Only the Heart Knows (The Brides Series) Page 22

And whether he was willing to jump.

  Chapter 26

  Mandy wasn’t sure how much time she’d spent in her room drafting letter after letter. The time had flown on one hand, and crept by on the other. By the time she climbed down the stairs to the first floor, she smelled dinner cooking. Mama must have a roast and potatoes in the oven. Soon they’d celebrate Papa’s birthday and enjoy that seven-layer coconut cake Mama and her sisters had made. Where everyone was, Mandy wasn’t sure. Perhaps they were off making decorations or wrapping their presents.

  And here she’d forgotten to get Papa something while she was in town. The whole reason she’d told Mama she was going. Something she’d have trouble explaining. Plus, she didn’t like the idea of not having something to give her father that was from just her. Adam had done that to her. Made her forget.

  She passed through the kitchen and saw the towering white-frosted cake on the table. The tantalizing scent of toasted coconut mingled with the more hearty scent of roast. She breathed in deeply as she hurried out the back door, her letter in hand. She’d find Darby and ask him if he’d take it to the post office tomorrow. Thankfully, the thread of discomfort between her and Miss Judith had vanished—with no effort on her part. She should consider herself lucky, she supposed. But she didn’t have the emotional fortitude to go back into town just yet. Images of her wagon ride with Adam still danced through her mind. Images of the big cat they’d seen on the way.

  And how everything had fallen apart between them. Because of what she’d said and how she’d said it.

  She’d squashed Adam’s pride without meaning to. She’d made her proposal sound like a cold-hearted business proposition. And she hadn’t confessed her feelings for him. A terrifying thought.

  She stopped cold on the back porch, realizing there was a horse hitched behind the house. And a lone man standing on the driveway below her. Darby was nowhere in sight. None of the ranch hands either.

  “Adam.” Mandy’s voice was barely a whisper. She clutched her letter to her chest.

  Adam climbed the steps toward her, looking every inch a weather-beaten rancher. Black Stetson, leather vest, his blue chambray shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows, dark jeans, dusty boots... A man bent on giving some well-rehearsed speech. Probably prepared to rake her over the coals for speaking to him the way she had. He reached up to remove his hat.

  “Before you say anything,” she blurted out, “there’s something I need to tell you.”

  He stopped on the porch, his hand arrested mid-reach. His Stetson still pulled low over his brow, shadowing his face.

  “Well,” he said, letting his arm fall to his side, “what is it?”

  Mandy took a fortifying breath. When that didn’t quite work, she placed a hand over her stomach, trying to still the butterflies madly dancing there. The letter in her hand crinkled, but she was barely aware of the sound.

  Adam took a step toward her, closing the distance and making the butterflies scatter all over the place, leaving her in a wild disarray.

  “The first thing is...” Her voice faded to a whisper.

  “Go on.”

  “Well, the thing is...” Oh, this was so much more difficult with him standing right in front of her, looking so mysterious and manly. She spun away from him, shaking. After taking one long, safe stride away from him, she turned back. He was right there with her. Must have followed her straight off. What did that mean?

  Did it mean he liked her?

  Did it mean he wanted to be close to her?

  Oh, she hoped so.

  She also hoped he wouldn’t decide differently after he knew the truth, after she told him everything.

  Oh my.

  How could she? How could she tell him?

  Darby’s voice floated through her head, all the things he’d said about doing unto others.

  She had to tell Adam the truth. And she had to do it now. This was her moment—he was right here—and she wasn’t likely to get a better one.

  “When I answered your ad...”

  A muscle flexed in his jaw. The brim of his hat masked his expression. From his posture alone she could tell he was listening intently, and whatever she had to say was of the greatest importance. Which didn’t help with her nerves in the least.

  “And when I said I didn’t want to leave Cross Creek,” she continued, “and that I ‘needed’ to get married...”

  “Yes?” His voice tightened in a most disconcerting way.

