"All right, if you don't want to say yes now," she said in a rush, to prevent him from refusing again so readily, "at least wait to say no."
He inhaled sharply.
Maggie took a quick breath and kept talking. "Until you go, why don't we try a partnership?”
“Try it?"
"Yes,” she said swiftly, sensing that he was at least willing to consider something temporary. And if that went well, at the end of two months, she would find a way to convince him to make it permanent. "Then we could both see how it would work out. You can teach me to cook and maybe we can make the restaurant so successful you'll change your mind and want to stay."
"I won't change my mind," he said softly, staring down into her eyes. She saw the glimmering shine of regret in those blue depths. Obviously, he was interested in her proposition. Why was he fighting so hard against it?
“People change their minds all the time," she countered. "You might too."
"I won't. I can't."
She ignored that, determined now to reach him. "Fine. But what do you say about the temporary arrangement?"
A long minute or two passed. Maggie could almost see him thinking, weighing his decision, and she couldn't help wondering why he was so hesitant. Was it being a merchant that bothered him? Or being partners with her? And what appointment was so important that it would keep him from ever returning to Regret? To her.
Finally, though, when she'd almost given up hope, he reluctantly said, "All right. For the next two months, we'll be partners. We'll get the restaurant up and running.”
She smiled at him and then felt that smile dissolve as he finished.
"And when I’m gone, you'll have the best damned restaurant in Nevada all to yourself."
#
"Sugar!”
Dolly glanced over her shoulder, making sure that no one was within earshot. But she needn't have worried. The Harmon house was at the end of town, set well back from the road. Sugar'd seen to that. The walkway leading from the street to the wide front porch was lined with flowers, now looking a bit frostbitten around the edge. Twin pines with slightly twisted trunks stood at the front corners of the house like crippled soldiers on guard duty.
The windowpanes shone in the morning sunlight and from within came the scent of fresh-baked cinnamon bread.
Dolly knocked on the door again, louder this time. She'd been trying to corner Sugar all week with no success. Durn woman appeared to be hiding out. Redmond must have warned her that Dolly was on the warpath.
"Dang it, Sugar," she called out, bending to one side to peer in the window. She thought she caught a glimpse of movement just beyond the lace curtain, but she couldn't be sure. "I know you're in there, Sugar,” she yelled, "and I'm not leaving until I have my say."
Ah. The magic words.
The door was jerked open a moment later and Dolly blinked in surprise as Sugar demanded, "What is it?"
The woman looked sour, as usual. Not for the first time, Dolly told herself it was a shame Sugar had never had children. Maybe it was the lack of them that had made her this way. Because Dolly remembered a time, years past now, when Sugar had even been known to smile occasionally.
But after marrying Redmond late in life and then not being blessed with children, she seemed to have shriveled up inside, finding her only comfort in making other folks as miserable as she was.
Still, she hadn't come to sympathize with Sugar, but to warn her off of Maggie. Dolly straightened up, tugged at the hem of her short, slightly too tight jacket, and asked, "Aren't you going to ask me in?”
"No, I am not," Sugar told her and positioned herself in the doorway's opening, as if she expected the other woman to charge right through, knocking her to the floor if she had to.
And Dolly thought about doing just that. But only briefly.
"Fine,” she said instead, "I'll say what I came to say, standing right here."
"Well, get on with it,” Sugar snapped. "I've bread in the oven."
"And a razor blade in your mouth."
“I beg your pardon?" The woman sniffed and lifted her chin even higher than normal. If it started raining right this minute, she'd probably drown, what with her nose stuck so high in the air.
"You heard me," Dolly told her and wagged her index finger. "Maggie told me how you came around to her place, stickin' that long nose of yours where it don't belong."
Sugar's mouth flattened into a thin line and her eyes narrowed. "I don't know what you're talking about.”
"Oh, yes you do."
"I think you'd better go,” she said and started to close the door.
Dolly slapped the flat of her hand against the pristine white door and held it open through sheer force of will.
"Let go of my door."
"Not until you swear to leave Maggie and her boy alone."
"I have nothing against her boy," Sugar said, and Dolly thought she almost spotted something wistful in her expression before it was stamped out.
"Then, for pity's sake, stop talking about his father."
She sniffed. “All I said was he had the look of Kersey."
"That's more than enough and you know it." Dolly moved closer. "Maggie doesn't want the boy asking questions about his pa and I reckon you can figure out why without having to be told."
"She should have thought of that before she married the man.”
"That's neither here nor there!'
A breeze stirred and shot past the two women, lifting the brim of Dolly's hat and teasing at the harsh, tight knot of Sugar's hair enough to loosen one or two strands.
Instantly, she reached up to push them back into place. "My bread…" she said.
"Fine. You go take care of your bread, I've said what I came to say."
"Good."
As the door started closing again, Dolly let it go, but added, "I'm warning you, Sugar. You shut your mouth about Maggie, or it'll be between you and me."
Sugar's fingers on the edge of the door tightened until her knuckles turned white. "Dolly Trent, you've no call to speak to me like that.”
