by Lisa Plumley
“I will not!”
Mr. Murphy lowered his shoulders—a certain sign, she’d learned during their acquaintance, that he was attempting to summon patience against his indisputably uncivilized nature.
She doubted it worked.
“Hold still,” he commanded.
Biting her lip, Grace did. Grudgingly. She hated to admit weakness and loathed even more following rules she had not set down herself. But Murphy was, after all, only trying to help.
Also, practically speaking, she couldn’t perform the delicate maneuver herself. Not easily at least.
She watched at first, wincing as he poked at her palm with a barkeeper’s instrument of some sort. He was adept with his hands, she was surprised to note—probably owing to his talent for pouring whiskey and scooping up the profits. Then Grace realized what other distractions lay nearby, quite apart from Jack Murphy’s blunt fingertips, and decided to take advantage of her unprecedented admittance to that most sacred of all men’s establishments: the saloon.
Swiveling her head, she examined her surroundings unabashedly. Only a few patrons sat at the tables nearby. Two played dice at the bar. A pair gambled at faro near the billiards table—Sheriff Caffey’s favorite lounging spot.
“There.” Jack Murphy’s rumbling voice interrupted her interested inspection. His tone seemed tinged with…something almost kindhearted. He went on holding her hand, very nearly cradling it in his. “Better now?”
Grace stared, transfixed, as he stroked his thumb over her palm. Tingles radiated from the place he touched, banishing the chilliness she’d felt before. She wouldn’t have credited him with so much agility, much less so much sweetness.
She made the mistake of looking into his face.
His level gaze met hers, vividly blue and filled with an unprecedented quantity of concern. Concern unlike anything she’d experienced all day. Concern that ran very contrary to the dream-crushing reality of the morning she’d spent so far.
Horrifyingly, Grace felt her chin wobble. Then her throat tightened. And instant later, tears prickled her eyes, defying her staunchest efforts to hold them back.
No, no, no. She could not cry in front of Jack Murphy!
She’d made it all this way. She could wait for the privacy of her rooms upstairs. She had to remember her goals.
His brow creased in obvious confusion. Unwillingly, Grace noted that the gesture lessened his ridiculous good looks not in the least.
“Is it your knee?” he asked. “Tell me where it hurts.”
The scoundrel softened his voice. Softened his voice!
Why had he chosen now to become considerate? Jack Murphy’s unexpected kindness affected her all the more. For some reason, she couldn’t take a single step…couldn’t leave this peculiar, unlikely circle of comfort he’d created.
With growing alarm, Grace felt a tear fall.
“It’s not—” she choked out. “I simply— It’s because—”
“That’s it,” Mr. Murphy announced, shoving her behind the bar. “I’m having a look at your injured knee.”
“No!” she shrieked, but it was already too late.
The next thing Grace knew, he’d knelt before her, hoisting her skirts in a decidedly unpolished—but effective—manner. Cool air struck her ankle. Then her calf. Determinedly, Jack Murphy shoved her ice-frosted skirts higher, his shoulder keeping her steady in her ignoble position between him and the bar.
Grace could scarcely breathe, much less move. Shock held her pinned to the spot, as did the scandalous heat of Murphy’s body. She couldn’t remember the last time anyone had rendered her motionless and speechless—Jack Murphy or no.
“Hmm,” the rascal mused, suddenly pausing in his efforts. He tilted his head, his gaze pinned unmistakably on her feet. “I own those same shoes.”
Chapter Four
“I refuse to discuss footwear with you!” Grace said.
Then she walloped Jack with her heavy skirts, effectively ending his doctoring of her wounded knee and also deafening him to the sharp-tongued tirade that followed.
For that, he was grateful. Because, frankly, no woman had ever mastered the art of speaking her mind quite as effectively as bossy Grace Crabtree, and Jack had already endured more than his fair share of her opinions. He was sorry he’d brought her inside. Sorry he’d heard her falling down the stairs and gone to investigate. Sorry, most of all, he’d seen her cry.
It had made her seem almost…vulnerable.