  “Well, I think I may have given you the impression that I was using you.” The fact was, he’d used those exact words, but why quibble? “That just about any man would do.”

  “Right,” he said. “That’s one of the reasons I came back.”

  “It is?” Mandy asked, thoroughly confused. What did he mean, one of the reasons? He had more than one reason? Why had he come back?

  “But go on,” he said. “I want to hear what you have to say.”

  “All right.” She took another small breath for courage and said, “What I didn’t say was that I want to marry you.”

  “You do?” He clearly wasn’t expecting this.

  “I do.” Mandy realized what she’d just said, and how it must sound, that she wanted to marry him. She resisted the most powerful urge to hide her face in her hands. Of course, she couldn’t do that. If anything, she needed to do more—to confess more. No matter how mortifying it might feel. “I—I like you.”

  He paused as if to consider that, his mouth turned down at one corner. That much she could see under the brim of his hat.

  “I’ve always liked you,” she said, crinkling her letter even worse. “Well, more than liked.”

  “More than?” he repeated thoughtfully—dare she imagine hopefully?

  She nodded.

  The lower half of his face settled into a more neutral expression.

  “I have absolutely no self-control when it comes to seven-layer coconut cream cake,” she went on. “And I’m afraid of spiders.”

  “Good to know...?”

  It seemed once she’d started confessing, it all started pouring forth—even things he had no business knowing, like that bit about the cake. And the spiders. It just slipped out. But all this confessing gave her the momentum to blurt out the next hardest bit of all, “And you should know— And I’m sorry to just be telling you now—”

  The rest refused to come out.

  She felt along the edges of her folded letter in its crisp white envelope, debating whether to thrust it into his hands and just let him read what she’d written.

  Would that be the cowardly way out?

  Likely.

  He grew impossibly still, as if he’d stopped breathing altogether, which was unsettling in the extreme.

  “What?” he prompted.

  “It’s about Ask Mack,” she blurted. “I’m the one who answered your letters. Me. I’m Mack.” She bit her lip to stop herself from rambling any further.

  He remained stock still for a moment, then reached up to tug at the brim of his hat, but for whatever reason, he didn’t remove it.

  He stroked his jaw. Opened and closed his mouth.

  Just when she thought he wasn’t going to say anything at all—that he was going to simply walk down the porch steps and climb back onto his horse and leave her standing there alone forever—he cleared his throat.

  She waited nervously, crumpling her letter into a wad. She couldn’t stop herself, even if the action gave away her deep distress.

  “You’re the one who answered my letters?” he asked. “Every one of them?”

  “Every one of them,” she whispered.

  “You read all of my letters too. Every one of them.” He wasn’t so much questioning as relating facts.

  She nodded, incapable of speech. It was indefensible, what she’d done. She’d practically invaded his privacy, taken advantage of his trust.

  Would he even care that she’d only wanted to help?

  At least he was still here. He hadn’t stomped off th
e porch and ridden away.

  Leaving her alone.

  Forever.

  “You read my letters,” he repeated.

  She swallowed, but didn’t answer, because he wasn’t asking.

  “You’re Mack. Mandy MacKenna.” He stressed the “Mack” in MacKenna. Understanding dawning. But still like he was gathering facts.

  Then he fell silent.

  What was he thinking?

  For a time it seemed like he was rereading every letter in his mind. He was going over every green question he’d asked. Every response she’d sent. She hoped he remembered her words of encouragement. She hoped he remembered that she’d been kind.

  Thoughtful. Helpful. Understanding.

  A friend, even.

  “Just how did all this start, you being Ask Mack?” he asked.

  He wanted to know that? Now?

  Mandy swallowed. Maybe she should have anticipated his question, but she hadn’t. She’d only been thinking about revealing her heart and her secrets. She hadn’t gotten much further than that. Of course he’d want to know how she became Ask Mack. It was perfectly reasonable to wonder.

  But she still couldn’t read his face in the shadows of his black Stetson. His voice didn’t reveal much either. He did sound curious, which she decided was encouragement enough.

