Small Town Cinderella

“You do know you’re not behaving like a cat,” she told it. “Cats don’t follow people. Cats play hard to get. Maybe we should call you Rover.”

It stared, nose twitching.

“You don’t like Rover? I don’t blame you. It’s not respectful. I apologize.”

Its gaze intensified.

“All right, then, if you want to talk, tell me what you think about this nephew Daniel never mentioned. Am I being harsh? He’s male and from the city, after all. How chummy can I expect him to be?”

The cat rubbed against her. She scratched behind its ear and it immediately threw itself on the ground, offering its belly for her attention, purring as soon as she touched it. When she got back to work it gave a protesting meow.

“Sorry. One day soon you can come on the porch with me. I’ll read and scratch your tummy.”

She hadn’t been out to pick for days, except for snacking, and most of the berries hovered between perfectly ripe and overripe. When she cupped a hand under them whole clumps of dark red fruit dropped in.

Instead of concentrating on avoiding spiders and worms, her mind kept going back to Matthew Rutherford. In particular, back to the suggestion of hard muscles under a crisp white shirt. How could she be preoccupied by something so superficial? There was nothing attractive about a man who wasn’t kind.

Maybe it didn’t have much to do with attraction. It could be the challenge of defrosting that cold face of his. Once or twice yesterday it had shown a hint of warming. Did he ever laugh? She’d like to see that. And manners. Manners would be nice.

She looked down at the cat, rubbing against her legs again. “I’m asking too much, aren’t I? A pretty tablecloth won’t make him behave.”

EMILY SQUEEZED PAST her pacing mother and began washing berries. “Something wrong, Mom?”

Julia gathered speed. After a few trips from the sink to the window and back, she said, “There’s another early book.”

“How early?”

“From Egypt.”

She must mean from the time of the Pharaohs. An unexpected picture of Cleopatra curled up reading came to Emily’s mind.

“Sinuhe, it’s called. The originals are on papyrus. Fragments of papyrus.”

“It’ll be hard to get your hands on any of those.”

Her mother didn’t smile. “Only museums can have the originals. Old papyrus needs special conditions or it will crumble. It’ll crumble, anyway.” Doubtfully, she repeated, “Sinuhe. I don’t even know how to pronounce it.”

“We’ll have to go to the library so you can look it up.”

“When?”

Emily wasn’t sure. She had promised to help with her grandmother’s garden and housework while Liz was away. “Soon. Tomorrow, maybe, or the next day?”

“Tomorrow.” Julia gave a determined nod. She’d never learned to drive. It didn’t usually bother her because she rarely wanted to go anywhere. She picked up her new book catalog and left the room. Something heavy, no doubt the Encyclopedia of Ancient and Medieval History, thudded onto the coffee table.

The rest of the day went too quickly. Emily finished washing berries, fried chicken to serve cold, picked up beer in case the nephew liked it, defrosted a quiche she’d made during cooler weather, piped rounds of meringue onto cookie sheets, whipped the cream and prepared salads.

With an hour to go before dinner she dragged the picnic table into the shade of the maples, as promised, angling it so no matter where the nephew sat he would be able to see the perennial garden, where sweet-smelling daylilies and clumps of bright yellow heliopsis were coming into their prime.

It was an ordinary, weathered picnic table, more than weathered, really—in a few years it would be sinking into the ground, its very own compost pile—but with a bit of care it looked beautiful. Her mother’s Irish linen cloth on top, a bowl of deep pink roses from the Henry Kelsey climber in the middle, sparkling glass and silverware, and the Wedgwood china her father had given her mother as a birthday present the year before he died. There was something about linen and bone china outdoors, with grass underfoot and branches overhead. No one, regardless of his personal deficiencies, could look at this table with anything but approval.

Hamish got up and gave himself a shake just before Emily heard tires in the driveway. The nephew was early, or she was late. She smoothed her hair and pulled at her dress, fanning it against her skin, then went to greet her guest.

He stood beside his car with his back to her, looking at the house. Today he had dressed more casually, but city casual, in lightweight khakis and a shirt that looked so soft she wondered if it was made of silk. She wished she’d had time to shower.

“Matthew. You found us.”

He turned, and in that moment her mental image of him, tended overnight, dissolved. The coldness that had surprised her yesterday, and that awful evaluating expression, were gone. He’d shaved, and he looked rested. Approachable.

Her body started humming about possibility again. She told it to give up. He was here for one week—less than that now—he had shown no interest in her, and he had been pleasant for all of thirty seconds since they met.

“Mrs. Bowen told me it was the house with all the trees around it,” he said. “Luckily, she added it was the third house with all the trees around it.”

“My aunt and uncle and my grandmother are the ones before us. You see why they call it Robbs’ Road.”

“Your very own road. The Robbs must be big fish.”

“Little fish, but there’s a big school of us.”

He held out a plastic-wrapped rectangle. “This was in my uncle’s freezer. Can you make use of it?”

It was a pumpkin loaf, like the ones Jack pressed on her when his crop outstripped consumer demand. Since his first harvest everyone he knew had received more loaves, pies and muffins than their appreciation for pumpkin could accommodate. “Lovely. We’ll have it with tea after dinner.”

Hamish hadn’t barked when Matthew arrived, but he kept skulking with his low-to-the-ground herding posture, circling from Emily to the newcomer and back.

“It’s all right, Hamish. Matthew is invited.”

“Is he a good watchdog?”

“He doesn’t get much testing. If he likes people he lets them do whatever they want.” She gave the dog a reassuring pat. “He growls at the cat all the time. I hope he can do it with people. My aunt and uncle’s house was broken into the other day.”

Matthew’s voice changed. “Anything taken?”

“Not that they could see. Things like that hardly ever happen around here.”

“You’re worried?”

She looked at him curiously. His manner wasn’t protective, but it ranged in that direction. Short, to-the-point questions, a sudden return to yesterday’s hardness. She found she didn’t mind it when it wasn’t aimed at her.

“Not really. There’s nothing to take. No fabulous gems. No Group of Seven paintings.”

“That’s not what most thieves are looking for—so I hear, anyway. Your laptop or your DVD player will do nicely.”

“We don’t have those, either.”

He smiled as if he thought she was joking. “I really have come to the backwoods, then. Next thing you’ll tell me you don’t have a telephone or the Internet.”

“We do have a telephone.”