Read Allie's Moon for Free Online

hem of her
apron.
    Will continued. “I couldn’t find Cooper and I
gave my word that I’d have a man out here. It looks like you’ve got
enough work to keep him busy.”
    Jeff inched his gaze up higher. The line of
her dark blue skirt draped over the modest flare of her hips,
ebbing to a small waist that accentuated her full breasts.
    She faltered. “Yes, well— Yes, I’ve had some
trouble getting anyone to come out here as I mentioned. I’m afraid
things have declined to a pretty bad state.”
    Jeff lifted his eyes to discover a
straight-backed, softly rounded woman in her middle twenties. The
sight of her hit him with an impact that startled him. He’d seen
her outside the saloon yesterday. He remembered that—he’d almost
asked her for money when she’d passed him. But he’d been so taken
by the sight of her, his pride had frozen the words in his throat.
Her hair, rather than white, was a thick, rich auburn that framed
her heart-shaped face with red and amber highlights. She wore it
pulled into a knot at the back of her head, but soft vagrant
tendrils had escaped here and there.
    In vivid contrast with her surroundings, she
was tidy and unrumpled, and beautiful in a way that many women were
not: she didn’t realize her beauty. How he knew that he had no
idea. But those big blue-gray eyes of hers— They looked as if they
could see into his very soul and read the shame written there, all
the doubt and failure and cowardice.
    Jeff dropped his gaze to the floorboards
again, feeling a flush work its way up his neck and over his face.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d done more than rinse his
clothes out in a rain barrel or the branch that ran in back of the
Liberal Saloon. And baths had become occasional rather than regular
events. He reached up to flatten out his hair with his palm, then
caught himself. Maybe she hadn’t noticed. He had never been as
conscious of his own appearance as he was right now, but hell, how
was he supposed to look? He’d spent a day and a night in jail, and
he’d been drafted to do a job that no one else would take. Little
wonder. There was enough work here to overwhelm three men and a
small boy.
    Althea stared at the two men on the porch.
Assuming that Sheriff Mason would find Will Cooper, she’d been
surprised to find him standing at her back door with a tall,
unkempt stranger. The man looked as if he lived in a hog wallow,
and when the breeze eddied around the confines of the porch, she
caught an overripe whiff of his unwashed body. His long sandy hair
stuck up in cowlicks all over his head, and his frayed dungarees
and shirt were of some undefinable color. He looked even worse than
Cooper Matthews had.
    “ This is Jefferson Hicks. He’ll be
happy to hire on for a day or two, won’t you, Jeff?”
    The man grunted without taking his eyes off
his feet.
    Jefferson Hicks! Althea gaped at him,
astounded. He was the man she’d seen on the street yesterday. Even
as isolated as she and Olivia were, she’d heard talk about the
total ruination of Decker Prairie’s last sheriff. He’d killed
Wesley Cooper, she remembered that much. From then on he’d slid
downhill.
    Will shifted his weight from one foot to the
other and adjusted his hat. “To be honest, I have to tell you that
Jeff has been spending a little time in the Decker Prairie jail.
Farley Wright caught him in his henhouse taking a couple of eggs.
It was a minor charge, but I thought you should know.”
    “ Um, yes—I can’t think of—I’m sure—”
Althea stumbled along, feeling trapped. She gazed at the top of
Jefferson’s downturned head and hesitated to commit herself. He was
still a young man, if her memory served, but he seemed more
dilapidated and rundown than her house. She’d heard that he’d taken
to the drink after that incident with Wesley Matthews. But the man
looked like a total derelict. How much work could he have left in
him? And what kind of a job would a man do who’d squandered