Pretty much the only woman he’d ever known, but that was beside the point.
“I have to leave, Trace. I . . . well, I don’t want to give you the idea I’m going to stay.”
He hadn’t asked her to stay, but when a man went holding a woman and almost kissing her that might be asking her to do something, and he was pretty sure staying was part of that something.
Nodding, because words were beyond him, he stood there silent.
“All my life I was . . . was . . .” Deb shrugged and seemed to rush through the next words. “I was little better than a servant to my pa. After Ma died, I did everything to take care of his business while Gwen ran our home.” She pursed her lips as if she wanted them to stop moving. Then she forced herself to go on, or it looked that way from where Trace was standing. “And now here I am, right back to serving someone else.”
Did that mean she didn’t want to help? He’d said it before, but he rushed to say it again. “We really appreciate all you do, Deb.”
“You’ve said so and thanked me.”
“And I appreciate all the times you’ve said thank you,” Trace went on. “But I probably haven’t said so because thanking you for thanking me seems stupid.”
Her smile cut through some of the thick tension between them. “My goal, and Gwen’s, is to reach California. After years and years of working for someone else, letting someone else take all the credit—and mostly all the money—for our hard work, we plan to work for ourselves. We aren’t going to tend men anymore like we did for our father. And here we are caring for you and your men. And we are willing, even eager, to do it because that’s fair. You’re working as hard, no . . . even harder than we are. Of course we want to help and will work just as hard as we need to. While we’re here, we are happy to do our part. But we aren’t going to do it forever. In the end we’ll find Maddie Sue’s father, leave the children in his care, and head on west. And . . . and well, I can’t be kissing a man. That’s a good way to get tangled up in . . . in forever.”
Which must mean, Trace decided, that when a man kissed a woman, it was the next thing to a marriage proposal. And he sure didn’t think that was what he’d meant when he leaned toward her.
Of course, he hadn’t been thinking at all. Or yep, he’d been thinking, but his head was all over in a wrong and confusing and fascinating place and stuck there solid as ice . . . only not cold at all.
“This is probably why it’s a good thing I’ve never been around women. I don’t know what I’m doing.” He threw his arms wide. “I don’t know how to act right, how to treat a woman right. Prob’ly won’t never figure it out, neither. I remember my pa saying females could be notional, but I never really understood what that meant.”
Deb shrugged. “I don’t know what it means, either. But men and women not understanding each other is a mighty common thing, I’d say.”
“It’s a wonder they don’t do a better job of avoiding each other.” Trace would do his best to avoid Deb from now on, or at least avoid being alone with her. Because being so close to her, having her touch him the way she’d done, was one of the sweetest things he’d ever been part of, and if he had his say, he’d probably want to fetch himself that kiss he’d just been denied.
And despite her words, he had a sneaking feeling she might just cooperate. In fact, it was all he could do not to test out that idea right here and now.
“Time to go back,” he said too loud and fast. “We can see if Gwen is ready for a tour of the house.” Trace turned to the door, and Deb grabbed his wrist and sunk her nails in.
“Ouch, let go.” Trace pulled against her grip, but she hung on and glared at him.
“What’s the matter?” Trace rubbed at the little grooves where her fingernails were decorating his wrist.
“I just, well, you won’t . . . won’t take . . . that is . . . Gwen is young. She’s mighty young.”
Trace wondered if Deb had taken leave of her senses. “She’s not all that young.”
Deb’s hand shot out again, but Trace dodged her this time. She might draw blood if he wasn’t careful.
“She’s only eighteen.”
“Well, that seems grown up to me. I was on my own in the wilderness at fifteen. Talk about ‘a voice crying in the wilderness.’”
Deb’s expression changed then. He wasn’t sure what it had been before, something mighty strange. She’d seemed upset, angry, maybe her feelings hurt. That all made no sense. Now her eyes went wide and she reached for his wrist again. He didn’t jump back, just because her expression had become so kind. She caught his arm much more gently.
“Did you cry out, Trace?” Her eyes got wider, and her bottom lip trembled. “Or did you just cry?”
“Men don’t cry!” Trace was horrified. How had she known? “It means like hollering. The voice of one hollering in the wilderness. I’d rewrite that part of the Bible if I could. I think of that because once in a while I’d do some yelling, wishing someone would hear me.”
Nodding, Deb said quietly, “I can’t imagine how lonely you must’ve been.”
Her eyes fell shut as if the weight of the lids was beyond her. “I know I was always around people, Trace. I’m sure I can’t compare it, but running the newspaper, with no respect or thanks from my father, a woman doing a man’s job while the man got
