Courting Miss Hattie (24 page)

Handing him the hardware and tools as he requested them,
she countered the strange longings in her body by chattering incessantly. The
strangeness of her behavior
caused
Reed to look at her curiously, but he made no comment. Within a few minutes they had the swing hanging properly.

"It looks wonderful!" Hattie exclaimed, standing back to observe his handiwork.

"Try it out," he said, and she seated herself hesitantly, like a queen. Her smile was so warm, so open, Reed had to look
away.
"I'm going to get some more coffee," he said. "You want some?"

She didn't, and Reed immediately disappeared inside the
house. Sitting there alone in the lantern light, Hattie felt foolish. She still hadn't changed from her black
silk dress, and she knew
the severe style made her look older than her years. She was a dried-up old spinster, she thought, with an equally old gentleman caller. Now she had a courting swing like a young girl, and she suspected she might well be the funniest piece of gossip in the county.

Reed returned with the coffee in hand. "How does it sit?" he asked.

"It's perfect," she said as he seated himself beside her. They sat quietly for a moment. Their proximity brought to both their minds memories of the two of them on this porch, and they grew slightly disconcerted. Reed took a big gulp of his coffee,
then
got up.

Hattie thought he intended to leave and was surprised when he lifted the globe of the lantern and blew it out. "The light draws insects," he explained as he sat again, casually draping
his arm along the back of the swing. "Besides, with the
light
on, you can't see the stars."

She leaned forward to see that indeed there were some tiny lights high in the sky watching over them. The breeze fluttered lightly, and Hattie tried to relax and ignore the arm that lay so close to her shoulders.

The silence between them lengthened interminably, until she couldn't stand it. What was becoming of their friendship that they could no longer talk? "I did kiss Mr. Drayton," she blurted out. She immediately wished she could call the foolish declaration back, but it was too late.

"Oh?" Reed's voice was coolly indifferent.

"Well, I thought you'd want to know," she explained, strug
gling to preserve what small measure of dignity she had left.
"That I didn't make a fool of myself or anything. It was easy, just like you said. I don't think he suspected a thing."

"I'm sure he didn't," Reed replied, trying valiantly to forget
the sweetness of Hattie's kiss, the heat that it had churned inside him.

"He kisses differently than you do," she added, hoping to sound blasé and impassive.

"Better or worse?" Reed couldn't keep from asking.

Worse
was the word that came to mind, but Hattie didn't
utter it.
Ancil
was the one who was courting her, after all.
Surely she owed him some loyalty. "Neither," she replied dip
lomatically. "Just different."

"Did you give him the peck, like I told you?"

"Well, yes, at first. That's what he gave me, actually, but I
wanted to try the peach, so I kissed him a second time the way I wanted."

She wasn't sure, but she thought she heard a hiss escape
through Reed's teeth.

"The worst part was that he pinched me on the bottom,"
she said. "Why would a man want to do that?"

Reed didn't answer, but she could sense that he was displeased. She shouldn't have told him about the kiss, she realized, but it was to late now. She tried again to mend his feelings. "I just wanted to tell you that I did it. I'm not sure if
I would have been able to go through with it if you hadn't shown
me how. I know that normally a lady wouldn't talk about such
things, but I wanted to tell you so you would see how very grateful I am for the time you
took to teach me."

To Hattie's amazement, Reed slammed his coffee mug
angrily against the arm of the swing. The
mug shattered, sending
a splash of hot coffee and shards of porcelain over both of them.
He held the disembodied handle in his hand for an instant,
then
cast it onto the wood floor with the rest of the broken mug.

Hattie gave a cry of fright.

"Are you burned?" he asked anxiously.

"No," she answered, shocked and confused.

"Then why did you scream?"

"Because you broke the cup," she said, thinking it obvious. "What is wrong with you?"

"Nothing! There is nothing wrong with me!" His voice was mocking and angry.

"Then why are you acting this way?" she asked, losing her temper also.

"Do
you think I enjoy hearing about some man pawing all
over you?"

"Nobody was 'pawing' me."

"You let him put his hands on your behind."

"He pinched me!"

"Same thing."

"I was just trying to tell you how grateful—"

"Would you stop being
so damn grateful!"

"Don't you curse at
me!
"

"Right. I can't curse you, but I can kiss you. If I kiss you, you'll be very grateful and will flaunt yourself all over the county, practicing what I've taught you."

