by Cat Cahill
Dora shook her head. Dark tendrils of hair wisped around her smooth, olive-skinned face. “It’s not the same. This is so much more . . . formal.”
“Don’t fret about it,” Penny said. “You know what you’re doing. Now these other ninnies, I’m not so sure . . .” She waved a hand at the larger group.
Caroline scanned their faces. She spotted Millie and the three girls she’d arrived with halfway through the summer. And then there was a sea of exactly twenty-three other girls, most of whom had come just before the fire. Since that time, the newer girls had been living in canvas tents, which the building crew had kindly vacated until the Gilbert Company had sent a shipment of canvas. Caroline and her friends were the lucky ones—they’d been able to remain in their rooms at the old house. But last week, all the girls had moved into their dormitories inside the finally completed hotel. There was only one girl missing from the group.
“I wish Emma were here,” Dora said quietly.
“As do I,” Caroline said. “But I wouldn’t take her happiness from her.”
“She’s off having grand adventures.” Penny’s face nearly glowed, as if she wished she were in Emma’s place.
“I don’t know how adventurous the California desert is,” Caroline said. Emma had arrived with the three of them in late May, making their foursome the first Gilbert Girls in Crest Stone. But she had since married Monroe Hartley, the hotel’s builder, and after staying to oversee the reconstruction of the Crest Stone Hotel, they had moved on just a couple of days ago to build another Gilbert Company hotel in California.
“Oh, but it is,” Penny said. “Just think! Snakes, outlaws, scorpions, no water for miles and miles.”
“That sounds horrifying,” Caroline replied.
Dora nodded in agreement.
“You wouldn’t know adventure if it knocked you in the head, Caroline Beauchamp. Why—” Penny’s words stopped when Mrs. Ruby walked into the room.
“Good morning, ladies.” Mrs. Ruby’s voice boomed across the large room. “This is a day of last-minute preparations. I want you all to inspect your clothing, check your stations, and ensure the tables are spotless. Now that the hotel will be opening, twice-daily trains will begin stopping tomorrow at noon and six p.m. If you feel the need to practice serving today, then by all means, please do so.
“Please note that I’ll be observing all of you over the next few days to select a head waitress and an assistant head waitress. In those positions, you will be privy to all decisions made regarding the dining room, you will be consulted regarding the hiring of new girls, you’ll be in charge of the dining room when I am not present, and—of course—your pay will reflect your new role. You are dismissed.”
The girls immediately began chattering among themselves as they broke off to attend their duties.
“Excuse me,” Caroline said to her friends, who were already talking about who they thought could be named head waitress and assistant head waitress.
Mrs. Ruby was just finishing up answering a question for one of the newer girls when Caroline approached her. “Miss Beauchamp?”
“Mrs. Ruby, I was examining the tablecloths before you came in, and I believe they may need to be pressed again. They seem to have acquired a fair amount of wrinkles.” Caroline reached for the nearest cloth and held up the end to show Mrs. Ruby.
The older woman squinted at the material and nodded. “Excellent work. The housemaids will need to press those before morning. I’ll alert them.” She paused and looked Caroline from head to toe before nodding in satisfaction. “I trust you were paying attention to my announcement?”
Caroline nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”
“You have continued to prove yourself worthy of the Gilbert name. I see a great future for you in this company.” With that, Mrs. Ruby moved faster than one would suspect a woman of her size could toward a group of girls congregated near the door to the kitchen.
Caroline’s entire face went warm. Could Mrs. Ruby have been suggesting Caroline might be named head waitress? The thought made her arms and legs feel almost too light to work. Never had she thought she would come this far. When she’d arrived here in May from Boston, she’d felt like a tiny, timid mouse about to be buried under the sheer emptiness of this wild place. Everything had frightened her—Mrs. Ruby, the men building the hotel, the miners a few miles east, the sharpness of the mountains to the west, the way the sky seemed to go on and on, the lack of any comfort she’d had in the city. More than once, she had determined to resign herself to what awaited her if she returned to Boston, because at least that was familiar, even if it was what she’d run away from.
But she’d been lucky to make quick friends here. Penny, Dora, and Emma didn’t know why she’d left Boston without telling a soul. What they did see was a girl who was capable of living up to the work expected from a Gilbert Girl. With their encouragement, Caroline worked and worked and worked, until she’d become proficient at chores she never would have even contemplated at home.
A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth as she wondered what her delicate older sister and her prim mother would say if they knew she could serve a table in under thirty minutes or wash her own clothing or—even worse—start a roaring fire to stay warm. That latest skill was newer, now that the nights had turned particularly chilly. Even the days had grown cool enough to require a coat on occasion. Snow had already come to the mountains above them, and according to Mrs. McFarland, it wouldn’t be long until snow found its way to the valley.
Caroline didn’t mind snow. She had learned she didn’t mind hard work either. She felt useful here, unlike at home. There, she’d often imagined herself a prized sow to be trotted out at dinners and parties to eligible young men. Here, at Crest Stone, in this little valley surrounded by friends, she felt . . . alive. Free. Capable of providing for herself. Able to make her own decisions. She would never give that up.
All she had to do was remain hidden here.
Chapter Three
Thomas bit down on the nail between his teeth as he lined up the notches he’d cut in the two pieces of wood. If he was honest, he’d admit he’d never made shelving before. But surely it couldn’t be that hard. After all, he’d helped build a hotel—twice.
