by Lisa Plumley
Not that Olivia wanted to be one of them! Shivering at the very thought, she stretched again, then inhaled another lungful of Griffin’s signature spicy scent. It was fortunate she liked it, she thought in a burst of cheerfulness, because it was probably all over her…exactly the way Griffin himself had been. She doubted a single square inch of her had escaped his loving attentions. From her ears to her toes, from her fingertips to her… Well, to the rest of her, Olivia felt tingly and loved.
She felt as though she’d shared something momentous.
Now she was ready for the next step. Because after everything that had happened over the past few weeks, Olivia felt more indomitable than ever. She’d taken on the challenge of Griffin. She’d successfully impersonated a chambermaid. She’d introduced Griffin to Morrow Creek, attended a whirlwind of activities with him and found the courage to step into her own lady’s rational cycling skirt and play a game of baseball.
From here, she reasoned, there would be no stopping her.
Smiling at that, Olivia finally popped open her eyes. At the same time, she swept her arm to the side, intending to tease Griffin. He possessed a few sensitive, surprising spots that were most fun to tickle. If she played her cards right…
She would find herself alone in bed?
Confused to find the opposite side of the bed unoccupied, Olivia frowned. She sat up in the selfsame shaft of sunshine that had awakened her, then looked around. From her bed, she could easily glimpse her entire set of rooms. Her settee and lamp were still in place. Her revolving bookcase and prototype toothbrush were right where they belonged. Her bathtub stood where she’d left it, holding much less water, now even colder.
Draped across it was her abandoned floral wrap. Nearby, her chemise had been flung inelegantly across an armchair. Olivia couldn’t remember how it had gotten there. She was too busy noticing that although her discarded clothing was still strewn about, Griffin’s underdrawers and dressing gown were not.
Hmm. Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, Olivia looked again. The view didn’t change. Apparently, sometime during the night, Griffin had left her rooms and quietly returned to his own.
Well. Undoubtedly that was because he wanted to help her retain her modesty and her reputation, Olivia told herself.
After all, if a member of the hotel staff came upstairs to retrieve her zinc-lined wooden tub, empty it of its water and move it downstairs—as they should have done last night—it would be better for everyone if Olivia and Griffin weren’t in bed together. That was only sensible, wasn’t it?
Assuring herself it was—despite the sense of prickly unease that filled her at Griffin’s absence—Olivia slipped out of bed.
After hastily washing her face and brushing her hair, she pulled on her wrap again. Trying to ignore her increasing sense of disquiet, she opened her door. She padded down the hall to Griffin’s suite. Her hotelier’s keys admitted her. Most likely, Olivia assured herself as she opened the door, Griffin would be dozing in his own bed, rightly exhausted from pleasuring her.
Or…perhaps he would not be in bed at all?
With rising concern, Olivia trod farther into the room. Immediately, she saw that things had changed overnight.
Griffin’s trunks and possessions were gone from the foot of the bed. His suit coat no longer occupied the dressing rack near the bureau. His long overcoat wasn’t on its hook; his toiletries weren’t beside the washbasin and pitcher. His books and valise were packed and gone. Even the imprint of his body was missing from his bed, which had been made up and smoothed as though by a professional chambermaid’s hands.
Hmm. Evidently, Griffin’s skills with housekeeping weren’t limited to sweeping, Olivia realized. He was apparently an adept bed maker, as well. Undoubtedly, he hadn’t wanted to malign her pathetic abilities by displaying his own. Until now.
Until the day he left.
Fraught with disbelief, Olivia stared at Griffin’s bed.
More than anything, seeing it uncharacteristically made up confirmed all her worst fears. He’d left The Lorndorff. He’d left her. And he’d done so secretly, in the worst way possible.
Probably, he hadn’t been able to face her, Olivia reasoned. Last night, Griffin had seen her. He’d known her in the most intimate and complete way possible…and, just as she’d feared, he’d ultimately found her empty. In a way no one else ever had, Griffin had gotten to know her absolutely—for her appearance and for her nascent inner qualities—and he’d rejected her.
