His manner cold as the winter prairie, he glanced around the room and asked, “Where’s the dress you wore down here?”
“I wore this!”
He gave a disgusted shake of his head. “You wore that outfit on a public street? What’s the matter, Dressmaker. Isn’t it enough to have one person stalking you? You want a herd of trail-dusty cowboys after you?”
Wonderful. As if she didn’t feel bad enough already, he had to go and bring up Big Jack Bailey. “I have a cloak,” she snapped.
“Get it on then. I’m taking you home.”
“No, you’re not.” She didn’t want to go back to her cottage. Not yet. Knowing someone had been there and had gone through her things gave her the shudders. She’d stay at the hotel again tonight even if it did mean squandering the coin. “I won’t go home.”
“You’re sure as hell not staying here.”
“Who do you think you are to tell me what I will or will not do?”
He drew a deep breath in an obvious effort to hold his temper. “My daughters care about you, Miss Fortune. They’d be devastated should any harm befall you. After the incident last night, and the one you instigated this morning at the Tivoli, I don’t like the idea of your wandering around Hell’s Half Acre alone. No telling what trouble you’d be setting yourself up for. I cannot go home and face my girls until I know you’re safely away from here.”
His speech took the wind right out of her sails. He was considering his daughters’ feelings. How could she argue with that?
Still, she wasn’t ready to go home. “You may escort me to my shop, Mr. McBride. I need to work. I was given two dress orders before your untimely arrival.”
He shrugged. “The shop then. That’s better for me, anyway. Blackstone Academy began classes today, and I want to be home when the girls arrive. It’s Katrina’s first day, after all. So, is that all right with you, your highness?”
She gave him an evil glare and snapped, “That’s fine.”
“Fine,” he repeated, marching toward the door.
The working girls at Miss Rachel’s Social Emporium didn’t think it was so fine. They met Jenny with dress orders in hand as she descended the stairs. Trace grumbled incessantly for the next hour and a half as measurements were taken and money exchanged, but he ignored each of Jenny’s requests for him to leave, even when school dismissal time came and went.
When they finally left the Acre, he spent the entire trip to the shop asking Jenny questions about the Baileys. Had she noticed Big Jack hanging around since the notes and such started? What about the sisters, any of them giving her grief?
“The Bailey daughters all moved away following their weddings. I think Mary Rose is in Louisiana, the others somewhere in south Texas.”
He continued to grill her, and Jenny sighed in relief when she finally saw the Fortune’s Design placard. She’d had about all she could stand of Trace McBride for one day. “Tell me, McBride,” she said as he took the shop key from her hand. “Have you always been this domineering, or is it a recent development?”
“Sarcasm doesn’t become you.” He turned the lock and pushed open the door. “Stay here while I check the shop.”
She followed him right inside. “I am not your responsibility, you know. I’ve been taking care of myself for quite some time.”
“I told you to stay outside.”
She shrugged. “That was a sure way to get me to come on in.”
“Contrary as a mule,” he declared, sweeping back the curtain of the fitting room.
“You don’t need to do this, McBride.”
He stopped and gave her a measured look. “Things were troubling enough before the stunt you pulled this morning.” He paused, then almost against his will added, “I’m worried about you.”
She didn’t know what to say. She simply couldn’t mesh the reality of the Trace McBride now conducting a thorough search of the premises, with the Trace McBride who’d kissed her nearly senseless and treated her so meanly in one of Miss Rachel’s bedrooms a short time ago.
Taking the order list from her handbag, she crossed to the worktable where she sat and opened her permanent record. She rummaged around for a pencil, then commenced recording the information she’d gathered from her newest clients. She did her best to ignore McBride, but when he finished his search and propped a hip atop her table, obviously waiting for something, she laid down her pencil and looked up. “What is it?”
“Aren’t you frightened at all?”
“Of you?” she scoffed.
He scowled. “I’m talking about Bailey.”
“Oh. I see.” She paused, then said, “I’m not really frightened. Nervous might be a more accurate word. Big Jack is as full of superstition as an egg is of chick, but I doubt he’s the type to do physical harm.”
