Page 35 of My Heart Will Find You

Max closed his eyes for a moment.Does everyone in town know everything about me?“Come work for me.”

“Wrangling?” He held up his hands. “I’m old and soft. I can’t—”

“Accounting. Add up things. Put it all in books. I had a man for a while but he ran off with—”

“Parmelia. I married them, remember?”

“I’m surprised you do. You were drunk.”

The preacher grimaced. “You say the same words a hundred times and see if you don’t need whiskey to fortify you.”

“You can’t drink at my house.”

“Ah right. Your precious little sister, the one nobody sees. Except the dressmaker. Who does she wear all that silk for? I heard your men—” He cut off at the younger man’s look.

Max stood up. “If you want the job, show up tomorrow morning at eight. Clean body, shaved, and sober. If I even smell beer on you, you’re out.”

“That church has a hold over me.” He sighed. “Takes my time.”

“Stay out of the bars and you can do both of them.” Max snorted. “Or maybe my wife can fix it. She seems to have a plan for everybody.” He put on his hat. “Clean and sober, got it?”

The preacher pushed his full glass away, then gave a nod. He looked serious. “I’ll be there. Tell your wife that...” He didn’t seem to know how to finish.

“You tell her. She doesn’t like talking to me.”

Max left the bar. Outside, he didn’t have to pull out his pocket watch to know it hadn’t been an hour yet. It was too early to go back to see the lawyer. The whiskey had elevated his mood a bit. Down the street was the Red Dog, and he knew that if he went there he’d be welcomed. There’d be laughter. He took four steps in that direction, then the sign for the dressmaker seemed to flash in his face. Hadn’t Alice said something about her?

He was lying to himself. He knew exactly what his sister had said. She’d told him he had to get his wife some new clothes. “She dresses like a middle-aged schoolteacher,” Alice said.

“She isn’t a schoolteacher,” Max shot back, and was given one of Alice’s looks that made him shut up.

Max went into the dressmaker’s shop. Thirty minutes later, he walked out feeling like he wanted more whiskey. How does a man answer questions about fabric and lace, and necklines and sizes? He kept telling her she had to go to his house, but she wouldn’t stop asking questions. And then there was the tea and little pink cakes.

When Max began to think he was never going to escape, the woman shooed him out, saying she had to get to work. Relieved, he headed toward the lawyer’s office.

Max was only steps away from the stairs leading up to the lawyer’s office and thinking hard.

How did she know about the preacher and numbers? Did the man give some hint when he was marrying them?

Maybe because he was preoccupied with his thoughts he didn’t see the danger lurking in the shadows of the alleyway. Before he could protect himself, he was ambushed. As he was pulled out of the light by two strong hands, he nearly fell.

In the next second, he was pushed up against the wall, hands placed firmly on his chest, and he was being kissed.

He pushed Cornelia away. “You can’t do that.”

“Because you’re married now?” Her eyes filled with anger, something he was used to, but then they softened with tears. Cornelia was a woman so beautiful that she could silence a roomful of people when she entered. Cornelia with tears could melt stone.

When she saw that her tears changed his attitude, she put her hands back on his chest. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I drove you to someone else, but I didn’t mean to. You don’t know how much I love you. It makes me do things I wouldn’t normally do.”

He put his hands on her shoulders and moved her to arm’s length. “We can’t do this. I have another life now.”

“With her?” The tears were gone. “You already care for her that much? Alice said—”

“Leave her out of this.” He took a breath to regain his composure. “You know you and I could never be together. We fight all the time. I never got any work done.”

She gave him a look through her lashes. “When you were with me, you didn’t havetimefor work.”

“I was well aware of that.” He wasn’t referring to the same thing she was.

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