"I
…
you…" she fumbled for words as Reed stood, kicking aside pieces of the broken cup.

"Good night, Miss Hattie," he said, his tone still rough with fury. "I'd better leave now before I do anything else that you
might be grateful for."

 
CHAPTER
 
13

«
^
»

D
usk
was creeping through the overhang of trees that edged
the river behind the
Leege
shack. Harmon sat on the small dock he'd built, staring out at the water. One bare foot rested on the dock, his knee tucked tight against his chest, the other on the nose of his boat.

He heard the flutter of noise behind him but ignored it. An
animal making its way through the grass was of no interest to him tonight. It was only when he felt the weight of a step on the dock that he turned to look behind him.

She was not dressed as she'd been earlier, so proper in black, so somber and controlled. Her pale blue cotton dress was obviously one worn around the house, clean and tidy but meant only
to clothe, not to decorate.

"I had to come, Harm." Her voice was barely a whisper.
"I knew you'd be leaving, and I had to say good-bye."

He continued to gaze at her for a moment,
then
he moved, dangling both legs over the dock, making room for her beside him. He patted the spot gently with his hand. "Come sit with me, sweet Bess."

Hesitating only an instant, she walked to the front of the
dock and with the grace that
was second nature to her, seated
herself
at his side.

"At the funeral," she said, "all I kept thinking was that now
that your father is gone, you'll leave also."

Harm didn't answer, or even acknowledge her words.

"You've always talked about leaving," she went on. "You've said yourself that you're no farmer and you want to work with machines. Now there is nothing to keep you here."

As he remained silent, Bessie Jane watched him out of the
corner
of her eye and wrung her
hands nervously.
"I
remember
you used to talk all the time about
Detroit
and all the factories for automobiles. Do you think you might go to
Detroit
? Reed says your ability with engines is a gift, like singing or playing the piano."

He turned to look at her then, his face void of expression. His blue eyes focused on her intensely, as if she were some
strange object he was trying to understand.

"I'm real sorry about your father, Harm," she said finally. "I didn't know him, but I know you loved him a lot. I was glad I got to go to the funeral. If Reed hadn't wanted it, I'm sure Daddy would never have approved."

He spoke at last. "Thank you for coming, Bessie Jane. I
needed you beside me, but just having you there was more than I'd hoped."

She flushed at his words. There was
nothing she could say
to that. They sat together for several minutes, his bare feet dangling so close to her shiny new brown leather high-buttons. It was like times remembered, but different,
so sadly different.

"Take your shoes off," he said quietly.

She took a deep breath, garnering her courage. "I can't. I only came to say good-bye."

He reached for her chin and forced her to look at him. "I thought you'd already said that to me months ago."

As tears welled up in her eyes, she jerked her chin out of his grasp and looked away. "You're not going to make this easy for me, are
you.
"

His light chuckle had no humor in it. "No, I'm not. If you're going to throw away everything that's between us, I want it to
be the hardest
thing you've ever done."

Quickly wiping away the evidence of
her emotion, Bessie Jane forced herself to meet his challenge. "I've tried to explain it to you. It just wouldn't work."

"Because I'm not rich!" he said, anger coating the words. He gestured to the shack behind him. "You want a fine house,
not my old shack. I understand that, Bess. I want better too. And I'm going to get it. I have plans, plans to make something of my life." He stared back out at the river, at the water moving ever so slowly out of their lives forever. "All my plans, sweet Bess, included you by my side."

"It's not just the money, Harm."

"Then what else is it?"

"Well, there's Reed."

"Reed didn't even know you were alive when you walked out on me. I'm not sure he knows it now. He's all wrong for
you, Bess. Surely you see
that."

"Reed loves me!"

"He may say that he does, he may even think that he does, but you're not right for him. He talks to you like a sister—no, like a daughter. You're just some child he's going to take to raise. That's no way to make a marriage."

"I thought he was your friend."

"He is. He's about the only friend I have, but being his friend doesn't make me blind." Harmon looked at her steadily. "Reed Tyler is not the man for you, sweet Bess, and we both know it."

Bessie Jane made no comment, then she shrugged as if to put that subject aside. "It's my family. My father—"

Harm raised his hands to stop her. "I know all about your father. That old man has had no use for me since I was a kid."

"It's not that he doesn't like you," she insisted.