

Was this
carnality
, she wondered, this raw ache,
this intense pull?
He knows of
this
, she thought, watching his gaze
follow the deliberate motion of his finger back and forth across
her lower lip.
He knows all about
it
.

His hand moved to span her jaw, caress her
throat. Then, slowly, he pulled away, leaving her in the aftermath
of the sensations he had created, bereft and dazed and still
waiting for a kiss that never came.

"’Tis getting late, I'm thinking."

Slowly, the low sound of his voice
penetrated, and she found herself getting to her feet. "Of course,"
she mumbled. She rose, staring down at the table, her cheeks
burning, unable to look at him.

"Tomorrow, we can go on to
words beginning with
D
," she said. She shifted her weight from one foot to the
other. "I don't know what made you decide to stay another month to
help me bring my crop in. But I want you to know that I'm very
grateful, and if there's any way I can repay you—"

"Go to bed, Olivia."

She obeyed the terse command, fleeing from
the kitchen without a backward glance. But alone in her room, after
she'd crawled into bed, she lay there with one arm around her
pillow and her hand pressed to her lips, trying to relive that
moment when he had touched her.

No man had ever touched her in such a way.
Even Vernon had never dared to touch her like that. She thought of
all the silly, whispered speculations she and Sarah had indulged in
as girls. After Joe had begun courting Sarah, she'd confessed to
Olivia that Joe had actually kissed her in the gazebo at Taylor
Hill, but when asked to describe it, she had been unable to do so.
"You'll find out, Olivia," she had whispered, with a secretive
smile, a blush, and a delicious little shiver. "You'll find
out."

But that was a long time ago, and Olivia was
still waiting. Somehow, those intervening years had just slipped
away. Somehow, moonlight and magnolias and kisses in a gazebo had
never come her way. They had been denied her by the needs of her
grieving father, kept from her by the turbulence of war, pushed
aside by the priorities of day-to-day survival.

She thought of Conor, and longed for what had
passed her by.

Olivia hugged her pillow tight. He was only
staying a month, she reminded herself. And she knew she would never
find out what Sarah had been talking about.

Troubled by vague and shadowy dreams during
the night, Conor awoke feeling edgy and restless. Although it was
barely dawn, he dressed and went for his morning walk.

He could not remember the specifics of his
dreams the night before, but they unnerved him nonetheless. Vague
whispers of the demons echoed in his mind, reminding him that they
were still with him.

He walked, concentrating on the inane task of
putting one foot in front of the other. He wanted to keep walking
forever, away from this place, away from the past, away from
himself.

But he could not. He'd made a promise to
Olivia that he would stay until her harvest, that he would help her
bring in her peaches. It was the first promise he'd made to anyone
in a long time, and it was already smothering him.

Conor walked until the sun was up, until the
restless feeling was gone. He turned and began retracing his steps
toward the house. But as he passed the barn, another voice intruded
on his thoughts, a voice that even raised in frustration was soft
and drawling.

"Cally, you stubborn old mule, come back
here!"

Conor walked around the corner of the barn
and found Olivia there, standing beside a gaping hole in the
pasture fence. She didn't see him. Hands on hips, she was watching
the mule, who was trotting away from her across the yard and who
obviously had no intention of returning to the confines of the
pasture.

"Ornery," Olivia muttered as she started
after the mule. "Just plain ornery."

Conor grinned and leaned one shoulder against
the side of the barn as he watched her chase the mule around the
yard, the skirt of her gray Sunday dress whipping behind her in the
warm breeze. He knew she was trying to get the animal headed in the
right direction, but Cally clearly had other ideas.

"Need some help?" he called as she paused for
breath.

She turned around. "How long have you been
there?"

"Long enough." He approached her, still
grinning.

Olivia did not return his smile but gestured
to the mule, who had paused about a dozen feet away. "Cally broke
through the fence again. Darn mule, always getting loose."

