Lisa Plumley - [Crabtree 01]

by The Matchmaker

  She nodded toward the one near his right hand. “The big jar,” Marcus observed. “Optimistic of you.”

  With a shrug, Molly agreed. Despite her nonchalant pose, though, a bit of her customary determination showed through.

  “I mean to fill it all the way to the top before I’m done,” she said. “Your allowing me to sell my goodies at your lumber mill moved most of those marbles, that’s for certain. I’ll always be grateful to you for that.”

  Appreciation softened her face. She smiled and squeezed his arm. “You don’t know how much your help meant to me.”

  He hadn’t at the time, Marcus agreed silently. But now he did. At the realization, he felt like the worst kind of cad for deceiving her. If Molly ever found out he’d been paying his workers to buy her baked goods, that they’d actually used them for shoe repairs and juggling practice and propping open doors with—well, Marcus just hoped like hell she never found out. It would hurt her too much.

  He selected a basket of what looked like cigar-size strips of rolled tree bark. “I suppose you use this to account for receipts or some such?” Marcus asked. “Let me guess, the big pieces of bark represent large bills, and the small pieces stand in for small bills.”

  Molly rolled her eyes. Don’t be ridiculous, her expression said.

  He reconsidered. “These are your receivable accounts?”

  “It’s cinnamon.” Her smile enlivened the whole room. “I rub it over a grater and use it in my cinnamon buns.”

  “Oh.” Feeling foolish, Marcus pushed away the fragrant basket. At least he’d diverted her attention from the subject of the supposed help he’d given her business. “Is that all, then?”

  “Not quite.”

  Molly went on explaining the various items she used in her business. As she did, gradually Marcus began to see that her methods might not have been the methods he’d have chosen, but they were valid. They served the same purposes as his ledgers and receipts and inventories did, only in an intuitive, tactile way.

  “I never thought I’d say this,” he told her when she’d finished, “but…you don’t need my help. You have something here that works for you. It’s plain that marbles and cookie jars and illustrated books suit your needs even better than writing in ledgers would.”

  “I do like these things,” Molly mused. With apparent pleasure, she rubbed her fingers over the jelly jars, stirred the marbles within. “They make sense to me. Seeing them, touching them, seems so much more real than writing numbers down.”

  He believed it. More and more, he’d come to realize that Molly Crabtree had a sensualist’s heart. She appreciated the textures and temperatures and tactile qualities of everything around her, and couldn’t help but reach out to experience them. Molly worked at business the same way she worked at everyday life—by filling herself with every part of it. By leaving no stone or marble or scrap of ribbon untouched.

  She bit her lip, gazing thoughtfully at him. “But until you came here, no one else…understood that. Are you certain it wouldn’t be better to account for things properly?”

  “I would have thought so.”

  Her gaze turned downcast. Gloomily she surveyed the ledgers. Her expression held all the eagerness of a man assigned to fell a mighty oak with a penknife.

  She’d misunderstood, Marcus knew. Driven by a need to reassure her, he cupped her chin in his hand. He raised her face to his. “I would have thought so,” he repeated. “Until I met you.”

  “Oh, Marcus.” Her tremulous gaze lifted. “You do understand!”

  “If you tell anyone, I’ll deny it. These ledgers are an atrocity. Nothing like the ones at my mill.”

  Molly pish-poshed his warnings. That was when Marcus knew he truly was doomed. This woman did not fear him. Not even when he used his most fearsome voice, the one that worked wonders on burly lumbermen everywhere.

  Instead, she beamed. “That’s wonderful! I’m so glad.”

  He made a face, grumbling now. “You are changing me, Molly. And it’s for the better, I fear.”

  It was for the better, if this sudden lightness he felt meant anything. For the first time, Marcus realized, he was beginning to see the world as a place filled not with tasks to be conquered, but with possibilities to be enjoyed. With Molly’s example, he understood that wrenching things into their proper places wasn’t always necessary.

  Next thing he knew, Marcus thought sourly, he’d be leaving his doors unlocked, with Molly’s open-to-the-public bakery to blame as inspiration. He’d be chattering for the fun of it. He’d be…losing his heart to the very woman who’d turned his life and his views upside down.

