Marry Me (21 page)

Well, this was awkward. How do you welcome back a woman who was very nearly your lover, sort of your friend, and now more or less your employee? The few manners his mother had drummed into him didn’t seem to apply.

“Let me get the rest of your stuff,” he said, and slid by her to do just that.

“Oh, please, don’t go to any trouble,” she said.

“I’ll get it,” he growled, finding her polite deference damn annoying.

“You shouldn’t be waiting on me.”

“I said I’d get it!”

“All right,” she said, and stepped aside. “Before you go—I thought perhaps hash for supper, if you have the supplies. Or hotcakes if you’d rather, Mr. Sullivan.”

“Damn it!” He stopped in the doorway, spun around, and whacked his hands flat against the doorjamb. “
Mr. Sullivan?
”

“I thought it might be…easier, if we attempted a rigorously professional relationship.”

“No, it would not be
easier
.” When she flinched at his words, he deliberately softened his tone. She hadn’t looked at him like that, wary, as if she wasn’t sure what he was capable of, for a very long time. He didn’t like it. “Em, this isn’t…I didn’t suggest this because I had a yen to order you around.” And though that wasn’t entirely true, his wish to command her was confined to very specific circumstances that had little to do with housekeeping, and he’d no intention of revealing that little fancy. “I don’t care what you cook. It’ll still be ten times better than what I would have if you weren’t here. You don’t have to clear anything you do with me before you do it. You just needed a place for a while. I could use some help. It doesn’t have to be any more complicated than that.”

For a second he feared she would flee. “Doesn’t it?”

“Not if we don’t let it,” he said, and commenced making himself scarce before he could make a lie of what he’d just promised.

“Hi.”

“Oh.” Surprised, Emily looked up from the socks she’d been darning when Jake sauntered through the door. The last week had been more like those first days after Jake had returned to Montana than the days when they’d pretended a marriage. Emily scarcely saw him. He was always working somewhere on the land, building, repairing, hauling supplies from town. He stopped only long enough to wolf down whatever she’d cooked, mumble his thanks, and disappear again. “Hi.”

He sniffed. “What’s that?”

“Juniper. May told me. You put a few fresh sprigs, maybe a few berries, on top of the stove when it’s warm and it scents the air.” She took a deep breath as well. “Smells good, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah. Guess it does.” He scratched his head in complete male bewilderment. Having Emily back had changed his life in more ways than he’d counted on. Oh, he’d sure looked forward to the food, which was every bit as good as he remembered. But all the other things…the luxury of coming home and finding his clothes washed and mended, and someone waiting with a smile. The sheer comfort, after a long day, of entering a room that smelled of lemon wax, finding a chair free of debris to drop into.

He was terrified he was getting far too used to it. And even more, he was struck with a terror so deep he couldn’t stand to think about it, the knowledge that he was more than getting used to her. Wanted her around for more reasons than material comforts.
Needed
her there. She’d lodged herself in his life and his heart in a way he’d never wanted and wasn’t sure he could survive, and he feared it was too late for him to keep her, and how he felt about her, safely contained in a neat, clean box. So he employed the tactic he’d been clinging to since her return: he ran, this time for the safety of his printing room.

Emily shrugged and went back to her darning. She’d resolved to keep from poking into areas he’d clearly marked to be left alone. She’d tried that once, and look what had happened. Instead she’d do the only thing she could think of to help him. By the time she left, his buttons would be sewed on so tightly they’d never pop off, his clothes as clean as if they were brand-new, and his pantry thoroughly stocked.

From the lean-to came a metallic clatter, like a box of bullets dumped on the floor, followed by a healthy streak of inventive and emphatic curses. She dropped the shirt and raced to see if he’d bruised anything that mattered.

Perched on a high stool, hands planted on his knees, Jake surveyed in disgust what looked like hundreds of tiny silver cubes scattered all over the floor.

“I pied the type again,” he said. “Never happens when I’ve barely started, of course. And this time it wasn’t only the form I was working on but the whole damn thing.”

“Here, let me help.” She bent over to begin. “I don’t have a clue where to start.”