She frowned at the animal. "I never should
have bought you in the first place. I should have just let Elroy
shoot you."

Cally tossed his head, not the least bit
intimidated. He pawed the ground with one hoof as if beckoning her
to continue the chase.

"Elroy?" Conor asked, pausing beside her.
"Elroy Harlan?"

"How did—" She broke off, realizing the
answer to her own question. "Elroy's the one you fought in that
boxing match," she said, a note of disapproval creeping into her
voice.

"At least I won the fight," he pointed out.
"Elroy didn't even last one round."

She sniffed, unimpressed. "I'm not surprised
he's been doing that boxing. He needs the money, I imagine. He used
to own the land across Sugar Creek, but he lost his farm a few
years back. Mean old coot, Elroy," she added. "Cally used to get
out of his pasture and go runnin' off. One day, I saw him chasing
Cally through the woods with his shotgun, yelling he was going to
shoot him. He would have done it, too. I couldn't let that happen,
and I told Elroy I'd take the mule off his hands. Paid two dollars
for him, too." She shook her head and glared at Cally. "I think I
got cheated."

Conor leaned closer to her. "If you go around
the other side," he said in a conspiratorial whisper, "we'd have
him surrounded."

She nodded. "All right, but don't be
surprised if he manages to get away from both of us."

Fifteen minutes later, a disgruntled Cally
was back inside the pasture, and Conor was examining the fence.
"'Tis no wonder he got out," he told Olivia. "These boards are so
loose, it'd only take a bit of pressure to pull the fence apart.
Look."

He reached over the fence, made a fist, and
slammed it against one of the boards. The nails holding the board
to the fence posts popped out, and the board fell to the ground.
"All the mule had to do was kick it once or twice."

"I know the fence is in pretty poor shape,
but it seems like every time I nail one board back in place,
another one comes down."

"Mama!" Becky's voice called from the back
porch. "If we don't hurry, we'll be late for church."

Olivia glanced across the yard at her
daughter. “I know, honey," she called back. "I've got to hitch the
wagon first."

Conor pushed the board he'd knocked down back
in place. "If you'll get me a hammer and some nails, I'll fix this
fence while you're at church."

His offer seemed to surprise her. "You
will?"

"Since I'll be staying another month, I might
as well have something useful to do."

She smiled at him, that astonishing smile
that always caught him off guard. "Thank you, Mr. Branigan."

"I do have one stipulation to make," he
added. "Stop calling me Mr. Branigan. I have a first name."

She eyed him thoughtfully. "Does this mean
we're becoming friends now?"

He looked out over the pasture. It had been a
long time since he'd stayed anywhere long enough to have friends.
"I guess it does," he admitted.

But as he watched her walk away, he admired
the sway of her hips and remembered the softness of her mouth
beneath his finger, and he thought friendship sounded a wee bit
tame.

***

After Sunday services, Olivia would have
taken the girls straight home, but Oren Johnson stopped her just
outside the church. "Do you have a minute, Olivia? I wanted to
talk with you."

"Certainly." She looked around for her
daughters. Becky was standing on the church steps talking to
Jeremiah, Miranda was enduring a round of cheek pinching from the
Chubb sisters, and Carrie was huddled in a circle with Jimmy
Johnson and Bobby McCann, concocting some form of mischief, she was
sure.

"Becky," she called, but she had to repeat
her daughter's name twice before Becky's attention was diverted
from her friend. "Keep an eye on the girls. I'll be back
shortly."

Becky nodded and turned back to Jeremiah as
Olivia followed Oren away from the church along the dusty main
street.

"I already told you that you could buy
Princess's calf, Oren," she said, laughing. "You don't have to
worry that I'll sell him to somebody else."

Oren shook his head. "This isn't about that
calf, Olivia." He stopped and turned to her. "Has Vernon been
making you any more offers about Peachtree?" he asked in a low
voice, glancing around to make sure no one else was within
earshot.