by The Rascal
“Certainly, certainly.” He sighed, shaking his head. “A tremendous achievement indeed. I’m very proud to know you.”
Grace flushed and hastened to lay out the first flyer.
Lizzie’s response was similar. “Oh, my! That’s wonderful news, Grace!” Her newly wedded friend hugged her, rosy with contentment. “What can I do to help?”
“Hmm. Well, you could sew a suffrage flag or two…?”
“I’ll do my best,” Lizzie promised. “I need to prove my homemaking skills to Alonzo anyway. He’s still recovering from my first attempt at succotash last week.”
Grace gave her a consoling pat. And a grin. “There is always tinned beef if you’re desperate. The modern age is gradually coming around to women’s rescue, you know.”
Lizzie poured them more tea, her expression thoughtful. “Although I do have to wonder… What will Heddy Neibermayer think of your friendship with Mr. Murphy? After all, he is a saloon owner, and you said some of the women in her retinue are temperance advocates. Aside from which, he is a bit rough.”
“He is.” For a moment, Grace lost herself in remembering Jack’s masculine demeanor, his big hands, his hearty laugh. “But there’s much more to him than that! He has unknown talents.”
Lizzie bit her lip, seeming unconvinced.
For an instant, Grace worried, too. What would Heddy say?
Grace had set out to achieve great things in Morrow Creek…and had wound up smitten with one of the brawniest men in town instead. Then the most brilliant idea occurred to her.
“I’m sorry, but I have to hurry away.” Grace hugged her friend. “I’ll be back tomorrow with the patterns for the flags!”
In the meantime, Grace had a new challenge to meet—making sure Heddy Neibermayer knew exactly how unique Jack Murphy was…and exactly how right Grace was to admire him.
In fact, she decided as she carefully folded a select few of his drawings and sealed them for mailing, with the correct evidence, Heddy would be sure to see that Grace had improved more than the quality of women’s lives in Morrow Creek. She’d improved her very own rough-and-ready saloonkeeper, too. And she couldn’t wait for Heddy and her entire retinue to see and admire Jack’s talents for themselves.
All those next few weeks, Jack stole every moment with Grace he could. He waylaid her on her way upstairs, recognizing her footsteps in the wee hours as readily as his own and hurrying to meet her. He bowed to her requests to invent things—special fatigue-fighting paintbrushes for parade banners, unique fasteners for hoisting bunting, even weight-bearing designs for wearable placards and advertisements—and grinned with pleasure over the effusive way Grace received every one.
“Oh, Jack! This is spectacular!” She threw her arms around him, treating him to an impulsive kiss. “Thank you. You are a true genius, to be sure, to have created all these things.”
She gazed at his designs, evident awe in her expression.
“Don’t tell anyone,” he warned.
Grace scoffed. “Why wouldn’t you want everyone in the world to know you can do this? You’re wonderful.”
“Don’t tell anyone that either.”
She smiled, then wrapped her arms around his middle. Her smile bedazzled him. “I don’t care how fearsome you look,” she declared. “Because I know the real Jack Murphy.”
And when she proved it by hugging him even closer, then pressing her mouth against his with all the ardor of a recently enlivened spinster, Jack couldn’t find the heart to disagree.
Grace was right, he thought as he caught her head in his hand, unraveling her prissy knotted hair with every urgent caress. Right to be cocksure in their affection for one another. Right to know he wanted her…and would refuse her nothing.
With the promise of the Excelsior Performing Troupe’s impending arrival as a guarantee, Jack managed to secure more liquor deliveries from Jedediah Hofer. With the assurance of a crowd-drawing spectacle in hand, he risked all the rest of his meager funds, working hard every day to enlarge his saloon’s stage, tune his piano and print handbills.
With Grace’s promises ringing in his ears, he even believed that the two of them had finally reached a workable compromise—a middle ground where her suffrage activities didn’t impinge on his successful saloon running, and his unruly patrons didn’t deter her ladies from their meetings and preparations.
It seemed too good to be true, Jack knew, but all the evidence pointed to it as fact. He and Grace seemed to have reached an accord. However unlikely that would have seemed to him a few months ago, Jack dared to hope it would last.
