The Hired Man. Lynna Banning

and Danny were arguing about what to do with the old rusted-out door screen.

      “Let’s build a bird cage.”

      “No! Let’s make a chicken coop.”

      “We’ve already got a chicken coop,” Molly pointed out.

      “Yeah,” Danny conceded. “But it’s pretty rickety. How about making a dirt-strainer.”

      “A dirt-strainer!” Molly’s blue eyes went wide. “That’s a dumb idea. What’s a dirt-strainer, anyway?”

      “You know. When Ma plants tomatoes ’n’ carrots she hoes the dirt real fine. A dirt-strainer would make it easier.”

      They argued and discussed until their mother woke from her nap, and Cord strode into the kitchen to bake his apple pie.

      Eleanor shook her head at the sight of the rangy man in her kitchen and when he tied her blue-checked gingham apron around his waist she had to smile. Danny disappeared into the pantry and emerged with a big bowl of last season’s red Jonathan apples. Cord sat him down at the kitchen table with a paring knife and showed him how to cut them in half, remove the core and peel them. He showed Molly how to slice them up fine, and while the children labored away, he started his piecrust.

      She watched with misgivings. Piecrust was hard to get just right. Adding too much water made it tough; adding too little made the crust crumble into nothing when you tried to roll it out.

      Cord scooped two cups of flour out of the barrel and dropped in a palm-size lump of her just-churned butter. She didn’t really believe he knew what he was doing, but his motions were decisive. He was even humming! Well, maybe he did know and maybe he didn’t, she sniffed. The proof would be in the pudding. Or the pie, she amended.

      Part of her hoped he would fail, that his crust would turn out tough and the apples mushy. Another part of her admired him, a rugged-looking man too tall for her low-ceilinged kitchen, for even attempting to bake a pie. And, she thought, studying her two children absorbed in their apple peeling and slicing, Molly and Daniel were certainly learning something new! Not only that, she acknowledged, they weren’t squirming or whining to go play outside.

      Cord must have threatened them with something. In just two days, this man who’d ridden in from God knows where, and about whom she knew absolutely nothing, had tamed her over-curious son and her lively daughter, and that was a miracle if there ever was one.

      She trusted Cord Winterman, and she had to wonder why. She was no green girl, one who was easily bowled over by a handsome face and skill with a hammer. In all the years she’d been alone, she had never hungered for male company. She knew this was a source of gossip and speculation on the part of the townspeople, and it was definitely cause for frustration on the part of the parade of men who brought supplies and mail and news from town and dropped broad hints about staying for supper. None of them had ever set foot in her kitchen, or sat at her supper table, or anywhere else inside the house. She wasn’t interested, and until this moment she had never wondered why.

      Isaiah, the old hired man she’d had for years, had rarely even spoken to her children, let alone taught them anything. Isaiah had been lazy and inept and dull-witted, but she’d been desperate for help and for all his shortcomings, she had trusted him around Danny and Molly. When the crotchety old man had moved on, she wasn’t sorry, but then she’d fallen ill.

      But this man, Cord Winterman, was a different kind of fish. He made her children sit up and take notice. He made her sit up and take notice. He made her wonder about things. Why, for instance, was he content to work as just a hired man when it was plain he was capable of so much more? Where had he come from? Where was he going? She should have demanded answers to these questions, but somehow when he had appeared at her front door, all the questions had flown out of her head.

      She watched him sprinkle flour over the breadboard, divide his pie dough into four equal parts and search for her rolling pin. So he was making not just one but two pies!

      The man knew his way around a kitchen, and she couldn’t help but wonder whose kitchen it had been in his past.

      He let Danny and then Molly try their hand at rolling out the crust. Then he took over, rolled it thin and expertly laid it in the tin pie pan. He showed Danny again how to roll out the next bottom crust, and then they all heaped in handfuls of sliced apples and brown sugar. Brown sugar? She never used brown sugar in apple pie! And then he added bits of butter and...cheese? Cheese! Whatever was he thinking?

      When he slashed the top crusts and slid the filled tins into the oven, the children clapped their hands and Cord half turned toward her. A flour smudge marked one cheek and his apron was spotted with something, but he sent her a grin that curled her toes. Even from here she could see the triumphant light in those unnervingly blue eyes.

      Suddenly she wished she had some whiskey in her coffee cup.

       Chapter Five

      Cord knew she was watching his every move, assessing him, judging him. Eleanor resented his presence in her kitchen, rooting around in her pantry and in the cutlery drawers. But she wanted an apple pie, didn’t she? If there was one thing he’d learned in this life, it was that you don’t get something for nothing. No rooting around in a pantry, no apple pie.

      He worked on, trying to ignore her, and trying to ignore the undercurrent of pleasure he felt knowing that her eyes were following every move he made. It made his chest feel as hot inside as he felt outside in the stifling kitchen with the roaring fire in the stove heating up the oven.

      While the pies baked, the children drifted out the back door to play in the yard and Cord warmed up the coffee, poured two cups and carried them into the parlor, where Eleanor sat.

      She looked up at him with a strange expression on her pale face. He sucked in his breath and waited.

      “You’re not just a hired man, are you?” she said. “I mean, that’s not what you did before I hired you, is it?”

      “I’m a hired man here,” he said carefully. “I’m not sure what I’d be somewhere else.”

      She reached for his offered cup of coffee, then glanced up again. “Do you have plans for ‘somewhere else’?”

      He gave her such a long look that she lowered her eyes.

      “I was planning to go to California, to the gold fields.”

      “What stopped you?”

      He didn’t answer for a long time, just focused his gaze out the window on the apple orchard. “To be honest, I wouldn’t have stopped here if I hadn’t been so hungry, even though I’d seen your advert in town. But then I came up on that little hill and saw all those apple trees covered with lacy white blossoms. Kinda made my heart feel funny, so I stopped and...well, you know the rest.”

      She paused with her cup halfway to her mouth. “How long will you stay?”

      “It’s April now,” he said slowly. “I thought I’d give it five months, say ’til August, before I move on.”

      “Very good. Doc Dougherty tells me I should be completely well and strong long before August.”

      “Yeah? You gonna chop wood and hitch up the horse and drive that wagon to town and muck out your barn by yourself? You need some help out here, ma’am. Even if I’m not going to be here, you should have a hired man to help out.”

      She gave him a half smile and sipped her coffee for a full minute before she spoke. “I chopped wood and mucked out the barn before I fell ill, Mr. Winterman. I have been on my own here for almost seven years, ever since Molly was born.”

      Cord studied her. Her cheeks were getting pink. “It’s too hard for a woman alone. That’s most likely why you got sick.”

      “That is pure nonsense. I got sick because I fell in the creek while I was chasing the cow and took