Read Online Printer in Petticoats by Lynna Banning - Free Book Online Page B

down, dusting the street, the trees, even her hair with white lace. Sounds were muffled. It was magical, an enchantment of gauzy flakes.
    Even their footsteps were softened by the silence. He’d seen snow before. He’d ridden in it, walked in it, but it had never looked this beautiful before. It made him feel humble, even reverent, right down to his boot tops.
    They didn’t speak, and when her foot slipped on the slick boardwalk, he caught her around the waist and they moved on in step together. When they reached the Sentinel office, Cole withdrew his arm.
    Jessamine gestured toward the snow-dusted pines beyond the main street. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” she murmured.
    â€œIt is.” But he wasn’t looking at the trees. He was looking straight into her eyes. “Beautiful.”
    â€œGood night, Cole.”
    â€œâ€™Night, Jessamine.”
    Jess studied his oddly strained visage a long moment, then turned toward the front door of her office. She should remind him about the candidates’ debate on Monday, but she couldn’t make herself speak such mundane words. It would only remind him, remind them both, that they were on opposite sides.
    He couldn’t know how desperate she felt about the survival of the Sentinel , how much she resented his coming here to Smoke River and threatening her livelihood. The Sentinel was her whole reason for being.
    She was so afraid of failing, of finding out she didn’t have the intelligence or the skill or the grit to be a true journalist. Most of the time she felt like a failure, especially since Cole Sanders had arrived in Smoke River. He obviously knew what he was doing as a newspaperman. She did not.
    She had worked hard to learn things from Miles, and she had to work even harder now that she was on her own. Failure shadowed every word she put down on her yellow notepad, every article she wrote. With each issue of her newspaper she shuddered with apprehension lest someone march into her office and fire a gun into her chest, as someone had done to Miles.
    Tonight she wanted to forget, just for a moment. Forget her fears and the barrier that lay between Cole Sanders and herself.
    Suddenly she heard his voice behind her. “Jess?”
    She swung back toward him and a soft, slushy snowball landed on her cheek.
    â€œLeave your lamp on tonight.”
    She wanted to laugh. She wanted to heave a snowball right back at him, to forget everything but the lovely, silent night and the delicious fleeting camaraderie between them. It made her hungry for something she couldn’t put into words.
    All at once she found that her eyes were stinging.

Chapter Nine
    T he debate between Sheriff Jericho Silver and his opponent, Conway Arbuckle, drew townspeople, ranchers, sheepmen and farmers from as far north as Gillette Springs. They thronged the church meeting hall, arguing at the tops of their lungs. Even the women’s voices were raised.
    The hall echoed with accusations and recriminations until Federal Marshal Matt Johnson, seated at a long table, gaveled the crowd into quiet.
    Jessamine sat on one end of the oak table, Cole on the other, watching as the marshal rose to open the proceedings. Opponents Silver and Arbuckle sat across the room at opposite ends of another table.
    â€œListen up,” Matt called. “We’re all here for a peaceable debate between the two candidates for district judge. Both the editor of the Smoke River Sentinel , Miss Jessamine Lassiter, and the Lake County Lark editor, Mr. Cole Sanders, have submitted questions for Mr. Silver and Mr. Arbuckle. I will read the question aloud, and then each candidate will have two minutes to respond.”
    The marshal ostentatiously produced an egg timer filled with sand and set it on the table before him. Jess choked back a laugh. Next, he unfolded a scrap of paper with the first question scrawled on it.
    â€œMr. Arbuckle, would you tell those assembled here what