Sighing heavily, he grabbed a side-tilted, divided wooden box off the floor and slammed it down on the small table he’d slapped together from raw boards and covered with a layer of tin. “To start, we sort.”

Unlike Jake, Emily didn’t mind the job. Jake had built a wide window in the outside wall and the shutters were open. Sunlight streamed in. The wind, gentle today, shuffled through carrying birdcalls that blended with the clink of type. And—okay, might as well admit it—she enjoyed working beside him, watching his concentration, the quick sure motions as he grabbed up great handfuls of spilled letters, glanced at them one by one, and hurled each at its small cubbyhole. Each throw got progressively harder, until at last one bounced out of its niche and back onto the floor.

“Shit!” Then he shot a guilty glance at Emily. “Sorry.”

“Always wanted to be a newspaperman, did you?” she asked, amused by his impatience. She found sifting through the pieces and putting them into their proper places soothing, a task that could be done and put aside with a precision and confidence life rarely offered.

He laughed.
Oh, it is such a triumph to get that man to laugh!
she thought.
Easy to become addicted to the challenge and reward of it.

“How’d you guess?” He shook his handful of type and the pieces clattered like the beads of a child’s rattle. “No, I’ve never had much of a leanin’ toward it.”

“I liked your article, though,” she said. “The one on flax cultivation.”

His hand froze in mid-shake. “You read it?”

“Of course I read it.”

“But…why would you need to know about flax?”

“I have no interest at all in flax. At least I didn’t before I read it.” She scooped up a few squares and poked through them. Two
c
’s, a
b
, and a spacer. “But you wrote it, so I read it.”

When he made no further comment, she looked up to find him staring at her, his brow furrowed. Had it been so long for him then, that he’d had someone in his life who’d be interested in something he’d done just because it was
his
? So long since he’d had, well, a friend?

“Why do you do it, then? The newspaper, I mean. If you’ve no interest in it.”

“Five bucks a proof.”

“That’s it?”

“Five bucks a proof times hundreds of claims is more than reason enough.”

That was hard to argue with. She dropped her type into the case and rummaged a half dozen from beneath the table. “What, then?”

“What’ll I do after I have the money?”

“No. You were in college, you said. What did you intend to be?”

He laid out his forms with more concentration than the task required.

“Well.” She shook a couple of pieces of type like dice while she pondered. “If you don’t want to tell me, I’ll guess.”

He swiveled on his stool, leaned back with his legs stretched in front of him, and crossed his arms. “This ought to be good.”

“Let me see.” She pursed her lips, tapped them with her forefinger. “Not a chef.”

“No, I tried that one. They paid me not to go near the kitchen again.”

“Really?” she asked before she caught the glint of humor in his eyes, and for once didn’t mind her own gullibility if that was the result. “A hat designer, perhaps. You have such flair.”

“Don’t I?” He batted his eyelashes at her like the most practiced coquette, and her heart fluttered just as wildly. “Perhaps all is not lost in that regard. Do you suppose Kate would hire me?”

“She’d be a fool not to.”

“Good to keep my options open.” Was this who he’d been, before life had stripped the joy from him? His eyes alight, his smile ready? No wonder Julia had defied her father to be with him. “Try again.”

“You did say Mr. Bates wished you to clerk for him. Considering your fondness for money…an accountant, perhaps?”

“Good God, no.” He uncrossed his legs and sat up in protest. “I’d go stir mad, poring over the books and searching for lost pennies.”

“Well?”

“No more guesses?”

They’d retrieved more than half the spilled type, she noticed when she bent for another handful. Then she’d have no more excuse to stay there with him. And so she made sure she had a terrible time finding the compartment for the
t
’s. “Teaching, maybe?”

“Worse and worse.”

“I didn’t say I thought you’d be
good
at it.”

“No, I know my limitations, and I don’t fancy ending up in an asylum after three days of work.” He took pity on her. “I’d planned to read for the law.”

“A lawyer?”

“Yeah.” This time his laugh carried a bitter edge. “A guy I grew up with got arrested when we were seventeen. Theft, they said, and I suppose he might’ve done a fair amount in his time. But he said he didn’t do it, and I believed him—no reason for him to lie to me, y’know? But they put him in prison. Mostly, I figured, ’cause he didn’t have money to hire somebody decent to defend him.”