  “I answered an ad in the Gazette. Actually it was several ads, week after week. Maybe I was the only one who saw them. I don’t know. I know I was the only one who answered. There used to be a feature called Ranch News, but the previous columnist left town.”

  Adam appeared to be waiting, so she continued, “That was Levi Keller. He was the one who wrote the column—it was no secret—but then his mother was getting older, and so, after his pa died, he went back east to live with her. To take care of her. Well, after he left, Gus kept receiving letters asking questions about ranch matters, which left him with a bunch of letters he couldn’t answer. Gus knows nothing about ranching,” Mandy confided, feeling ever-so-slightly disloyal to her editor.

  “And Gus took you on. Just like that?”

  “No, no, it wasn’t ‘just like that,’” she said, feeling suddenly a bit defensive. “He didn’t know it was me at first. I answered anonymously, you could say ‘in the spirit of things.’ Miss Judith, the postmistress, assisted my efforts. She’s the soul of discretion and has become my confidante and mediator in all things Ask Mack related.”

  “The postmistress knows?”

  “She rather likes keeping secrets, I’ve found. It puts a twinkle in her eye. At first she was the only one who knew anything. She’d hold letters from Gus for me—sort of test letters he’d sent along for me to answer—and I’d pick them up on Sunday.”

  “She opened the post office on Sundays?”

  Mandy heard a note of surprise and perhaps disapproval in his voice. Oh, how she wished he’d take off his hat so she could see his eyes.

  “Actually, she’d slip them to me... In church.”

  He took a breath. Before he could say anything, she hurried on, “But we decided that wasn’t the best practice.” She didn’t want him to think she lacked faith or any of the more spiritual virtues. The truth is, she’d felt very guilty about passing letters in church and about all the deception, after a while.

  “After Gus finally offered me the job, in a letter,” she said, “I decided he needed to at least know who I was, so I showed up one day in his office.”

  “And you told him?”

  “Not precisely. I handed him my acceptance letter and stood there waiting for him to say something.”

  “He gave you the job.”

  “A week later. He wasn’t very happy with me at first, but then he read back through all my replies to his sample letters and decided he couldn’t do without me.” Mandy thought she detected a slight twitch of Adam’s lips. “That’s what he said, anyway.”

  “But why did you want to do it in the first place—that’s what I don’t understand. Did you like fooling everyone?”

  “Oh no.”

  “Did you enjoy...laughing at the men behind their backs?”

  Oh boy, was that a loaded question.

  “Of course not! I’d never.”

  “Then why?”

  Mandy thought furiously. Her vision had grown faint at the edges of her periphery, like a bright light engulfing her from all sides. The air grew warmer, as if she’d been standing in the direct sun for too long without a drink. How could she make him see? He had to understand. She’d never wanted to make a fool of him. She’d never—ever—laughed at him. All right, maybe she’d laughed a few times, but only in the friendliest way, as with a friend sharing a joke. And as a woman falling in love.

  Although, she couldn’t very well say that aloud.

  Then how? How could she possibly explain?

  She thought back to how it all started. Reading Gus’s first ad for a columnist. And then the next. And so on, until one day she’d finally put pen to paper and answered his ad.

  “I once tried to save a drowning spider...” she began.

  “What’s a spider got to do with—”

  Mandy held up a finger to stop him. “The spider didn’t make it, I’m afraid, but the point is: what a good columnist needs is a desire to help someone who’s struggling. And that’s me. I scooped that spider out of the kitchen sink and tried to set it free. I don’t even much like spiders—”

  “You said you were ‘afraid’ of spiders.”

  “That’s true.”

  “And you have no control when it comes to seven-layer coconut cake.”

  She had the uncomfortable feeling that he’d been listening ever-so-closely to everything she said earlier, that he’d never forget even the smallest detail. A quality to both admire and fear, in a respectful way.