Griffin, like everyone else, had decided Olivia really was nothing more than a face on a patent remedy bottle. His only fault was lacking the strength of character to tell her so in person—to behave as forthrightly as everyone else in Morrow Creek had and be honest with her about her own limited appeal.
Not that she should have expected more from The Boston Beast, Olivia tried to tell herself. He was notoriously bad. He was known to be cruel, known to be harsh and unforgiving…
But Olivia didn’t believe that. She knew this was her fault. She had tried to be fully herself with Griffin—philosophy books, inventions and baseball playing included. He’d obviously not appreciated those aspects of her. Unlike everyone else in town, Griffin knew her…and he didn’t want her. If he had, he’d have been there, greeting her with a kiss and a smile, pulling on his hat and preparing to accompany her on another outing.
But he wasn’t. He was gone. And she’d been a fool.
Feeling increasingly stunned, Olivia walked closer to the bed. She touched its coverlet, hoping against hope that its smooth appearance was a trick of the light. If she could glimpse a slight crease, if she could detect Griffin’s presence…
But it was no use. He’d gone. There was no changing that.
In a sense, his leaving had been inevitable. Griffin had never promised to stay. In fact, he had always been evasive about his plans in Morrow Creek. Whenever Olivia had pressed him about it, she’d been met with outright caginess. She’d figured his equivocation owed itself to his scheme to take over the hotel and his reluctance to discuss The Lorndorff with her.
Now she realized Griffin had been evasive not because of the hotel, but because of her. He’d been too kind to reject her attentions immediately. But eventually, as time wore on…
As time wore on, he’d had to reject her. The alternative was to commit to her. Griffin clearly hadn’t wanted to do that.
With a sharp sense of despair, Olivia remembered yesterday’s baseball game. That must have been the limit for Griffin. He’d goaded her into playing and, when confronted with her true rebellious and unladylike nature, had found her unsuitable for him. Just as she’d guessed, he had been testing her. She’d failed. Just as she should have known she would.
Truthfully, it hadn’t been fair for Griffin to use his greater sophistication and considerable intellect against her—all while tempting her with fiddle music and dancing, inventions and their prototypes, athletics and women’s baseball playing. But he had. And she’d fallen for it entirely. Gullibly and trustingly, Olivia had allowed herself to be led.
She had allowed herself to love.
Now what was she supposed to do?
Woodenly, Olivia sank onto Griffin’s abandoned bed. She felt its soft mattress give way beneath her weight, felt its plush coverlet bunch up around her fingers and knew there was nothing she could do. She’d taken a chance on love. Foolishly, she’d taken a chance on loving a man whom the whole world should have warned her against. Of course, she should have known better.
Of course, she should have resisted him.
But remembering Griffin just then—recalling his smile and his gruff voice and his disarmingly attentive ways—Olivia knew she could not have resisted him. She’d been too smitten, too awestruck…too skirts over chignon for a man who had appeared to want her, just as she was. A man who had appeared to need her, to care for her, to know and appreciate her innermost being.
She was intelligent, Olivia reminded herself ruthlessly. She could not have been
utterly wrong about Griffin. Could she?
Looking back on their time together, Olivia considered the evidence. In this, as in most things, perhaps scientific thought could save her. She couldn’t risk becoming caught up in grief and sentiment—not if there was a way around it. After all…
You’re so beautiful, she remembered Griffin saying last night. So beautiful, and so much more than beautiful. Those weren’t the words of a man who had judged her and then found her wanting. Those were words of love.
I keep telling you, he’d said before that. You don’t have to do anything except be you. Those were words of acceptance.
A beauty like you should have more than a beast like me, Griffin had said. But if you’ll have me, Olivia, I promise to try to protect you.
Those…well, those were words of self-disdain, mingled with words of strength and loyalty and protectiveness.
