Into the Light (20 page)

A
LONE IN THE
office the Monday after the difficulty with Mrs. Snopes, Deborah stopped typing and rose from the desk when the front door opened and the bell gave a polite jingle. Her breath caught in her throat at the sight of the small, fragile-looking woman on the other side of the counter.

Snowy white hair, lined skin, and a slight tremble in the hand on the counter. Deborah ignored the signs of age and concentrated on the shrewd gray eyes assessing her from underneath the brim of a stylish hat.

“Mrs. Tindell, how nice to see you. I’m the only one in the office at the moment. May I help you?”

The older woman nodded acknowledgment of the greeting. “I’d like to arrange for someone from the paper to attend the welcome home celebration I’m holding for my granddaughter Caroline. She’s returning from a European tour next week.”

Deborah took a deep breath, held it, let it out slowly. “We’d be happy to do that, Mrs. Tindell. You understand I will be the one attending and writing about the event for the paper?”

“I do.” The knowing gaze held amusement. “Unlike others in this town, I have no objection to young ladies working in respectable situations if it suits them. I employed your cousin as my housekeeper some years ago, you know. She was Mrs. Norah Hawkins then.”

“Of course. She told me about it herself.”

“A strong-minded young woman. She left my employ rather than give up the man who became her husband, but I suppose time proved her right. She has tamed him, and so far as I know she’s been happy.”

Deborah strangled laughter inside but couldn’t suppress a wide smile. “I don’t believe she ever tried to tame him, Mrs. Tindell. I doubt if anyone could change Cousin Caleb. Maybe that’s why he thinks the world of her.”

“As you say.”

Mrs. Tindell left, a faint wisp of expensive perfume hanging in the air after her.

“Can you believe it?” Deborah asked Trey when he arrived. “She came in person.”

“Of course, I can,” he said, hanging his coat by the door. “Enlisting the newspaper on the Tindell side in the Tindell–Snopes war for social preeminence is too important to leave to minions. Mrs. Snopes ought to surrender right now. She hasn’t got a chance, and we have just been blessed by the grande dame of Hubbell.”

He grabbed Deborah and waltzed her around the counter, leaving her breathless and flushed. If Aunt Em had ever corralled someone like Trey at dances....

Oh, yes, more peaks than valleys.

B
Y MID-
D
ECEMBER
T
REY
no longer worried about the direction he had taken the
Herald
. Circulation had increased, so had advertisements, which were the financial life blood of the paper. Deborah’s amusing, quirky way of describing town events appealed to even those her reports tweaked.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather stay here and do your write-up on the Christmas Pageant?” he asked her for the third time. “It’s bitter out there, and the streets are sloppy.”

Deborah swung her scarf around, bundling up to her eyebrows, and gave him a muffled third refusal to trade desk duty and stay inside and warm. “No, Mrs. Tindell’s annual descent on the deserving poor awaits.”

Trey watched her leave, watched her through the front window until she disappeared before returning to his own story on the town’s proposed celebrations of not only the new year, but the new century.

The bell on the door sounded.

“Jamie!” They met at the end of the counter, hugging and pounding each other on the shoulders. “So you made it home for Christmas. Where’s Nolan?”

“He’s home hugging Maura, who’s a prettier armful than you are. She’s expecting. He’s going to be a father, and I’m going to be an uncle.”

“Congratulations. I already am an uncle. Webster Van Cleve Forbes. Maybe I’ll even meet him some day.”

Jamie just shook his head. “You look good, and you bounced out of that chair faster than I could. You can’t be spending every day behind a desk.”

“I’m still walking a couple of miles around town every day, at least when it’s not cold enough to freeze me mid-stride, and until I hire someone else to throw bundles of paper around, I’ll stay in shape. So where are these automobiles? Why don’t I see one out in the street? Did you leave them all at the train depot?”

Jamie leaned on the counter, his face grave. “Well, now, that’s a little problem. There are no automobiles.”

“But you bought four. Your letter said two Runabouts and two Victorias.”

“We don’t have any.”

“They were stolen? How could someone steal four of those things? Where did you....” Trey stopped as Jamie’s face changed to a big grin.

