Notorious in the West

by Lisa Plumley

  That could only be one of…well, several items, Olivia knew. Giving the contents of her sketchbook a hasty mental review, she set down her cycling skirt sample. She placed her toothbrush prototype on top of it. She inhaled, shot Griffin a helplessly excited glance then looked toward the spot he’d indicated.

  A device made of polished, turned wood stood there, fitted with a wheel. The wheel itself was outfitted with hanger arms, slats and shelves, forming a sort of circular bookcase.

  “It’s my book-holding carousel! You made a prototype of this, too?” Wonderingly, Olivia trod around it. She gave it a gentle push. The revolving mechanism spun the wheel, just as designed. The next shelf—one of six—held an open book. Tears leaped to her eyes. “It’s my favorite! With this, you can read several books at once.” She marveled. “How did you make this?”

  “With a great deal of help from my new friends, the lumber mill owner, the blacksmith and the saloonkeeper,” Griffin said. “Did you know Murphy has a secret past of inventing things himself? His creations caused such a furor he fled Boston.”

  “Mr. Copeland, Mr. McCabe and Mr. Murphy were too kind.” Amazedly, Olivia transferred her attention to the lady’s skirt and the toothbrush. “I’m guessing their wives may have helped with your plan, as well. I see ladies’ handiwork here.”

  “Everyone was surprisingly helpful,” Griffin told her. He gazed concernedly at her tears. “As soon as I mentioned—”

  “You didn’t say these things were for me, did you?” Olivia yelped, dashing away her sentimental tears. Suddenly she felt all too aware that her years of decorum were for nothing if her outlandish hobby of inventing things came to light. It was unfeminine enough to be bookish and interested in science. It would be a hundred times worse to be a verifiable entrepreneur, filing patents and creating inventions and working to sell them.

  Even freethinking suffragist Grace Murphy—née Crabtree—hadn’t gone that far toward female equality. And she’d been detained in Sheriff Caffey’s jailhouse a time or two for her courageous efforts on behalf of women’s rights.

  “No. I didn’t say they were for you.” With a patient smile, Griffin thumbed away an errant tear—one she’d plainly missed—from her cheek. “I thought you would say that by displaying your work here at the handicrafts show. The book carousel should be of particular interest. Although I wish I’d brought more books—”

  “I can’t tell people about these. I can’t!” Urgently, Olivia gestured at the prototypes. “People will think—”

  “That you’re brilliant? Rightly so.”

  “That I’m strange! That I’m eccentric. That I’m—”

  “Brave?” Griffin stepped nearer. He held her shoulders, then smiled at her. “Do it, Olivia. Show everyone who you are.”

  “I can’t.” Resolutely, she shook her head. Didn’t he know how much depended on not doing that? This had to be another of Griffin’s tests, Olivia reasoned. He had bags of money. Having these prototypes made would have been inconsequential to him.

  “You can,” he insisted. His gaze met hers. “There was more light in your eyes when you looked at your inventions than there was in the entire time you were cross-stitching your sampler.”

  “You don’t know that,” she grumbled, remembering the pricked fingers and tangled embroidery floss she’d endured. “You weren’t there for the entire time I was stitching it.”

  “I was there long enough to know that you might tolerate needlework, but you love inventing things. Just admit it.”

  Obstinately, Olivia refused. “You don’t know me.”

  “Then let me know you. Let everyone know you.” His impassioned gaze worked to persuade her. “Can’t you see? You must show yourself. Otherwise you’ll never really be happy.”

  If that was Griffin’s notion of irony, Olivia didn’t care for it. What did he know about showing himself to everyone? He did everything he could to remain invisible and unknowable.

  “You’re making fun of me.” Even that was a kinder scenario than the one wherein Griffin was testing her suitability to be a bride. “You know I should prefer needlework, and since I don’t—”

  Oops. Drat it all. Feeling nearly overcome, Olivia stopped.

  She gestured in frustration toward the prototypes Griffin had made—toward the shapes of her imagination, revealed now in ivory and bristles, in muslin and thread…in wood and metalwork fittings. She could scarcely believe she was seeing them.

  She could scarcely believe he’d made them for her.

