A Bride in Store (20 page)

“There were plenty of frilly ladies to distract a man’s attention there. Here . . . well, fewer ladies are gussied up in feathers and ruffles and fringe like back home.”

“So why not wear something more becoming now?” He’d tried banishing the vision of Eliza in the churchyard in her silk dress for days.

“I’m not comfortable in fancy dresses.”

“But you were breathtaking in your wedding dress—with those ruffles and all that . . .” He stopped talking when her face fell.

His palms hovered in midair, where he’d unconsciously undulated his hands, mimicking her curvy form. He dropped his arms, but she’d already retreated toward the door.

“I believe I’ll visit Mrs. Graves now, and while your insight to offer my services to businesses is a good one, I shouldn’t work for
you.” She backed away, bumping against the door, then turned the doorknob behind her. “I’m very sorry. Good day.”

He kicked the counter once she disappeared from sight. What an idiot. That’s what he got for letting himself fall asleep the last few nights imagining her in that gown.

Walking toward him.

But if she didn’t walk toward
him
, how long until another man met her beside the pulpit? Single women were rare in Salt Flatts—too many men needed a wife, and Eliza would break under the constant assault of wooing and the empty pockets housekeeping jobs wouldn’t fill.

Could he, or rather should he, try to win her? Was that what all his wayward thoughts were leading to? Matrimony?

He wouldn’t consider offering his hand or the store until Axel was caught and convicted. For how could he woo Eliza if his friend might return with evidence to prove his innocence—as unlikely as that would be? How would Axel’s criminal activities affect the store once caught? She’d said she didn’t want this store anymore—he couldn’t blame her after what happened—but maybe with time she’d change her mind.

Yet all the reasons that had kept him from stopping her wedding were still valid. And even if she were willing to completely give up owning a store, he’d postponed marrying Nancy until after he’d gone to school—for how could he provide and care for a wife while spending every waking minute trying to read and keep up with his studies?

Will turned at the sound of boot steps on the front porch. He saw the sheriff walk up to the door and then stop. Will beckoned him in.

Once inside, Sheriff Quade cleared his throat and scratched at the back of his head. “Good afternoon, William.”

Will sat on the counter, shoulders slumped. “I suppose you aren’t here to buy anything either?”

“Business that bad?”

“Afraid so.”

The man grimaced. “I feel like scum coming here while you’re struggling, but I’ve got to do my duty.”

His duty? Could the week get any worse?

“I need to forewarn you.”

“Axel’s been caught?” Wouldn’t that be a good thing?

He shook his head. “I’ve talked to the lawmen in the surrounding counties, and Axel’s description fits a man who’s been aiding the Waller gang recently. Axel’s mother’s assertion that Miss Cantrell is mistaken doesn’t appear to hold water.”

Will licked his lips. “I’ve been mulling over the changes in him over the past several months. His disappearances and preoccupations . . . Illegal activity makes perfect sense. I’m a fool for not seeing it earlier.”

“Well,” the man said, his jaw working, “I’m afraid you might not feel any smarter once I tell you why I’ve come.” He put his hands behind his back and looked him square in the eye. “Did you hire a lawyer when you started this business?”

What did that have to do with anything? “No. Axel already had the store running. I just joined in.”

“Nothing written?”

“No.” William’s heart threatened to leave his chest.

“That’s what I was afraid of. Unless you have a good contract drawn up protecting your assets in the company, once I find Axel and the judge hands down a conviction, if he can’t produce the goods the gang stole, they’ll require restitution.”

“But we’ve rarely made a profit—we don’t have much.”

“And so, the judge will ask me to liquidate his assets.” He gave Will the look people gave widows at funerals. “Any profit from the sale of this store would be used to cover what the Waller gang has stolen.”

“He shouldn’t be responsible for the entire gang’s thefts.”

“Maybe so, but people are mad. So the judge ain’t going to be too particular about that. He’ll want to return as much of the victims’ money as possible.”

“What about me?” His arms went numb.

“Off the record, I’d put what money I could in your personal bank account, which I couldn’t touch. Hire a lawyer to see if there’s some way to sue Axel for the store. Though if you have no written agreement . . . and if the judge suspects you might be in cahoots with Axel, like some others in town, he might put an injunction on any auction or sale you might attempt anyway. . . .” The sheriff frowned. “Well, I’m sure a lawyer could help you figure things out better than I could.”

