At dinner she and the boys sat at one end of the table and ate what she cooked, while Cole sat at the other end and ate the greasiest mess Manuel could manage to come up with. And considering Manuel's expertise in that area, Joe hated to think what that was like.
With Zachary's help, Mrs. Kate had hired a couple of women who had retired from "other" work in Legend to do the cleaning, washing, and ironing. Except they didn't clean or iron or wash for Cole. His room was left a pigsty and she left the care of his clothes to Manuel, who made sure they stayed dirty and rumpled.
The result of all this was that Cole Jordan's temper was enough to send bears running for cover. Half the hands had quit and moved to Texas. "Or hell," they'd said. "Hell couldn't be worse than this place."
Now, when the sky opened up and cold rain poured down on them, Cole didn't seem to notice, so Joe kept on holding the fence posts for him while he strung the wire. But when the sleet started and icy pellets hit the two of them, Joe didn't bother to tell Cole he was going back to the bunk-house. After all, it was already ten o'clock at night, they were working by moonlight (which wasn't there anymore), and they'd both been up since four a.m. And if that weren't enough, it was Christmas Eve.
After another half hour, Joe just turned away, got on his frightened horse, and started riding away. Even over the storm he could hear Cole behind him shouting that he was fired and that a man couldn't find anybody today who knew how to work.
"Damn them all to hell," Cole muttered under his breath as he pulled on the wire again, but it slipped from his gloved hand and landed... He had no idea where the wire went, and it was much too dark to see. Reluctantly, he stuck the hook in his back pocket and mounted his horse. When the animal was skittish, Cole pulled back on the reins until it knew who was master.
The sleet was so bad that it took nearly an hour to find his way back to the house, and when he rode into the barn he was shivering. Shaking one of the men awake, he told him to rub his horse down, then Cole staggered to the house.
As always, the back door was bolted closed, and the sight of the Christmas wreath on the door just angered him more. "Damn her!" he yelled just as thunder cracked and drowned his words. Her and her obsession with locking him out of his own house! In one of her rare moments of addressing actual words to him, she'd handed him a key and said that he could use it. But now his hands were too cold to find a key in his pants pocket.
After fumbling for a few moments he said, "Oh, the hell with it," then raised his foot and kicked the door in. "Fat lot of good a lock does," he muttered, then stumbled toward the big cast-iron stove along the far wall. But of course the stove was cold; the coals had been banked for the night. With hands that were like pieces of wood, he tried to pick up the iron lifting handle and insert it into the plate so he could throw some kindling on the coals and get a fire going. But his hands weren't responsive, and he dropped the plate so it went clattering onto the stone floor. The crash of the iron plate knocked about half a dozes homemade Christmas decorations down with it.
"Take another step and I'll shoot you," came a woman's voice from the shadow of the doorway.
"Go ahead," Cole growled. "Might as well kill me since you're trying to starve me anyway."
"Oh, it's you," Kathryn said flatly. "I thought you were--"
"I was who?" he said angrily as she lit a lantern and golden light flooded the room. But she didn't waste any time looking at him; her interest was in the door. "Look what you've done! "You've broken it Now the lock won't work." Bending, she picked up the wreath that had fallen when the door crashed back.
"Lock?" He half yelled at her. "Can you tell me why the hell you need a lock when there are armed guards around the place night and day? And where the hell did you get a gun?"
After Kathryn put the wreath on the end of the table, she pushed the shattered door closed against the wind, then braced it shut with a kitchen chair. "I don't have a gun. It was a bluff." When she had the door relatively well shut, she turned toward him. "Well then, good night," she said stiffly and started toward the doorway.
But when she glanced at him, she paused, her eyes widening as she stared at him. He was thoroughly wet, and ice had formed on some of his clothing and in his hair. He was holding his gloved hands close to his chest, as though they were lifeless things somehow attached to the end of his arms. With a glance at the pot handle and the stove lid on the floor, it didn't take much to figure out what he had been trying to do.
With a grimace, she said, "If you get sick and die, I'll be out of a job so I guess I'll have to help you." If Cole hadn't been so cold he would have laughed. As it was all he could do was curl one corner of his mouth up in amusement. "That would be very sensible of you," he said, then stepped away from the stove as she quickly moved to stand in front of it and build up the fire.
Standing to one side, he stood there looking at her for a few moments. Her thick dark hair was in one fat braid down her back; she was wearing an old robe that looked as though it had been made from a blanket, and the front was gaping open so he could see the front buttons on her flannel nightgown. Cole was sure he'd never seen a more beautiful or desirable woman in his life.
But then he'd felt that from the first moment he'd seen her. When he'd turned that first day and seen the woman who had called out and warned him that Bartlett was about to shoot him, Cole had been shocked at the beauty of her. No, not just her beauty. There were lots of pretty girls in Legend. But what Cole saw in her eyes that day was the kindness of her, the sweetness--and the strength. At that moment if someone had told him that he'd die if he kissed her, he still would have done it.