Harlequin Historical May 2014 - Bundle 1 of 2: Notorious in the West\Yield to the Highlander\Return of the Viking Warrior (16 page)

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 another 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

B
efore 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 between 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.

Something was not quite right here.

“Miss Mouton!” He greeted her formally, since they were in public, by clasping her hand in his. He smiled, undoubtedly looking naively smitten. “It's a beautiful day for baseball.”

“Yes, it is!” She smiled back at him, still holding her bat. The breeze loosened tendrils of hair from her chignon, then tossed them across her face. “I'm glad you're here, Mr. Turner.”

With a moue of frustration, Olivia hooked those soft tendrils with her fingertip. She tucked them behind her ear. That impatient gesture only pulled Griffin's attention to her lovely hands, to her winsome face...to her soft, alluring lips.

Olivia glanced up at him welcomingly, and all at once, Griffin didn't care that they were in public. He didn't care that the residents of Morrow Creek had gathered all around them with boisterous goodwill, lugging bats and balls and improvised baseball bases. Given Olivia's nearness, Griffin wanted more.

He wanted to touch her hair himself. He wanted to pull her closer for a kiss. He wanted to embrace her, to explore her sweet womanly curves with his hands, to give in to all the most ungentlemanly impulses he strived so hard
not
to surrender to when they were alone together in his hotel suite.

So far, he'd done a good job of suppressing those sensual needs. Now, in the space between his hello and his handclasp, they came roaring back to him, twice as intense and a million times more demanding.

He'd never been more aware of Olivia as a bountiful and passionate woman—or himself as a strong-bodied and virile man.

The air between them felt atingle with mounting sensuality, rife with a sense of forbidden possibility. Together, he and Olivia could share so much more than they already had, Griffin knew. Together, they could be one. But a woman like Olivia deserved more from him than desire and wild imaginings and longings to kiss her. She deserved everything he had.

So, chivalrously, Griffin gave it. He gave her respect and admiration. He gave her gallantry. He smiled anew, and vowed to himself not to seduce her...however much he wanted to.

He nodded at her coat. “Have you caught a chill?”

His studied tone made her smile. “Indeed, I haven't.”

“Yet you're bundled up as if you expect a blizzard,” Griffin said. “Won't you find it difficult to play?”

“I don't expect to.” Olivia glanced to the side, exchanged a few words with another female player then returned her attention to him. “I don't ordinarily play in the games,” she informed him. “Generally, I function as the team's secretary. I maintain notes of our meetings, catalogue our equipment, set the batting order among the players...things like that.”

“You don't play? Why?”

“Because it's appropriate.” She shrugged, her bat still held capably in hand. “Because it's...sufficient for me.”

Griffin doubted it. For a long moment, he studied her. He knew her love of activity. He understood her interest in sports.

Suddenly, he realized the truth. “This is like Nickerson's Book Depot and News Emporium,” he declared. “You want to be part of the baseball league, but you don't trust yourself to play. So you surround yourself with baseball, then don't partake of it.”

Olivia laughed, even as people passed by them, preparing either to play in the game or spectate. “What? Don't be silly!”

Dauntlessly, Griffin persisted. “This is not a course of action that will lead inevitably to some imagined downfall,” he said. “You won't hit one baseball and transform into a hoyden. You won't pitch one inning and erase years of known propriety.” He squeezed her arm encouragingly. “Play, Olivia. Do it.”

A hopeful light came into her eyes. Still, disappointingly, she waved away his urgings. “You can't make me play baseball.”

“Why stay on the fringes? If you want to, play!”

Cautiously, Olivia looked around. She bit her lip. “No one would understand. I've never played in a game. I practice, but—”

“
These
women would understand.” Griffin gestured at the other female players. “They are playing, too! Isn't that right? Surely they wouldn't dare criticize you for joining them.”