“Is he still there?”

“Far as I know.”

“I’m sorry.”

“If there’s justice to be had in this world, Em, it’s gotta be found in the courts, too. I
hate
that it’s reserved for those who can buy it.”

In his agitation his elbow bumped his mock-up table, and they both dove for it, splaying their arms across to rescue the type they’d spent the last half hour sorting. They ended up tangled together, arms entwined, she half lying across his back.

“I’m sorry,” she said quickly and sprang away, her face flaming.

Once he was sure the type was staying put, he peeled himself up slowly. “Don’t be,” he said. “Especially when you look so cute with your cheeks that shade of pink.”

“Cute?”
Cute
wasn’t really what she had in mind. Years ago, when flocks of smitten young men had descended on their house to preen for Kate, they’d tried to win Kate’s favor by patting Emily on the head and pronouncing her “cute.”

“Oh, don’t look so put out,” he said. “It’s not an insult.”

“That’s what you think.”

“Yes, that’s what I think.” He tapped her lightly on the nose, and she had the most unaccountable urge to nip the offending finger. “Em, you can’t keep jumping every time we accidentally bump into each other.”

“I don’t do that,” she lied. She hated that it seemed to be so easy for him, and so completely unsettling for her.

“Must be me, then.”

“I’m sure it must be.”

He studied her thoughtfully until she could no longer hold his gaze, which she realized too late was every bit as telling as her skittishness.

“How’d you like a job?”

“I thought I had one.”

“No, a real one. Five bucks a week as my printer.”

“But I’ve got no more idea how to run that machine than I do how to break a colt.”

“I know. Which is why you’re only getting five. Going rate’s eight.”

Jake could’ve whacked himself over the head for being so thick that he hadn’t thought of this before. It’d swell Emily’s nest egg a bit. Even better, she’d have a skill that would be in demand. There’d be hundreds of proof sheets popping up—if things worked out the way he planned, a fair number of them might even be his—and so maybe this time, after she left, he wouldn’t go near crazy worrying about her. Hell, maybe he’d even keep her himself.

And now
there
was a slip of the brain that threatened to keep him up nights.

“I hate writing,” she objected. “Kate used to have to bribe me with gingersnaps to get me to write to Anthea.”

“I can write,” he told her. “It’s those dinky pieces of metal that make me crazy.”

But she eyed the hulking, rusty press with open suspicion. “I don’t know,” she said doubtfully.

“Heck, Em, if you can deliver a baby, you surly can do this. A lot fewer hidden parts, I promise.” He tried his most winning smile, surprised to find that he remembered how. “And it’ll keep me from taking a mallet to this thing one day.”

“What makes you think my temperament is more inclined to patience than yours?”

“You put up with me.” He meant it as a joke. But his voice softened at the end, set up a warm humming in his chest. “Here,” he said hastily, and yanked off his printer’s apron. He dropped it over her head before she could protest, wrapped the ties around her narrow waist—three times, before the ends didn’t trail on the floor—and knotted it tight. “There. Let me see.”

Ink mottled the stiff canvas, which puffed out from the belt and held its own shape instead of hers. It flipped up in front where it hit the floor like a bent strip of tin.

“Kate would have a fit.” Laughing, Emily lifted her hands and spun for his benefit. “What do you think?”

He opened his mouth but she beat him to it.

“If you say ‘cute,’” she said warningly, “you’re going to be picking up type till spring.”

“I’m surprised Godey’s hasn’t picked up on it yet.”

“You must promise,” she told him, “that, if I’m terrible at it, you will fire me without a second thought.”

“I will be a terrible ogre of a boss,” he promised her solemnly. “You will curse me with every letter you set.”

“Oh, I’ve no doubt about that.”

Because he wanted to kiss her, he took her by the arms, plopped her on the stool, and spun her around to face the setup table so those dancing eyes wouldn’t tempt him. But then he ruined the noble gesture by standing right behind her, bracing his arms on the table on either side, and peering over her shoulder. And even he couldn’t convince himself he did so because that was the easiest way to demonstrate what to do.