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“Yes. I’ll let you know.” She walked away before he could say more. She breathed a sigh of relief the moment she’d put some distance between them.
What would her life be like married to him? The images her mind conjured weren’t terrible but something seemed—off. The happy feelings she should have felt at having a handsome man as her husband just weren’t there.
Maybe settling down was too new of an idea to embrace. She’d never really thought of it. Well, that wasn’t true. Like most young girls, dreams of a wedding, babies, and a house to call her own filled her childhood fantasies but there was always a problem when it came to the groom so she’d locked those wishes away. Now that she was a grown woman, maybe it was time to think about it again.
Hugh was handsome, had a decent size home, was liked by everyone who knew him and his business was one everyone in town showed up in eventually, even her pa and uncles. As far as marriageable men went, he was on the top of the list for many.
So why was she so reluctant to give in?
She caught her reflection in the storefront window of the mercantile. She stopped and straightened her waistcoat and raised a hand to tuck a few stray curls back into her bonnet.
Her reflection revealed a woman she barely recognized most days. She certainly wasn’t the same girl who ran away from home ten years ago, mad at the world and swearing to anyone who would listen that she wouldn’t be caught dead wearing some prissy dress and carrying on like some giggling debutant. But here she was, primping in front of a store window, worried she looked a mess after traveling all day.
Ten years ago she wouldn’t have cared what people thought but now she was Alexandra Avery, schoolmarm in Willow Creek, and if Hugh Jacobs courting her was any indication of things to come, the future wife of the local blacksmith.
She sneered at her reflection and her thoughts. She hated titles more than being told what to do and marriage wasn’t something she even wanted to think about yet.
Turning away from the window she headed to the school to change her clothes. Not that it mattered much. Once her pa found out what she’d done, her appearance would be the least of her problems.
She mumbled the speech she planned to give him under her breath again. She’d memorized it line for line on the trip back from Missoula. Hopefully, it would be enough to convince him to see things her way for once. She just hoped her nerves held out as she told him what she had to say.
The piano music from the saloon distracted her as she neared it. A few of the girls who worked the rooms upstairs were leaning against the front of the building, smiling and calling out to the men who passed by. That was a new practice that had Edna and the rest of the town council in an uproar. The girls from the saloon never ventured outside when she was younger, preferring instead to linger by the upstairs windows and talk to those on the street from there but like everything else, things change.
She straightened her spine as she passed the first girl. She was young, her blond curls nearly the same color as her own. Her face was painted. Blue above her eyes and pink on her cheeks. The girl looked her over from head to toe then looked away as if bored. Alex did the same.
The noise inside the building was loud as usual. Shouting and boisterous laughter filled the air and she turned her head to take a look inside when she crossed in front of the swinging doors. Her eyes widened the moment she saw a man hurtling toward those same doors, the wood panels swinging open as he stumbled out onto the sidewalk to crash into her. His momentum was enough to carry them both to the edge of the sidewalk.
Alex squealed as she fell backward, the air knocked from her lungs upon impact with the ground. She gasped, staring up at a cloudless blue sky as the voices around her grew louder. When she regained her senses, she was flat on her back in the street with something warm underneath her seeping into her dress and the man who slammed into her sprawled on top of her.
She gritted her teeth and tried pushing him away. “Get off of me,” she said. The words came out in a raspy whisper, the weight of him stealing what little air she managed to fill her lungs with.
Bunching the material of his shirt into her hands, she pushed again, trying to get his attention and realized he was laughing. His heated breath tickled the side of her neck, the rasp of chin whiskers scratched against her skin and when he lifted his head and looked down at her, the smile on his face was familiar.
Recognition came in slow degrees. It did for him, too. His green, bloodshot eyes widened in surprise, the smile on his face disappearing before he squinted at her.
“Alex?” He leaned up a fraction, then looked down the length of her body. His left eyebrow rose, that irritating smirk she was sure to never forget curved his lips again and when he looked back at her face, her blood was boiling.
“Get off of me, you scraggly headed goat!”
“Yep, it’s you all right.” The timber of his voice was deeper than she remembered. The smokey richness of the sound caused gooseflesh to prickle her skin.
He crawled off of her and stood, holding a hand out to help her up. She refused the offer and got to her feet herself.
She scowled as she took in the multitude of changes he’d been through over the past ten years and stared in disbelief at the fact Jesse Samuels, the bane of her existence, was back in town.
He looked nothing like she remembered. Where was the tall, lanky red-head kid she used to fight with? This wide-shouldered, auburn haired man looking down at her was too handsome to be Jesse Samuels. He tilted his head to one side and smirked at her. That, she remembered. It was Jesse all right. “I should have known it was you,” she said. “No one else is as clumsy and oafish.”
“Ah, there’s the girl I know.” He laughed and righted his hat. “I’ve missed the way you talk down to me. Nothing like hearing the contempt in someone’s voice as they address you.”
Alex took in his smile but something in his eyes said her words weren’t being laughed off as he would have her think. She bit back the retort she had ready to let fly and tried to form some sort of coherent sentence that wasn’t scathing but nothing seemed to come to mind.
She’d never been civil around Jesse. It was odd trying to be. It had to be the shock of seeing him again after ten years that left her so tongue-tied. It certainly had nothing to do with the fact he resembled nothing of the boy she remembered. The man he’d grown into was causing her heart to skip wildly in her chest while her pulse beat frantically along her veins. Why was he back? Was he staying?
A crowd had formed. The sidewalk was full, people staring, some pointing and snickering and a look down showed her why. The muddy hem of her dress was nothing compared to the dark green and brown sludge now covering her from shoulder to foot. The smell hit her when the breeze shifted and those laughs coming from the sidewalk caused her ire at Jesse to multiply by the second.
Less than ten minutes in town and she’d been humiliated, made into a spectacle for anyone looking by ending up flat on her back in a pile of horse manure big enough to fill a wagon.
Heat flushed her skin as the laughter rose, her face burning as she looked up at the man standing in front of her. Seeing him again wasn’t as shocking as the sight of him was. He’d changed so much in the years he’d been gone. He was taller, the top of her head barely reaching his chin now. He’d put muscle on his once thin frame and his red hair had darkened and was longer, the ends brushing his shoulders. The look in his eyes was the same, though. Amusement shined as bright as always. The sight only made her anger burn hotter.