“The man hanged a paint-soaked dummy on your front porch and left dead roses in your bed! You don’t think that’s a warning?”
Jenny’s smile was rueful. “He says he knows nothing about it.”
“And you believe that lie?”
“No. Well, maybe I believe that there’s more to it than I previously thought. I may be wrong, but I believe the mess last night was an attempt to protect against danger, not a threat of it. I think he was trying to get rid of my ‘bad luck.’”
“What gives you that idea?”
“Something he said. He told me to do all these different things to change my luck.”
Trace picked up her pencil and rapped it against the table. He shook his head. “I don’t know. That might be some risky thinking on your part. Sometimes men with strange ideas like Bailey’s are the most dangerous. You need to be careful.”
“Oh, I’ll be careful,” Jenny replied. “In fact, I intend to stay at the Cosmopolitan again tonight and give my cottage a little more time to air out.” With a grim smile, she added, “I noted a certain sense of … viciousness in the atmosphere last night.”
He snorted. “I smelled a rodent.”
Jenny fiddled with a button on her cloak, searching for the right words to make the point she believed he needed to hear. “There is something you should understand about me, Mr. McBride. I take after my father in that I am tenacious about something I want. I want Fortune’s Design, and I refuse to allow Big Jack Bailey to take it away from me with either rumors or threats. I appreciate your concern, but I am determined to carry on as if nothing happened. Because, in truth, nothing of consequence has occurred. I won’t be bullied.” She sharpened her stare and added, “By anyone.”
One side of his mouth lifted in a crooked grin. “You talk a good game, I’ll grant you that. Foolish, but a good game.”
“I mean it,” she snapped right back. “Now, I have work to do, and you’d best go on upstairs and see to the girls. Who is staying with them after school?”
His grin faded, and was replaced by a grimace. “The housekeeper of the week is a woman named Wilson. I expect she might last till Friday if I’m lucky.”
He pushed off the table and sauntered toward the front of the shop. “I’ll keep an eye on things as best I can, whether you want me to or not.”
“Why?” she asked, throwing out her hands in frustration. “Surely you don’t still expect I’ll accept your job offer.”
He shrugged but didn’t really answer. “Guess I’m right tenacious myself.”
It wasn’t enough. She couldn’t say why, she just knew it wasn’t enough. “That’s no answer, Trace McBride.”
At the door, he hesitated. “I’ll do it for my girls. Everything I do, I do for my girls.”
Jenny’s question came low and soft and without forethought. “Is that why you acted the way you did at Miss Rachel’s? The kiss? Was that for the girls, too?”
Her words seemed to echo through the shop. She held her breath. Her heart pounded as if her entire fate rested on his reply.
Trace stood frozen, his back to her, his hand gripping the doorknob. Abruptly, he turned. Mockery lengthened his drawl as he said,
“Hell, no, Miss Fortune. I learned a lesson a few years back and I’ll never forget it. Any time I kiss a woman, I do it for me. All for me. Take it as a warning.”
With that, he left her shop.
TRACE STEERED clear of the dressmaker for the next few days, relying on the attentions of others to reassure him Jack Bailey had been leaving her alone. Every time he remembered what had transpired between the two of them in Rachel Warden’s bedroom, he wanted to kick himself. He’d been a real bastard. The lady had gotten to him and he’d hit back—quick and fierce and mean.
But truthfully.
He could salve his conscience with that. Any woman who thought to dangle her lure in his direction needed to know he’d steal the bait and dodge the hook. Jenny Fortune had definitely been dangling.
And he’d come closer to being hooked than he had in years. Six years, to be exact.
He’d wanted her. Badly. She’d set his senses afire, erased all rational thought from his mind. He’d sunk into pleasure so pure it was torture, and all from a kiss.
God knew what bedding her might do.
