A Bride in Store

by Melissa Jagears

  They had to.

  How often had he raided his nest egg to buy medicine for people who offered only a lump of butter or a handful of eggs for his visits?

  And this was how they repaid him?

  Boot stomps on the porch made him shake his head at himself. He needn’t have fretted so—the townsfolk just needed time. Or so he hoped.

  Lynville Tate stepped in and dragged off his hat.

  “Good afternoon.”

  Lynville jumped and turned to face him. “Whatcha doing there?”

  “Miss Cantrell suggested I sit up front to greet the customers.” He walked around the L-shaped counter. “What can I do you for?”

  “Um . . .” He licked his lips, and his gaze darted around the store. “I’d hoped Miss Cantrell might assist me.”

  Really? The man was back to flirt already? Will crossed his arms. “She no longer works here.”

  Lynville spun on him, his hat smashed against his hip. “You fired her just because she almost married your no-good friend?”

  “You know me better than that.” Will fought to keep from rolling his eyes. “She’s chosen not to return.” Which meant he probably had as much chance at winning her as Lynville.

  “Ah.” Lynville relaxed and glanced out the window. “So where can I find her?”

  “Leave her alone, Lynville.”

  He sized him up. “You got your eye on her?”

  Even if he’d admit it to someone other than himself—he wouldn’t fight Lynville over a woman so grieved over her attachment to a train robber going sour that she was giving up her long-held dreams. She’d not refuted the town’s gossipers when he’d visited her at Irena’s. She was devastated over losing Axel.

  He’d assumed she’d be happy to have escaped a marriage to a criminal, but evidently he’d imagined her attachment to the Axel she’d fallen for through letters to be far weaker than it truly was. “I’d think you’d be gentlemanly enough not to swoop down on her like a turkey buzzard.”

  “I would do no such thing.” Lynville flipped his hat onto his head. “A woman all alone in town needs someone to cheer her up after such an incident.”

  “You don’t think Mrs. Lightfoot is adequate?”

  “The bearded lady?”

  “I don’t understand how facial hair signifies she’s inadequate.” He eyed the man’s pitiful mustache. “Unless you’re saying something about yourself.”

  Lynville scrunched his nose. “All I’m saying is a girl who’s been heartbroken needs a distraction.”

  Ah, that was the strategy. “She’s not that fragile. A decent man would wait until she healed before—” Will stopped short. Surely she’d never choose to be a farmer’s wife once retailing got back into her blood.

  But then, he needn’t give Lynville helpful advice either. “Do you need something from my store?”

  “Not really. I think I’ve bought plenty here lately.”

  Will couldn’t help the smirk. “I believe you have.”

  “I’ll bid you good day, then.” Lynville pushed up the brim of his hat a touch before leaving.

  How he wanted to stick his head out the door and holler Leave Eliza alone! Instead, he tromped to the back for his feather duster. He sighed and yanked the duster off its nail.

  He wouldn’t believe Eliza could give up her dream of running a store so easily. Yes, he had once told her that dreams sometimes died, but he hadn’t thrown his school dream onto a garbage heap to rot—it simply refused to live no matter how often he attempted resuscitation. Hadn’t he offered her the work she needed? Her refusing the position made it clear she wanted nothing to do with him.

  However, Eliza wouldn’t be content cleaning houses for long. She’d find some way to become competition before he was ready.

  Ugh, competition. Not what he needed.

  The bell tinkled up front.

  Customers were what he needed. He walked over an aisle to see the door. “May—”

  And of course Eliza stood there beside an empty counter, not greeted the moment she stepped inside. He groaned at his failure and walked toward her. “I suppose you don’t need help finding a razor strop or a bucket of nails.”

  “What’s this?” She pointed at the counter, her eyebrows high.

  “A counter, up front, as you suggested.”

  She blinked, her eyes as big and luminous as ever. “You said you had no money for this.”