  “Change is nothing to fear,” she assured him with a wave of her hand. “It’s the natural course of things. The matchmaker says so. A fine woman enlightens her man. She shows him the better sides of things.”

  The matchmaker. Her mention of the meddlesome creature should have prompted Marcus to question her. It should have stirred an interest in seeing the matchmaker’s shenanigans put to rest. But for the second time that night, Marcus didn’t care to delve into the secret he’d promised to uncover.

  Let the men’s club be damned, he thought. Now he was here with Molly, a beautiful and kindhearted woman. It would be a greater crime to forget that than it would be to neglect his fact-finding duties.

  At least it would be…for now.

  In that moment, Marcus gave in.

  “Then show me a few of those better things,” he said. He stroked his thumb over the curve of her cheek, marveling at her softness. “For I need them, Molly. More sorely than I knew.”

  I need you, he thought, and felt himself drawn still further into the warmth of being with her. All he could feel was the want of her; all he could know was that she held some secret, some thing that would make him feel whole.

  At first, Molly’s answer was silent. He held his breath to receive it, then in the subtle lamplight she gently touched his face. She dragged her fingers across his jaw—clean shaven for her, just before he’d come here—then caressed his cheek. Something akin to amazement passed over her expression, then was chased away by the smile that tilted her lips.

  “Everything of mine is yours,” she said. “Didn’t you know that? After all, it isn’t every man I allow to see my ledgers.”

  Her sassy smile lightened his heart.

  “It isn’t every woman I invite to improve me.”

  Marcus flattened her hand against his face, savoring her touch. He rumbled with pleasure beneath it, feeling like a lion gentled by the most unlikely of tamers. He captured her hand and pressed a kiss to her palm, then curled her fingers around it to keep that bit of his feelings safe within her grasp.

  “But at this moment, I’m putty in your hands. You should take this opportunity and go wild. You should turn me into the kind of man you’ve dreamed of. Now, while I won’t stop you.”

  “No.” Molly shook her head. “I cannot.”

  “Am I so hopeless as that, then?” Despite everything, Marcus felt wounded. ’Twas his first inkling that these better things of hers might come with a cost to bear. A cost to his heart.

  “I won’t believe it,” he scoffed in his most manly tone. “With the effort you exert toward all your projects, I could easily become the man you’ve dreamed of.”

  “No! I cannot…because you already are that man. Marcus, don’t you realize how much you’ve given me? You’ve bolstered my business. You’ve kept me company in the most charming of ways. You’ve introduced me to kissing. Soon you’ll even be embarking upon repairing my shop.”

  “Introduced you to kissing?” Stopping her on that point, he raised his brows, his curiosity piqued. “Surely you’d been kissed before.”

  “Not so it counted.”

  Unreasonable pride filled him. Wasn’t that what every man secretly suspected? That he was the ultimate lover, the only one his chosen woman wanted?

  Marcus cocked his head at a rakish angle. “Of course. This town is filled with loutish
oafs who’d as soon slobber on you as kiss you. With clumsy buffoons who step on your toes. With long-nosed cretins who can’t decide which way to tilt their heads so as not to jab your eye out.”

  “No. That’s not it. The men aren’t so inept as all that, I can assure you.”

  Was she laughing at him? Marcus thought so. Her eyes looked far too bright, her cheeks far too pink, for anything other than politely stifled amusement. Damnable woman.

  “What, then?” he demanded.

  “It’s never counted before,” Molly said softly, “because none of those men who tried to kiss me…were men I cared for. Marcus, I care for you. More deeply than I expected.”

  Shocked, Marcus could only stare at her for a moment.

  Then…what the hell, he decided, and threw caution to the wind. It was what any marble-collecting, ribbon-sorting, pretend-money-creating person would have done.

  “Then we are even.” His heart hammered. He felt as though he’d run clear to his mill, out to the logging camp and all the way back here without stopping. Placing his hand protectively over his chest, Marcus swallowed hard and went on. “Because I never expected these feelings I have for you.”