“Sold. We sold them all before we crossed the Mississippi.”

Trey’s mouth had fallen open. He closed it with a snap. “Back East? You sold them rather than bring them out here after all?”

“We loaded them on the train and got as far as Pennsylvania. We had to wait a day there — a wreck on the track shut things down in all directions. So we got off and started talking to people in the town there, and when they heard we had motor vehicles, they wanted to see them. You know how Nolan is. He couldn’t unload one to show off fast enough, and damned if some fellow who owned half the town didn’t want to buy it.”

“You’re making that up.”

“So we got the idea, Nolan and I, that maybe traveling straight through wasn’t the smartest thing to do. After that we stopped for a day in every likely place, and we sold them all. I know you never believed we could sell a one, but the fact is we did it, and the profit is more than either of us could make in a year at the mill.”

Trey said a word he didn’t use too often.

“Exactly. We already wired an order for five more, and we’re going back after Christmas. Trey, they let us help build those things. Five more and Nolan will be able to take one apart and put it back together himself. Me, I’d rather keep my hands clean and do the selling, but I know what goes where and can fix most things in a pinch. Speaking of clean hands....” He gave Trey’s hands a hard look.

“Ink,” Trey said vaguely. “You didn’t take promissory notes for them, did you?”

“Were we born yesterday? We did not.”

It finally sank in. “So I’m never going to see one of these things? You’ll keep getting them back there and selling them before you make it home?”

“We’re thinking next time we’ll stop trying after three and bring two here. If no one in Hubbell wants them, at least we know what to do.”

“I’m still having trouble believing it.”

“You’re a heathen in every way. Why would anyone want to keep a horse when a nice little horseless carriage can sit in the barn without eating its head off or needing its shit shoveled? Now let’s get out of here. I’ll buy you a drink, or dinner, or a drink and dinner.”

Trey shook his head. “How about tonight? It’s my very own policy that the office is open every weekday. I can’t leave until Deborah gets back. Peter’s visiting his youngest son.”

Jamie straightened and folded his arms across his chest. “Deborah is it now? That would be Miss Deborah Sutton? Why would we be waiting for a lady you decided to forget about before I left? Was that in a letter that never made it all the way back East?”

Trey examined the black rims on his cuticles. “It’s a long story.”

“Is it now. A whiskey story, I suppose. Since you can’t leave until Miss Deborah Sutton returns, tell me you have a bottle stashed somewhere around.”

“I don’t, but I know where Peter keeps his, and I can buy him another bottle. Drag a chair from the back room out here, and I’ll find glasses.”

Once they’d settled at the desk, drinks at hand, Trey explained about the Richmonds. “So I wanted someone who could write in a way that appeals to female readers the way Mrs. Richmond did.”

“And sneaky Miss Sutton popped right into your mind.”

“She’s not sneaky,” Trey said irritably. “I wanted to help her stop hiding out on that farm and pretending to be an old maid. She’s twenty-five for Heaven’s sake.”

“You wanted to help her.”

“Yes, and I was right. She’d good at the job, and she’s....”
Intelligent, beautiful, clever, exquisite, thoughtful, desirable.

“So she’s turned from an odd stick into the kind of woman you want who will throw herself in your arms, kiss you in front of the whole town, and laugh.”

“I wish I’d never told you about that,” Trey said, tossing down the last of his drink and pouring more. “No. She’s never going to be that woman.”

“Then why are you toying with her? Walk on by and find one who will be.”

“I can’t. It’s like she’s a magnet, and my bones are all iron. How do you do it? How can you just make up your mind to spend time with a woman who gets your blood going, get to know her, and walk away because she’s not Catholic or not — whatever.”

“They all get my blood going. Women are made that way, God bless ’em. Marrying, children, it takes more than a romp in a bed.”

“I know that, but I can’t stop thinking about her, thinking maybe....”

“Seduce her then. Scratch that itch a few times and it will go away. You know damn well if you marry her, she’ll make you miserable.”

Trey slammed his glass down. “Don’t ever talk about her like that again. I didn’t take it from my father, and I’m not taking it from you.”