"Oh, yes I have," she said. "Maggie has no one to speak up for her and she's so durned concerned about what folks around here think of her, she won't say anything herself."
Sugar snorted. "If she's all that concerned, then she shouldn't have a strange man living in her home."
"He works for her."
A nasty smile touched Sugar's lips briefly and died an ugly death just as quickly. “That's what she says, of course. But I say, where there's smoke, there's fire."
"And I say, where there's venom, there's Sugar."
"Now, you listen here…"
"No, you listen," Dolly told her and took a step toward her. Heaven help her, never in her life had she wanted to strike another human being as badly as she did at that moment. To keep from doing just that, she curled her fingers into tight fists. "You've become a dried-up, spiteful woman, Sugar Harmon, but there's no reason for you to spread your bile to those who don't deserve it."
She sucked in a breath as though someone had thrown a punch to her midsection. "Go away."
"Oh, I'm goin'," Dolly told her, “but you mind what I said."
Then she stepped back and Sugar slammed the door so hard, the curls on Dolly's forehead fluttered in the resulting breeze. A small thread of satisfaction wound through her as she turned and stepped off the porch to walk back to town. At the end of the walkway, she turned for another look at the Harmon house and was in time to see the lace curtain fall back into place after sliding off the tips of Sugar's fingers.
She smiled, then set off for the mercantile, enjoying the soft mountain breeze that rattled the leaves overhead and stirred tiny dust clouds on the road.
#
A week later, Gabe stood in the kitchen, waving the back door like a giant fan, trying to clear the smoke out of the room. Every day, they'd worked at this and every day, Maggie found something new to burn.
Nothing was safe. Pies, cakes, meats of all kin
ds, everything that entered her oven left it looking like a lightning-struck tree—black, twisted, and smoking.
"I told you. I'm hopeless," she said from across the room.
He wanted to say, “Yes, you are” and quit torturing both of them. But Gabe wasn't a man to whom quitting came easy. "No you're not,” he said and shoved his fingers through his hair.
Maggie coughed and flapped her apron at the last of the smoke still hanging in the room like fog. "I don't know what else you'd call it," she said and walked to the table to pick up her latest failure.
Gabe looked at the two unidentifiable lumps and shook his head. Who would have thought apple pies could blacken so nicely?
“At least the stray dogs in town are eating well,” she muttered and, carrying the pies to the open back door, set them on the top step as her latest offering.
When she turned away, Gabe noticed a single hound come skulking toward the back porch. It sneaked up on the pies, gave them a sniff, then whined and backed away from them. He frowned and closed the door firmly. She didn't need to know that even stray dogs had started to avoid her cooking. He'd bury the pies later.
“I don't know why I can't do this,” she grumbled and gave the stove a dirty look, as if it were the real culprit.
“It just takes practice,” he said for what had to be the thousandth time that week. And even Gabe noticed he didn't sound quite so sure as he had when they'd started their lessons.
She gave him a look that let him know she'd heard the disbelief in his tone too.
“Your bread's not bad," he offered. Though silently he wondered how anyone could char the outside of the loaf and have the inside be doughy and underdone.
“Face it, Gabe," she said. "I have. I'm not a cook, will never be a cook."
He scrubbed one hand across his face and looked at her. Flour dotted her hair and the front of her blue dress. Her apron bore the marks of everything she'd tried to cook, and even the palm of her right hand was still singed from making an unwise grab at a falling hot pan.
All right, maybe it was time to take a break from their lessons and try something else. The woman had absolutely no talent with a skillet and a stove. Well, except for one thing, he told himself, remembering the huge kettle of beef-vegetable soup she'd made Saturday morning. Apparently, she'd gotten into the habit of making her specialty on the one night she could count on customers.
And he had to say, the cowboys had eaten every drop of that soup and washed it down with gallons of coffee, before heading off to the saloon. But as he'd reminded her as she'd stood back proudly, you couldn't run a restaurant that served only soup.
If it killed both of them, he would teach her to cook at least a few edible things. Then, once the restaurant started making money, she could hire a real cook. As for now, though, they could work on something just as important.
If they were going to change things around at this restaurant, Gabe thought, they were going to do it right. It wasn't just Maggie's cooking that had to be fixed, it was the place itself.
“Forget about this for a while,” he said and started for the door leading to the dining room. "Come with me."
"Not that I'm complaining about leaving the kitchen," she said as she tore her apron off and started after him, "but where are we going?"
"The mercantile," he said shortly.
#
Maggie stood beside him as he placed order after order with Dolly. Nerves escalating, she tried to keep track of the money he was spending and lost count purposely when it climbed past fifty dollars.
Still, she had to say something when he ordered some fancy wine all the way from St Louis.
"You'll get customers so drunk on your wine," she said, "they'll spill food all over the new tablecloths you just bought and ruin them."
“If they want to get drunk," he told her with a too patient smile, “they'll go to the saloon. If they want fine wine with an excellent meal, they'll go to—“
"San Francisco?” Maggie prompted.
“Very funny." He turned back to look at Dolly, who was busily taking notes on her order pad. "We'll need some china coffeepots, too," he said and got an elbow in the ribs from Maggie.
