Richard’s jaw set in a way she was beginning to recognize.
“Then we won’t say just what we’re up to,” he said flatly. “Come on. Let’s get busy.”
As he took off upstream, calling to the others to follow, Anna Louise ran after him. “You can’t do this,” she shouted after him, trying to make him see reason. “It’ll just make things worse.”
“It’ll save the church, won’t it?” He gave her what seemed to pass for a smile with him. “Don’t worry, Anna Louise. I know some of Orville’s most wretched childhood sins. He won’t mess with me.”
Anna Louise stared after him as he stalked off. Somehow the thought that Richard was willing to resort to blackmail on her behalf wasn’t much comfort. But that didn’t keep her from following after him and pitching in. It helped to see that Tucker Patterson had gone along with the plan without an apparent qualm.
Another load of donated sand was dumped upstream. From noon until darkness fell they did what they could to divert the rising waters of Willow Creek and send them off on a new, less destructive path.
Anna Louise’s shoulders ached. Her arms burned with a searing pain from the constant lifting. Her clothes were soaked through. Her hair clung to her head in a tangle of wet curls. She could barely put one foot in front of the other when Richard came to her and put his hands on her shoulders.
“Enough. Take the other women and go home. I’ll stay here with the men and keep at it for as long as it takes. Luke’s bringing some floodlights out.”
As tempted as she was by the thought of a hot shower, dry clothes and a warm fire, Anna Louise shook her head. “It’s my responsibility.”
Hard blue eyes stared into hers. “And now it’s mine.”
“Why would you do this for us?”
He shrugged. “Don’t go nominating me for sainthood, Anna Louise. It’s just something that needs doing.”
She gave him an exhausted smile. “Why do you fight so hard to convince everyone what a hard heart you have, Richard Walton?”
“Because that’s the truth,” he said evenly, his gaze never wavering. “Don’t forget it, Pastor Perkins.”
He turned, then, and walked away. Anna Louise stood staring after him, her own heart aching. If he couldn’t see the goodness in other people quite yet, why couldn’t he at least admit to the goodness inside himself? “You’re a kind, decent man, Richard Walton,” she murmured. “Someday I’m going to get you to recognize that.”
Banished from further sandbagging by that very same kind, decent man, she rounded up the other women. “The men are going to keep at this for a few more hours. Let’s go make them some hot coffee, soup and sandwiches. They’ll need them when they’re through.”
Luke Hall’s wife volunteered to raid the general store for cheese and cold cuts. Nate Dorsey’s wife, Kathryn, offered to gather the last of the fresh vegetables from her garden for the soup. Patty Sue Henson had some beef stock she’d frozen. She donated that to go with the vegetables. Maribeth Simmons gave Anna Louise a shy smile and offered to run home for loaves of fresh-baked bread her mother had made that morning. Tucker Patterson overheard their plans and volunteered to go by the drugstore and pick up all the thermos bottles he had in stock so they could bring the coffee and soup out to the men.
By the time the other women returned, Anna Louise had started the huge coffee urn they used for church suppers. She and Kathryn Dorsey got to work chopping the fresh onions, green beans, carrots and potatoes, while the beef stock defrosted and began to simmer on the oversize stove in the parsonage’s restaurant-style kitchen. The house itself might be tiny, but the original founders of the church had seen the need for a kitchen that could prepare meals for the entire congregation. Rather than putting it in a church hall they couldn’t afford to build, anyway, they’d just put it in the pastor’s residence, which had turned the house into the center of church activities. Anna Louise, who loved to entertain, had always liked it that way.
Tonight, filled with the aroma of soup simmering on the stove and fresh coffee perking, the house felt cozy despite the steady pounding of the rain on the old-fashioned tin roof. The atmosphere had been so congenial with everyone working side by side that she felt for a moment as if the threatening flood had been something of a blessing. The sense of community often sparked by crises was one of the things she liked best about life in a small town.
She was thinking about that and stirring a second pot of soup, while the other women carried the first round out to the men, when she sensed that she was no longer alone. She glanced over her shoulder and saw Richard standing in the middle of the kitchen, looking like a drowned cat. His heavy-duty yellow slicker had long since been shed because of the unseasonable October heat and his hair looked as if he’d just stepped from a shower. He looked disheveled in a way that was astonishingly disturbing.
“Good heavens, you’re soaked clear though,” she said. She sounded flustered, possibly because of the way his shirt clung to his broad shoulders. “Since the sun’s gone down, it’s getting cold out there. I’ll get you some towels so you can dry off.”
“Don’t bother, unless you mind me dripping on the linoleum. I’ll need to get back outside in a minute, anyway.”
“Don’t worry about the floor. I’ll have another batch of soup ready shortly. Sit down and I’ll bring you a cup of coffee while you wait.”
“I can get the coffee.” His gaze met hers. “You okay?”
“Of
