Page 24 of A Convenient Heart
She accepted his hand up into the wagon seat. With her next to Will, there was nowhere for Jack to sit.
She was prepared to get back down, not wanting to leave her fiancé behind. Jack seemed to read the intention in her expression, because he shook his head slightly. “I’ll walk.”
Will leaned forward and spoke to Jack. “You can step up on the brake bar and hold the side of the box. It isn’t far.”
Jack took a step back and jumped up onto something she couldn’t see beneath the wagon box, clinging to the side.
Will was already clucking the horse into motion.
“Isn’t that dangerous?” A gust of wind blew her papers, and she pressed them to her bosom to keep them from flying away. Her seat felt precarious as she twisted to try and see Jack.
“Only if he falls,” Will said from behind her.
Her heart thumped, but it was the pirate’s grin Jack sent her that made her pulse begin to race.
“I used to do this all the time when I was a boy. With my brother.”
There was a look of boyish joy in his expression. The wind ruffled his hair, and she remembered that he’d given his hat away yesterday.
The wagon wheels must’ve hit a rut, and she bounced on the spring seat, one hand letting go of her papers to clutch the bench beneath her. Jack whooped with delight.
She shook her head.
“Almost there,” Will murmured.
They pulled up in front of the dance hall, and Will set the brake.
Jack was already there to help her down. She’d climbed in and out of wagons her entire life, but today her foot slipped on the wheel spoke as she used it for a step down.
Jack’s strong arm banded around her waist as he caught her against himself.
“All right?”
She was caught in his dark-eyed gaze, trapped in the intensity so that she couldn’t breathe?—
“All right, Miss Harding?” That was Will’s voice, and it broke her from the frozen state.
She stepped back from Jack, brushing off her skirts with one hand while still holding her papers with the other. She cleared her throat. “Yes.”
Jack was still, his eyes hooded.
“I didn’t know you had a brother,” she blurted. “You didn’t write about him in your letters.”
His expression went carefully blank. “He passed away years ago.”
Will had jumped into the back of the wagon, and Jack brushed past Merritt to reach for one of the chairs the young man was handing down. Jack placed it carefully on the boardwalk and then reached for another one.
Merritt rushed inside and dropped her papers on the nearest table, then went back outside to help.
She bumped Jack out of the way to take the next chair from Will.
“What was he like?” she asked over her shoulder. “Your brother? What was his name?”
He didn’t meet her eyes as they changed places. She couldn’t help but notice the way the muscles of his shoulder rippled beneath his coat.
He didn’t answer, and she reached for the next chair.
“Jack?” she prompted. Perhaps she bumped his arm on purpose when she next passed.
