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mug down, she pressed a hand to her lips, tossed the brew around in her mouth, and finally swallowed. When she looked up, he offered her a cloth.
    She dabbed at her mouth. ‘‘It’s hot.’’
    ‘‘So it is. Are you all right?’’
    She could barely breathe. ‘‘Fine. Thank you.’’
    He leaned back in his chair, took a slow swallow, and stared at her. ‘‘So what is it you wanted to talk about?’’
    ‘‘Well, for starters, I need a tour of your storeroom.’’ She folded her hands in her lap. ‘‘I also need to know what time you would like your meals served, where your mercantile is, and what kind of budget you would like me to adhere to.’’
    He tugged at a string around his neck and withdrew a key from behind his shirt, then placed it on the table beside her.
    ‘‘Here is the key to the storeroom. Eight, noon, and five for meals. If you will make a list of sundries, I will pick them up for you. And there is no need to worry over budgets. I can afford whatever you need.’’
    She fingered the key, still warm from lying against his skin.
    ‘‘Don’t lose that,’’ he said.
    She slipped it over her head and allowed the piece of metal to shimmy down behind her bodice. It settled inside her corset. His eyes tracked its progress.
    ‘‘Mr. Johnnie?’’
    A black man with friendly eyes and hair sprinkled with white stood at the door between the kitchen and the hotel.
    Johnnie smiled. ‘‘Come in, Soda, and meet the lady I was telling you about. Miss Van Buren, this is Soda. He serves, uh, refreshments to my customers and looks after things when I’m not here.’’
    She nodded. ‘‘How do you do?’’
    ‘‘I do jus’ fine, miss. Jus’ fine.’’ He turned to Johnnie. ‘‘Alverson and Canfield are headin’ to the mines and wanna settle up.’’
    ‘‘Tell them I’ll be right there.’’
    ‘‘I’ll do that. It was nice meetin’ ya, miss.’’
    ‘‘Nice meeting you, Mr. . . . Soda?’’
    He bobbed his head and left as quickly as he’d come.
    She pushed her chair back.
    Johnnie leapt to his feet to assist her. ‘‘I have some work to do on another piece of property,’’ he said, ‘‘and I would like to take Michael with me. We’ll be gone all day.’’
    ‘‘Oh. Well, of course. I’ll pack you a lunch and then fetch Michael.’’
    ————
    The boy talked nonstop during their hike to the four acres Johnnie owned on the outskirts of town. He repeated verbatim the heated argument between his sisters and the subsequent dressing down Miss Van Buren had given him.
    ‘‘She said I should have known better,’’ Michael continued. ‘‘And that she can’t trust my judgment anymore, that her and Lissa are in danger of lawless men every time they step outside the door, that I did a lousy job of being a protector, and—’’
    Young Michael’s soliloquy came to a sudden halt as they topped the hill. ‘‘Thunderation,’’ he said, ‘‘would you look at that? I wouldn’t have thought a blade of grass could grow here without four posts to hold it up.’’
    Johnnie scanned the once barren sandy spot he had reshaped into gentle hills and covered with native lupine. It wasn’t exactly the pastoral greens one would see back home in Connecticut, but it was a start. ‘‘It’s a long way from completion.’’
    ‘‘What do you mean?’’
    ‘‘Well, I plan to convert this into a pleasure ground.’’
    Michael’s mouth hung open. ‘‘You’re building a park ?’’
    ‘‘No, not a park. Just a quiet place that has something other than sand dunes and scrub oak.’’
    ‘‘But, you can’t just make something like that. God has to. Shoot, I haven’t seen one single tree since I got here. Never heard of no pleasure grounds without trees.’’
    Johnnie smiled. ‘‘The pond’s over here. Come on, I’ll show you.’’
    He led the boy toward the west side of the property but got no farther than the greenhouse when Michael stopped yet again.
    Alone on