The weeks whisked past, bringing even more frenzied activity from Grace. The snow melted, seducing the scrub oaks into giving up their furled leaves. All the ponderosa pines straightened, too, free of their winter coats. The whole mountain turned green with saplings and bright with sunshine. But indoors Grace raced to and fro, thundering upstairs to her meeting rooms with ever more bunting and canvas and paint.
“Wait,” Jack called. “I have something for you.”
She stopped, her man-shoes skidding. Jack smiled at them, feeling inexplicably charitable toward their clunky soles. He watched as they trod briskly downward again. Grace’s face, flushed and harried, appeared over the edge of the stair rail.
“What is it?” she asked. “Heddy Neibermayer is arriving in two days’ time, Jack. I don’t have a moment to spare.”
“Hmm. You’ll have to come closer to claim it.”
Grace held her burdens—a bundle of printed programs, an assortment of flags and a gaudy pile of fabric—and duly clattered lower. Not even her dowdy reformer’s dress could staunch his happiness at seeing her. It felt years since they’d been alone together…ages since they’d kissed.
“Very well. I’m ready,” she announced. “What is it?”
She fidgeted. Worry emanated from her, along with the harsh scents of paint and paste. Up close, Jack realized, Grace seemed beyond frazzled. Even her hair looked tightly strung, bundled as hastily as everything else she touched these days.
This endeavor was harder on her than he’d known.
“Oh, Jack. It’s a kiss, isn’t it? I recognize that look in your eyes.” She puffed out her cheeks, plainly overwhelmed. “That sounds lovely, honestly it does. But it’s getting late, and everyone else has gone home to their families, and I’ve the parade to organize and the banners still aren’t finished and the podium for the suffrage rally still hasn’t been—”
“It’s not a kiss.” Making a lie of that claim, Jack kissed her all the same. He could not resist—he was a man, after all. And it proved a failsafe way to make her stop babbling long enough to breathe. Deftly, he removed all the items from Grace’s arms and assumed their jumbled heft himself. “I’m helping you with all this. You’re not doing it alone.”
“No, Jack. I won’t—”
“I’m not leaving until everything’s done and ready,” he said. “Come upstairs. We’ve got rabble-rousing to do.”
Chapter Sixteen
Much later, exhausted but relieved, Grace stood in the center of her primary meeting room and surveyed the remarkable progress she and Jack had made.
All around her rested parade signs and placards and suffrage banners. A beautifully embellished lectern and podium waited near the window, ready to be toted to the rally. On the tables nearby, assorted Wild West souvenirs lay higgledy-piggledy, set for Heddy Neibermayer and her retinue.
“What do you think?” Jack asked.
She turned to find him at the opposite end of the room, standing near her rumpled cot. Grace had never moved it, finding it useful to store bunting and paintbrushes and advertising flyers. When viewed in juxtaposition with Jack’s height and breadth, her makeshift bed looked spindly indeed.
In the lamplight, Jack’s dark hair gleamed. His shoulders straightened. He’d cast aside his brocade vest with typical carelessness some time ago and now held its replacement—an enormous suffrage flag—over his chest with both broad hands.
Grace smiled at his earnest expression. “I think not many men would work so diligently on behalf of female suffrage and women’s deserved equality.”
He made a mischievous face. “About the flag.”
“Oh, that.” Pretending to notice it for the first time, Grace strode nearer. She traced the length of fabric Jack held against him, enjoying the solid warmth of his chest against her fingertips. “On you, this suffrage flag looks surprisingly masculine. I wonder if we should redesign it?”
Jack’s mouth pressed together. With a firm nod, he agreed. “I’ll paint another one. Pink this time.”
Smiling, Grace stopped him in midturn. “I’m joking. It looks superb. You make a marvelous model, too.”
His cheeks turned ruddy. “Someone had to do it, else this overlong thing would drag on the floor.”
He undraped his flag, then folded it with nimble movements. He set it aside with the others they’d already finished.