  Even more, she could scarcely believe she was disowning them. But Griffin was more important to her than her longtime flights of fancy. Making an impression on him had to prevail. How else could she love him? How else could she prove herself?

  “You claim them.” Olivia lifted her chin. “I’ve just developed a frightful headache,” she fibbed. “I’m going home.”

  “Olivia.” Griffin appeared utterly downhearted. He grabbed her arm, even as more attendees to the handicrafts show arrived—even as conversations swirled around them and people began touring the various tabletop displays. “Please stay. Please. I didn’t mean to upset you. I thought you’d be happy.”

  “I am happy. I’m thrilled by these!” Pulling her arm from his grasp, she gave a helpless wave at the models he’d fashioned of her inventions. They represented a real opportunity to move forward. With these prototypes, Olivia knew, she could file for patents. She could take steps to a new life. She could…alienate herself from her family and friends. She sighed. “They’re wonderful. Truly, they are. But if you think I can claim them—”

  “I know you can claim them. They’re remarkable!”

  “—then you don’t know me at all.” Even more determinedly, Olivia squared her shoulders. She glanced around the handicrafts show. “I’m sorry, Griffin. I wish I could be different.”

  “I don’t want you to be different. I want you to be you.”

  Olivia only shook her head. “That’s very convincing,” she told him with the shadow of a grin. “But I’ll believe that line the day you show up hatless, wearing clothes that aren’t black.”

  For a moment, Griffin looked almost crafty. Then…

  “Fine.” He smiled at her. “I didn’t become the man I am by giving up, Olivia. I’m going to make you admit the truth.”

  The truth. Unfortunately, that statement only confirmed her suspicions. Griffin was testing her, Olivia reasoned. The most bedeviling part was, she had no idea whether she’d passed.

  Given that she sometimes feared, in her own heart, that she might be nothing more than an empty beauty—that her life’s highlight truly might have been appearing on that remedy bottle—Olivia reckoned she might not have passed Griffin’s test at all.

  But then she realized another unexpected truth. The only reason Griffin would test her was if he was considering marrying her! Pondering that, Olivia shot him an observant glance.

  He stared back, hands on his hips, looking manful and sturdy and broad shouldered…and so adorably mulish that she wanted to fling her arms around him and hug him straight into next week. He did care about her. That meant she still had hope.

  She had hope that Griffin might love her—might even propose to her. She also had hope that he might relinquish The Lorndorff altogether, for the sake of her happiness. Once those things had happened, she could be happy and enjoy harmony at home, too.

  With a new lightness, Olivia touched Griffin’s arm. Doing so made her remember what he’d looked like, partly naked, that day in his hotel suite bed. It made her recall what he’d felt like while holding her close. Boldly, she slid her hand past his cuffed shirtsleeve, down to his bare, hair-sprinkled forearm.

  His skin felt shockingly hot. Excitingly firm.

  He jolted at her touch, and her imagination flared anew. She’d had no idea she could affect him merely with her touch….

  This fraught encounter with her invention prototypes didn’t have to be a setback, Olivia told herself. It could be anothe
r beginning. Now that she knew she possessed some leverage with Griffin, she didn’t have to be quite so fearful of the outcomes of their encounters. Now that she knew Griffin wanted her…

  …she was free to want him back. Unreservedly.

  “I just might make you admit the truth, too,” Olivia said, echoing his earlier words. “Just wait and see if I don’t.”

  Then she sashayed away, said her goodbyes to Violet Benson and the other members of the Territorial Benevolent Association and made her way back to The Lorndorff to formulate her plans.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Before arriving alone in Morrow Creek, stealing in under cover of darkness, Griffin had experienced baseball games. After all, the pastime of baseball was tremendously popular in Boston. Griffin was acquainted with Harry Wright. He’d followed the career of pitcher Albert Spalding. He’d reported on the sporting exploits of the Red Stockings, the Beaneaters, and the Red Caps in his own newspapers. But despite his diverse and long-standing understanding of the game of “baseball,” Griffin realized very quickly that the sport was played…differently in Morrow Creek.

  In the Arizona Territory, he’d learned, many things were.