Right, a lawyer who’d want money. Of which he had none. Will rubbed his temples.

Sheriff Quade slipped his hat up an inch to scratch at his hairline. “I hope for your sake Axel gives up the stolen goods—if any’s left. Otherwise, I’m afraid the Waller gang’s victims won’t be the only ones mourning what Axel’s stolen from them.”

Will couldn’t muster a good-bye as the sheriff took his leave.

Sometimes dreams didn’t just die. Sometimes they were annihilated.

Chapter 14

The morning sunlight pierced through Will’s eyelids, and he moaned, pulling at the covers to burrow deeper. The sound of paper sloughing onto the floor jolted him awake. He slapped his hand onto the pile spread atop his blanket, but most of the pages fanned out across the floor anyway.

Hoping to disperse the fuzziness in his head, he rubbed his temples. But reading all night, especially when words danced in dim candlelight, hadn’t helped the headache the sheriff had left him with. Will had searched through Axel’s papers for anything he might have written that could prove Will was a partner and not an employee, and then he’d stumbled across Eliza’s letters to Axel.

He should have retied the bundle to give to Eliza, but he figured he might find some clues to Axel’s whereabouts.

An excuse, of course. But still, he hoped he might find something.

And he had. Every single business idea Axel had passed off as his own was hers, though that shouldn’t have surprised him. Her ideas to improve the business went beyond what Axel had tried to implement.

After telling him she didn’t want a men’s store yesterday, she’d mentioned somebody named Woolworth. Hadn’t she said that
name the day he’d stitched her cheek? Eliza would run an amazing store if given a clean slate.

He scratched his scalp and yawned. Since the sun was so bright in the solitary window, he should’ve already flipped over the Open sign, but why bother? He had to carry on, of course, but the futility reminded him of holding his dead little sister and later watching her twin struggle to crawl and walk.

Leaning forward on his narrow tick bed, he held his head in his hands and rubbed the sleepiness from his eyes.

When he’d gone to the bank for a loan three years ago, Mr. Raymond had told him their venture would end badly. At the time, Will hadn’t believed the banker could judge his capabilities from a fifteen-minute interview, but the man had been right to deny them a loan—he and Axel hadn’t had a business plan nearly as well thought out as what Eliza had hastily penned in her letters.

If Eliza had petitioned Mr. Raymond on their behalf, she might have convinced the tight-fisted banker to believe in them.
Her
business plans would have won him over, and—

Will slapped his knees. Mr. Raymond would surely help her. Will rushed to the water basin, washed, and put on his least wrinkled coat. As he exited the front of the store, he wasn’t surprised that no one waited outside the door. After locking the door and stepping onto Main Street, he tipped his hat at a few early-morning pedestrians and forced himself to smile at those who’d shunned his store since Axel’s disappearance.

His steps slowed before he entered Salt Flatts Savings and Loans after crossing Main. Admitting that Mr. Raymond had been right would be easy, considering the mess the store was in. He’d have to be full of himself to believe otherwise. Though if Mr. Raymond agreed to his proposal, he’d be shooting himself in the foot.

He rested his hand on the door handle but didn’t push the lever. This wouldn’t hurt much more than waiting for some judge to
strip the store away from him. Forging into the dry air of the bank foyer, he glanced toward the caged-in teller counter, but no one stood behind the bars.

“I’ll be there in a moment!” Mr. Raymond’s voice called from his office, followed by the sound of shuffling papers and a chair scraping across the floor.

Will walked straight over. They ought to discuss this in the office anyway. “I’ll come to you.”

Hugh Raymond looked over his glasses as Will stepped inside the handsomely furnished office. “Ah, Mr. Stanton. I figured I might see you after my conversation with the sheriff yesterday.”

Will held his palms out. “Can you do anything to help?”

“I’m afraid I wouldn’t touch you or anything you owned with a ten-foot pole right now.” The older man’s upper lip twitched. “Probably not what you wanted to hear, but beating about the bush wastes time.”