Which was clearly a trick of some kind. Because Jack knew a less vulnerable woman had never been born than Grace Crabtree.
He caught hold of her flailing arms, dodged one more soggy woolen wallop, then peered into her face. “Better now?”
Sometimes females needed to express their more hysterical impulses. Any man who’d spent more than a few hours’ time with a woman knew that. Ordinarily, Jack kept himself well out of the way. This time… Well, this time he didn’t know how he’d gotten caught in the middle of things. He didn’t much like it.
“I’m fine.” Grace sniffled. She narrowed her gaze. “I don’t know what you mean by being so kind, Mr. Murphy, but rest assured, I don’t credit it for a minute. You’re up to something, I know it. And I won’t be swayed by this pretense of decency.”
He nodded. “I’d better work on my pretenses.”
“I won’t be lulled by your agreeableness either!”
He endeavored to scowl.
“There you go again! It’s positively unnatural.”
Jack shrugged, knowing he would lose in this situation no matter what. Grace’s declaration of skepticism was unconvincing in the extreme—especially accompanied, as it was, by a wobbling chin and teary eyes. Her admonition lacked punch to be sure. But he didn’t want to say so. She seemed dangerously close to all-out bawling again.
At the realization, uncertainty swamped him. Jack wanted to help somehow, but a gentlemanly display of good manners and concern would hardly help matters. Or bolster his rough-and-ready image. Instead he resorted to his usual tactic.
He grunted. The all-purpose sound earned him a roll of the eyes and a disdainful sniff, which seemed—blessedly—a lot more in keeping with the Grace Crabtree he knew.
Heartened, he produced a handkerchief. After a small tussle, she accepted it, then swabbed indelicately at her face.
Whoever had originally claimed women looked beautiful when they cried had obviously never seen Grace Crabtree do it. Her eyes streamed, her lips trembled like a trout and her putty-colored hair straggled from its knot to join the whole mess.
“This is a very clean handkerchief,” she managed to say, twisting it in her fingers. Despite her efforts, tears welled in her eyes and threatened to spill over. “Is it Irish linen?”
Watching her struggle for composure, Jack felt horrified. And strangely hurt. As though he shared her distress somehow.
The notion was too bizarre to credit.
“How should I know?” He did know, because in the days when he’d enjoyed genteel things, he’d ordered that handkerchief himself from a fine Boston seamstress. “It’s yours now.”
Grace’s red-rimmed eyes widened. “Oh.” She clutched the limp linen as though it were a square of embroidered gold leaf, then promptly burst into tears. Loud, caterwauling tears.
To his knowledge, Grace Crabtree had never cried before. She was well on her way to making up for lost time now.
Hell. So much for kindness.
“Stop that blubbering,” Jack demanded, gesturing manfully outward. “Else you’ll scare away my customers.”
Several already stared at them, their lagers ignored. Apparently, his patrons had been content to ignore the woman in their midst—until she’d reached the level of a bawling calf.
“I’m not blubbering! I never cry. If you would just quit being so…so considerate.” From her, it sounded a perfectly vile accusation. As though sensing the irrationality in that, Grace shoved ineffectually at his chest. “Just leave me alone.”
J
ack considered it. “I would, but your man-shoes are crushing my toes.”
Her eyes flared. Whoever had adjudged women the gentler sex had gotten that wrong, too, Jack decided. Else they’d never met Grace Crabtree. She was an odd one. He knew it was true, because usually women liked his jests.
Pointedly, Grace shifted her feet two inches to the left.
“There. Do you know, I quite like it here,” she announced, plainly rallying as she offered a sweeping glance at his gaping patrons. With her practiced orator’s voice, she said to the room at large, “In fact, now that I’m inside this vaunted male sanctuary, I may never leave!”
Several gasps sounded. Grumbles of discontent were heard.
Frowning, Jack grunted at her. Very, very loudly.
Obliviously, Grace flung her arms outward, almost smacking him in the nose. “I may stay for the Morrow Creek Men’s Club meetings,” she added, clearly gaining momentum and fervor, “and have my say there, too. I may have a whiskey! Why not?”
