Chapter Twenty-Seven
“Well, that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” Alexandra said. She stared at Aidan, certain that she couldn’t have heard him correctly.
Here she was, having a reasonably tolerable day—the children were in fine form, Lisa was beginning to rouse herself from her sickness—when Aidan had dragged himself in through the front door.
He’d flopped bonelessly into his favorite chair in the sitting room and unceremoniously announced that he’d have to sell Cyprus.
Her objection had left her mouth of its own accord, and she put her fingers to her lips. Aidan blinked up at her in mild concern. She lifted her chin, standing by her sentiment, if not the delivery.
“After everything you went through to get that horse, you’d just sell him on?” she demanded, standing over Aidan with her hands on her hips. “What about your plans for the ranch?”
“Might not have much of a choice,” he grunted, with a significant look behind Alexandra.
Following his gaze, she turned and saw the children clustered together, staring at them with wide eyes.
“Out, the lot of you,” Alexandra ordered. “Find something that needs weeding and get to it.” She pointed toward the garden until they relented and moped out the door. Only Danny turned to look back, his face uncertain. Alexandra shooed him away with her apron.
When the children were gone, Alexandra perched on the footstool in front of the armchair.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
Aidan, looking wrung out, reached up and scrubbed at his face with both hands before meeting her eye.
“Kevin Black paid me a visit,” he said slowly.
Alexandra’s hands clenched reflexively. “What did he want?”
“To repeat his claim that I still owe him money. Apparently, his gang of ne’er-do-wells had learned what ‘interest’ is and is charging it by the day, probably by the very hour.
” Aidan paused, pushing his hat from his head and letting it fall to the floor.
“I’ll never be able to dig my way out of this hole. ”
Alexandra sat back, absorbing this. “How much does he want?”
“Two hundred, last I knew,” Aidan rumbled. He met her eye and nodded grimly.
Alexandra wove her fingers together against the stab of pain at losing such a creature. “Do you think you could get that much for him?”
“I don’t know,” Aidan admitted. “Horse market out here isn’t the same as in the big cities, for better or worse. Not sure it matters, though.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well,” Aidan continued, gesturing. “I don’t think Kevin would ever be satisfied. I could sell Cyprus, the rest of the breeding stock, the house, the land, my last pair of socks, and I still don’t think it would be enough. I think he’s out to prove a point to the rest of the territory.”
“You mean, he wants to make an example of you?” Alexandra said.
Aidan nodded again. “I’ve heard rumors that he’s riding with a whole gang of misfits now. They’ve been throwing their weight around here and there.”
He drew breath as if to go on, and then he didn’t. Alexandra watched his jaw shift. She watched his eyes drop to her hands, knotted together in her lap, and she watched whatever it was go back down inside him like a stone dropped into a well.
“That’s the whole of it,” he said.
It wasn’t. She was very nearly certain it wasn’t. But she had learned by now that pressing Aidan Rawlins was the most reliable method of making him say less, so she let it lie, and filed it away with all the other things she fully intended to have out with him one day.
“Ugh,” Alexandra said. “Lousy, no-good, lowlife… hornswoggler!” she spat. “I’ve a good mind to take my broom to him should he ever show his sallow face around here again.”
“I’d pay good money to see that,” Aidan said, smiling tiredly.
“Hmph,” Alexandra said, folding her arms over herself. “We simply shan’t be taking this lying down.”
“What do you propose we do about it? Unless you’ve got some gold hidden away in those stacks of books, I believe we’re really in the soup,” Aidan said.
“I can’t say that I do, but I do have something almost as valuable: a society lady’s experience,” she said.
“I don’t follow,” Aidan said.
“Back east, everyone is concerned with being either new or old money,” Alexandra explained.
“The new people are desperate to be accepted by the old, and the old are desperate to keep the new thoroughly on the outside of society. The surefire way for the new people to earn a bit of respectability is through fundraising.”
“That’s… informative?” Aidan offered.
“It’s more than that,” Alexandra said, leaning forward. “It’s a way out.”
Aidan’s dark brows drew together. “How do you figure?”
“We’re going to do a bit of fundraising. If we can raise the money, we can give Mr. Black all of his money at once, and then he can’t charge us interest,” Alexandra said triumphantly.
“I’m not taking handouts,” Aidan said firmly. “And I don’t want you going around town with a collecting box.”
Alexandra waved him off. “Perish the thought! I’m talking about something thoroughly respectable. Let’s host a day here at the ranch, a—a—community day of sorts. There can be games, and we can sell refreshments, and you can auction off some of the horses.”
Aidan rubbed at his chin. “I don’t know how that’s going to raise enough money.”
“It will,” Alexandra insisted. “You’ve got a whole cabin of extra furniture, don’t you? We’ll auction that off, too. Besides,” she continued, “it would be a great chance to show off Cyprus.”
She leaped to her feet, too enthused to sit still.
She paced back and forth, ticking things off on her fingers.
“I can bake, and the children can help serve. It will be quite easy to set up tables, too; we can inquire at the mine if they have some extra planks and saw horses we might borrow. I bet the ladies of the town would donate fabric for tablecloths.”
She paused, her foot tapping as she considered.