“I don’t expect anything less from you, Mr. Raymond.” How many times had he seethed over the banker’s prediction that they would fail? Yet he’d barreled headlong into trouble with Axel in an attempt to prove the man wrong. “Hopefully, I’ve matured enough these past three years for you to hear me out, though.”

Hugh pointed to a fancy leather seat and waited until Will sat before returning to his chair behind his massive mahogany desk. “I don’t turn people away before they’ve spoken. I may not run a charity, as so many of you young’uns think I do, but I’m respectful enough to listen.”

“I didn’t doubt that, sir.” Will tried to settle into the seat, but the cushion proved stiffer than it looked. He gave up being comfortable and scooted to the edge, closing the gap between them. “I suppose the sheriff told you everything.”

Hugh shrugged and nodded at the same time. “Most likely.”

“And I assume Axel’s savings are in this bank.”

“Yes.”

“Could you tell me whether or not there’s enough in his account to save the business if indeed he’s caught and convicted?”

“I’m afraid I can’t disclose that information.” Hugh shook his head longer than necessary, keeping his gaze firmly on Will.

So that was a no.

He tried not to slump. He’d suspected as much. “I see.”

“Look, son. I’d suggest you hire a lawyer, because unless you’ve invented an instrument every doctor around the nation will salivate over, I doubt you’ve got anything with which I’ll want to involve myself. Your business will likely be swallowed up upon Axel’s probable conviction.”

“I’m afraid my herbal remedies won’t tempt anyone except midwives and country doctors.”

He’d have to consult a lawyer, but did he have enough money? Was an auction worth the effort? And if he started whatever litigation a lawyer recommended and lost . . . how could he cover the expense?

Hugh leaned back in his chair and placed an ankle on his knee. “When you cured my brother’s fever after Dr. Forsythe hadn’t any luck, I told my wife you should forget clerking and go to school—”

“Yet you didn’t offer to sponsor me.”

The man shrugged one shoulder. “Life is tough.”

The townsfolk often said clay clogged the banker’s veins. Seems he’d have to agree. “You offer no charity, yet you advise me to enter a profession where charity is expected. What kind of doctor wouldn’t help a man on his deathbed despite his empty pockets? Dr. Forsythe usually insists on cash, yet even he will accept a half a hog or a pail of stew if that’s all his patients have.”

“That only proves you two are a different breed than I.”

Will scowled. “Dr. Forsythe and I are nowhere near the same kind of man.”

“No, you’re better.” Hugh scooted closer to his desk, grabbed
a pen, and laid a hand on a stack of papers, signaling an end to the conversation.

But Will wasn’t there for himself. “Thanks, but I haven’t told you why I’m here yet.”

“If you came for financial advice regarding Mr. Langston—I hope you caught my hint about his assets.”

“I did, but I’m here on behalf of another.”

“Why isn’t he here, then?”

“Because if
she’s
heard anything about you, I doubt she’d bother.”

And because she wasn’t in her right mind at the moment, though he wouldn’t share that with the banker.

“A woman? What could she want from me?”

“What any man would. A chance for her ideas to be judged on their merit rather than her lack of connections, capital, or how she looks. I have no doubt if you listened to her business plans without prejudice—”

“I’m sorry, son—” he held out his hand, a sigh escaping—“but how would you know what makes a business plan good or bad?”

“Oh, I balked at some of her ideas, because you’re right, I don’t know a good plan when I see one. But I just learned every idea Axel implemented that gave us any success came from her. She’s had years of experience, and her last store appraised for forty thousand dollars.”

The man’s eyebrows raised, and he leaned against his chair, steepling his hands. “What does a woman with forty thousand dollars need with my assistance?”

“Unfortunately, her father gave the store to her brother, who’d never done much more than sweep, and her fiancé robbed her on the train here.”

“Mr. Langston’s almost bride?” The man sneered. “A woman with judgment that poor doesn’t generate esteem.”

He wouldn’t let Hugh sidetrack him. “Look, has Eliza Cantrell come to talk to you about cleaning the bank?”

“Not that I know of.”

“When she does, would you mind asking about her original plans when she came to town? Get her talking about her dream of store ownership and see if you aren’t impressed yourself. You said you’re willing to hear people out, and that’s all I ask.”