“Calm down.” Consternation deepened Jack’s brogue. His shoulders tightened. “You’re not thinking clearly.”
“Ah, you’re worried now, aren’t you?” Grace’s eyes gleamed dangerously. “You should be! After all, I have nothing better to do—” her voice wavered, then broke “—now.”
Now? That pitiful-sounding word niggled at him, as did Grace’s brokenhearted admission. She looked a fright and sounded it, too. If he could only figure out what now meant…
Abruptly, Jack quit puzzling over that nonsensical statement. He was done with analyzing things. The plain fact was, Grace was the busiest person he knew—the busiest person anyone knew. She had plenty to do besides invade his saloon.
On the other hand, he mused, she had never hesitated to launch one of her outrageous plans either. He should send someone for Sheriff Caffey, just for preparedness’ sake. Then show her the door. Decisively.
“Now?” Jack found himself repeating instead.
She nodded forlornly.
Which didn’t help him decipher things in the least, although the gesture did—against all reason—rouse his sympathy. He peered closer, then touched her hand. “What do you mean?”
Her gaze skittered to his hand atop her ruined glove.
All at once, Grace’s whole face crumpled. Her shoulders did, too. Clearly she’d finally been overcome by her heavy coat, her mannish shirtwaist and the cumbersome weight of her obstinacy.
Either that or she wasn’t accustomed to simple courtesy. Jack wasn’t sure which. But he was sure of one thing: trying to make sense of Grace Crabtree was the height of foolishness.
Despite that fact though, Jack held fast, concernedly squeezing her hand. He’d known Grace for over a year now. She was the person he wrangled with most in town. That gave them a bond of sorts. He didn’t like to see her so downtrodden.
“Don’t you have protesting to do?” he asked gruffly.
Grace shook her head, tendrils of hair sticking to her blotchy cheeks. She looked woefully pathetic and a little lost.
“Somebody else to pester?” he tried. “Work to do?”
At that, she heaved a tremulous sigh. Her whole chest shuddered beneath the exhalation, setting her shirtwaist aflutter. At least as much as the starchiness of it would allow, that is. Not many women looked as sensible on a daily basis as Grace did, and today was no exception. Aside from her tears.
They oughtn’t fool him, Jack knew. All appearances to the contrary, those tears did not magically make Grace Crabtree delicate or sensitive. She was still the same woman who had surreptitiously plastered a hand-painted CLOSED sign on his saloon’s entryway just two months ago, in outright defiance of his open-for-business status. It had taken him weeks to regain his former level of patronage.
“Well, yes. I do have typesetting to do,” Grace allowed, surreptitiously swiping at her cheek. “But I have half a mind to leave all the work to the new editor my father hired.”
“Hmm.” Jack didn’t think it was much like Grace to ignore work, but he’d already gotten in collar deep this morning. He didn’t want to tempt fate. “Maybe you ought to leave it.”
“I should!” Her face brightened, taking on a distinct glow. “After all, that odious Thomas Walsh can learn for himself what it takes to run the Pioneer Press from top to bottom.”
“Top to bottom,” Jack agreed. He adopted his best rugged stance, contemplated a manly grunt, then frowned instead. He didn’t want to overplay his hand. “I reckon.”
Grace’s thoughtful gaze lit on him. “You know, you’re not so bad, Mr. Murphy.”
“Neither are you, Miss Crabtree.”
“Why, you’re almost intelligent!”
“And you’re not quite as disagreeable as I thought.” Jack leaned against the bar and crossed his arms, nodding. Now that things seemed settled, however nonsensically, he felt better. Relief loosened his chest—and perhaps unwisely, his tongue. “Adam hired a new editor, you say?”
Grace nodded.
Jack considered that. “You want to know something funny?”
“Most certainly. If you feel yourself capable of wit.”
He couldn’t help but grin. Now that her fighting spirit was restored, Grace seemed herself again for certain. She’d be out of his saloon lickety-split. For the first time since coming to the territory, Jack felt a hero just for helping her.
“I almost had the idea Adam would give you the newspaper to manage,” he confided. “It’s the most radical in the territory, after all. And you’re…you.” He chuckled. “I guess you just might have had the gumption to take on the job.”