  For one thing, Griffin noticed as he strode past the modest schoolhouse and approached the designated baseball field, a distinct festival atmosphere prevailed. Townspeople streamed toward the game site with cheerful expressions. They held picnic baskets in hand, covered with gingham checked cloths, swinging them to and fro as they walked. They brought hand-stitched baseballs and rudimentary homemade bats. They laughed.

  Where Griffin came from, sporting events were serious business. Gamblers wagered fortunes on them. Players staked their livelihoods and reputations on winning them. Spectators started rowdy brawls over them. But here in Morrow Creek, where rosy-cheeked children whooped their way toward the field and women sewed homemade team symbols on their husbands’ shirts and men struck silly strongman poses—like barnstorming Signor Lawanda come to clobber the bases—everything was different.

  It was, to Griffin’s mind, miles and miles better.

  Of course, that opinion probably owed more to the presence of Olivia, he knew, than to any real appreciation of sport. Because as he spied her waiting in the distance, speaking with a group of her friends and holding a bat herself, Griffin felt himself involuntarily walk faster. His heartbeat raced, too.

  More than that, it felt as if his whole heart expanded.

  Honestly, Griffin had expected that to quit happening by now. How much affection could one meager heart hold after all?

  Maybe his heart had extra room, having been empty for so long…at least until he’d met Olivia.

  “Whoa, there.” Beside him, nearly at a trot now, Palmer Grant shoved out his arm. “Slow down, Turner. Do you want these ladies to believe we’re eager to see them play baseball?”

  “I am eager to see them play baseball,” Griffin returned honestly. He’d learned from Olivia—and from the members of the Morrow Creek Men’s Club—that in the town’s established league, the men played their games first. Then the women played their games last. “As curiosities go, it’s bound to be entertaining. Besides, Olivia strongly implied that it’s somehow scandalous.”

  She’d said, in fact, that suffragist Mrs. Murphy had gone to some lengths to have the women’s league approved. She’d staged a protest, then instigated a strike among the women who sewed the regulation-weight horsehair baseballs used by the men’s leagues. She’d seized and then hidden all the existing baseballs so the men couldn’t practice unless they came to terms. In the end, she’d been successful…with some compromises.

  “You interpreted that to mean it’s worth racing to?” His associate stared at him. “Where’s your dignity, man?”

  “I’ve never needed dignity less than I do around here.” Griffin grinned, still striding onward. “It’s damn refreshing.”

  At that, Palmer stopped altogether. Incredulously, he peered at Griffin. “I knew you were sweet on Miss Mouton. But it’s worse than that. Do you actually enjoy this rustic town?”

  Griffin stopped, too. He shrugged. “Don’t you?”

  “Don’t I—” Palmer stuttered. He frowned. “My outlook on the matter doesn’t count. We’re talking about you. You and your increasing willingness to participate in this…looniness.” As proof, he shook his head at the sturdy homespun clothes Griffin had borrowed to play baseball in. He straightened his own collar with a fussy gesture. “As soon as you come to your senses—”

  “Again, that’s not going to happen.”

  “—we’ll be heading back to Boston, where the streets are paved, the restaurants serve good steaks and the women are sophisticated. Remember that?” Palmer asked. “Remember your mansion? Your other mansion? Your business and properties—”

  “None of that matters.” Griffin waved hello to Olivia.

  Palmer exhaled in evident exasperation. “You ordered new suits! I took that to mean you were ready to return home.”

  “No. But thank you for relaying my wishes to the tailor. With a rush on the job, I think those suits will arrive soon.”

  “You can’t stay here forever, Griffin,” Palmer persisted. “Henry Mouton has more gumption than you counted on. You know he’s contacting potential investors to buy out your shares of the hotel.” An even more aggrieved look. “He’s telegraphed Simon Blackhouse! You know…of the California Blackhouses?”

  Hearing that notorious family name made Griffin frown.

  “The Blackhouses? Mouton didn’t say anything about them.”

  “Undoubtedly, he’s keeping his strategy close to his vest.”