  He didn’t know what to do with the duster in his hand, so he tucked it under his armpit. “A patient built it as payment for helping his sick child last year. He’s good at carpentry and had a pile of salvaged lumber.” He waited until she looked at him. “I thought I’d surprise you.”

  “Well, you did.” She shrugged as if the counter didn’t mean anything.

  He’d meant the counter as sort of a gift since he could no longer hand her and Axel his part of the store, but her nonchalance felt as if she’d tossed his handpicked flowers in the trash.

  Her eyes roved the store. “No one’s here?”

  “Business has been poor.”

  “Because of Axel?”

  “They’ll get over it.” And he’d tell himself that over and over again until it became true. Because how would the store stay afloat if they didn’t? “I need your help, Eliza. I’m not going to be able to get this store to make a profit without you.”

  She tipped her head. “You haven’t taken any of my advice before.”

  He looked pointedly at the front counter.

  Her gaze followed his. “You can’t afford me.”

  “That’s the second time you’ve mentioned that. Are you going to demand an exorbitant hourly wage?”

  “I’ve seen your books, Will.”

  He rubbed his temple and swallowed. Did she think less of him because he couldn’t balance the ledger? Did she know how hard he struggled with figures? “You mean you looked at them after I told you there was no need.”

  “No need, eh?” Her hard glare almost knocked him over. “What are you hiding from me?”

  The daggers she threw at him from her big brown eyes made his lungs deflate. “You think I’m as shady as Axel.”

  “Your ledgers don’t balance, and—”

  “That’s exactly why I didn’t want you looking at them. I need more time to figure out what I miscalculated.” Maybe he ought to poke a pin in his pride and take the books home to Ma. She was a math enthusiast, but no grown man took things home for his mother to patch up unless absolutely necessary.

  “Even if you correct the books”—Eliza shrugged—“you’re still too far in debt to hire someone.”

  He held out his hands, palms up. “Unfortunately, that’s so, but what about splitting any profits?”

  She looked askance and shook her head. “This isn’t the kind of store I want to run anyway. If I ever run one, it’ll be my way. A setup just like F. W. Woolworth’s.”

  A small flame of stubbornness and yearning still flickered in her eyes. Good. She’d get over this need to do something else faster than Axel ran out of town. “Can’t you work with whatever’s already here?”

  “No. The inventory is all wrong.” She frowned a little and sighed. “I won’t even entertain the idea. I came here for recommendations. You make house calls when someone needs doctoring, yes?”

  He nodded. Was there any other way to entice her to work for him?

  No. He had nothing, and she knew it.

  “I figured you’d know who has money to pay their medical bills and who might have houses in need of help. I’d also be willing to help nurse invalids or the bedridden.”

  So he’d be the storekeeper, and she’d be the medical professional? Could the world turn any more topsy-turvy? “Mrs. Graves might like the prestige of another maid. But she’ll not pay you well.” And did he really want her working in the same house with Nancy? “Maybe Mrs. Raymond, the banker’s wife, but I think Señora Nogales’s girls work for her. I’d hope you wouldn’t want to underbid the girls—the Nogaleses r
eally need the money.”

  Eliza’s shoulders slumped.

  “Instead of focusing on families, maybe you should approach businesses?” He held up his duster. “I wouldn’t mind if you cleaned all this sawdust instead of me.”

  A twitch of amusement played at the corner of her mouth. “How are you going to pay me again?”

  “How about the same way my patients do? Bartering. Goods.” He picked up a pair of suspenders. “How about these? They’d look good with that plain button-up shirt of yours.”

  She pulled at her collar but didn’t smile back. “I think I’ll pass. I’m afraid you’d quickly run out of things I’d want from your shelves.”

  “How about a top hat you could glue some lace to?” He scanned her unadorned shirtwaist and dull navy skirt and couldn’t keep the question in any longer. “Why do you dress so plainly anyway?”

  “If I don’t draw attention to my femininity, male customers are more likely to bypass flirting and get on with business.”

  He scratched the side of his face. “So you think Lynville hasn’t been buying an awful lot because—”

  “Maybe the strategy hasn’t worked here as well as it did in Pennsylvania.” She scrunched her lips.