Reminded of something similar Griffin had once told her, Olivia squinted. She knew he’d expressed a comparable sentiment—one that, at the time, she’d not given much further thought to.
Then she recollected it.
I’ll leave before endangering you, he’d sworn to her that lazy afternoon when they’d been lolling in the sunshine beside Morrow Creek after paying their social calls. I swear it.
It seemed, all at once, that Griffin had done exactly that.
It seemed that Griffin had sacrificed himself—sacrificed them both—for her. His view of himself as irreparably flawed had prevailed in the end. His wrongheaded sense of honor had made him leave…had made him try to protect her from himself.
What a foolish, foolish man he was, Olivia realized.
She didn’t need anyone to protect her! If Griffin had truly been paying attention, he’d have known that all she needed was someone to love her. The rest was just sketchbooks and sparrow sightings, quilting bees and quiet times…getting herself through her days as best she could, just like everyone else she knew.
Unlike everyone else she knew, though, Olivia realized, she wasn’t afraid of uncertainty. She was excited by it. She hadn’t been daunted by wrangling with The Tycoon Terror. If anything, she’d been drawn to Griffin even more strongly because of the danger inherent in him—because of the courage he’d made her reveal and the facets of herself she’d uncovered in the process.
Because of him, Olivia realized, she’d learned her limits. She’d learned they were only as wide as she measured them to be. No one else could peg out that yardstick for her. Just like no one else could think her thoughts or dream her dreams, no one else could tell her how far she could go or whom she could want.
Including Griffin Turner.
You’re priceless, Olivia, he’d said to her last night. Then, she’d believed him. Now…she still believed him. A man like Griffin didn’t say pretty words for no reason. In fact, given the evidence of their time together, he was likelier to grumble and complain and hide away when troubled. Perhaps he was even doing so right now—hiding away in a place she couldn’t find him.
Well. Griffin Turner had drastically underestimated her, if he thought Olivia Mouton could hear something like “you’re priceless” and then just tuck it away in her memory like a colored autumn leaf in a scrapbook. She was better than that! She was braver than that.
Now, more than ever, she was stronger than that.
Griffin probably hadn’t set out to test her with his leaving. Inadvertently, he’d done exactly that. He’d aroused Olivia’s instincts for observation and analysis, and he’d riled her sense of feminine outrage, too. She deserved a proposal of marriage from him. All the facts—and her heart—pointed to that.
Besides, she loved Griffin. She did. If she didn’t make sure Griffin smiled sometimes, laughed often and resisted the occasional urge to hide away in a dark hotel suite, who would?
She’d made some promises, too, last night—promises to love Griffin and stay beside him, to help him and try to make up for the terrible mistreatments of his past. She’d meant those promises.
Now Olivia meant to keep them. After all, it wasn’t every day a woman heard, I’ve never known anyone as special as you.
It wasn’t every day she met a man who would say those sweet words, and then show her with kisses and smiles and every kind of loving attention that he truly meant them.
Unless her hypothesis was wrong—and hers weren’t usually wrong, because Olivia knew to think them through—Griffin was even now on his way out of Morrow Creek. He was sacrificing the friends he’d made and the progress he’d made, and he was giving up her love, too. There’d probably never been a more foolhardy notion than his idea that he had to leave to protect her.
He had to stay to love her. And to be loved by her!
Standing again, Olivia straightened her spine. She lifted her chin, then directed her gaze out of the hotel suite’s window. In the distance, the Morrow Creek railway station stood with a train on its tracks even now, preparing to pull out. It was possible that Griffin was on that train. It was possible, given how late in the morning she’d slept, that he’d already left.
Either way, Olivia meant to track him down.
Because you didn’t fall in love with someone who’d been hurt and abandoned and abused in the past…only to hurt and abandon and abuse them yourself by letting them go. With dignity and decisiveness, she intended to go to Griffin. With determination aplenty, she intended to show him that some people were steadfast, that some people could be counted on and trusted…and that she was at the head of that line.