“You could stake out a race course outside the edge of town that begins and ends at the ranch. I’m sure people would love to spectate.
You could use the big corral—the one just in front of the house—for some other event, goat wrangling or whatever it is that people do for fun out here.
Do you think it would be in bad taste to have some sort of sharpshooting event? ”
“Well, I—”
“No, I’m sure it will be fine,” Alexandra said, brushing right past him.
“The problem is organizing prizes. Do you think anyone in town would donate something for the cause? I should ask Dr. Bruin’s wife; I bet she would know.
Can you—what?” she asked. She’d turned back to Aidan and found him staring up at her, looking more than a little alarmed.
“I… I’m not sure if I’m in awe or terrified,” he breathed. “You’re like a prairie fire.”
Alexandra blushed, but brushed it aside. “The answer is both,” she stated confidently. “But there’s no time for that.” She resumed pacing, calculating how many people they could safely pack into the ranch and where to set up various stalls and games.
When she turned to pace back toward the sitting area, she bumped straight into Aidan. She’d been so absorbed with her planning that she hadn’t heard him stand up. She rubbed her forehead where it had collided with his rock-solid chest, scowling up at him without any real anger.
“You might’ve warned me,” she muttered.
“Drina,” he said. It made her stomach do a flip. “Do you really think you can do this?”
“We can do this,” she answered, supremely sure of herself. “We’re going to need all hands on deck for it, but we can make it happen.”
“How long do you need?” Aidan inquired.
Alexandra pursed her lips as she considered. “A week, at the outside ten days.”
“A week?” Aidan repeated, his dark eyes wide.
Alexandra gave a self-deprecating shrug. “I grew up fundraising,” she explained. “We raffled, baked, and sewed to raise funds for Union soldiers all through the war, and then for various charitable organizations afterward. There was a great need for hospitals.”
Aidan continued to stare at her. He rubbed at the back of his neck.
“All right,” Aidan relented. “Let’s give it a try. At the very least, we’ll have a grand send-off for the ranch.”
“None of that defeated talk,” Alexandra snapped with all the authority of a military captain. “This will work. The real question is, can you keep Black at bay for a week?”
The mention of Kevin’s name made Aidan’s face sour again. “I think so,” he said. “Worse comes to worst, I’ll sell off the clock or some other trinket.”
“Okay,” Alexandra said, clapping her hands together. “Let’s get to work.” She made as if to go into the kitchen, intent on taking stock of the limited supplies, when Aidan stepped directly in front of her.
At first, she put it down to the narrow corridor between the two rooms. She made an apologetic sound and started to step around him, but Aidan, too, had sidestepped and was blocking her way once again.
Annoyed, she looked up at him, ready to tell him off for playing about when there was work to be done, but the look on his face stopped her.
There was none of the usual bemusement or derision that she had come to expect.
There was a softness, an openness that would have seemed boyish if not for the look in his eyes. They bored into hers, dark and direct.
That’s so unfair, she thought faintly. Why is it always that men get the loveliest of eyelashes that never need the leaded comb? They don’t appreciate them.
She tried to swallow, but her mouth had grown quite dry without her knowing when.
She tried again and succeeded, and all the while, there was Aidan, looming over her, staring down at her.
He was so close that she could smell the shaving soap that he used in the morning, the scent lingering even through a day of work.
Her lips parted, ostensibly to say something, but what, she couldn’t begin to guess at. All that she knew was that the space between them ought to be filled with words, lest something else entirely occur. Aidan watched as her mouth moved, his eyes flicking down.
Is he going to kiss me? she thought. I think he’s going to kiss me.
Silently, he raised a hand, reaching for her face. Alexandra let her eyes drift closed, her heart flitting about in her chest like a trapped bird. Counting out the seconds in the beats of her heart, she waited for his mouth to find hers…
But nothing happened.
And then she watched something come down behind his eyes, like a shutter dropping across a lit window.
His jaw set. His gaze slid past her, over the top of her head and out through the front window, toward the road and the long empty stretch of it, and it stayed there a moment too long.
When it came back to her, it had changed.
There was something careful in it now, and something like an apology, and underneath both of those a flat, cold anger that had nothing whatsoever to do with her.
His hand hung there a second longer, near enough that she could feel the heat coming off it. Then he closed it into a fist and took it back.
Even though it was only a matter of fractions of inches, it might as well have been a gulf opening up between them. The cheek that had been so near his hand was suddenly cold.
Without a word, Aidan withdrew from the room, from the whole house, the screen door slamming in his wake.
Alexandra stood there, rooted to the spot.
She could only assume that she’d managed to displease him in some fashion to cause him to run off like that.
She didn’t mean to be so open with her affections; she just wasn’t prepared for when Aidan suddenly turned the full force of his interest on her.
Except that it hadn’t looked like displeasure. She had seen him displeased often enough to know the shape of it, and this had been something else. Whatever crossed his face in that corridor had not been about her at all—and she discovered, turning it over, that she liked that a good deal less.
She shook her head, dislodging the thought. There’s work to be done, she told herself firmly. The proverbial wolf was at the door, and she intended to use all of her skills to keep him at bay. Whatever her situation with Aidan was or wasn’t, she had children who depended on her now.