Free Yesterday's Magic by Beverly Long Page B

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pocket. “It’s probably dark at night when you’re leaving. You
should go out the front door,” he added. “And…uh…tell your niece to
do the same.”
    “She’s really lovely, isn’t she?” Freida
asked. “I have to admit, I never thought any of Herbert’s family
was all that attractive.”
    “She’s got a lot of hair,” Jed said.
    Freida nodded. “Ain’t that something? And she
just wads it all up and puts a rubber band around it, like that’s
supposed to be some style. Didn’t even put it in a braid or
nothing.”
    “We sort of had words,” Jed admitted, digging
the toe of his boot into the wet dirt.
    “About?”
    “I said something that made her think I
wasn’t happy about going to the dance tomorrow night.”
    “You don’t have to take her,” Freida
said.
    “I want you to go,” Jed said. “I didn’t know
about you and Thomas but now that I do, I sure as hell don’t want
to be the reason the two of you can’t spend a Saturday night
together. He’s a good man, Freida. You could do worse.”
    Her eyes warmed. “I know that. He stopped in
this morning, with his brother. Earl said he was hoping that he
could take Bella to the dance. I told him she was already spoken
for but if you’re having second thoughts, I know he’d be
willing.”
    It was that easy. He could step out the way
and clear a path for Earl Bean. Bella Wainwright would become
Earl’s problem. There’d be no more opportunity for the woman to
make him do or say silly things. He wasn’t a silly man and didn’t
want to be thought of as one.
    Freida was giving him the chance to forget
about Bella Wainwright with her flashing black eyes and her unruly
black hair.
    But he thought it might take more than one
free Saturday night to do that. Perhaps it would be better if he
just carried on, kept his commitment, and discovered that there was
absolutely nothing special about the woman.
    “I told you I’ll take her and I will. I just
hope she’s a better dancer than Bart.”
    ***
    There was absolutely no reason to worry about
Freida and her niece. After all, Freida could take better care of
herself than most men he knew.
    Even so, at half-past four that afternoon,
the time Jed knew that Freida most generally closed up the
Mercantile, he stood across from the store, his toes growing colder
and stiffer in his boots with each passing second. The afternoon
sun had held some warmth but now that it was gone, the temperature
was dropping fast.
    It was another ten minutes, when the day had
slipped well into night, that the two women finally opened the
front door. Freida pulled the door shut firmly behind her and then
double-checked to make sure it held.
    See. They were fine.
    But instead of going home, like he’d told
Bart he was doing, he watched them walk across the street, toward
the Livery. Wymer Hayes had Freida’s rig ready, like he’d been
doing for the past five years. That was the courtesy extended to a
widow. When Freida’s husband had been alive, it would have been his
job to get his own horses.
    Women needed special consideration. This land
was hard enough on a man. Even big, sturdy women like Freida needed
a helping hand from time to time.
    Freida’s niece looked like she might need
more care than the average woman did. Not that she was frail. She
had a womanly-enough shape, certainly one that could catch a man’s
eye, with her full breasts and her narrow waist. But yet she seemed
delicate. Her fingers were long and narrow, her wrists so small
that it’d be no challenge at all to wrap his fingers around
them.
    The skin on her face was unlined and smooth
and her lips were soft, like she’d done a good job protecting them
from the weather.
    He didn’t know if she’d taken his advice or
if Freida had stepped in but at least she was wearing a scarf
wrapped around her head and she had gloves on her hands. There was
just enough daylight left that he could see the bright blue cloth,
a strong contrast to the black