"China? You can't make coffee in china pots. Even I know that." Desperate, she tried to snatch the order pad, but Dolly was too fast for her and moved back out of reach.
"The china's not to make it in, but to serve it in,” he told her, shaking his head.
"Dolly, don't order those," Maggie said and looked up at Gabe. "The restaurant's not making any money. I can't afford to buy china when tin will work just as well."
"You can't afford not to," he told her. Then, winking at the storekeeper, he said, "Think you could extend us a little credit, Dolly?”
Clearly getting into the spirit of this, the older woman said, “Well now, there's two things I usually stay clear of—credit and a smooth-talkin’ man.” She shot him a knowing smile.
Maggie groaned.
Gabe slapped one hand to his chest in mock horror. “Me? Why, I’m hurt."
"You'll heal, I'm thinkin',” Dolly said with a smile.
He leaned on the countertop and met her gaze. "A little credit would help me on the road to recovery."
“What are you doing?” Maggie demanded, tugging at his sleeve until he looked at her. "I don't want to be in debt."
Damn the man, he patted her hand as if she were a child and said, “You won't be in a couple of weeks."
"Dolly…" Maggie warned her old friend with a shake of her head.
But the woman waved an idle hand at her and kept her gaze locked with Gabe's. "Done," she said and offered him her hand.
Instead of shaking it, Gabe bent and kissed her knuckles and Maggie groaned again.
Gabe heard her and understood why she was so worried. She had to take care of Jake. Had to make her business successful. But to do that, she was going to have to take chances. Be daring. And if that meant getting a little credit to tide them over, so be it. It was necessary to fix up that restaurant and make it a place that people would want to come to.
"You've got to make your restaurant stand out from the rest of town," he said, turning to face her. "Since the food's not enough to draw customers, you have to offer them something else. You've got to be different to be noticed.”
Dolly cleared her throat, and glanced at Maggie, who scowled back at her.
"What?" he asked.
“Nothin'," Dolly said.
Maggie ignored her friend. "What if I don't want to be different? What if I want to fit in and have my restaurant make people feel like they're at home?”
He laughed shortly. She really didn't understand showmanship at all. We that was one thing he knew plenty about. Gabe had learned early on, while watching his father, that people's perception of things was really all that mattered. How many times had his father been down to his last two-bit piece….but to look at him no one would ever have guessed it. His clothes were always well tailored, and brushed clean. Hair neat, fingernails trimmed, shoes shined, Eamon Donovan had always looked the very image of a prosperous man. And so people believed it.
Gabe had done the same thing during his career as a gambler. Look successful and, sooner or later, you became successful.
Now, he had to teach Maggie that same lesson. "People don't want sameness when they're out getting away from their routine," he said and shook his head patiently. "If it feels like home when they go out…why go out?"
"I don't know…”
"Trust me, Maggie," he said and gave her a slow smile. "You don't want to be like everyone else."
Dolly cleared her throat again, louder this time.
Frowning, he looked at the older woman "Are you all right?" he asked.
"Fine, fine," she assured him, but he noticed her giving Maggie another sharp look. Obviously, there was something going on here that he didn't know about.
"If you're sure…"
“I’m fine, young man,” Dolly told him and waved her pencil
in the air. "Now, go on with what you were sayin'."
Maggie smirked at her.
"Anyway," he said, still sure he was missing something, "besides learning to cook, you need to paint the inside of the restaurant. And I think you should leave that part up to me." He shook his head and tried to say what he had to, kindly. "You don't really have the knack of making a place look… special.”
Maggie gasped, clearly insulted.
Dolly choked and went into a coughing fit that shook her whole body. When Gabe tried to slap her on the back though, she moved out of reach, wiped tears from her eyes, and shook her head. "S'cuse me," she said, "must've swallowed the wrong way."
"What is going on here?” Gabe asked, looking from the restrained humor in Dolly's eyes to the disgust in Maggie's. No one spoke. "Will one of you let me in on the joke?"
But neither of the women were looking at him. Instead, they stared at each other for several long moments and oddly enough seemed to almost be having a silent conversation. Finally, though, one of them broke.
"I don't have the 'knack'?” Maggie asked him.
He'd hurt her feelings. Well, hell. He hadn't meant to, but still, he couldn't back down now. If she wanted his help in fixing up her business, then she'd have to take his advice, even when it hurt. "It's nothing to be ashamed of," he said in an effort to placate her some. "Why, in most big restaurants, the owners hire somebody to come in and make the place look nice.” He gave her a conciliatory smile. "And I'll do it for you."
She huffed out a breath, tapped her fingertips against the wooden counter, and looked as if she were counting to ten.
"Is that right?”
He nodded. "Don't worry, it'll look fine."
A muscle worked in her jaw.
“Maggie?" the older woman ask chuckling under her breath. Maggie slid her a glance. "Why don't you just show him?”
"Show me what?” he asked, looking from one woman to the other, trying to figure out what was going on.
"Hire him to decorate the restaurant for me,” Maggie muttered. "I have no talent for the job," she went on, as if prodding herself with his verbal jabs.
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