Printer in Petticoats (4 page)

Cole watched her disappear through the
Sentinel
office doorway. “Don't know what got into her,” he murmured.

“Maybe she's hungry,” Ellie offered with a laugh.

“Nah, she just finished breakfast.”

Ellie nodded. She was as tall as he was, with a slim figure and a graceful way of moving. He thought he recognized her from her photo in the
Sentinel
.

“Mrs. Johnson, isn't it?”

“Ellie.”

Cole nodded. “What can I do for you today, Ellie?”

She smiled. “It's about what I can do for
you
, Mr. Sanders.”

Cole waited while her smile widened. “Uh, what might that be? You aren't a typesetter, are you?”

Behind him, Noralee gave a squeak of outrage.

“Heaven's no. I'm a music teacher. I came about tonight.”

“Tonight? What about tonight?”

“Why, the tryouts for the choir,” she explained. “At the church.”

“Sorry, I'm not a churchgoing man.” He hadn't set foot in a church since that awful day back in Kansas when he buried Maryann.

“Oh, it's not a church choir,” she said quickly. “It's the new community chorus that I am directing. We're doing a Christmas benefit for the new music school.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Do you like music? Singing, I mean?”

“I do. But not in church.”

“Whyever not? What have you got against churches?”

“I...” Cole faltered. He could never explain how he felt, that God had abandoned him to black despair when Maryann had died. He shook his head.

“Do come,” she urged. “A little religion would do any newspaper editor good. Seven o'clock.”

She was gone before he could say yea or nay. Mostly he thought nay. A little religion would never in a thousand years cure what ailed him.

But then he thought of all the town news he might glean at choir rehearsals, and he changed his mind.

Chapter Five

C
ole hated churches. He'd been married in one and a year later he'd sat through Maryann's funeral and felt his heart turn to stone. Ever since then he'd steered clear of religious establishments.

To his surprise, the Smoke River Community Church meeting hall wasn't oppressive. The walls were painted a soft cream color, accented by dark wooden beams. Oak, he thought. Nice.

About two dozen townspeople sat on benches around the perimeter, waiting for the tryouts to begin. Including, he discovered with a jolt of pleasure, Jessamine Lassiter.

Tryouts, he discovered, involved singing alone, and Cole immediately felt uncomfortable about that.
Trapped
would be a better word. Maybe he should give up the idea. He had started to rise when the choir director, Ellie Johnson, impeccably dressed in a black skirt and a soft pink shirtwaist, clapped her hands and everyone sat up straighter.

“Let's start with the women's voices.”

The women sang selections from church hymns for their tryouts. Ellie selected four altos and three sopranos that blended with each other. One of the sopranos was Jessamine, who had spent all evening studiously ignoring him.

The tenors tried out next. The director chose five, including Whitey Poletti, who had a whiskey-smooth tone and an extraordinarily high range. Whitey had launched into “Santa Lucia,” but got no further than the first stanza before Ellie smiled and nodded at him.

By the time the director got around to the baritones, Cole was ready to bolt. He couldn't sing like Whitey. He had no musical training, never sang in a church or any other choir and he hated the thought of doing it in public.

He looked for the exit, but just then Ellie pinned him with an expectant look.

He maneuvered to sing last, praying that those already chosen, including Jessamine, would go on home.

No such luck.

“Cole Sanders? Your turn.”

Cole stood up, wishing a trapdoor would open beneath him. The director smiled encouragingly. “What would you like to sing, Mr. Sanders?”

He felt Jessamine's cool green-gray eyes on him, and his throat closed up tight. The director waited.

“Uh, could I do this outside? Just the two of us?”

She shook her head, and the onlookers began to whisper among themselves. Shoot sake! This wasn't any worse than facing down a rabid mob of pro-slavery demonstrators back in Kansas. He drew in a deep breath.

Jessamine waited. She'd bet the country bumpkin from Kansas couldn't sing a note. Then he opened his mouth and started in.

“‘Oh, my darling, Oh, my darling, Oh, my darling, Clementine...'”