  There. He’d said it. He’d revealed a piece of himself for her, to either accept or refuse. Not that she would refuse, he assured himself. Not when he gave the finest kisses she’d ever—

  No. On the heels of his mush-hearted declaration, something changed. Marcus watched in alarm as Molly’s expression faltered. Her nose crinkled. The magical warmth between them began seeping away, sometime between his first declaration and the next.

  “You make me sound like a rash,” she accused. “A rash you never wanted and can’t wait to be rid of.”

  “No! Molly, you’re not a rash at all.” Befuddled but determined, Marcus lunged to hold her in her chair beside him before she could slip away. How could he explain? “At most, you’re…a temporary lunacy. A lunacy I love.”

  There. That ought to smooth things over.

  Her eyebrow rose. “Temporary? Temporary! When do you plan to cure yourself of me, Marcus? After you’ve wormed the matchmaker’s name from me, I suppose?”

  Marcus shook his head. “Given both ‘temporary’ and ‘lunacy,’ you choose ‘temporary’ to object to? I will never understand you.”

  “Very tidy avoidance of the real issue, Mr. Copeland.”

  “Now we’re back to that? Marcus,” he reminded her. “Marcus, Marcus—”

  “I’ll never give you the secret, you know,” she informed him. “I’ve sworn not to. My very image of responsibility and steadfastness depends on keeping that promise.”

  How had they come to this? One moment, they’d both been proclaiming their growing affections or so he’d thought. The next, they were adversaries again? Marcus raked his hand through his hair, confused.

  “I don’t care about the matchmaker! Do you think I would be here with this mess—” exasperated, he gestured toward her bookkeeping accoutrements. “—if I were only after that damnable woman’s name?”

  Molly gasped. “You said you understood my system!”

  “I do. Listen to me.” He grasped her chair, dragged it toward him, then kept both hands fixed on its seat on either side of her bustled behind in order to keep her with him. “Beyond all reason, I like spending time with you. I like learning your outlandish ways of looking at things. I even like being made to keep up with you, as senseless as it seems—”

  “If this is your notion of sweet talk, you may as well quit while you’re ahead,” Molly said, crossing her arms over her chest. “Before you tell me that as well as being crazy and childish, I’m also unattractive and…and—” she churned her arm, seeking more “—and smell funny!”

  “You smell delightful.” He smiled fondly. “Good enough to taste.”

  “Ooh! How dare you remind me of that!”

  Ah, their first kisses. “I dare much more than that. Care to test me?”

  “I’m leaving.”

  She tried to rise. His arms on her chair prevented it.

  “Let me go.”

  “Not until you hear me.” Marcus nodded toward the chair.

  Warily Molly settled fully into it again. Her arched brows bade him continue.

  “When I said before that I never expected the feelings I have for you, it was true. I did not expect them. But I do believe in them. I will not be baited into denying them.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Yes, you do. You don’t trust me because you believe it’s the matchmaker I seek. Not you. But Molly—”

  Marcus paused, caught between the old and the new, between what he’d promised and what he needed. He could not have both the matchmaker’s identity and the woman he cared for, and he knew it. He chose Molly.

  “From the moment I touched you, something in me changed. When I see you, the sun comes out. When I hear you laugh, my spirits lift. I might not be skilled at romantic talk—and that’s probably why you were mad at me before—but I mean what I say. I want you, Molly. I can’t promise—”

  “Oh, Marcus!” She lurched forward, flinging her arms around him. With happy little movements, she hugged him close. “You excel at romantic talk! I don’t know why I didn’t see it before.”

  Molly slapped both palms gently on his cheeks, holding his face steady. She pressed rewarding, tiny kisses all over his jaw, his cheekbone, his neck and eventually, his lips. Her fervor was endearing, if a little lacking in finesse. Marcus didn’t mind a damned bit. Not so long as she forgave him, and went on trying to perfect her technique.

  Her lips met his. It was all he could stand. Grasping the nape of her neck in his hand, Marcus took control of her chaste kiss, turning it to something far deeper, far hotter, far more passionate. He could not get enough of Molly’s mouth, of her breathy whispers, of her lush curviness as, after long moments, he finally let his hands wander lower, lower, to cup her breasts in both palms.

