by Lisa Plumley
Why, then, did a part of her wish it was something more?
Ridiculous.
“What did he say?” Isabel asked, wide-eyed. “I thought you told me he refused to even discuss your proposal.”
“He did.” For now. Firmly, Julia pushed away those dangerously distracting thoughts of his final, searing glance. “But I have a feeling I haven’t seen the last of him. I wouldn’t be surprised if he even turned up here.”
“Here?”
“Certainly. Why not?”
Giving her friend a teasing wink, she tossed her polishing cloth into the bin beneath the counter, then raised her hands to her hair and checked for tendrils that had escaped her new bonnet. Her hatpins and chignon still felt secure, despite her tumble to the grass earlier.
With a critical eye, Julia leaned closer to the mirrored space behind the soda fountain apparatus. She wanted to make certain no traces of her encounter in the park were visible. She certainly felt changed, somehow. On the inside. But there was no reason she couldn’t present the same, unchanging appearance to the people who knew her.
She hoped.
“After all,” she continued when she’d finished primping, “this is where Mr. Corley will find the mysterious person who settled his boardinghouse bill this morning.”
Isabel gasped. “You didn’t!”
“I did. If there’s anything I know about gentlemen, it’s that not one of them can bear being beholden to a lady. Mr. Corley will come back, all right.” Julia smiled at her reflection. “And he’ll be looking for me when he does.”
“Oh, Madre Dios.” Swiftly, Isabel crossed herself. “Your papa will kill you when he finds out.”
“My father isn’t going to find out.”
“He…might.”
“What? How?” Turning at the curious, singsong note of warning in Isabel’s voice, she caught sight of her friend’s face. She looked worried. But then, that was Isabel. A mother hen, even before she’d been out of short skirts. Whatever had her riled up now, it was probably nothing to panic about.
Or maybe it was.
Julia followed her friend’s gaze to the front of the shop, just as a dark-hatted figure moved briskly past the plate-glass windows. Nearly past the entrance, a hairsbreadth from the ornate show globe that designated the place as a pharmaceutical shop, he paused. He squinted through the glass. Then, with an abrupt shove of his hand, he opened the door.
The bounty hunter entered.
In his wake, the bell chimed merrily. The man stopped for an instant, obviously getting his bearings in the merchandise-packed shop. He frowned. Standing amidst the pharmaceuticals advertisements, shelves of goods, glossy fixtures and stacked displays of medicinal remedies, Graham Corley looked twice as rugged. Twice as fearsome.
And all at once she felt twice as foolhardy, for entangling herself with a man like him. But what choice did she have? None, really, Julia reminded herself.
Nevertheless, as his gaze finally reached her—pinned her, examined her, touched her—she felt rooted in place. When he started toward her across the oak plank floorboards, Julia had to stifle a very real impulse to flee. Staring straight at her, Graham Corley strode toward the soda fountain. His footsteps were loud and ominous in the sudden stillness.
For one giddy instant, Julia imagined herself lifting one of the high wrought-iron soda fountain stools, aiming it bottom-first at the bounty hunter, and forcing him backward like a lion tamer determined to keep his most savage pupil at bay. But that was ridiculous, she told herself. If her plan was to succeed, it would require her and Mr. Corley to remain much closer than a chair’s distance apart.
Much, much closer.
At the thought, she suppressed a cowardly urge to duck behind the counter and hide. Instead, Julia made herself stand upright while she awaited his approach.
Miss Julia’s Behavior Book, volume one: Ladies should avoid staring openly at people to whom they have not been properly introduced, as this is ill-bred and unbecoming, and shows a serious want of dignity.
She realized she was indeed gawking at him with a lack of dignity that probably went far beyond unbecoming, and lowered her gaze. If this transaction were to proceed as she hoped, she couldn’t afford to take any actions that might offend Mr. Corley.
Not that a bachelor like him would be likely to notice. Still, as the town’s sole etiquette expert, she did have a responsibility to uphold.
