He went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “I think you wouldn’t know a bee unless it stung you. I counted four men crowding around you after Sunday services, and none of them was Rooster or the boys. Jelly trips over his own feet because he’s busy watching you.”
“Jelly’s a baby.”
“Trust you to focus on that and not the men hovering around you after church. Did you even notice them?”
“I’ve known three of them all my life and the other one about half of it. Of course I noticed them. You saw me speaking to them, didn’t you?”
“There’s speaking to them and then there’s giving them the time of day. I don’t think you give anyone the latter. With the least encouragement from you, more than one of them would be at your door with flowers and an invitation to go walking. Why don’t you encourage them?”
“I told you, I’ve known them for what seems forever.”
“So?”
“So you’re mistaken about their interest. It’s in the station, not in me.”
Call wondered if that could possibly be true or if that’s what she told herself to keep would-be suitors at arm’s length. “What about Josey Pye?”
“What about him? If you’re asking if I noticed him, I did, and I didn’t appreciate his attention. I had the impression he thought I was easy pickings. I’m not, you know, in spite of everything I’ve said to you that points to the contrary.”
“I’m clear on that. There is nothing about you that’s easy.”
Laurel did not mistake that for a compliment. “This station is my life, Call. I don’t necessarily like being hard, but I can’t afford to be easy.”
“Why me, Laurel?”
She understood what he was asking, but she tapped humor to try to avoid answering. “Besides the fact that you’re pretty?”
Call didn’t smile. “Don’t.”
Laurel sobered. “All right. You’re not long for this place. You’re doing a job and then you’ll move on. I’ve never heard you indicate that you want to stay around, and you’ve never expressed an interest in the station that made me suspicious of your motives.”
“Maybe I’m better at hiding it.”
“I’ve thought of that, but you’ve always impressed me as saying whatever is on your mind. Do you want my station, Call?”
“No. But I envy what you have here. Took me by surprise when I realized it, and I’m not as sure as you that I’ll be moving. Not unless you boot me, that is.”
“Oh. I didn’t realize.”
“Yeah. I didn’t think you did. It seemed the fair thing to do was to tell you. If I agree to what you want from me, then you should know that there could be complications.I reckon we’d have jumped right over the courting piece at that point, but that leaves me to wrestle with a proposal, marriage, being your husband, and falling ass over teakettle in love with you.”
She simply stared at him.
Call couldn’t tell if she was stunned or thinking. He decided it was time to point out what had never been discussed. “There’s the matter of maybe being a father that we haven’t talked about. I don’t have any bastards, leastways not that anyone’s ever told me. Being one myself, you can imagine that it doesn’t set well with me. I need you to chew on that because everything you think you don’t want changes if I put a child in your belly.”
Laurel’s eyes dropped away from his. Her expression clouded as she pulled in her lower lip and began to worry it. She stopped tugging on her lower lip and looked at him again. “It’d just be the one time,” she said carefully.
This was the first Call was hearing of it. He challenged her notion. “Are you certain? You don’t sound certain. What if you get a taste for pirooting?”
“Please don’t be crude.”
“All right, then. What if you enjoy the experience so much that you want to repeat it? Or, and this is more likely, you find your first time doesn’t meet your expectations and decide you want another bite of the apple?”
She shook her head. “It’d be the only time and it would be up to you to make it right. You’re the one with the experience.”
Call said nothing for a moment. He blew out a long breath, raked his hair with his fingers. “Jesus, Laurel, I don’t think Lee and Grant dickered this much when they met up at Appomattox.”
“Perhaps not, but one of them was surrendering. Neither of us is.”