  At his touch, she moaned into his mouth, arching toward him. Lace and satin met his callused hands…and beneath the fabrics, warm, willing woman awaited. Molly felt every bit as wondrous as he’d ever dreamed. Marcus knew he would never get enough of her.

  Especially not tonight.

  She held his shoulders, pulling him to her. Then, abruptly, Molly lurched away. She broke off their kiss and stood, her hands visibly trembling. “We mustn’t do this.”

  Not do this? How else could he show her his feelings, save touching her? Meaning to do so, Marcus reached for her.

  She sidestepped his grasp. “I’m sorry. I must leave, and that means you should, too.”

  “Is something wrong?”

  “No. You were remarkable.” She touched her lips, let her gaze turn faraway, shook her head to clear it. “But I fear I don’t have the ability to resist you further, and I won’t have my first time abed with the man I love be…not in a bed.”

  Flustered, Molly grabbed his discarded suit coat and flung it toward him. Just as Marcus caught it, something fluttered from within its folds to the ground. He bent, quite carefully due to his state of thwarted arousal, to pick it up.

  By the time he straightened, again carefully, Molly had quit the office. “Just let yourself out!” she called from the front of the bakeshop. “Goodbye!”

  The front door thudded closed. Left alone, Marcus shook his head. Just when he thought he had Molly reckoned out, she surprised him. His mind whirled with thoughts of Molly “lying abed” with him. Had she meant that? Given her unconventional family, she might. He no longer found it shocking that she never locked her doors, but he did find it startling that…

  His gaze caught on the thing in his hand. Held. It was the note Molly had given him, inviting him to dinner. For the first time, Marcus recalled his determination to match Molly’s handwriting with that bold script he’d studied on the matchmaker’s note kept by Jack Murphy. With an uneasy feeling roiling in his gut, he made himself unfold the note.

  He looked. Molly’s note
was printed, in a hand unlike the one he’d seen at Murphy’s saloon.

  With relief, Marcus shrugged into his suit coat. Although it wasn’t quite as telling to match printed letters with cursive ones, this all but proved Molly wasn’t the matchmaker. He tucked away the invitation, then reached for Molly’s ledgers, left open on the desk. It was time to put them away and, along with them, some of his misguided notions about Molly.

  Bemused, he flipped through her accounts one final time. It seemed Molly had made an attempt at proper bookkeeping some time ago, he saw as he examined an old ledger he hadn’t looked at closely before. Because this journal held several inventory notations, each entered on its own line…in a distinctive curved script he recognized.

  It was the matchmaker’s handwriting.

  Here, in Molly’s ledger. Marcus would need Jack Murphy’s note to prove it true, but logic told him there was no doubt.

  His hand clenched above the page. Stunned, Marcus took out Molly’s note again and lay it on the desk. He examined both, side by side. The truth struck him all at once, leaving him sick at heart. Likely Molly had deliberately scribed her invitation to him in a false hand, he realized, to try and lead him astray.

  Her deceit had worked—until now.

  Slamming shut the ledger, Marcus tucked it beneath his arm. He made to leave. This would change things, to be certain. But exactly how they would change remained to be seen.

  Chapter Eleven

  The next several days passed uneventfully for Molly. She continued making daily visits to Marcus’s lumber mill, spending time behind the new baked goods stall the men had built for her. She met with her mother and the family’s cook, planning an elaborate meal for Friday evening, when Marcus would join them for dinner. She collected petition signatures with Grace, filled paper cornucopias with Sarah for her students’ autumn celebration, and called on several more townspeople in charge of assigning Chautauqua booths.

  Her efforts on that matter still hadn’t come to fruition. Not even specially baked miniature dried apple pies had been enough to tip the scales in her favor. But that didn’t mean Molly intended to give up. Instead, she set her sights on baking a magnificent Lady Baltimore cake filled with fruit and nuts, telling herself that when the Chautauqua committee tasted it, they’d grant her two booths and a fanfare from the Morrow Creek municipal band, too.