The Bad Luck Wedding Dress (9 page)

He gave her a sidelong look, waiting. When she nodded, he continued. “Well, throwing in with us would solve that particular problem. And considering the state your business is in, you should be grateful to have the work.”

The idea of charging his wife rent was bad enough, but the reference to Fortune’s Design poured salt into a wound. “Job?” She lifted her chin. “Well, I don’t doubt that marriage to you would be a job, but let me tell you right up front, Trace McBride,
no one
is going to make me close my business.”

“Marriage!” The word exploded from his mouth and his boots kicked up a small cloud of dust as he backed away from the threat. “Who the hell said anything about marriage?”

“You did,” she snapped.

“I did not,” he scoffed. “I never will. I’ll never marry again. The very idea makes me want to lose my dinner.” He marched the last few feet to the creek. Swiping two of the white cotton shifts from the branches of a bush, he reached for the third, then stopped dead cold. “Good God, Miss Fortune. Surely you didn’t think I was asking you to marry me!”

Lose his dinner at the thought of marrying her? Jenny almost swooned from the injury.

Thankfully, pride came to her rescue. “Of course not,” she jeered, sweeping Katrina’s little shift from beneath his outstretched hand. “I’d have to be a fool to think such nonsense. I’m simply trying to get you to make your point so that we can return to town. It’s been a tiring day, Mr. McBride. I’m ready to go home.”

“Oh? I thought I’d spelled it out, but maybe not.” He appeared both puzzled and relieved.

Foolish man.

“I’m offering you a position in my household, Miss Fortune. I want to hire you to be a substitute mother for my daughters. I want you to take them in hand and do all the mother things they are missing out on. Things like teaching them to sew. I want Emma, Maribeth, and Katrina to grow up to be ladies. Truth be told, I’m not having much luck teaching them myself.”

Heat stung her cheeks as embarrassment washed through her. How stupid of her to think of marriage; how mean of him to phrase his words and actions in such a way that led her toward that conclusion.

She began wringing the water from the shift, heedless of the fact that the cloth was nearly dry, and nearly a minute passed before she emphatically stated, “No.”

Turning around, she hurried up the path.

You can tie out bad luck by tying a string around a broom
.

CHAPTER 6

“HUH?” TRACE WATCHED HER flee, bewilderment washing over him. What the hell had happened? “Miss Fortune? Hold on there a minute, would you?”

She hiked up her skirt and began to run. Trace muttered a curse and followed. Twice he heard the rattle of gravel as her footing slipped, and he increased his speed fearing she’d fall and hurt herself. He caught up with her beside a bank of honeysuckle vines. “Slow down, there,” he said, grasping her arm.

She jerked, trying to pull away. “You have a lot of nerve, McBride. And quit manhandling me! Every time I turn around you are grabbing at me.” She waited, glaring up at him until he dropped her arm, then she scuttled beyond his reach.

Trace lifted an exasperated gaze to the heavens. How she could look both so wounded and so angry at the same time was beyond him. “Do you want to tell me what happened back there?”

“I turned down your job.”

“That much I figured,” he grumbled. Damn, but she looked pretty—all eating fire and spitting smoke. Her blue eyes burned like flames in a gas lamp; her cheeks glowed pink as a prairie sunset. Shutting his eyes, he dropped his chin to his chest.
Keep your mind on business, McBride
. Thoughts like that weren’t getting him anywhere he cared to be.

Inhaling deeply, he raked his fingers through his hair. Then, he lifted his head and pinned her with his gaze. “Why? Why did you turn it down? You didn’t give it a chance; you hardly heard me out.”

“I didn’t need to hear anymore, Mr. McBride. You managed to say plenty.”

If she lifted that chin any higher, she’d break her neck. “What’s the problem? I thought you liked my daughters.”

“I
do
like your daughters,” she stressed. “I like them well enough never to risk doing them harm by participating in this ridiculous scheme.”

“What do you mean, harm? As long as I am careful about the woman I choose, how the hell could I harm my girls by giving them a mother?”

“Mr. McBride.” She said his name like a curse. “You are missing a basic truth with this little plan of yours.”

Trace clenched his jaw. Maybe he’d been wrong about her. Maybe he didn’t want her around his girls after all. In a snide voice, he replied, “And what, pray tell, is that?”

The flame in her eyes flared hotter, and he spied the flex of tendons as she briefly clenched her fists. Apparently, the woman didn’t like snide.

Making an obvious effort to summon control, she spoke slowly and evenly. “I’ll do my best to explain it to you. The way I understand it, you believe that the reason your girls have committed ample mischief to be dubbed the McBride Menaces by the people of Fort Worth is because they don’t have sufficient womanly influence in their lives. Am I correct?”

“That’s right. They need a mother’s influence.”

She nodded. “So, the way I understand your proposition, you want me to provide that influence by fulfilling such a role.”