Determined to put the incident from his mind and meeting with only limited success, he managed to avoid any personal contact with Jenny Fortune for the next few days. That ended when a note arrived from Miss Harriett Blackstone, the girls’ teacher, requesting a meeting to discuss mischief Maribeth had hatched at school the previous day. Upon arriving he was startled to find Jenny Fortune also in attendance. The meeting that followed proved to be an exercise in humiliation, and one of the longest half hours of Trace’s life.
As they left the building a blush stained Jenny’s cheeks, and he thanked God for the summer tan that hid proof of his own embarrassment. He yanked on his hat and grimly set his teeth. If he had a nail he’d be chewing on it. “When I get my hands on that girl I swear I’ll dust her feathers.”
Jenny wouldn’t meet his gaze. “I’m certain she meant no harm. And Miss Blackstone realized the … uh, stories … Maribeth told about us couldn’t be true.”
“She’s only nine years old, by God! I haven’t taught her about… that. Where did she learn it? Who told her? That’s what I want to know.”
They walked together toward the wagon Trace had driven to the school, having delivered four cases of whiskey to a private home on his way to the meeting. Beside the buckboard, he paused. Unwilling to appear ungentlemanly on the heels of his daughter’s devilment, he offered Jenny a ride back to the Rankin Building, half-hoping she’d decline.
She accepted. He refused to acknowledge the ripple of rightness he felt at having her seated beside him.
She smelled like soap. Nothing fancy, just clean and fresh. He’d noticed it first in Miss Blackstone’s classroom amidst the autumn odor of chalk and children. Her scent teased him, luring his thoughts in a direction they didn’t need to go.
She made a couple of attempts at conversation, but Trace wasn’t in the mood to chat. They completed the trip to Fortune’s Design with an uncomfortable silence hanging between them.
His tenant had recently added awnings to the front of her shop, and the green-and-white striped canvas flapped in the breeze as Trace jumped down from the buckboard. As his boots hit the dry red dirt on Throckmorton Street, Katrina shouted from an open window upstairs. “Papa, oh Papa,” she cried, leaning farther out than was safe. “We’re so glad you’re home.”
Emma’s head joined her sister’s. “Please hurry, Papa. We have something important to tell you.”
Trace had a few things to say, himself. He called up to his daughters. “Y’all back away from that window. And tell your sister I said to meet me in the parlor. In fact, I might as well talk to all three of you.”
“But Papa!”
The welcome bell in Jenny’s shop sounded a tinkle. Trace turned his head to see a stunning woman dressed in a stylish traveling suit of royal-blue serge step from inside. “Well. There you are. No wonder your business is failing if you leave it unattended all the time.”
“Mother?” Jenny said incredulously. “What are you doing here?”
Her mother. So this was the infamous Monique Day. Trace’s gaze swept the older woman, taking in at a glance the fine bone structure, radiant complexion, and curvaceous figure. He should have recognized the lady immediately. Jenny looked just like her.
He glanced from the women to the upstairs window where now all three of his daughters leaned dangerously over the sill. He lifted his hand to wave them back inside at the same time a man stepped from inside the shop.
Younger than Trace and impeccably dressed, the tall man smoothed a finger over his dark mustache, smiled warmly, and said, “Hello, Jenny darling.”
Jenny darling? Trace looked at the dressmaker. Was that surprise he saw in her expression? Shock? He tied the reins to a hitching post, his gaze flicking between Jenny and the dandy who called her darling.
She finally cleared her throat, nodded, and replied, “Hello, Edmund.”
Edmund. So, his name was Edmund. Trace’s mouth suddenly tasted sour. Who the hell was Edmund?
“You’re surprised to see me here, are you not, my dear?” Edmund moved forward, lifting a hand to assist Jenny from the wagon.
Trace stepped right in front of him, grabbed the seamstress around the waist, and swung her to the ground.
The stranger’s eyes flashed a protest. “I say, man!”
“Nothing I imagine I want to hear,” Trace drawled.