“Mr. Corley!” She summoned a shaky smile and gestured toward one of the stools lining the soda fountain’s long marble countertop. “How pleasant to see you again. I believe you’ve already met my friend, Isabel Deevers.”
He nodded to a gaping Isabel, who muttered a greeting in response, then retreated to serve a customer who had followed the bounty hunter inside the shop. Julia watched her friend all but run to the opposite end of the soda fountain counter, and had the feeling that, in this instance at least, Isabel might very well be the wiser of them both.
Bravely, she looked up at the man she’d maneuvered into seeking her out. He glowered back.
What in heaven’s name had possessed her to choose him?
Desperation.
And it hadn’t abated a bit.
She fluttered her fingers toward a stool, hoping he would take a seat. Maybe then he wouldn’t tower over her in quite so daunting a fashion. “I—I trust you had no trouble locating my father’s fine establishment?”
“None at all.” He ignored the stool she’d indicated. Standing beside it, he bared his teeth in what she supposed passed for an answering smile. “I asked in town about you. Where could I find Avalanche’s most fancy-talking, won’t-take-no-for-an-answer, busy-bodiest female? I asked. You must be talking about Miss Julia Bennett, everyone said. Just go straight on over to Bennett’s Emporium.”
Wanting to cringe, Julia lifted her chin instead. She could well imagine what folks in town would have told him about her. Uppity. Peculiar. An overeducated excuse for a spinster. She had heard them all, and more. As the town misfit, she should have become accustomed to it.
She hadn’t.
The comments still hurt. Now, and every time she heard them. They were one of the reasons she needed to escape back to New York, where she could be safely anonymous again.
Of all the things she’d learned at Vassar, the most important had been the revelation that she could live her life without feeling like an outsider. Without feeling as though she didn’t belong, and never would. In the city, no one cared if she could figure enormous sums in her head, or memorize great spans of text and formulas and theories. In the city, she was just another person.
It was a feeling Julia would give almost anything to experience again. At the moment, stranded as she was in rustic Avalanche, that goal seemed almost impossible. But she had experienced freedom once, and she’d vowed to do so again.
Even if it meant forging an alliance with the intimidating, unpolished and unlikely man frowning at her from across the soda fountain counter.
She untied her apron, using the task as an excuse to stop looking at him. “You can believe about twenty-five percent of what you’ve heard about me, Mr. Corley,” she said crisply, tugging it from her waist. She turned away from him and, with trembling hands, hung her apron on the hook beside the stacks of stemmed soda glasses. “And as for the rest—”
“As for the rest, I’d rather come to my own conclusions.”
His voice came from directly behind her. How had he slipped past the counter without her noticing? Julia felt his breath blow gently against her nape, stirring the delicate hairs there. Then she sensed the warmth of his presence…and its disturbingly rousing effect on her emotions.
For the space of a breath, she yearned to lean back against him. To absorb some of the strength he used so effortlessly. To let herself be sheltered by someone bigger and stronger, even if only for a moment. Fortunately, a lifetime’s self-preservation set itself into motion just in time.
“Good. You’re an original thinker.” S
he smoothed her apron strings. Tucked them into her apron’s pocket. Made doubly sure the garment was secure on its hook…and, all the while, tried desperately to appear as though she stood within touching distance of a man every day of her life, and was thus unaffected. “Then perhaps you’ll listen to my prop—”
“I’m not finished talking.”
“Neither am I!” Overcome with the frustration of trying to speak with a man who obviously had no sense of common politeness, Julia drew a deep, fortifying breath. “And I never will be, if you don’t stop inter—”
Turning, she found herself nearly squashed between his broad chest at her front and the pile of glasses at her back. The rest of her planned speech emerged in a squeak. “—rupting me!”
A tinkling sound, coming from the vicinity of her skirt’s bustle, warned of an imminent crash. Calmly, the bounty hunter reached past her hip, steadied the stack of stemmed soda glasses with one large hand, and then took a step back. Fresh air swept between them.