When it came to him, that line might be endless. If he stayed. Because this was the only place, Olivia realized as she pulled tight her wrap and headed for the door, that Griffin had truly dared to be himself—without his dark hat, without his black clothes, without his intimidating demeanor. If he wanted to be happy, he had to stay here. He’d said so himself.
You must show yourself, Griffin had told her.
Otherwise, you’ll never really be happy.
She’d already done that, Olivia knew. But she’d almost let her happiness slip through her hands, too. At the first bump in the road—when faced with Griffin’s departure—she’d been ready to surrender being herself and go back to being Miss Milky White.
But no longer. From here on, Olivia vowed, she would pursue the life she wanted with all the verve and vigor she could muster. And she would start by pursuing the man she wanted.
After all, if Griffin had never pursued her, she might never have uncovered herself. She might never have known how courageous she could be. Or how inventive. Or how loving.
Griffin would be easy to spot, Olivia reasoned as she left his suite and returned to her own rooms. Griffin would be the man whom women were staring at, men were sizing up admiringly and children were trustingly approaching…the way little Jonas had done at the musicale. Griffin would be the man who stood apart from all the rest—not because he was alone anymore, but because when Olivia looked his way, he was all she could see.
If she hurried, she knew, she might be able to catch Griffin today, within the hour. The only question now was…
Exactly what did a fashionable lady wear to properly impress the man she meant to spend the rest of her life with?
Chapter Nineteen
Griffin had never had so much trouble leaving a damn rusticated creek-side town in his entire life.
Starting at daybreak, he’d approached the Morrow Creek train station. Clad in his most menacing black attire—to match his dark mood—he’d stomped to the window and requested a ticket. The clerk, a certain Miss Hartford, had claimed she was “plumb sold out for today.” What was more, Griffin had been sure there was a note of triumph in Miss Hartford’s voice, too.
“Sold out in all directions?” Griffin had asked, glowering.
A shrug. “Yes, sir. Sold out. It’s the oddest thing.”
“You can’t be sold out. Don’t you know who I am?”
A squint. Another shrug. “Are you a prospector? I’d like to help you out. Surely, I
would. But if the train’s full—”
“Never mind. I’ll take a coach.”
Biting back his annoyance, Griffin had stalked toward the stagecoach office next. All the way there, he’d been confronted with the now-familiar sights and sounds of Morrow Creek. The butcher, O’Neill, opening his shop. The mercantile owner, Mr. Hofer, sweeping the raised plank boardwalk in front of his store. The blacksmith, McCabe, stoking his fires. The various female typesetters of the Pioneer Press, animatedly discussing the latest meeting of the ladies’ auxiliary league while they walked across town to the newspaper office. Every last one of those people had smiled and said hello to Griffin.
He hadn’t had much patience for any of them.
Especially not once he’d reached the stagecoach office, asked for an eastbound ticket and was told they were “sold out.”
Stymied, Griffin had frowned. “But I need to leave town,” he’d insisted.
“You’ll need to wait, I reckon,” the female clerk had said, echoing Miss Hartford’s victorious tone at the railway station.
“Never mind. I’ll hire a horse.”
But once Griffin had reached the livery stable, Owen Cooper had been away—and his laconic stableman, Gus, had been less than no help at all. He’d actually proved an impediment to leaving.
“Nope. Not a single horse available,” Gus had confirmed, fiddling with the grimy bandanna around his neck. “Nor a donkey, neither. It’s the strangest thing.” Amiably, he’d spat some tobacco, leaned on his hay rake and added, “I’d sure love to jaw with ya a bit ’bout yore biznesses in the states, though. Ya see, the thing is—and nobody knows this ’cept you—I got me a surefire notion for a different kind o’ hiring company.”
Gus had commenced chatting, talking at the approximate speed of a turtle who’d spied a tasty clump of leaves, spending a full half hour or more trying to obtain Griffin’s opinion of his various and prospective business ideas. By the time Griffin had managed to extricate himself from the stableman’s sudden garrulous spell, he’d been downright worn-out.