The notches didn’t line up. He spat the nail at the workbench he’d drug out of the shed behind the hotel. He needed a break before his annoyance boiled over into anger.
Although if he were being completely honest, it wasn’t just the shelving that was fouling his mood. It was the man from earlier, the one with the wanted posters.
Thomas reached for the dipper in the bucket of cool water he’d pulled from the creek earlier. While there was a chill in the air, the sun was still bright, and something about that made him thirsty. Or maybe it was the fear that his face was on one of those posters inside the hotel lobby right this moment. Or the guilt at what he’d done that ate at him if he thought too much about it.
He pulled off his hat, reached for another ladle of water, and dumped this one over his head. Dropping the dipper back into the bucket, he rubbed at the cold liquid trickling its way through his hair and into his eyes. That did the trick. His mind sharpened just enough to remind him that he didn’t necessarily know there was sketch of him in that sheath of paper. After all, wouldn’t one of the front desk employees have recognized him and sent McFarland after him? Although it hadn’t even been an hour yet . . .
A woman emerged from the kitchen door, interrupting his worried thoughts.
And not just any woman. She was the one who’d caught his eye more than once since Hartley’s wedding.
Her arms were filled with a wooden crate of glassware, and she kicked the kitchen door shut with her foot. She set the crate down next to one of the fussy wrought iron chairs that someone had pulled from the nearby garden. Then she settled herself onto the equally fussy floral cushion and reached into the crate. She pulled out a piece of stemmed glassware and began rubbing at it with a cloth.
Thomas cou
ldn’t take his eyes off her, and she hadn’t even noticed him.
Eventually he realized he must look a fool, standing there, covered in sawdust, water dripping down his shirt, and staring at this girl who looked as if she’d blown in on the breeze. He shook his head and clamped the worn brown hat back on it.
The shelving. He needed to get back to this project, or else McFarland would have no use for him.
Rather than waste the wood he’d already worked with, he decided to trim off the notches on each piece and try again. This one could be a smaller shelf to hang just inside the door for those items used most often. He began to saw into the wood, letting the misshapen notches he’d made earlier fall to the ground.
“Pardon me.” A higher-pitched voice sounded over the grind of metal through wood. “Pardon me!” it said again as he yanked the saw through the last bit of wood.
He looked up, knowing exactly who he’d find in front of him.
And he wasn’t wrong.
The petite blonde girl stood in front of him, one hand on her hip, the other one holding out a delicate glass. She wore the soft gray dress and white apron that all the Gilbert Girls wore under a black cloak, and a small, matching gray hat perched on her head.
“Good morning, miss,” he said as he pulled off his hat and ran a hand over his wet hair. His words were smooth, but his heart leapt in a strange way to see her this close to him.
“Good morning,” she said shortly. “Would you mind terribly if I asked you to relocate your . . . woodworking?”
She looked a bit ruffled, and something about that delighted him. But he schooled his face into an impassive expression. The last thing he wanted was for this beautiful woman to think he was laughing at her. “How come?”
The woman held out the glass. He looked at it, but all he saw was, well, a glass.
She shook it a little in her small hand. “You’re getting sawdust in the stemware.”
He stepped around the table and peered into the glass. One tiny piece of sawdust sat on the side of the glass. He reached in, pressed it against his finger, and lifted it out. “Fixed,” he said, holding his finger out to the girl.
She stared at his hand as if he held a dead mouse in his palm. “You dirtied it! Now I have to wash the glass and let it dry before I can rub the spots off it.” Her words were so carefully formed, almost as if she were speaking to the Queen of England and not a man born and raised in Texas by a barkeep father. He had only scant memories of his mother, but according to his father’s tales, she would’ve gotten along well with this pretentious, fussbucket of a girl.
The way she kept looking so appalled at his hand made it impossible to keep the laughter in. It burst out like a winter gale. “I apologize for sullying your glassware. But to be truthful, no one is going to notice one tiny piece of sawdust in a glass.”
She drew herself up to her fullest height, still nearly a foot shorter than Thomas. Wisps of wheat-colored hair floated around her face and her blue eyes shot fire at him. “The Gilbert Company does not serve its guests from glasses with even the tiniest speck of dust, sir. Now will you kindly move your table away from my work area?”
He couldn’t keep the grin off his face. She was livid. That made him only want to poke at her more, almost to see if she’d drop her high-society facade. “No, ma’am. I don’t believe I can. You see, I set up here first—at the request of the head chef—and here I intend to stay. You’d best find yourself a new place to scrub at your glassware or just get used to filling it with all of this sawdust.”
The girl’s face went bright red. “I—” She didn’t finish, only clamped her mouth shut and spun on her heel back to her chair.
Thomas laughed to himself as she picked up her crate and marched away toward the garden. She was awfully pretty, he admitted to himself as he picked up a knife and the recut piece of wood. Beautiful, in fact.
But far too prim for his liking.
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About the Author, Cat Cahill
A sunset. Snow on the mountains. A roaring river in the spring. A man and a woman who can't fight the love that pulls them together. The danger and uncertainty of life in the Old West. This is what inspires me to write. I hope you find an escape in my books.
I live with my family, my hound dog, and a few cats in Kentucky. When I'm not writing, I'm losing myself in a good book, planning my next travel adventure, doing a puzzle, attempting to garden, or wrangling my kids.
