she could say another word and headed for the barn. Even if her baby hadn’t needed her just then, he didn’t like the idea of Emily climbing around the broken planks and timbers that blocked the end of the towering building. He was even less enthralled with the idea of her dealing with the animals he could hear battering the boards and bawling over the racket Mr. Clancy made when he pulled out a plank and the piece of wall it supported collapsed. He wasn’t crazy about the idea of dealing with them himself. What he knew about farm animals was pretty much limited to the meat counter at his local supermarket. But he was pretty sure a terrified animal was as unpredictable as it was dangerous. It was hard to tell how much damage one could do. Rather like a rejected woman.
The comparison balled a leaden knot in his gut. The last thing he needed to be thinking about right now was how to deal with his senior partner’s daughter. He hadn’t rejected Cameron Beck, anyway. Not yet. He was too busy avoiding the involvement her father was pushing on him to let her know he wasn’t in the market for marriage. Never had been. Never would be.
Given a choice, he’d rather take on the cow.
“That looks pretty heavy there. Let me help you with it.”
The old farmer glanced over his shoulder, his ham-hock fists grasping the end of a beam. Beneath the shadowing brim of a green cap embroidered with the word Pioneer, his spiky gray eyebrows knitted in a worried slash.
“Thanks. Need to get a path cleared,” the man said, his need for haste battling curiosity over who was offering the unexpected assistance. “Brought my animals in to get ’em out of the storm. Now they’re trapped in their pens. They’re going to collapse that wall the way they keep knocking into it.”
He hauled on the beam, dust billowing.
Judiciously avoiding a protruding nail, Justin reached for a door on top of the pile. The tines of a pitchfork were imbedded in its frame. Incredibly, so were stick-straight pieces of straw.
Not Oz, he thought. It was more like a rabbit hole.
Vaguely aware of two pairs of female eyes on his back, not pleased at all to find himself comparing his life to children’s stories, he pulled the door upright. Wincing at the pain in his shoulder, he tossed the door aside and added to the cloud of dust himself.
“You say he was fishing?”
“That’s what he said.”
“Bet he’s staying at that fancy bed-and-breakfast in Hancock that young couple from Des Moines opened last year. He looks like one of those yuppie-types, or whatever it is they call themselves nowadays. Can’t imagine who else would wear one of those designer shirts to go fishing. I’ll bet you can get three shirts from the JCPenney catalogue for what he paid for the one he’s wearing.”
“I suppose.”
“Did he say where he was from?”
As frantic as she’d been at the time, Emily was surprised she even remembered. “Chicago.”
Mrs. Clancy gave a nod. “Thought he looked like big city.”
Speculation brightened Mrs. Clancy’s pleasantly rounded features as she sat on the hay bale she’d selected for a chair. Emily sat on a bale beside her while Anna nursed, the cotton diaper she used for a burp cloth modestly shielding her from the men working beyond them.
“I’d say he’s used to getting his way, too,” the older woman observed, watching the man under discussion shoulder a heavy beam. “I wonder if he’s a firstborn? I can’t remember if I saw it on Sally or Oprah. Or maybe it was Extra,” she considered, pondering, “but someone had a birth-order expert on a while back. A psychologist, I think. She said firstborns are the responsible ones. Used to being in charge and all.
“Junior is like that,” she confided, lowering her voice as if someone might overhear her disparaging her own oldest, and only, child. “Stubborn as the day is long. Just like his father.” Settling back, Mrs. Clancy gave a sharp nod. “As insistent as that lawyer was about you staying put, I’d say that he’s just as set in his ways.”
“I don’t know about birth order,” Emily admitted. She’d never heard of such a thing before, but Mrs. Clancy watched all the talk shows and she was very informed. “But he does seem quite sure of himself. Except with Anna,” she mused, contemplating his broad back. “When he held her, he acted like she was going to slip right out of his hands.”
“Now, why would you be letting a strange man hold your baby?”
“So I could get out of the cellar after the storm passed.” Her voice gentled, her expression turning pensive as she stroked her baby’s downy little arm. The thought that she could have lost Anna tightened her chest, hinted at pain that went far deeper than any she’d felt before—and simply couldn’t bear to consider. “He helped us, Mrs. Clancy. I don’t know what would have happened if he hadn’t come along.”
For a moment, the older woman said nothing. She just pinched her lips and patted Emily on the arm.
“Well, he did come along,” Mrs. Clancy allowed, looking as if she were thinking of the day help had come too late for Emily’s husband. “And you and the baby are fine, so just push those thoughts right out of your head.
“I’ll admit he did seem a little anxious when Anna started fussing,” she observed, deftly changing the subject back to the man Emily was openly watching. “It could be that he’s just never been around young ones before.” She cocked her head full of pink curlers, her interest taking another turn. “I didn’t notice a ring on him.”
“A ring? Oh, you mean a wedding ring.” Emily’s glance automatically cut to the pretty little diamonds glittering on the woman’s left hand. The custom of exchanging rings hadn’t existed in her old community. In it, when a man married, he grew a beard which he never shaved. No one had worn any jewelry at all. “I didn’t notice, either.”
She hadn’t looked at his hands. She’d only felt them. Watching him heft another board, studying the strong lines of his back and long legs, she realized she’d actually felt a considerable amount of his beautifully muscled body. He’d felt very warm, very…hard.
At the thought, her glance faltered, warmth touching her cheeks.
“I’d say you noticed something,” her too observant neighbor murmured. “Of course, a woman would have to be drawing her last breath not to notice a man like that. But you can never be too careful around that sort, you know.
“You remember me telling you about that lawyer on The Tame and The Wild?” she continued, carrying the conversation the way she always did. “Handsome devil, that one. Charmed the sweet young niece of a client right into his bed. Seduced her in five episodes, then dumped her for his secretary’s mother. I’m not saying this fella’s like that and I’m not one to judge,” she claimed, doing just that. “I mean he did offer you and my Sam a hand and I have to say that speaks well of him. But he is a lawyer. And he is from the city,” she stressed, sounding as if the combination somehow diluted his more redeeming behavior.
“Sheltered as you’ve been, I know you haven’t come up against his type. Smooth and sophisticated, I mean. And arrogant,” she muttered, her expression turning to a glower as her thoughts shifted course. “Like those no-conscience weasels from SoyCo who spout statutes and clauses and time allowances instead of fixing the drainage problem by our land. We have crops being flooded because of their negligence and they keep telling us how much time they have to look into the problem. I can tell ’em what the problem is. That new drain tile they put in when they bought the Eiger farm is draining straight onto our land. All they’ve got to do is dig—”
“Mrs. Clancy,” Emily murmured. A vein bulged by the pink tape holding a curl in place at the woman’s temple. “Remember your blood pressure.”
Connie Clancy glared at Justin’s back for another moment then huffed a breath. “Well, I am of a mind to think they haven’t a feeling bone in their bodies,” she muttered, nowhere near ready