Jamie nodded and got to his feet. “Sure then. We’ll have that dinner another time.”

S
O WHAT TIME
is he coming by for you tonight?” Judith asked, leaning over to taste the stew simmering on the stove.

“You make it sound as if we go somewhere together every night,” Deborah said.

“Do I? I suppose it only seems that way when you’re watching someone else courting.”

“We’re not courting!”

“Of course you are. Everyone in town knows it, so you may as well stop pretending it has anything to do with newspaper reporting.”

“Stop doing that with your eyebrows! It’s, it’s unseemly. We’re going to the theater to see
Shenandoah
, and you can read a report on what we see in next week’s paper.”

“Calm down. I’m not accusing you of skipping the play and spooning in some corner all night. I know you’re going to see the play, and I know you’ll write about it.”

“We’ll work together on the review in the paper. If he expected me to go to the theater alone at night, you’d bar the door.”

“Of course we would,” Judith said soothingly. “And since the two of you have to bear each other’s company, you might as well eat caviar at the hotel instead of stew here.”

“They don’t serve caviar!”

“Deborah,” Judith said in that irritating, patient voice she used on the children, “even if you don’t know what’s written all over your face every time you look at him, you can’t be blind to what’s all over his face every time he looks at you. The two of you might as well hold up signs. Stop being silly. You’re courting.”

“No! We can’t be. He can’t.... I can’t....”

“Is everything all right here?” William stood in the doorway, concern on his blunt-featured face. The children ran by him to Judith, gave Deborah baleful glares, and buried their faces in their mother’s skirts.

Judith waved her soup-tasting spoon. “Yes, we’re all right. Deborah is just being Deborah.”

Deborah drew breath to argue further, looked at the children, and let it go just as a knock sounded on the front door.

“I’ll let him in,” William said.

Not
I’ll see who’s there,
or
I wonder who that could be
, but
I’ll let him in.

Deborah ignored her sister and stalked off to get her coat.

D
EBORAH’S HEART BEAT
a little faster when she took Trey’s arm and walked down the street beside him. The first time she’d done it, she felt strong, confident. Knowing the heavy wool of both their coats, her dress, his jacket, and a few more layers were between the strength and warmth of his arm and her own helped.

At least that’s what she told herself the first time she realized she was leaning into him instead of gritting her teeth and enduring the touch the way she did when she had to dance with every clod Aunt Em could pressure into asking.

Tonight Judith’s words echoed in her head, and the small pleasure of walking with him was gone. Courting. Judith was growing into as much of a matchmaker as Aunt Em and nursing ridiculous notions, just like Aunt Em. He was kind, that’s all. Generous.

She made small agreeing sounds to Trey’s conversation about his friend’s successful automobile sales, lost in her own thoughts

The First Street Hotel didn’t offer caviar, which was just as well. Deborah would have been as unable to taste that as the beef she ordered.

Trey’s expression
did
seem particularly intent. She couldn’t be looking at him like that. Except she couldn’t look away, and heat flushed through every part of her, frightening heat spreading to frightening places.

“Have I got ink on my face?”

“No, of course not. You look fine.”

Impossibly handsome. Broad forehead, high cheekbones that no longer angled sharply under his skin now that he’d put on weight, straight nose, a little long maybe, with one side of the bridge just slightly higher than the other. Everyone said he looked like his mother, and Caleb had described Mrs. Van Cleve’s chin as pointy, but Trey’s wasn’t pointy, just tapered, just right.

He forked a bite of his own roast beef and chewed. Deborah forced herself to stop staring at his mouth, his lips, which were — perfect. Not wide, not thin, distinctly outlined.

Her corset was too tight, her breathing quick. Trey Van Cleve was a man any woman would want. Except one who couldn’t. Shouldn’t.

His head tipped to one side, and he studied her as if he could read her thoughts, his eyes dark in the restaurant light. “We’d better hurry. Can’t miss the first act.”

Deborah nodded and stopped pushing her food around on the plate. He didn’t need her to attend nighttime events. She would tell him they couldn’t do this any more. After the play.