No Other Will Do (Ladies of Harper's Station #1)(3)

“You must be cold,” she said at last. Then she started unbuttoning her coat, and before he knew what she was about, she had the thing off and was wrapping it around his shoulders.

The heavy wool felt like heaven, still warm from her body. Heat seeped into his frost-nipped skin, thawing him until he thought he might melt like candle wax in an oven.

“Don’t just stand there gawking like you’ve never seen a girl before,” she demanded. “Put your arms in the sleeves.”

His angel scowled at him, her lower lip protruding in an exasperated pout as she lectured him. Then, because he obviously wasn’t moving fast enough for her liking, she reached out and did it for him. Peeled his arms apart and stuffed them in the too-short coat sleeves.

“You’re near to frozen,” she complained when her hand first touched his wrist, but the observation didn’t cause her to slow down at all. She just reached for the buttons next, did them up, then started rubbing his arms up and down through the sleeves, the friction heating his skin even more. He stared down at the top of her head while she worked. She only came up to about his chin. Tiny little thing, his angel. Bossy, too.

She pulled away after a moment. “Hmm. This isn’t good enough.” She stalked over to a sawhorse situated near the tack wall, threw the bridle that had been sitting atop it to the ground, and grabbed hold of the striped saddle blanket draped across its middle.

“Sit down,” she ordered as she dragged the thick blanket over to him. Once he complied, she flopped the blanket onto his lap. She stared at him again, all thoughtful-like. Her gaze hesitated at the ends of the coat sleeves, where his wrists and hands hung uncovered. “Oh! My mittens!” A grin broke out across her face and she bounded away, into the stall that she’d emerged from earlier.

She hurried back and thrust a pair of bright red mittens at him. “Here. Put these on.” Her face clouded again for a minute, then cleared. “And my scarf!” She unwrapped the long knitted strip from around her neck and twined it about his, wrapping it up over his ears and head, as well. “That’s better.” The triumph in her voice made him smile.

She examined him again, the frown lines reappearing above her pert little nose. He was beginning to feel a bit like one of those snowmen the kids liked to build by the schoolhouse when the weather turned wintry. He half expected her to fetch a carrot and jab it against his nose. Not that he would have minded. A carrot would taste a fair sight better than cow corn.

“Your feet,” she said at last. “There’s still snow crusted in your laces. Aunt Henry is always fussing at me to get out of my wet boots and stockings before my feet shrivel. If you were walking around in the snow out there, though, we’ve got more to worry about than wrinkled toes.”

Aunt Henry? What kind of person was that?

The girl glanced up at him. “Old Man Tarleton got lost in a blizzard a couple years back, and his feet got so cold, they froze solid. Three of his toes turned black and fell off.” She reported that grisly piece of news with a decidedly non-angelic degree of enthusiasm. “So we better get those shoes off.”

She sat down in front of him and started picking at his laces.

Enough was enough. He couldn’t let his angel touch his stinky feet. There was no telling what muck he might have stepped in.

“I’ll do it,” he groused. He tried to push her away and take off the fuzzy red mittens, but she wouldn’t let him.

“Keep those mittens on!” She glared at him so fiercely he didn’t dare argue. “I’ll not have you catching your death on my watch.”

Why was she doing this? Helping him instead of calling her father to send him away. Giving him her own clothing. Talking to him as if he were any other person. Not the piece of gutter trash he knew himself to be.

She finally got the laces undone and gently tugged his shoes off. He tried to pull his feet beneath the horse blanket before she saw the sorry state of his socks, but she wouldn’t let him. She peeled the hole-riddled stockings from his feet one at a time, tsking over how icy his toes felt. He was just happy to see they weren’t black like Old Man Tarleton’s. They were filthy, though. Ugly. He pulled them away from her clean white hands and did his best to hide them under the saddle blanket.

She made no comment, just plopped onto the dirt floor in front of him and yanked her shoes off. What was she . . . ? His angel pulled the thick wool socks she wore off her feet and went digging under the blanket for his toes. Before he could react and scramble away from her, she latched on to his right foot, dragged it out, and pushed on the sock. She captured his left just as easily. ’Course he’d stopped trying to get away by then. His brain might be half frozen, but he recognized an unwinnable battle when he saw one.

The warmth of the socks brought a tingle of awareness to his feet that quickly expanded into a searing pain so deep, he wanted to kick her away so she’d stop touching him. But he didn’t. Wouldn’t. Ever.

He’d just encountered the biggest blessing his scrawny list had ever seen. No way was he gonna do anything to hurt her. So he gritted his teeth and sat still while she flopped the horse blanket down over his stinging feet.

“Now for the inside.” She stood and pushed her bare feet back into her boots and disappeared into her stall again. When she emerged, she waddled, carrying a full pail of milk in front of her. He jumped up to help her carry it, taking it from her hands.