“I’ve been thinking that you might benefit from one of my etiquette guides, Mr. Corley,” Julia told him, raising her eyebrows. “Perhaps the volume I wrote as an aid to bachelors who want to enrich their lives with the benefits of marriage and family.”
His eyes gleamed dangerously. “Not a chance.”
She shrugged. “I see. It’s possible that the volume containing hints and helpful guidelines on the art of conversation would be more to your—”
“Miss Bennett—”
“—liking.”
“It’s possible, as you say,” he gripped her elbow, drawing her closer, “that you are the one who needs your etiquette books.”
“What? Sir, I do not!”
“That’s debatable.”
“It’s preposterous!” Julia said, offended at the very suggestion.
“It’s true. True as what I came here to tell you today, before heading out of town.”
Out of town? This wasn’t proceeding at all as she’d planned. Bothered by that fact, but unwilling to reveal as much to him, Julia jerked her arm out of the bounty hunter’s grasp. She darted a nervous glance at her father’s bowed head. Thankfully, he still seemed absorbed in his work—for the moment.
She gazed back at Mr. Corley. He stared down at her with barely suppressed impatience. Maybe it was best to humor him before presenting him with her proposition, Julia decided. In that spirit, she gave him the most innocent look she could muster. “Very well. You came to tell me something?”
“You had no business paying my damned boardinghouse bill,” he said. The hard set of his features left little doubt he meant it. “Graham Corley pays his own way. I’ll be beholden to no one.”
“Well. You already are.”
His gaze darkened. Flippancy didn’t agree with him, it seemed. In a quieter voice, Julia said hurriedly, “But not for long. You see, all I ask in return is that you consider my proposition. It won’t take more than a few minutes. I feel sure you’ll want to discuss it.”
“Sure enough to bribe me into coming here to do so?”
“Irony is unbecoming in all its guises, Mr. Corley.”
He rubbed his hand over his dark-stubbled jaw, looking aggravated. “So is trying to force a man into listening to you.”
“I simply want to hire you,” she said.
“I already told you. I’m not looking for work.”
“Perhaps not yet.” Julia waved away his refusal, then reached beneath the soda fountain counter to retrieve her reticule and gloves. Pulling them on, she stated the obvious. “But every man has his price. It would save us both a great deal of time if you would tell me yours. I assure you, I can afford to pay it.”
If possible, that statement drew an even more forbidding expression from him. Could it be that she’d chosen the wrong tactic for dealing with a man like him?
If so, it was too late to correct the matter now. She’d simply have to forge ahead.
His unshaven jaw took on an obstinate angle. He folded his arms across his middle—a gesture, Julia couldn’t help but notice, which effected an interesting contrast between his sun-browned skin and plain white shirt. In fascination, she watched the play of muscle and sinew against the faintly nubbly cotton, then realized what she was doing and jerked her gaze upward.
He’d caught her at it. The knowing grin on his face told her so. To her surprise, that moment’s weakness on her part seemed to soften him. Just a tad. But perhaps it would be enough.
It was.
“All right, Miss Hoity-Toity,” he said. “Tell me what you want.”
It took Miss Julia Bennett thirty-odd minutes, one change of gloves, a church social’s worth of inane chatter to the people in her father’s shop, and about fifty yards’ worth of walking to reveal her proposition to him. And even then Graham couldn’t tell what the hell it was.
It was written down.
He stared at the paper she’d handed him, vaguely aware of her moving around inside the small clapboard structure behind Bennett’s Emporium that she’d led him to. With a brisk motion of her arms, Julia snapped open a pair of shutters to his right, then another pair at the rear of the building. Sunlight flooded in. A steady beam of it filtered between the crates and bottles and dust motes, illuminating the fancy script letters that faced him.
Graham squinted harder. The curlicue-adorned script merged into a spidery mess and made his situation all the worse. Christ. It figured that an uppity woman like her would want to hire him with a written agreement. After their encounters so far, the last thing he wanted was to admit he couldn’t read it.
