“Why?” Sarai asked. “How could I not say something? Was I supposed to pretend I was mute? That was well under control.”
“It was not,” Arden countered. “You know what he wanted, don’t you?”
“I’m very clear on what he wanted!” she retorted. “He wanted my attention. And I wanted to get past. Do you think I never deal with this sort of thing?”
Arden’s gaze flashed. “I’m sure you do. But I’m telling you, as a man, that’s not the way to do it. You were only encouraging him.”
“And you’d know!” Sarai couldn’t quite explain the rise of anger. But a few years ago, Arden was just like that Englisher young man—maybe even worse! And he had the gall to lecture her about whether or not she should answer a question?
“Yah, I would,” Arden retorted, not seeming to quite understand her meaning. “Men take that as encouragement. He got you talking to him. He figured he was ahead of the game.”
“There is no game,” she shot back.
“There is always a game.” Arden shook his head. “You know what, Sarai? You are incredibly naive.”
An Amish woman that Sarai recognized looked over at them in curiosity, and Sarai felt a rush of embarrassment. Now Arden was going to make her look foolish to boot. So Sarai pulled back her fist and punched him solidly in the shoulder.
It was a shocking thing to do—an Amish woman slugging an Amish man. But he’d asked for it, hadn’t he?
“What was that?” Arden looked surprised.
“You said to smack you!” she said.
“I said to smack me if I was flirting.” A smile turned up one side of his lips. “I wasn’t flirting.”
No, he’d been doing something worse.
“You were overstepping. You were pretending to be more to me than you actually are. You were—” He was making her feel warm, protected, and her heart had taken a little tumble. “That wasn’t fair. You wanted me to show you how you should behave. Well, that kind of thing is out of bounds. Got it?”
“Okay.” He sobered. “Sorry.”
“Good.” Her gaze slid toward the window, and she saw Luke staring in at her, a curious look on his face. She shook her head and turned away.
“Let’s get what we need,” she said.
They were here to shop, not argue or make a scene, and Sarai refused to give anyone more reason to talk about them. This had always been the problem with Arden: he never knew when to stop. Maybe what he needed was for a woman he respected to tell him straight when he was messing up. And she was happy to oblige.
Arden looked over his shoulder toward the broad window letting light into the hardware store. This store didn’t have electric lights, so it had plenty of windows. The Englisher was peering in them, but when Arden shot him an annoyed look, he turned away. The young men were still hanging around, and he had no doubt that if Sarai left the store without him, Luke would be trying to get her to talk to him again.
Did he blame the guy? Not entirely. Sarai was particularly beautiful, and she didn’t seem to know it, either. The Good Book said it best: like a lily among thorns. That was what Sarai was like—every other girl paled in comparison to Sarai Peachy. That was just a fact, and he couldn’t blame those young men for being hopeful. But Sarai was Amish, and they’d better respect that. That was all he was defending...
Arden headed for the carts, pulled one out with a rattle and started toward the aisle with building supplies. He purposely didn’t look in the direction that Sarai went, making his point. He wasn’t going to overstep with her. She’d been clear enough.
Maybe Sarai was right: maybe he should have postured a bit more when it came to Mary. But he still thought he shouldn’t have to stomp around like a rooster in a henhouse in order to keep a woman faithful to him. The truth was, he’d tried that with Marvin. He’d told him to back off. That didn’t work when the woman didn’t want defending.
And Sarai didn’t want his defending, either.
He used to think he knew his way around the girls. And maybe he had, but he didn’t know his boot from his hat when it came to grown women! And he was praying for guidance now. He didn’t want to play games. He wanted a woman who’d accept his heart. That was a rarer treasure than he’d ever realized before.
The hardware store carried only one kind of shingle, and he picked up a few packages, mentally tallying up how much he’d need for the stable roof and the chicken coop. Then he grabbed some nails and some tar paper to go underneath it all to protect the roof from the elements. He’d gotten plenty of roofing experience in Ohio—one of the silver linings to having an old house that needed repair.
But he had a different problem here. Dawdie Moe had told him to use the tab. But a tab was simply debt, and somehow he’d gotten the impression that his grandfather wouldn’t pay it off easily. Arden had asked a few questions, trying to figure out his grandfather’s financial situation, but Dawdie Moe was rather tight-lipped about money.
Sarai had mentioned the egg money at one point. Would she use it for this? Because if he dipped into his savings for repairs, he would be draining away the money he needed to pay her father back.
Sarai came around the corner and spotted him. She had a bag of chicken feed and she dropped it into the cart with a huff of breath.
“There,” she said. “Do you have everything?”
“Yah, I’ve got what we need for the roof,” he replied.
“Good. Shall we?”
They headed for the register, and Sarai stopped at a bin of cotton yarn.
“I need some for dishcloths,” she said, grabbing four skeins and adding them to the cart.
Arden mentally added the price to his tally. Sarai eyed the bin and grabbed two more.
“Sometimes we sell them at the farmers’ market, too,” she explained.
Right. Of course. He tried to still that wriggle of worry in his gut as he lifted the items up onto the counter. The cashier was an Amish girl, and she smiled as she started to type the prices into the till.
“Hello,” she said. “Arden, you don’t remember me, do you?”
He looked up, perplexed. “No, sorry.”
“I’m Sadie-Mae,” she said.