Grace no longer wondered at his mechanical agility, having seen Jack perform nothing less than miracles with his creations for her over the last few weeks. She felt very grateful for his help…and very interested in the muscles that pulled and flexed so intriguingly beneath his plain white shirt right now.
Jack turned. “What’s wrong? You look strange.”
“I was merely thinking…” Blushing, she set aside her musings. “You are nearly a suffragist now yourself, I’d say.”
He grunted. This time, she found the sound charming.
“I may order you about all the time,” Grace continued, teasing him. “It certainly proved an effective tactic today.”
Jack merely nodded. “Everything is done here. I reckon you’re ready for Humorless Heddy and her bluestocking band.”
“Jack!”
“I’ll say what I want. I’m helping you, not them.” He sauntered nearer, then took her hands. He clasped them in his own, twining their fingers together. He studied them. “Most people could not have organized such a shindig as this, Grace. I’m proud of you.”
At his kind words, Grace felt warm all over. She had never in her life blushed so often as she had in Jack’s company. Somehow, he brought out the girlishness in her. It should have felt ridiculous in a veritable spinster such as herself.
Instead it felt…good. It felt right.
“Thank you for helping me.” Fatigued to her toes, she stretched upward for a brief kiss. She wriggled her hands free and gestured expansively at the disarray surrounding them. “I don’t know what I would have done without you tonight.”
His smile flashed. “If you need more, I am at your command.”
“Hmm.” Emboldened by the notion, Grace pretended to consider it. “My command? Why, that’s all I’ve ever asked, all along.” She found herself smiling back at him, unable to resist.
“Only you cannot command more modeling of suffrage flags from me,” Jack stipulated, running a hand through his already disordered hair. It stood appealingly rumpled. “I feel my manliness in dire danger if I perform another pirouette.”
This time, Grace laughed aloud. He looked disgruntled, abashed…and wholly, unreservedly hers. At least for tonight.
“Well, I wouldn’t want to waste my opportunity,” she said, studying him. Jack’s shirt lay flat against his throat, casually unbuttoned to display a few tantalizing inches of sun-browned skin. His twin braces teased her gaze lower. His trousers fit him with blatant masculinity in places she’d never before dared to look. “I think you should kiss me immediately,” she managed. “Strictly as a celebration of our progress, of course.”
Silence descended. Then… “No.”
Startled, Grace glanced up. Jack’s expression looked solemn, his eyes dark in the lamplight. The room was dim, she realized in a rush. Sometime while they’d worked, the night had swept in, leaving stars hanging outside her window. It was a view she’d never shared with anyone, much less a man like Jack.
Suddenly, Grace felt aware of her position.
And all the possibilities it implied.
“I don’t need an excuse to kiss you,” Jack said. “Nor a celebration. But if you keep looking at me that way…” His dark gaze met hers as though reading every secret. “I should leave.”
“Nonsense.” Grace crossed the span of floorboards dividing them, her heart pounding with every step. She wasn’t a girl, to be swept away foolishly. But when Jack looked at her that way…somehow, she felt as though she were.
She felt swept away and secure at the very same time.
“Don’t leave.” Grace framed his face in her hands. His day’s growth of beard rasped against her palms. She smiled, loving that proof of their new intimacy. “Stay awhile.”
“Grace, we’ve—”
She shushed him with a kiss. “You have to do it.” A smile of recognition shimmered between them. “I command you.”
Jack closed his eyes like a man summoning courage. Or maybe a man resisting temptation. Grace fancied it was the latter.
He opened his eyes, and she glimpsed stunning honesty within their depths. “I’ve wanted you all along,” he said.
Entirely unable to speak, Grace felt her mouth drop open.
“I want you now,” he added.
Questions whirled through her mind, racing with instant rebuttals and arguments and all her usual staunch disavowals. But this time Grace could muster none of them. Her wit deserted her while looking into Jack’s raw expression.
“I think I’ll want you always.” His hand rose to hers, flattening it against his cheek with fervor. His gaze held hers, braver by far than Grace’s could ever be. “I know I will.”
She gaped, her heart hammering. Hopefulness surged.
