Rainwater by Sandra Brown Read Free Book Online Page B

return, I don’t want you thinking too much about me, or Solly, or our circumstances.”
    He studied her a moment, then said, “You should allow yourself to get angry more often. I think it would do you good.”
    His candor robbed her of words. Taking umbrage, she just stood there and stared at him.
    “Good night, Mrs. Barron.” He stepped around her and went upstairs.
     
     
     

FIVE
    A week passed. Ella saw little of David Rainwater other than at breakfast and dinner. During mealtimes, he showed remarkable forbearance for the Dunne sisters’ chatter and ill-disguised curiosity.
    The spinsters began “dressing” for dinner, each night coming downstairs arrayed in their Sunday best, wearing pieces of jewelry and explaining this sudden affectation by asking, rhetorically, what good was having nice things if one never used them? Ella even caught a whiff of cologne one evening and suspected Miss Pearl, who played the coquette whenever in the company of the new boarder.
    Mr. Hastings returned one afternoon, barely having time to wash up before dinner. As Ella was serving the salad course, the sisters made the introductions.
    “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Rainwater,” the salesman said. “It’ll be nice to have another man in the house. Do you play chess?”
    “Not too well, I’m afraid.”
    “Excellent! Maybe I can win a game for a change. Ah, Mrs. Barron, I’ve missed your cooking. Nothing like it where I’ve been.”
    “Thank you, Mr. Hastings. Did you have a productive trip?”
    “Nothing to boast of, sorry to say. My vendors don’t buy what they used to. In fact, nothing even close to what they used to, because they can’t sell the inventories they have. Nobody can afford notions these days. People are lucky if they can eat regularly. Despite Mr. Roosevelt’s optimistic speeches, times seem to be getting worse, not better.”
    “Which should make us all the more grateful for our blessings,” Miss Violet intoned.
    After dinner that night, the two men played chess in the formal parlor while the sisters listened to the radio in the informal parlor. Ella could hear strains of music as she worked in the kitchen. Occasionally she detected a male voice coming from the front room.
    Mr. Hastings stayed for two days, then doggedly carried his sample cases down the stairs and out to his car. “I should be back next Tuesday,” he informed Ella. “I’ll call you if for any reason I’m delayed.”
    “Have a good trip, Mr. Hastings.”
    He tipped his hat to her and set off. That evening Mr. Rainwater excused himself immediately after dinner and went up to his room. He hadn’t spent any more evenings sitting on the porch, at least none that Ella knew about.
    Their encounters were polite, but brief and stilted, as though each was being careful not to offend the other. As she’d requested, he no longer stood up when she entered a room or extended any other overt courtesy. It felt to her as though they had quarreled. They hadn’t. Not exactly. But she avoided being alone with him, and he made no attempt to seek her out.
    Which was as it should be.
    He’d been in residence for two weeks when they had their next private conversation. She’d been cleaning upstairs while Margaret was in the front parlor mending a drapery and watching Solly as he played with spools of thread, which was one of his favorite pastimes.
    Ella was toting her basket of cleaning supplies down the stairs when she heard a scraping sound she couldn’t identify. She followed it through the kitchen, out the back door, and around the corner of the house.
    Mr. Rainwater was applying himself to a garden hoe, using it to chop the dry soil between rows of tomato plants. With his coat and vest draped over a fence post, he was in shirtsleeves, the cuffs rolled to his elbows. Suspenders crisscrossed his back, forming an X over the spot where sweat had plastered his shirt to his skin.
    “Mr. Rainwater!”
    Her exclamation brought him around. “Mrs.