As the two men squared off like bantam roosters, Monique glanced eagerly from one to the other. “My goodness, Jenny. Who is this man? This situation has shades of one of my dramas. Perhaps we should all go inside before—”
Jenny made brief introductions all around. Trace learned the man’s surname. Wharton. Edmund Wharton. Wharton Shipping was a big concern out of Galveston. Did this dandy have a connection with them?
Dismissing the men, Jenny frowned at her mother. “Did you and Edmund cross paths here in Fort Worth?”
“No, he traveled with me. We’ve just arrived from the coast.”
Trace didn’t miss the way Jenny’s mouth dropped open in surprise as she asked, “You’re traveling with Edmund now?”
Monique gave her a look. “Don’t be gauche. I am being faithful to your father during this marriage. I have told you that.” Then she flashed Wharton a smile. “Edmund has been such a dear. We have plans, Jenny, grand plans. And they involve you.”
“Why is it I don’t want to hear this?” Jenny questioned of no one in particular.
At that moment the apartment’s front door banged open and a trio of petticoats and pigtails burst onto the scene. “What’s taking you so long, Papa?” Maribeth asked, folding her arms and looking downright peevish.
Katrina flung herself at his knees, and Emma hung back, wringing her hands. “Don’t be mad, Papa. We simply couldn’t stay upstairs any longer. You said not to leave until you came home, but you’re home now so we shouldn’t be in trouble, right?”
“Never mind trouble, Emmie,” Katrina said against his shoulder. “We have a ‘mergency.”
Trace looked at his two older daughters, noting their fearful expressions. “Emergency?”
“Yes!” The three girls exclaimed as one.
The dressmaker stepped toward them. “Girls? What has happened?”
“It’s awful, Miss Fortune.” Maribeth glared at Edmund Wharton.
“Truly terrible,” Emma agreed, fastening her unforgiving stare on Monique Day.
“The most terrible awfullest worstest thing,” Katrina cried, wrenching herself from her father’s arms. With her flare for the dramatic, she stepped forward, put one hand on her hip, and extended the other arm, her finger pointed at Edmund Wharton’s face. “That man has come to steal you away from us. We heard the whole story.”
Emma nodded and grasped Jenny’s hand. “He says he’s come to Fort Worth to marry you!”
It is bad luck to have a rabbit cross your path from right to left.
CHAPTER 8
<
br /> AN UNUSUAL, YAWNING ACHE spread outward from Trace’s heart, catching him by surprise as he turned to Jenny.
She said, “Oh.”
That was all.
Then the girls all began talking at once. They protested, challenged, and generally acted extremely upset. As the situation deteriorated, Trace stood woodenly through it all, assaulted by the vague sensation that he was about to forfeit something he hadn’t realized he wanted.
After giving Trace a curious look, Monique Day took charge by shooing Wharton and Jenny inside the shop. But when Trace made to follow, his daughters trailing like three little ducklings at his heels, Monique blocked the doorway, her smile gracious but the light in her eyes unyielding. “Family business, Mr. McBride. I’m certain you understand.”
He understood, all right, and he didn’t like it one little bit. Jenny’s dazed expression made him downright uncomfortable. “Mrs. Fortune,” he began.
“Day,” she corrected. “Monique Day. Please call me Monique. I do feel badly about rushing you away. Perhaps you and your family would care to join us for dinner later this evening at the Cosmopolitan Hotel?”
Trace hesitated. This was a school night; he should put the girls to bed early. But they needed supper one way or the other. What would it hurt? “Thank you, ma’am— uh, Monique. I accept the invitation.”
He ushered his daughters upstairs, hating to leave Jenny in the hands of this fancy-man Wharton who called the dressmaker “darling.”
The moment the shop’s front door shut behind Trace and his children, Jenny looked from her mother to Edmund Wharton, then back to her mother again. “Would someone care to explain just what is going on?”
Monique’s smile blossomed like a peach tree in spring. “It’s perfect, dear. I’ve taken the germ of an idea and nurtured it into a full-blown scheme.”
Jenny leaned against her worktable and stifled a weary sigh. This was just like her mother.
The Bad Luck Wedding Dress Page 11