Suddenly the room was so quiet she could have heard a hatpin hit the floor. She sat straight as a ramrod and stared at him.

“You are lost and gone forever
...
”

She'd never heard a more beautiful male voice. Rich and full, like a hot mince pie warm from the oven. The director stopped him after “dreadful sorry, Clementine.”

“Mr. Sanders, do you read music?”

Aha!
Jess would bet a million dollars in gold that he couldn't. That was why he'd chosen a simple folk song for his audition, and besides that, his voice was entirely untrained.

“Yeah, some,” he said. “My momma taught me when I learned to play the guitar.”

“Then we would be honored to have you in our community choir. We'll be performing selections from Handel's
Messiah
at Christmas. Are you familiar with this work?”

Cole shook his head.

“In addition to the choral numbers, there is also a mixed quartet of voices included—soprano, alto, tenor, baritone. Perhaps you would consider—?”

“Just four voices singing by themselves? 'Fraid not, ma'am. I—”

The director stepped up close to him. “Please, Mr. Sanders. I am short one good baritone voice.”

Jessamine clenched her fingers together in her lap.
Say no
, she urged. Ellie had chosen her to be the soprano singer in the quartet. The last thing she wanted was to stand next to Cole Sanders and sing. The very last thing. The thought made her cold and then hot all over.

She caught Cole's eye and subtly shook her head.

He gave her a long, unreadable look. “I'll do it,” he announced.

Jess's heart contracted. She sat numb with anxiety while Ellie selected two basses, rancher Peter Jensen and Ike Bruhn, who owned the sawmill.

“That will be all for tonight,” Ellie announced. “Rehearsals will start next Tuesday when Winifred Dougherty's grand piano arrives from St. Louis. Until then, pick up a score and look it over.” She gestured to a pile of music on one of the benches.

“And for the quartet...” She glanced meaningfully at Cole and then Jessamine. “Please start learning your parts. We will rehearse separately, on Thursday evenings.”

Jess pressed her lips together. It wasn't enough to have Cole Sanders in her hair every day of the week, but nights, too? She considered dropping out of the choir, but she'd looked forward to singing the
Messiah
ever since Ellie had chosen it.

She would just have to cope. She'd lived through worse than standing next to Cole Sanders. When Miles was killed she'd wanted to give up on life, but she hadn't. Now singing was something that kept her alive inside. She prayed she could manage to learn her part. Even when she was a child, her father said when she sang she sounded like a sick cat.

Cole made a move toward her, but she slipped out the side door. She was still trembling inside at the prospect of standing next to him twice each week. She comforted herself with the knowledge that it would only be until Christmas.

But Christmas was weeks and weeks away. Oh, bother. She would just have to learn how to keep the man from nettling her at close range.

* * *

Cole stared down at the draft page of his latest editorial, scattered across his desk. Time to pull out all the stops, he guessed. He hated to ride Jessamine any harder, but newspapering was a business like any other.

He dipped his pen in the ink bottle on his desk. Let's see, now...

“Arbuckle Opponent Cowers,” he wrote. Good headline.

Yeah, that ought to do it. Something to elicit a response from the
Sentinel
and bring in some more subscriptions.

“We note the recent absence of Sheriff Jericho Silver,”
he continued.
“And we wonder. Is it possible the man is hiding from confrontation with his opponent, Conway Arbuckle?”

He ran his hand across his stubbly chin. He needed one more verbal jab to draw blood.

“Only a coward would skulk in his jail-cell office instead of getting out and campaigning among the good voters of Smoke River.”

“Noralee,” he called. “Set this up right away, will you?”

* * *

Tuesday night rolled around. Cole rode back into town after delivering the last of his papers to his outlying subscribers, hurriedly sponged off, ate a quick supper at the restaurant and made it to the choir rehearsal with five minutes to spare. He hoped Jessamine had read his editorial.

The new music school smelled like fresh paint and new wood and had ample seating for the twenty-seven-member chorus now drifting in for rehearsal in twos and threes. Good acoustics, too, Cole noted as their chatter reverberated around the room.

