He needed to speak to Sarah before she left for the schoolhouse. The answer he’d been looking for had come to him last night as he’d left Allen on the porch, but he needed her help to make it work. And some part of him wanted her to know she wasn’t alone. He’d just splashed his face with the bracingly cold water when he saw her. She sat on a plank swing hanging from a tree not far away, blond hair loose down her back, head bent. The sight of her, the very beauty of the picture she presented caught his breath in his chest. Heat flushed through him, making him acutely aware of the cool drop of water that slid down his throat and beneath the collar of his shirt. His feet took him toward her before he realized it, and he knocked his hat against his thigh. Nervous as a schoolboy. She looked up and their eyes met and locked. He nodded a greeting, scratched the back of his neck, uncomfortable as all get out with this new awareness of her.