The silence that came next felt ominous. Even underlaid, as it was, by jovially clinking glasses and the resumed billiards game in the corner of the saloon. Nearby, dice clattered.
“I would have.” Grace’s voice sounded as stiff as her high-necked shirtwaist. “If I’d been allowed to. Apparently though, my papa believes an outsider would do a better job.”
She shook out her skirts, then lifted her chin higher. The moment of camaraderie they’d shared—however briefly and improbably—vanished like so much mescal delivered to a table of thirsty miners. Jack could scarcely keep up.
Was she going to start bawling again?
“Well, now.” He made his voice soothing, to prevent any further outbursts. “That’s good news, isn’t it? Now you’ll have more time for other things, like…uh, getting hitched.”
Her brow arched. “‘Hitched’?”
“Yep.” That sounded an appropriately western term to him, and it was the first feminine goal that had come to mind. “You can fulfill every woman’s dream and get yourself a husband.”
“A husband?” Her cheeks reddened. “Why, you—”
“A fancy dress, a big fluffy cake, a preacher to announce you man and wife,” Jack elaborated, stricken all at once with the rightness of it. He nodded. “If you could only find a man who’d have you, you could finally get married.”
Grace opened and closed her mouth. She gawked. She blinked. She even appeared to consider the idea for an instant.
“Ha! You get married!” she cried.
With that outrageous rebuttal, Grace shouldered her way past him, her clodhopper shoes slapping briskly across the floorboards. Even though he was happy to see her go, Jack couldn’t help but reflect that a husband would make her wear decent shoes. A husband would make her wear a proper dress instead of those suffragette dress-reform getups she favored. A husband would…
He would make her stay away from Jack’s saloon.
The solution to all Jack’s troubles dropped clean on him.
He had to find Grace Crabtree a husband.
“I mean it,” he protested, following her. “Wait.”
Typically contrary, she shoved through the saloon doors instead. Jack followed, pursued by ribald jests from his amused patrons and temporarily blinded by the sunlight sparkling from the slushy snow. By the time he sighted Grace again, she was about to ascend the stairs to her meet
ing rooms.
Her damned meeting rooms. They were usually packed to the rafters with prissy protesters and radical women and off-putting officers of some ladies’ club or another, all of whom disrupted his business and his customers’ enjoyment of their libations.
Jack had had just about all he could take of Grace and her meeting rooms. If she had a husband, he told himself, she’d have to quit them. No reasonable man would allow his wife to continue with her wild pursuits—especially pestering her neighbor. Him.
Her stomping feet hastened upward.
She was getting away.
“Wait!” he called again.
Huffily, Grace halted. She wheeled around on the stairs, sending chunks of snow pinging toward his knees, regarding him with a demeanor likely to give a man frostbite.
“Well?” she prompted. “What is it? Because I won’t allow you inside my meeting rooms, and that’s a promise.”
Undaunted, Jack offered up his best Irishman’s smile—the one that had always proven nigh irresistible. This was no time, he reasoned, to worry about cracks in his new-minted ruggedness.
“I’m going to find you a husband,” he announced.
She seemed stunned by his largesse. “Mr. Murphy, I can assure you that I do not want a husband.”
“Plenty of men come into my saloon.” He raised his arms expansively. “One of them is bound to be willing.”
“‘Willing’?” She seemed gobsmacked by the very notion. “This is not about ‘willing’ or ‘plenty.’ It’s simply—”
“Come along now, Miss Crabtree.” Another smile for good measure seemed right to him. He leaned casually on the railing. “There’s no need to be shy. We’re neighbors, after all. If you’re doubting I can find you a suitable man—”
She hooted with laughter.
“—you shouldn’t be,” Jack finished patiently. “I can be very resourceful when I have to be.”
“Oh?” Her lips quirked. “Is that so?”
Now he’d seen every side of Grace Crabtree—dubious, weepy and downright foolish included. But with his solution well in sight, Jack was of no mind to quit now…or to let her needling get to him the way it usually did.
