Sarah leaned over to speak quietly to Velma as chuckles spread up and down at the table. Even Pa seemed to be stifling a smile.
Adam took it in stride. "I don't think I'm a bossy sort." He winked at Breanna again.
"D'you play checkers?” asked Ida. “Breanna's the cat's whiskers at that."
Goodness gracious. Even the little girls wanted to make her shine for Adam.
"It's been a while since I've had occasion to play,” Adam said. “Although, I did once play poker with a man who claimed to have played against Billy the Kid. I could never verify his account, so I'm sad to say he didn't make it into the paper." He winked at Breanna, but something rang hollow in his story. Was it that he seemed to be showing off for her family? Or something else? She didn't think he was lying. What was bothering her?
The serving bowls had finally made their way around the table, and everyone dug in. Breanna hoped that her family might be distracted by the food in front of them, but it was not to be.
"What does a newspaperman do?" Sarah asked.
Adam was polite enough to finish chewing what he'd put in his mouth before he tried to speak. He told the table about hawking papers and then spending hours every day setting letters in line to spell every word in a newsprint sheet.
"That sounds boring," Walt chimed in from the corner of the table behind them. Was everyone eavesdropping?
But Breanna couldn't help but concur with her younger brother. Sitting in an office all day? What could be worse than being confined by walls and overheated by stuffy machinery? Ugh.
"I don't know about that," Adam said, not losing his easygoing manner. "I can travel anywhere I like—anywhere in the world—through those 'boring' words. Stories can transport me to the Orient or London or even here, the wilderness of Wyoming. And recently I've been the one writing those stories."
Somehow, he made the boring sound exciting.
He leaned back so that he was speaking directly to Walt. In doing so, his knee brushed against her skirts.
He didn't seem to notice, but she felt the touch zing through all her layers and travel up her spine.
"I stopped to stretch my legs at a station in Chicago,” Adam said, “and I picked up a copy of a local newspaper. Do you know what I discovered? There's to be a cowboy race in just a few days. Riders will travel on horseback from a little town called Sioux City, Iowa, to Chicago in a week's time for a five-hundred-dollar purse."
"That sounds like something Breanna'd do!" Walt's innocent exclamation sent a hush over both tables. Only baby Andrew's babbling and the scrape of a fork broke the sudden silence.
Someone coughed. It was as if no one wanted to even breathe about her past exploits.
"What?" Walt asked, confusion obvious in his expression.
Breanna laughed, but it felt forced. "Adam already knows I like to ride fast." From the table behind her, she could feel Ma's stare boring into her. She wouldn't give details now, but she could bet she'd be pressed for them later.Oh, Walt.
"A race like that would be incredibly dangerous for a woman alone," Sarah murmured. She wasn't looking directly at Breanna, but she felt the words like the dart that they were.
In the ensuing silence, Ma got up from the table and came to Breanna's side. "I've already finished. Let me take this little one."
Breanna gave him up, but her stomach had knotted, and she wasn't sure she could eat the food still cooling on her plate.
"Are you gonna race your horse in that cowboy race?" Ida asked Adam, too innocent to understand the silent tension in the adults at the table.
Adam shook his head. "I wouldn't want to injure my horse. A race like that would be dangerous. You know, I have a friend back home who raises racing horses." His words seemed to be directed to Breanna, though she couldn't look up from her plate.
Girls don't race.
Adam continued, "He has a lovely filly that he's sure will win the Preakness next season. That's a race for three-year-olds," he explained to the young girls. "It's been several weeks, but I got to watch his jockey exercise her. She was a beauty, flying around the track as if she had wings instead of hooves."
He spun the story so well that it made Breanna want to read some of the articles he'd written. He had a natural way with words—and with the girls, who hung on every one. He was naturally charming in a way most men could never pull off. Or at least none of her brothers.
Did he even realize how his voice lilted when he spoke of the horse? He had a lot of interest in it, considering it belonged to his friend.
Thankfully, Sarah turned the conversation to Cecilia and her studies, and the attention was diverted from Breanna.
For the first time since she'd sat down, she felt free to take a breath and eat.
