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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.
    â€œThat 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.
    â€œAnd 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...
    â€œArbuckle 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.
    â€œWe 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.
    â€œOnly a coward would skulk in his jail-cell office instead of getting out and campaigning among the good voters of Smoke River.”
    â€œNoralee,” 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