Page 59 of Silver Lining
While he worked, Max decided that Livvy was right. There was no woman worth losing his brother over. His feelings wouldn't change overnight, but for the first time since he had looked down and found the scratched marble in his palm, he understood that he'd only paid lip service to the fact that he had to let Philadelphia go. On some level he had stubbornly believed that eventually, somehow and someway, everything would work out as it should have. But it wasn't going to. He had to accept that, completely and finally, or lose his brother.
*
They didn't discuss the dreamlike evening on the kitchen floor or the fight between Max and his brother.
There was no need because Louise understood that Philadelphia stood squarely at the center of both events. To state it mildly, Philadelphia was not her favorite topic despite the amount of time she wasted thinking about the woman. Half a dozen times a day she recalled her meeting with Philadelphia and thought about all the things she might have said in response to Philadelphia 's remarks.
The only reason she'd taken Philadelphia 's comments lying down was because she felt sorry for her, and because she knew Livvy McCord desperately did not want an open breech within the family. For Livvy's sake, Louise had decided that she would do whatever it took not to cause further trouble. If that meant letting Philadelphia walk all over her, well, so be it. There was nothing Philadelphia could say to her that she hadn't heard before.
Besides, if she ever let herself cut loose, she could outdo Philadelphia any day of the week when it came to insults. If living in a man's world had done nothing else, it had taught her how to cuss and hurl insults alongside the best of them.
There was another, less noble reason why she hadn't given Philadelphia a hard verbal slap. A little matter of the truth.
Pausing with her dust rag on the piano keys, Louise reluctantly conceded that Philadelphia was right.
Louise hadn't been choosy about who drew the scratched marble. To get a baby she would have slept with just about any of the prospectors.
But she wasn't a whore as Philadelphia believed. She wasn't promiscuous either. At age twenty-eight, she'd been with two men, and one of them she'd married. If that made her an affront to decent women—if wanting a baby to love and raise wasn't something respectable folks could understand—then she didn't want to be decent or respectable.
Be who you seem to be. That was one of the proverbs she tried to live by. She didn't put on airs, didn't gussy up her background, didn't apologize for who she was or how she lived. She tried to do right and stay out of trouble. She lived what she considered a decent life, though it might not seem so to someone like Philadelphia .
There were about a million rules in the Good Book and in society, and she tried to obey those that made sense. But it never should have been a rule that a woman became indecent if she was willing to accept just about any man in order to make a baby. Some women were never going to catch a husband or didn't want one. That didn't make them in-damn-decent.
Raising a hand, she banged her fist down on the piano keys, striking a jarringly discordant sound. After she did it again, Max appeared in the parlor archway, startling her. She hadn't realized he'd come inside.
"What are you doing?"
Her chin came up and she glared. "Everyone in the McCord family can play a stupid piano except me.
Even Sunshine can pick out a tune; she told me so." When Max smiled and pointed out that neither he nor Wally played the piano, she snapped at him. "You know what I mean."
"I'm sure Gilly would be delighted to teach you."
"Well, maybe I'll just ask her about that." After closing the lid over the keys with a bang, she swished her skirts past him and headed for the kitchen. "Or maybe I won't. Maybe I think a person can be decent without knowing how to play a single damned note. What are you doing here anyway?"
"I came up to the house for dinner," he said patiently, following her into the kitchen.
"Oh Lord. Is it dinnertime already? Seems I just finished putting away the breakfast fixings." Her face flamed as she walked across the section of floor where they had lain together, and she didn't dare look at him. They had done… it… on the kitchen floor. If she were still a cussing woman, she would have spun out a string of awed swearing, yes sir.
"Just give me some bread and gravy. That'll be fine."
"A man ought to have more than bread and gravy for his dinner." He was standing too close, and that flustered her. In all her born days, she didn't think she'd ever met a man who smelled as wonderful as Max did. He smelled like lots of good things. Leather and smoke, horseflesh and cowhide. Soap and fresh air, earth and sun. Sometimes he smelled of whiskey, and sometimes he smelled like the apples she kept in a basket near the mudroom door. Sometimes she smelled lamp oil on his hands, sometimes coal or pine resin. If she sniffed him before he washed up at night, occasionally she caught the tang of good honest man sweat.
"Louise …"
They stood gazing into each other's eyes, close enough that her skirt wrapped his legs. And his intense speculative look suggested that he, too, remembered what had happened in this spot a few nights ago.
"Mr. McCord? Max? Are you in there?"
Louise gave him a faint smile and stepped backward, folding her shaking hands in her apron.
"That you, Shorty?" Max called toward the mudroom door. He placed a fingertip at the corner of Louise's lips.
His touch was light, but it shot a spear of fire down to her toes and pinned her to the floor.
"You and me," Max said quietly. "We got some talking to do. I'll be back after I find out what's on Shorty's mind."
Nodding, Louise leaned against the sink and wet her lips. There were a dozen things he might want to discuss. Piano lessons, expenses, the roundup, the weather, his black eye. But the hot tingle in her stomach and the accelerated thump of her heartbeat suggested that she hoped it was none of those things.
