She’d just bent to sweep her neat little pile of debris into the pan when he spoke above her.
“What’s freckled and pink and red all over,” (Jack Coogan) asked with a snickering laugh and then sang his detestable ditty. “Tell me Rachel dearest, if what they say is true, are you like the other redheads and red all over, too?”
Anger rose in Rachel so quickly and violently that it should have frightened her. Her spine snapped to attention, shoulders back and squared. Gripping her broom with two hands, she spun it upright like a soldier presenting arms and then she swung that broom like she knew what she was doing and had done it before. She thrashed that obnoxious wolver, who was now hunched over with his arms curled around his head to protect himself from the blows of the tightly woven fan of straw.
“Do you really want to know the answer?” she hissed at him, continuing the broomstick battering. Whomp. “Because I’ll gladly tell you, Mr. Coogan.” Whomp. “Your whole body, that’s what.” Whomp. “Or it will be by the time I’m finished with you! Now get out of here before I really lose my temper.” Breathless, she gave him yet another swat. “And don’t come back!”
“Aw, Rache, I was just trying to get your attention,” Coogan complained as he scuttled around the edge of the large vestibule, Rachel right behind him threatening another bout of violence. “It was just a bit of fun.”
“It’s Miss Kincaid, and the next time you think that’s the way to get a lady’s attention, you’d better think twice. Do you hear me, Mr. Coogan? I have neither time nor tolerance for your fun. Now get out and do not dare to enter this establishment ever again.”
She drove him through the open door with the threat of her broom. Someone stepped aside when, with one last stroke of the broom, and as if she was sweeping the last of the dirt out the door, Rachel chased the man out.
A large, booted foot connected with the seat of Jack Coogan’s trousers with enough force to send him sprawling over the porch and down into the dirt.
“Always happy to help a beautiful woman,” said a deep voice.
Cheeks flushed from the heat of battle, green eyes blazing with a hundred grievances ready to explode, and trusty broom at the ready, Rachel turned to the owner of the boot.
“Whoa, little lady, whoa.” He waved his hands in front of him to ward off the imminent attack. “I’m on your side,” he laughed. “No guy in his right mind would say that to a lady.” He laughed again. “I would have helped you more, but you looked like you were doing fine without me.”
Rachel felt her mouth open, yet no sound emerged. With a conscious effort, she forced it shut, but could do nothing about her wide and staring eyes. To calm herself, she drew in a breath deep enough to make her corset creak, and caught the heady scent of a prime alpha wolver.
“Are you okay?”
No, of course she wasn’t ‘okay’. How could she be? She’d just lost her temper in the most unladylike manner in front of this, this…
“Oh dear,” she breathed and looked at the broom in her hands as if she’d never seen one before. “Oh dear,” she said again.
Reason tried to reassert itself when she spotted the dog, sitting at the wolver’s heels. Out of all the thoughts whirling in her head, only one made it to her tongue.
“You can’t bring the dog in here, and out there, it must be on a leash.”
“Actually, I was looking to rent a room for a few days.” He stepped through the doorway and closed the door behind him. “Miss Kincaid? I think you should sit down.”
Her face fell into a different kind of frown. Etiquette, practiced for years, was lost. Words of polite discourse were nowhere to be found. “How do you know my name?” she asked rudely.
“You told the guy you just gave the ass whuppin’ to. It’s Miss Kincaid, you said.”
She started to reprimand him for his language and then her befuddled brain kicked in and she realized what he’d said. “How much did you hear?” she asked in a high pitched squeak that sounded nothing like her own well-modulated voice.
“From the minute the bastard spoke,” he told her, grinning. “I was standing in the doorway, admiring your, um, dustpan skills, when the jackass made a crack about your…”
“You saw the whole thing? Why didn’t you speak?” And save her from making a fool of herself.
“Should I have? You looked like you had it under control.” He winked at her. “Next time I’ll remember to step in.”
“There won’t be a next time, Mr.… I’m afraid I didn’t get your name.”
“Challenger McCall, though most folks just call me…”
“Sheriff McCall.” She rolled her eyes heavenward with a silent prayer to the Good Lord to strike her dead without delay.
“I hope so,” he said, starting to laugh. “Is that a problem?”
“No, sir, of course not. Why would it be?”
“I don’t know. You just seem a little upset by it, that’s all.”
Upset? Why would she be upset? It couldn’t be because the visitor, who should be, as all visitors were, gone in the next day or two never to return, a visitor who witnessed the most improper, unrefined and disrespectable circumstance she’d ever found herself in, turned out to be the very handsome and unsettling new sheriff. Oh, heavens no. That wouldn’t be upsetting at all. Her stomach rolled and fluttered in unaccustomed discomfort, as if she’d ingested something alive and still moving. Panic started to rise.