He looked toward the receipt.
"I'll cancel the order."
"Good."
That evening, the ranch hands ate at the long kitchen table.
Emily did not cook.
Henry had already put on a pot of beef stew before they arrived, and she saw no reason to march into another person's work simply because a preacher had changed her name.
Jack noticed.
"Thought Reed brought home a wife."
Nathan's spoon stopped.
Emily kept eating.
Jack continued.
"Figured we'd get something different from Henry's stew."
Henry looked offended.
"My stew's fine."
"It'll remove rust from a shovel."
Robert laughed into his mug.
Jack leaned back.
"Just wondering what Mrs. Reed's duties are."
Emily set down her spoon.
Nathan's chair scraped backward.
The sound cut through the room.
Emily looked at him just once.
Nathan stayed seated.
That mattered.
Emily turned toward Jack.
"What are yours?"
Jack frowned.
"Ma'am?"
"Your duties."
Emily glanced at his right arm.
"And apparently tearing your clothes."
Jack looked down. The sleeve of his winter coat had split along the elbow seam.
Samuel noticed first, then Robert.
A laugh escaped Henry.
Jack's face reddened.
Emily picked up her coffee mug.
"If you'd like, Mr. Turner, I can repair that before the sleeve falls off completely."
Jack's mouth tightened.
"After what I just said?"
"Your manners and my workmanship are separate matters."
He had no answer for that.
Emily picked up her spoon. Henry did the same. A moment later, Robert reached for the bread.
Conversation returned slowly.
Jack remained quiet.
After supper, Emily went upstairs. Twenty minutes later, there was a knock at her door.
She opened it.
Nobody stood there.
A worn winter coat lay folded across the sewing table in the hall.
Emily touched the torn sleeve.
Then she noticed something else.
The table had been moved beneath the window so she would have better morning light.
She glanced across the hall.
Nathan's door was closed.
Downstairs, a floorboard creaked beneath his unmistakably heavy step.
Emily carried Jack's coat into her room.
Outside, Black Ridge disappeared behind clouds and snow began falling over Double Pine.
The ranch had not welcomed her warmly.
It had not rejected her either.
For the moment, that was enough.
But as Emily threaded her needle beneath the lamplight, she remembered the look on Jack Turner's face after the others laughed.
Some men forgot humiliation by morning.
Others carried it like a stone in their pocket.
And Emily had the uneasy feeling Jack Turner was the kind who kept stones for the next several days.
However, Jack gave her no trouble.
He collected his repaired coat the following morning without apology and without meeting her eyes.
"Seam ought to hold," Emily said.
Jack tested the sleeve.
"You reinforced it."
"It needed reinforcing."
He gave a short nod and left.
That was as close to gratitude as he came.
Winter tightened around Double Pine. Snow covered the north road until wagon ruts became two shallow trenches between white banks.
The cattle stayed close to the lower pasture where Nathan and his men broke ice from the watering trough each morning with axes.
Emily found her own rhythm.
She repaired canvas sacks instead of letting them be thrown away. She patched Henry's gloves, replaced buttons on Samuel's work shirt, and showed Lucy how to make straight stitches on scraps of old flower cloth.
Nathan never asked her to do any of it.
That was partly why she kept doing it.
He also kept his promise about her room.
Every morning, he knocked before speaking through the door, even when all he wanted was to tell her breakfast was ready.
Every evening he gave her space, sometimes too much.
There were nights when Emily heard his boots cross the upstairs hall, pause near her door, then continue into his room without a word.
She never asked why.
One afternoon in early December, Nathan came inside carrying a saddle over one shoulder. Snow covered his hat.
He bent to set the saddle beside the wall, and his coat pulled so tightly across his back that Emily heard the stitching complain.
"Hold still."
Nathan froze.
"What?"
Emily stepped closer.
"Your coat."
He glanced down at himself.
"What's wrong with it?"
"Nearly everything."
"It works."
"So does a feed sack. I wouldn't recommend wearing one to town."
Lucy snickered from the table.
Nathan gave his niece a look. She immediately lowered her head over her stitching, though her shoulders kept shaking.
Emily walked around Nathan.
The coat had been made for a large man. Nathan was beyond large. At 6'7", his shoulders strained the cloth whenever he reached forward. The cuffs stopped well above his wrists.
Someone had added fabric at the bottom years earlier, but even that extension had begun fraying.
"How long have you owned this?"
"Six years."
Emily stared at him.
"Why?"
Nathan seemed genuinely puzzled.
"Because it's my coat."
"That isn't an answer."
"It's warm."
"It doesn't fit."
"Nothing does."
He said it without complaint.
That bothered her more than complaining would have.
Emily crossed to her sewing basket and took out a measuring tape.
Nathan watched her.
"No."
"Excuse me."
"I know that look."
"What look?"
"The one you had before you took apart Henry's saddlebag."
"Henry's saddlebag survived. After 3 hours of you muttering at it, it deserved what I said."
Lucy put both hands over her mouth.
Emily pointed at Nathan.
"Stand by the window."
He didn't move.
"Nathan."
"Emily."
"Are you frightened of a measuring tape?"
That got him.
He removed his hat.
"Fine."
He stood near the window while Emily stepped behind him, arms out.
Nathan raised them.
Emily measured shoulder to shoulder, then neck to waist.
When she came around to measure his chest, the situation became unexpectedly awkward.
She had to stand close, very close.
The tape passed beneath his arms and around his broad chest. Emily could smell cold air in his coat, horse leather, and faint wood smoke.
Nathan stopped breathing.
Emily pulled the tape straight.