Page 13 of Inventions of the Heart

CHAPTER

THREE

LIFEWAS MELANCHOLY AT THE RANCH,though Michelle was grateful for all the little ones. They brought cheer to the household.

Michelle was sitting on the settee in Zane’s office tending the three babies. Hannah, Melinda’s baby, was only a few months old, so she was in Michelle’s arms. The baby liked to lie on the floor kicking her feet, but Caroline tended to dance around, and falling onto a baby was a bad idea. Willa, the daughter of Heinrich and Gretel Steinmeyer, was crawling now and pulling herself up on anything she could reach. She held her own with Caroline, under close supervision, but Hannah didn’t stand a chance.

So Caroline danced, Willa crawled, and Hannah chewed on Michelle’s fingers. No teeth, so except for the soggy drool, Michelle didn’t mind. Michelle wasn’t as good at caring for the babies as Jilly. But Jilly was busy building cabins.

Harriet and Nora had announced their engagements, then promptly rode to town with their cowboys and came home as married women. Caught up in the romance of it all, SallyJo married just as quickly, and Melinda had confided to Michelle that she expected a proposal any day.

In addition to the line shacks at the far end of his ranch, Zane was building two cabins near his own home. Jilly was wrangling around for a fifth, and Zane didn’t seem overly opposed, just harassed at the sudden building boom.

“I’m starting my own town,” Zane muttered.

Michelle rolled her eyes. “You can afford it. Besides, it’s going to be better here for your hands, and for your own life, to have women about.” Michelle knew he was increasingly worried about the drought. Rain would make him a much more cheerful man.

“It’s all talk so far. I haven’t dug a single”—he glanced at the empty door—“ounce out of that rock.”

Michelle whispered, “If you’d let me manage your you-know-what, that would get me and Jilly out of the house. You’d have plenty of room in here.”

With Caroline toddling around the room, Michelle especially didn’t dare say the wordgold. The little girl repeated every word she heard.

“You’re not getting that job,” Zane said.

“You haven’t given it to anyone else yet.”

“I’m trying to find the right person.”

“Me.”

Zane glared at her.

He’d kissed her exactly once. And that had been weeks ago. The day she’d told him about the gold. He was excited and not in his right mind exactly, so she didn’t take it seriously. But she thought of it. Now and then, and now.

“At least the house has settled down some. I suppose Sally Jo and the Steinmeyers will move out soon, too.” As soon asthose houses were up. And the work was going fast. They might well be gone by the weekend.

Michelle felt a sudden weight on her shoulders. “Jilly and I should go, too. If you want us out now, we’ll go.”

“Where would you go?”

Michelle shrugged. She had no idea. “We had no plans when we set out, so we’re no worse off than we were before. We’ll just go. We’ll ... we’ll ... move to ... to...” She shrugged again. “San Francisco, I suppose.”

Except people knew them there. But if they rented humble rooms and lived quietly in a neighborhood far from where they’d grown up, they’d almost certainly not run into any friends they had in San Francisco.

Probably.

Not as much fun as running a gold mine, but maybe she could rent two humble rooms and turn one into a space for her inventions. Or, better yet, one humble room and one small warehouse where she could work on her inventions.

She had ideas for making train travel down steep mountains with tons of logs safer. She also had a keen interest in building a new kind of engine that had been written about but was still just a theory. Whoever perfected the theory would change the world.

Michelle kind of liked the idea of doing that.

She wasn’t sure what Jilly would do. No construction company in San Francisco would hire a woman. Maybe Jilly could find a library and read, study, and, oh yes, find a husband.

Laura had liked the idea of a husband.

Jilly dreaded it.

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