The morning rain had eased off, and outside the air smelled of frost. Felt like it, too. Women were bundled up in wool fascinators and fur muffs, and men lumbered in wearing sheepskin coats or wool mackinaws and leather gloves.

Jessamine Lassiter entered, stamping her feet and blowing on her fingers. He knew she'd already read his latest edition when she sidled past him and hissed a single word at him. “Snake.”

She took a seat next to the potbellied stove in the corner and glared at him with eyes like green jade. Her nose and cheeks were reddened from the cold.

They all stood to warm up their voices, and then the director arranged them by vocal part, basses on the left, then tenors, baritones, sopranos and altos on the far right. The piano accompanist, Doc Dougherty's wife, Winifred, struck a chord.

Cole could hear Jessamine's clear, sweet soprano soar above the others, and a shiver went up the back of his neck. Anger sure made her voice sound beautiful.

Then Ellie Johnson dropped her arms. “I want to mix up the voices more, to get a better blend.” Instead of standing in vocal sections, she arranged them in quartets—one soprano, one alto, a tenor and a baritone, all grouped close together.

Cole ended up standing beside Jessamine. She held herself rigid, as if her corset stays were made of iron, and he fancied he could see sparks pop off her body.

The choir la-la-la'd up and down a scale, and now he was quite sure fury was affecting her voice. Her enunciation was so crisp her tongue could cut paper, and the tone... Jehosephat, it was so clear and beautiful it stopped his breath.

“Jer-i-cho-Sil-ver-is-not-a-co-ward,” she sang up and down for the next scale. She glared at him for emphasis.

He cleared his throat. “He-is-too-a-coward,” he sang.

Her cheeks flushed as she attacked the next scale, this time in a minor key. “Just-you-wait-you-snake-la-la-la-la.”

The rehearsal itself wasn't near as much fun as the warm-up scales and the la-la-la battle with Jess. Then the words of the
Messiah
took precedence over the insults they were passing back and forth. Cole was halfway disappointed.

But what almost did him in was standing next to her, catching the scent of her skin as the room warmed up, smelling her hair as that tangle of wild curls bobbed near his shoulder. He groaned without thinking.

Watch out, Sanders. After Maryann you swore you'd never have thoughts about another woman.
Well, hell, he wasn't having
thoughts
. He was having
feelings
. Normal male feelings. Feelings of the most basic variety. Feelings of just plain wanting.

But, he assured himself, his mind was in full control. A man could
look
, couldn't he? Just as long as he didn't let Jessamine Lassiter mean anything to him beyond admiration for a pretty rival newspaper editor. Just as long as she didn't
matter
to him.

Maybe he should just crawl onto his cot tonight and forget about watching her silhouetted form against the window blind across the street.

At that moment she tossed her shiny dark hair back over her shoulders and he sucked in his breath. Or maybe not. Damn, she smelled good.

Ellie had the sopranos sing the next section by themselves. Standing next to Jessamine, Cole tried to keep his mind on the music instead of surreptitiously watching her.

“‘For unto us a child is born...'”

He worked hard to screen out Jess's lilting soprano voice, but with little success. He heard every single syllable, felt every indrawn breath she took until he found himself unconsciously breathing right along with her. It was a bit like making love, he thought. Instantly he wished he hadn't thought it.

She moved unconsciously when she sang. Just enough to bring her body an inch or two closer to his. He began to sweat.

Too close.

Not close enough.

Despite the chill in the rehearsal room, his body began to grow warm. He fought an urge to rip off his flannel shirt, but he settled for rolling his sleeves up to his elbows.

Big mistake. As she swayed beside him, the hair on his forearms rose as if reaching toward her. The urge to feel her skin brush against his was overpowering.

Move toward me, Jessamine. Touch me
.

Shoot, he was going nuts. Another hour of this would make him crazier than a wolf in heat. He sidled away from her, and tried to control his hammering heartbeat.

What he couldn't control was his groin swelling into an ache. He wanted to toss her over his shoulder and take her...where?

He suppressed a groan.
To bed
.

Oh, God.

That night he didn't sleep at all.