  “He’s playing with fire, is what he’s doing.” Griffin knew of the Blackhouses. If anything, their line was worse than his own. They’d had a fortune for generations—and no morals to stymie that fortune’s disreputable use. Extortion, cheating, threats of violence…nothing was too extreme if it satisfied the Blackhouse family’s pleasure-seeking ways. “Did you warn Mouton off?”

  “I tried.” Palmer frowned. “He seemed to think it was a trick. After you offered to let him manage The Lorndorff again, Mouton started thinking everything we did or said was a trick.”

  Griffin sighed. Henry Mouton was a sore trial, to be sure.

  Griffin had extended an olive branch to Mouton with that management offer. Admittedly, it had been a half measure. Mouton had had too much pride to accept it. Still, Griffin had been willing. For Olivia’s sake, he’d been prepared to let her father come back as the hotel’s acting manager. He’d been rebuffed.

  Now they were at an impasse. Griffin couldn’t relinquish the hotel completely. If he did, what excuse would he have for seeing Olivia? Her determined mission to make Griffin surrender control of her father’s hotel had kept Olivia glued to Griffin’s side. Until he felt sure of her feelings for him, he could not abandon his only means of making certain she stayed near.

  “I’ll come up with a strategy,” Griffin promised, setting aside the issue for now. “Don’t worry. In the meantime—”

  He broke off, realizing that Palmer was no longer listening. He was waving, with alarming enthusiasm, at a woman who knelt near the improvised home plate while sorting through a burlap bag of baseballs. Annie. It was Olivia’s friend Annie.

  She glanced up, saw Palmer and waved equally vigorously.

  “Hmm. You say you want ‘sophisticated’ women?” Griffin couldn’t help grinning. “She, my friend, is a chambermaid.”

  “So was yours, at first! She was a chambermaid, too.”

  “Yes. Olivia surprised me,” Griffin admitted. “Maybe Annie will surprise you, too.” He gave her another look. “Maybe she’s more complicated than you know. Women often are.”

  Palmer scoffed. “I doubt I’ll find out. I’ll be back in Boston by then. You enjoy your baseball. I have other plans.”

  Without so much as another hectoring reminder of Griffin’s temporarily abandoned mansions and businesses, Palmer took off at a dash. He ducked betwe
en two bat-carrying men. He galloped past a cluster of children, then nearly collided with a grandmotherly woman who fittingly lectured him on decorum.

  Palmer arrived at Annie’s location. He swept off his hat.

  The chambermaid looked up. She smiled broadly at him.

  Despite Palmer’s protestations to the contrary, there was little doubt that the two of them had sparked a romance. Whether their budding ardor would flourish was anyone’s guess. But as Griffin watched his upright associate and Olivia’s freewheeling friend chat together—spiritedly if contrastingly—he felt newly inspired to sort out things with Olivia.

  He may not have succeeded with persuading Olivia to dance to the fiddle music at the town musicale. He may not have won her heart—or ignited her courage—with his presentation of her invention prototypes at the handicrafts show. In fact, given her topsy-turvy reactions on that day, Griffin wasn’t sure if making those prototypes had been the right thing to do at all.

  Still, Olivia had, afterward, allowed him to bring those models secretly to her cozy attic rooms at The Lorndorff. And she had cried happy tears upon seeing the prototypes again. And she had hugged Griffin thank-you with such ferocity that he’d thought his ribs might crack. So that was progress, of a sort.

  In fact, it was heartening progress, Griffin decided as he loped toward the baseball field himself. Olivia’s grateful reaction proved he was on the right course. From here, he only had to persevere. He only had to help Olivia help herself.

  The upcoming baseball game was an opportunity to do just that, Griffin realized as he neared her position and saw that—unlike her fellow members of the women’s league—Olivia was not wearing a sturdy dress, outrageously hemmed to her ankles to allow free movement. She was not clad in sensible brogan shoes with low heels, suitable for a sportswoman’s athletic needs. Instead, Olivia stood bundled in a lightweight coat with its collar up to her neck, doubtless broiling in the heat.

  Even in the mountainous town of Morrow Creek, it wasn’t cool enough to require outerwear. Not at this time of day, at least. Glimpsing Olivia’s buttoned-up coat, Griffin puzzled.