Jack’s mouth quirked. “It’s your turn to talk.”
Grace blinked, roused by the husky, needful tone of his voice. Jack’s rugged face veered into view, waiting. A million denials imposed themselves on her, borne of a lifetime of never needing anyone…never allowing herself to need anyone.
Much less needing someone to love.
“I want you, too, Jack.” The words emerged in a rush. Grace felt she might hold them in forever, but they refused to be unsaid. “I didn’t know how—I’ve never—but I love you and I—”
His smile was dazzling. He pulled her to him for a kiss as heartfelt as any they’d ever shared. Their noses collided, then angled sideways; their breaths hitched and held and finally tangled. Caught up in the urgent press of Jack’s mouth, Jack’s hands, Jack’s need, it was all Grace could do to hang on to him…to tell him, with this kiss at least, all the things she’d been unable to voice just a moment ago.
“Usually I’m so good with words,” she babbled when they parted, her whole body tingling with giddiness. “If only I—”
His next kiss cut off her speech, splendidly and wonderfully. Not minding a bit, befuddled but elated, Grace shoved herself closer. She kissed him back with all her heart.
“I’m certain I could explain,” she gasped between kisses. Jack tipped her head back, his mouth traveling unerringly to all the places she loved but hadn’t known it till now. “If only my heart would quit pounding, perhaps my mind would—”
Jack squeezed her. She stopped on a squeal of pleasure, squirming with all the agility her bicycling and snowshoeing had earned her to get closer. Closer. Jack slid his hand lower, holding her around her middle, cradling her as though he simply could not hold her tightly enough, and Grace found the sensation remarkable. She wanted more and more and more…
“Perhaps you have the right of it.” He paused and smiled more widely, his entire demeanor wicked. Scandalously so. “This is a celebration after all.”
He proved it with more kisses, this time to her neck, her throat…the delectable, previously untouched spot revealed by her unbuttoned dress. She couldn’t remember when he’d begun loosening it, but the feat, once accomplished, felt perfect. Jack worked diligently at her remaining buttons, his agile fingers making a short task of freeing her.
As though she could feel any freer than this.
Laughing, weeping, Grace nodded. “It feels it. It feels like a celebration. Oh, Jack…”
“We were foolish.” He tucked his hand over her hammering heart, palming her with reverence. His expression fraught with wonder, he gazed at all he’d revealed. Her bare skin, her bosom—pushed to their limits by her corset—her helpless need. “We were foolish to wait,” he said.
“To deny.” Willing, thrilled and far too inexpert for her own liking, Grace dared to grab Jack’s clothes, too. She bit her lip and wrested with his shirt buttons. She caught his surprised look and widened her eyes. “What is good for you to do is just as good for me to do.” She gestured to his top few buttons, already freed. “Given my inexperience, I would say I am very skilled at this. Wouldn’t you?”
“Very, very skilled,” Jack agreed. With his eyes shining in clear approval, he cupped her chin in his hand and kissed her again. “Don’t stop or I’ll begin to doubt your sincerity.”
“Never.” Grace set to her undertaking again, only to find herself tipped backward a moment later. She fell, shrieking.
They landed together atop her crowded cot, its blankets askew and its pillows fluffing around them. Sprawled ignobly beneath Jack, Grace squirmed. “Now I can’t reach your buttons.”
“I’ll take care of everything,” he promised. “Even you.”
For once, Grace didn’t disagree. Jack’s care and concern were too obvious to argue with—as was his sincerity, when he thumbed away a few more buttons and spread apart her dress. For a long moment, he was silent as he looked his fill.
“You are beautiful, Grace,” he said. “Beautiful.”
And just then, Grace believed him.
She wanted to blush beneath his admiration. Strangely, she did not possess that much modesty—probably because she rapidly became engrossed in her own discoveries. Holding Jack’s shirt wide, Grace admired the broad span of hair-sprinkled chest she’d uncovered. He looked even better than she’d imagined, fit and strong and sun browned. With a helpless sound of appreciation, she flattened her palms against Jack’s bare skin.