I plopped in the chair beside him. “You are the most disagreeable man I’ve ever met.”
He rested his forearms on the table and leaned forward, green eyes unnerving. “You ever wonder why?”
His scent of spices and weapon oil right there. I wouldn’t become unsteady round this man, no matter how much space he took up in my home.
“Because you’re disagreeable,” I said, my voice wispier than I’d like. “I just said that.”
“Nah. I think it’s you.”
I jabbed my finger at him. “That right there. You’re being quarrelsome.”
“You’re the one judging my character.Disagreeable.”
I leaned forward, bit my lip. “Maybe try not being disagreeable then.”
The flames moaned and snapped. My coffee warm and fragrant. He straightened the lapel of his vest. “You like crosswords?”
“What’s this? Changing the subject?”
“You’re doing it again,” he said. “You like quarreling with me.”
I rubbed my mouth. “What else is there to do?”
He scratched his jaw. “We could plan it.”
“How’s that?”
“Perhaps on Tuesdays we debate some text in our own literary society. Wednesdays it’s your crossword. Maybe on Thursdays we torture each other in a shooting contest.”
“You want a weekly schedule.”
“I like routine, like what’s predictable.” He stood, riffled through the hardbacks on my shelf.
A laugh caught in my throat—when I realized he wasn’t joking. There was so much performance and big walking with cowboys, but this was something real about him. He pulled out myVanity Fairhardback with thegreen floral motif, flipped open the book, and frowned at the inscription from Magnolia. And then I saw him as something altogether different. Part of him was undomesticated, but another part of him, perhaps buried under long ago tragedies, was traditional. His classic black trousers, old-fashioned cowboy boots, shined with perfectly spaced laces, the monochrome biled shirts and simple tie. Most cowboys flashed jeweled spurs, beaded hatbands, and slick mustaches. He pulled out my ma’s black hymnal, the book tiny in his hands, and sat back at the table. I tugged my sleeve over my wrist, feeling altogether too exposed. I’d thought his subdued guise clever, that it helped him blend in, when perhaps he just liked what was classic. If life had come another way, maybe he’d have been the sort of man to be happy with a simple life.
He flipped through the pages, brow slightly lifted, unspoken commentary on such a book in my home. What had happened in his past? There must be much desolation to have remade Stot into the Lawman. It was foolish, but I’d stopped believing in tall tales.
Perhaps Stot did prefer predictability in life, but I certainly didn’t. “I don’t want a schedule.”
“Then how about now?”
“I can’t thwart you in some shooting contest this morn—I’ve gotta keep digging my well while this spell of warmer weather holds.”
He scanned a page. “I can help you with that.” It felt violently familiar, his hands curved round Ma’s hymnal—all those moments Ma had deftly turned the pages, her fingers rawboned and graceful.
“What about your claim?” I asked.
“It’ll keep.”
“What about your dratted shot shoulder?”
He turned the page, fingers calloused but clean. “I’ll be fine.”
“I know I said I’d prefer settling debts, but you don’t have to stay and help—don’t have to repay me.”
“I like being here.” He closed the hymnal, rested his arms on my table. “I want to be here, helping you. You can’t build a homestead allby your lonesome, nor can I. Your brothers aren’t helping; I’ve got no one. We get along well. Just let it be.”
I stood and pulled on the ties of my robe, looked beyond my curtains, my gaze unfocused, just colors: taupe, ivory, evergreen, gold. “Okay.”