  He couldn’t keep from smiling at a woman who found polite male deference less than chivalrous.

  “There were plenty of frilly ladies to distract a man’s attention there. Here . . . well, fewer ladies are gussied up in feathers and ruffles and fringe like back home.”

  “So why not wear something more becoming now?” He’d tried banishing the vision of Eliza in the churchyard in her silk dress for days.

  “I’m not comfortable in fancy dresses.”

  “But you were breathtaking in your wedding dress—with those ruffles and all that . . .” He stopped talking when her face fell.

  His palms hovered in midair, where he’d unconsciously undulated his hands, mimicking her curvy form. He dropped his arms, but she’d already retreated toward the door.

  “I believe I’ll visit Mrs. Graves now, and while your insight to offer my services to businesses is a good one, I shouldn’t work for you.” She backed away, bumping against the door, then turned the doorknob behind her. “I’m very sorry. Good day.”

  He kicked the counter once she disappeared from sight. What an idiot. That’s what he got for letting himself fall asleep the last few nights imagining her in that gown.

  Walking toward him.

  But if she didn’t walk toward him, how long until another man met her beside the pulpit? Single women were rare in Salt Flatts—too many men needed a wife, and Eliza would break under the constant assault of wooing and the empty pockets housekeeping jobs wouldn’t fill.

  Could he, or rather should he, try to win her? Was that what all his wayward thoughts were leading to? Matrimony?

  He wouldn’t consider offering his hand or the store until Axel was caught and convicted. For how could he woo Eliza if his friend might return with evidence to prove his innocence—as unlikely as that would be? How would Axel’s criminal activities affect the store once caught? She’d said she didn’t want this store anymore—he couldn’t blame her after what happened—but maybe with time she’d change her mind.

  Yet all the reasons that had kept him from stopping her wedding were still valid. And even if she were willing to completely give up owning a store, he’d postponed marrying Nancy until after he’d gone to school—for how could he provide and care for a wife while spending every waking minute trying to read and keep up with his studies?

  Will turned at the sound of boot steps on the front porch. He saw the sheriff walk up to the door and then stop. Will beckoned him in.

  Once inside, Sheriff Quade cleared his throat and scratched at the back of his head. “Good afternoon, William.”

  Will sat on the counter, shoulders slumped. “I suppose you aren’t here to buy anything either?”

  “Business that bad?”

  “Afraid so.”

  The man grimaced. “I feel like scum coming here while you’re struggling, but I’ve got to do my duty.”

  His duty? Could the week get any worse?

  “I need to forewarn you.”

  “Axel’s been caught?” Wouldn’t that be a good thing?

  He shook his head. “I’ve talked to the lawmen in the surrounding counties, and Axel’s description fits a man who’s been aiding the Waller gang recently. Axel’s mother’s assertion that Miss Cantrell is mistaken doesn’t appear to hold water.”

  Will licked his lips. “I’ve been mulling over the changes in him over the past several months. His disappearances and preoccupations . . . Illegal activity makes perfect sense. I’m a fool for not seeing it earlier.”

  “Well,” the man said, his jaw working, “I’m afraid you might not feel any smarter once I tell you why I’ve come.” He put his hands behind his back and looked him square in the eye. “Did you hire a lawyer when you started this business?”

  What did that have to do with anything? “No. Axel already had the store running. I just joined in.”

  “Nothing written?”

  “No.” William’s heart threatened to leave his chest.

  “That’s what I was afraid of. Unless you have a good contract drawn up protecting your assets in the company, once I find Axel and the judge hands down a conviction, if he can’t produce the goods the gang stole, they’ll require restitution.”

  “But we’ve rarely made a profit—we don’t have much.”

  “And so, the judge will ask me to liquidate his assets.” He gave Will the look people gave widows at funerals. “Any profit from the sale of this store would be used to cover what the Waller gang has stolen.”