  “—and Emma and Juliana were running away into the hallway, screaming at me to kill it,” Mandy continued valiantly, pretending she hadn’t heard him. “They were bouncing up and down, and screaming over and over, but I couldn’t do it. Not when it was trying so hard to survive.”

  “So you saved it.”

  “At first it seemed like I had. Its little legs started twitching.”

  “But then?”

  “But then Emma ran right back and hit it with something heavy—Papa’s Bible, actually. He wasn’t happy about that, not in the least. And the spider, as I said, didn’t survive.”

  “A shame.”

  Mandy shrugged. “That’s not the point. The point is I tried. I tried to help.”

  “You tried with me too.”

  “And look how much better that’s turning out?” She gave him what she hoped was a winning smile.

  Only Adam didn’t return her smile. His whole demeanor had turned a bit grim, or so she thought.

  He lifted the brim of his Stetson with one thumb, revealing a pair of mesmerizing blue eyes. Eyes looking at her oh-so-searchingly.

  Oh, how she loved those eyes.

  Mandy lost the capacity for thought for a moment.

  “So you weren’t...mocking me with those letters?” he asked.

  “Mocking you?” she echoed, aghast. “I’d never mock you. Never. Like I said, I’ve always liked you.”

  More than liked. She’d admitted as much, and the words circled back around unsaid.

  He had to be thinking those very words.

  But all he said was, “I don’t assume anything. I don’t assume you like me. I don’t assume you even think about me.”

  “Oh, I think about you all right.”

  “You do?” Those blue eyes of his lit with interest.

  Mandy nodded, embarrassment stinging her cheeks.

  “I just can’t believe it,” he said.

  “That I like you?” Such an understatement.

  “That you’re really Ask Mack,” Adam said, blinking once as if to clear his vision. There seemed to be an air of stunned disbelief hovering about him even now. He looked her over from the top of her head to the tips of her half boots
peeking out from the hem of her skirt, and all the way back up again. He paused briefly on the letter wadded up in her hands, frowned in recognition, but then kept going without comment. She squirmed under his thorough inspection, wondering what he saw. Afraid he was as offended by Too Tall Mandy MacKenna as the rest of the young men in town.

  Finally, he shook his head. “I just can’t believe it. You’re Mack. You. A pretty little thing like you.”

  “What—what did you say?” Mandy could only gape at him in astonishment.

  “I said, ‘I can’t believe you’re really Ask Mack.’”

  “No, I mean the other.”

  “A pretty little thing like you?” he repeated, appearing every inch as if he were puzzled. Not like he was acting. He looked sincere.

  He really did think she was pretty.

  And he’d called her “little” without batting an eye.

  Mandy opened and closed her mouth, completely wordless. Then it all built up in her like a spring bubbling up through the earth. She didn’t stop to think—she just flung her arms around his neck and clung to him for a moment. A very long moment, truth be told. And it wasn’t entirely proper. Not proper at all. The two of them pressed close, her face practically in his neck.

  “Banks?” she whispered fiercely.

  He stood locked in her embrace, not pushing her away, but not exactly lifting her off her feet and spinning her around in a field of blue Columbine flowers either. As it were, not literally. For of course they were standing on her back porch, in full view of the kitchen window.

  None of that had changed.

  “Yes?” he asked cautiously, placing one large, very warm hand on her upper back. The heat of that hand burned through all her layers of fabric and straight to her skin. It was heaven.

  What she was going to say next was likely the biggest risk of her life, Mandy realized.

  He’d have the power to crush her.

  If he wanted.

  If he was that kind of man.

  She had to stake claim to all she knew about him from his letters. From all those times she’d watched him across the church. And every one of their sweet, heart-pounding dances. Their three-legged race. That they won together. He was a good man, and she could trust him. He wasn’t perfect—she clung a bit tighter to his neck—not so long ago he couldn’t have lassoed a steer to save his life, or anyone else’s—but he was good and kind. And responsible. He wanted to do the right thing. He strove hard to be a better rancher. He tried. He made improvements.