Unlike past transgressions when he’d skated scandalously beyond the boundaries of good taste, however, this particular episode didn’t elicit Augusta’s customary long and imaginative lecture regarding his lack of manners. She immediately returned to the subject of her new ward. “I don’t want to hear another word against my decision, Jacob,” she said with a regal arrogance he rarely heard from her. “The child’s mother was a gentle, well-bred woman—a Witherspoon, my dear—and breeding will tell. Hattie Witherspoon Taylor is coming to live with us, and I expect you to treat her as part of the family.”
She gave him her “I mean business” stare. “The subject is closed.”
Hell, Jake thought now as he paced the station platform, that was fine with him. It wasn’t as if he’d had a serious objection in the first place. His only concern was for his mother. She was hardly old, but neither was she a young woman. He feared rearing a rambunctious youngster would wear her out.
But perhaps it was precisely what Augusta needed. He often suspected his mother was bored—particularly since she’d been emotionally blackmailed into moving to town. He knew damn well she’d been lonely since his father’s death. She undoubtedly looked forward to the prospect of a new challenge. There was, after all, nothing Augusta Murdock liked better than managing other people’s lives. Perhaps she looked upon the advent of a youngster in her life as a God-given opportunity to bend a fresh personality to her formidable will.
The train’s whistle blew a low and mournful note in the distance, and Jake walked to the end of the platform to await its arrival. The sight of smoke and cinders, glimpsed above the trees as they blew from its smokestack, preceded it into view.
Then suddenly it roared around the bend, its vibration and noise increasing from a rumble to clattering thunder as it hurtled toward the station.
The whistle wailed and the brakes screeched in a high-pitched shriek of metal on metal while the brakeman plied his trade. The wooden station house shook with a teeth-jarring rattle as the train thundered in. Brakes still screeching, the great black engine rumbled past, slowing to a shuddering halt at the platform’s far end. An immense gust of steam belched forth with a sound that made Jake think humorously of a fat woman releasing her stays.
Moments later, a door on one of the passenger cars slammed open and the conductor stepped out, placing a metal step box on the platform, bridging it to the train’s stairwell.
Portly and red-faced, wearing a blue uniform with polished brass buttons, the railroad employee stepped to one side. He mopped his brow with a wilted handkerchief as a salesman stepped down, banging a large sample case through the opening. Once he was clear, the porter leaned into the car, extending his hand. He stood that way for a moment; then he made an impatient grab at something out of Jake’s sight in the doorway’s shadow.
“Keep your sonovabitchin’ hands to yourself, mister,” a young and irate voice instructed him. The man lunged again, his upper torso momentarily disappearing into the car’s doorway. He reappeared with a wild-haired, wild-eyed, spitting, struggling moppet in his grasp.
With resigned premonition, Jake started forward. “Hattie Witherspoon Taylor, I presume,” he said dryly upon reaching the pair.
2
Hattie wrenched her upper arm from the porter’s grasp and glared up at him for a moment before directing her attention to the immaculately dressed young man standing before her. He returned her regard with a half smile. Impatiently hitching up a sliding strap on the boys’ overalls she wore, she shook her heavy hair out of her eyes. “Who wants to know, mister?”
“Jacob Murdock, at your service, miss.” He doffed his hat, replacing it at a cocky angle on the back of his head. “You can call me Jake. I’m Augusta Murdock’s son.”
“Yeah?” She studied him suspiciously for several long moments. Finally, her mouth twisted derisively. “Skinny little sonovabitch, aren’tcha?”
“Mind your mouth!” the porter snapped and made a grab for her. Hattie knew from experience he was prepared to shake some manners into her.
But the Jake fella merely grinned and deflected the porter’s movement by reaching out to grasp the man’s hand. Shaking it, he thanked the man for keeping an eye out for his young relative, and surreptitiously slipped him a bill. Hattie would bet big cash, if she had any, that the money was more to get rid of the railroad man than any doubtful assistance he might have given her.
Mumbling dire predictions, the porter moved away.
And Hattie, who had already hopped nimbly beyond his reach, turned back to the new person in charge of her.
As they eyed one another, Jake reflected wryly that the kid wasn’t the first person to mistake his build for skinniness. He was on the lean side and looked slimmer still in his lawyering duds. It didn’t bother him. More than one man had discovered to his cost that lean didn’t equate to weak. Because Jake’s body beneath the deceptive camouflage of tailored clothing was roped with long, flat sinew and muscle, honed to a strapping toughness by an active life. Anyhow, he knew he’d probably gain more bulk as he grew older, because his father had been a muscular man who had often remarked that Jake’s build was like his own as a young man. And Jake, at twenty-two, had begun noticing a bit of additional bulk to his physique.
With a dull thump, a carpetbag suddenly landed on the platform next to Jake’s feet, kicking up a puff of dust. He looked up in time to see the porter withdrawing into the railroad car once again, but lost interest in the man when Hattie dashed forward to snatch up the bag and hug it to her chest. She turned her head and glared at him, all big eyes and defiance.
Jake felt something shift inside him at the vulnerability briefly flashing across her face, abruptly belying her fierce display of independence. Well, I’ll be damned, he thought. The rowdy little faker wasn’t nearly as tough as she’d like him to believe. He took a good, hard look at her.
She was a funny-looking little creature: all lips, eyes, and hair. Her wide, mobile mouth was a feature she’d probably grow into one day, but right now it was too large for her round little face. And, good God. That hair. She possessed the wildest hair he’d ever seen. Thick and corkscrew-curly, it was the color of a copper penny that had been kicking around in a farmer kid’s pocket. God knew she was grimy. But her hair’s untamed mass seemed to possess a life of its own, and he would stake his life on it glowing like a bed of coals once the dust was washed out.
Her eyes were huge and round and the amber hue of a good whiskey, ringed in a deeper shade of brown and fringed with thick reddish-gold lashes. They were framed by even thicker golden-red eyebrows, which resembled commas rocked onto their sides. He wasn’t certain how, but those eyes managed to convey defiant fearlessness and a frightened vulnerability at one and the same time. It was the eyes, in the end, that really got to him.