  “He shouldn’t be responsible for the entire gang’s thefts.”

  “Maybe so, but people are mad. So the judge ain’t going to be too particular about that. He’ll want to return as much of the victims’ money as possible.”

  “What about me?” His arms went numb.

  “Off the record, I’d put what money I could in your personal bank account, which I couldn’t touch. Hire a lawyer to see if there’s some way to sue Axel for the store. Though if you have no written agreement . . . and if the judge suspects you might be in cahoots with Axel, like some others in town, he might put an injunction on any auction or sale you might attempt anyway. . . .” The sheriff frowned. “Well, I’m sure a lawyer could help you figure things out better than I could.”

  Right, a lawyer who’d want money. Of which he had none. Will rubbed his temples.

  Sheriff Quade slipped his hat up an inch to scratch at his hairline. “I hope for your sake Axel gives up the stolen goods—if any’s left. Otherwise, I’m afraid the Waller gang’s victims won’t be the only ones mourning what Axel’s stolen from them.”

  Will couldn’t muster a good-bye as the sheriff took his leave.

  Sometimes dreams didn’t just die. Sometimes they were annihilated.

  Chapter 14

  The morning sunlight pierced through Will’s eyelids, and he moaned, pulling at the covers to burrow deeper. The sound of paper sloughing onto the floor jolted him awake. He slapped his hand onto the pile spread atop his blanket, but most of the pages fanned out across the floor anyway.

  Hoping to disperse the fuzziness in his head, he rubbed his temples. But reading all night, especially when words danced in dim candlelight, hadn’t helped the headache the sheriff had left him with. Will had searched through Axel’s papers for anything he might have written that could prove Will was a partner and not an employee, and then he’d stumbled across Eliza’s letters to Axel.

  He should have retied the bundle to give to Eliza, but he figured he might find some clues to Axel’s whereabouts.

  An excuse, of course. But still, he hoped he might find something.

  And he had. Every single business idea Axel had passed off as his own was hers, though that shouldn’t have surprised him. Her ideas to improve the business went beyond what Axel had
tried to implement.

  After telling him she didn’t want a men’s store yesterday, she’d mentioned somebody named Woolworth. Hadn’t she said that name the day he’d stitched her cheek? Eliza would run an amazing store if given a clean slate.

  He scratched his scalp and yawned. Since the sun was so bright in the solitary window, he should’ve already flipped over the Open sign, but why bother? He had to carry on, of course, but the futility reminded him of holding his dead little sister and later watching her twin struggle to crawl and walk.

  Leaning forward on his narrow tick bed, he held his head in his hands and rubbed the sleepiness from his eyes.

  When he’d gone to the bank for a loan three years ago, Mr. Raymond had told him their venture would end badly. At the time, Will hadn’t believed the banker could judge his capabilities from a fifteen-minute interview, but the man had been right to deny them a loan—he and Axel hadn’t had a business plan nearly as well thought out as what Eliza had hastily penned in her letters.

  If Eliza had petitioned Mr. Raymond on their behalf, she might have convinced the tight-fisted banker to believe in them. Her business plans would have won him over, and—

  Will slapped his knees. Mr. Raymond would surely help her. Will rushed to the water basin, washed, and put on his least wrinkled coat. As he exited the front of the store, he wasn’t surprised that no one waited outside the door. After locking the door and stepping onto Main Street, he tipped his hat at a few early-morning pedestrians and forced himself to smile at those who’d shunned his store since Axel’s disappearance.

  His steps slowed before he entered Salt Flatts Savings and Loans after crossing Main. Admitting that Mr. Raymond had been right would be easy, considering the mess the store was in. He’d have to be full of himself to believe otherwise. Though if Mr. Raymond agreed to his proposal, he’d be shooting himself in the foot.

  He rested his hand on the door handle but didn’t push the lever. This wouldn’t hurt much more than waiting for some judge to strip the store away from him. Forging into the dry air of the bank foyer, he glanced toward the caged-in teller counter, but no one stood behind the bars.