Page 10 of A Convenient Heart
“Everyone in town will be there,” said her younger sister.
Miss Harding was the first to speak. “I’m sure Mr. Crosby has seen his share of pageants and played his part when he was your age.”
She’d be wrong about that.
For a moment, he was kicked back to his childhood—a time he didn’t like to think about. Going to bed hungry at night. Chores all day—backbreaking work. Never knowing when he was going to get switched for something he’d done wrong—or somethingsheimagined he’d done.
His guardians hadn’t believed in schooling, not for him. After he’d left the orphanage at eleven, he hadn’t seen the inside of a school building.
“We’ll see,” he said.
He wouldn’t be in Calvin when the pageant rolled around. But he hadn’t said an outright lie either.
Miss Harding was watching him, and for once, all his skill at reading people failed him. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking, but that little furrow above her nose was back.
* * *
Merritt placed her fork across her half-full plate and folded her hands in her lap.
The nerves she’d felt since the first moment she’d come face-to-face with John—Jack—hadn’t dissipated one bit.
Food gone, he sipped his coffee across the table. The waiter had already taken his plate.
He ate like a man who worked long hours of physical labor, like her cousins. Or like a man who’d grown up not knowing when he’d eat his next meal.
It didn’t fit with what she knew of John through his letters.
Everything about the man was incongruous with what she’d imagined.
He was quiet. Not once while they’d eaten had he rushed in to fill a silence. He watched the people around them.
But she’d also felt the intensity of his attention. Never once while she’d chattered had he looked bored or uninterested.
As pretty as your Miss Harding.
She hadn’t expected the compliment.
Or how his very presence, sitting across the table, seemed larger than life somehow. As if he wasn’t quite real.
He wastoohandsome. Maybe that was the reason her stomach was knotted.
His eyes changed color in the low lamplight. Sometimes blue. Sometimes hazel or green.
She’d expected him clean-shaven, but the stubble at his jaw somehow made him seem more rugged. The slightest crook in his nose should’ve ruined the visage but somehow only enhanced it.
This was all wrong.
The beat of her pulse, which hadn’t steadied all evening. The flutter of her heart when he turned his gaze on her.
This was supposed to be atransaction. A signature on a piece of paper, an amiable, friendly affection. She’d hoped for a simple, pleasant sense of camaraderie. Someone to provide companionship on lonely prairie winter nights that stretched long.
But what she felt for John—Jack—this instant attraction…it felt dangerous.
She scooped up her coffee cup and held it with both hands in front of her, a sort of protective measure.
“You told me about your business deal in your last letter,” she said. “Were you able to complete it satisfactorily?”
A shadow chased through Jack’s eyes. He set his coffee mug on the table and smiled that dangerous smile at her. “We’ll have plenty of time to talk about all that later.”