Julia stepped between a stack of pine crates and a table piled with a jumble of what he assumed were dusty pharmaceutical supplies. Her skirts whispered in the stillness, yellow and lacy and far too fancy for plain surroundings like these. Still, she seemed oddly at home in the cluttered shed—and more at ease than he’d seen her so far.
It made him wonder about her, something Graham had done far too much of already. He should have left Avalanche when he had the chance. No matter how much she intrigued him, or how much being indebted to her pained him. Now he was stuck with a lady he couldn’t get out of his head and an offer for another bounty hunting job he didn’t want.
It ought to be a simple thing to turn her down. Strangely enough, Graham wasn’t in a hurry to do it. From the moment she’d tumbled to the grass and blinked up at him with those wary eyes of hers, he’d been stupidly—and temporarily, he felt sure—smitten. It was just his blasted luck.
Aside from Frankie, he hadn’t known many real ladies. Graham figured that was the reason this one fascinated him so much. Anything more didn’t bear wondering about.
“This was the original shop my father opened when he and my mother settled in the Territory,” Julia offered, indicating the little building and its furnishings. “We don’t use it much since the Emporium was constructed—a schoolroom for a while, before my mother died—but it’s out of the sun and well away from the street. We’ll have the privacy we need here.”
“It’ll do.” Clearing his throat, he looked again at the paper in his hand. He could make out his name, the name of the territory, and a few of the smaller words. Nothing more.
“I thought a written agreement would suit best for this situation,” Julia said, coming closer. She stopped beside him, angling her head to read the paper, and the scent of oranges wafted upward. “I wouldn’t want there to be any misunderstandings between us…especially with so delicate a situation as this. I’m sure you understand.”
Not at all. “’Course.” Feeling damnably awkward and uncertain, Graham thrust the paper onto a barrel beside him and then retreated to familiar territory. “But I usually work on a more informal basis. Why don’t you tell me exactly what you need?”
Her pretty face turned pink. “I—I was hoping to avoid that, actually. It’s…well, it’s rather embarrassing.”
Finally. A hint as to what she wanted. ’Twas probably a runaway fiancé that Julia Bennett was wrang
ling for him to find, Graham figured. No wonder she was skittish.
Hoping to put her at ease, he pushed his hands in his pockets. He looked through the shuttered windows with a deliberately casual air, as though studying the painted sign visible through the glass on the side of the Bennett’s Apothecary and Soda Fountain Emporium building.
“I assure you,” he said, idly watching a stagecoach pass by between the buildings, “you’re not the first lady to request this sort of thing.”
“I’m not?”
“Happens more than you’d think.” But he’d be damned if he’d haul the poor knuck back to face a wedding noose. Not for her. Not for anyone. “But like I said, Miss Bennett, I’m fixing to head out of Avalanche today. I’m not—”
“Please! Just consider it. I wouldn’t be asking you now if I didn’t truly need your help.”
Again she shoved the paper toward him. Reluctantly, Graham took it. He frowned down at the indecipherable words written on it, and discovered there was no sorrier feeling than knowing a lady was relying on you…and the only way to help her was to make yourself look like a blasted fool.
He looked up at her. Worriedly, Julia nibbled at her lower lip while she read the paper once more—looking for whatever he might have objected to in it, most likely. Teeth caught on the fullness of her lip, she looked up and caught him staring. To Graham’s dismay, even the little wrinkle between her eyebrows appealed to him. Beyond all reason, experience and common sense, he wanted to help her.
Lord, she was pretty.
Lord, he was in trouble.
He’d never gone spoony over a woman like this in his life. Spooked at the sensation, Graham took a step back. He needed time to think. He needed distance to plan. In the park this morning, trying to scare her away hadn’t worked. But what would?
And did he really want it to?
Yes, a part of him yelled. Hell, yes. He was a drifter. A man who belonged on the trail, not lodged in a town overrun with families and irrepressible bookish females.
Graham peered at the paper. What he needed was a gentle way to turn her down. He opened his mouth, and could scarcely believe what emerged. “If you want my help, you’ll have to tell me what you need straight out. I can’t read this.”