“Yes. Exactly.” Trace folded his arms. “The arrangement would benefit us both. I tried to be kind about all that bad luck business, but the truth of the matter is, Fortune’s Design is obviously on a fast slide downward. Until the rumors die away, you’ll have a hard time keeping the door open. If you come to work for me, I’ll even allow you to sew a little on the side, if you’d like. Make a little extra income.”

“You’d
allow
me?” she said, her voice rising in a squeak.

“Sure. I don’t see what it would hurt. I don’t believe you’d neglect the girls. Face it, you need me and I need you. It’d be foolish not to help each other out.”

She closed her eyes. “What is foolish, McBride, is your idea that I’d give up my business, not to mention the notion that it is possible to hire a mother.”

“Now Miss Fortune. Jenny—” Trace began.

Shaking her head, she glanced his way. “Let me explain, at least about your inaccurate perceptions of motherhood.” She reached for a honeysuckle blossom, plucked it from the vine, then twirled it between her fingers as she spoke. “I spent half my childhood physically apart from my mother, and no matter how wonderful my father’s hired help, not a one of them came close to duplicating the relationship I shared with Monique. You see, I could teach your girls to sew. I could teach them manners and deportment and any other feminine skill you’d like them to learn. But those things do not make a mother.”

She tossed the blossom to the ground and said flatly, “You cannot buy love, McBride. You cannot hire someone to love your daughters as a mother would. Love is a gift that comes from the heart, freely given. You are wrong to try and purchase it.”

Her words pricked his skin, giving rise to defensiveness. He snapped, “Are my children so unlovable?”

“Of course not. I could easily love your girls. I’m halfway there already. But can’t you see the potential harm your plan might cause, to both me and the children?”

He gawked at her. “No. No, I can’t. Seems to me that we’d all win, unless you spend all day acting snippy like you are now, that is.”

She gave him a killing glance, then promptly looked through the trees where the girls were playing. “All right, McBride, let’s just say for the sake of argument that I went along with your notion and gave your daughters my love. Say I played the mother’s role. What happens when you give them the real thing? What happens when you bring home a wife?”

It was a verbal punch to the gut. Trace snapped his reply. “I told you I’ll never marry again!”

Her wan, weary smile presaged her words. “I’ve heard it before. My father said the same thing each time he divorced my mother. At least I was lucky in that he chose my mother to remarry time and again. Had each of his marriages been to a different woman, I could have had up to four mothers by now. Imagine that.”

“Look, Miss Fortune. I’ll be damned if I marry again once, much less four times. We’re not talking about the same thing here.”

“Yes, we are. Mothers are not interchangeable, Mr. McBride. You cannot buy one like a new bonnet or rid yourself of one like an old shoe.”

“You want to bet on that?” The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them. It didn’t matter though. She had no way of knowing the impetus behind the words.

After giving him a look of pure disdain, the dressmaker said, “If you want your girls to enjoy the advantages of having a loving mother in their lives, I suggest you provide for them in the normal manner. Get married. Give them a mother who can’t be fired or replaced, short of divorce.”

Trace gazed back toward the campsite where his daughters waited. “Or death,” he murmured softly.

Jenny’s look was sharp, but compassionate. “I know you want what is best for your girls, but this idea of yours isn’t it. Those girls want and need a permanent tie. I can’t be that for them.”

“You can if you’ll only allow it.”

She shook her head. “Even though you might have sworn off marriage, I have not. I like to believe that someday I’ll meet a man and fall in love. What happens then if he wants to move away? Are you going to allow your daughters to come with me?”

“Of course not.”

“You need a permanent tie, Mr. McBride. Get married. That’s the way to give your children a mother.” She took a few steps up the path, then glanced back over her shoulder to say, “It’s getting late. Take me home, please. All in all it’s been an enjoyable day, and I thank you for including me.”

“Can’t we just talk—?”

“I think I’ve made myself perfectly clear. I will not be a party to such an ill-conceived notion. Not now, or ever.”

Trace yanked a sprig of honeysuckle from the vine. What did he do now? How could he convince her she was wrong?

He tried the only thing he could think of. “I’ll let you keep Fortune’s Design if you want,” he called after her. “I’ll even advance you some cash to tide you over. How about it?”

Miss Fortune didn’t reply.

JENNY AND the girls chatted amiably on the ride back to town. Trace was unusually quiet. As he pulled the horses to a halt in front of the dressmaker’s cottage on a quiet residential street not far from downtown Fort Worth, he bade the girls wait while he escorted Miss Fortune to her door.

“No need to do that, Mr. McBride,” Jenny said hastily. Despite her protest, he was there to assist her from the carriage.

“I may be a saloonkeeper, but I was raised a gentleman, ma’am.” With a bow of his head, he gestured toward the walk. Jenny gave a little shrug, then proceeded up the path.

Trace’s gaze gravitated to her dress below the waist, making a lie of his claim to gentlemanly behavior, as he scrutinized the swish of her skirts up the porch steps. Watching her backside was getting to be a habit, he silently acknowledged.

Then Jenny pulled up short. “Oh, no. Not again.”

He followed the path of her gaze, and a curse burst from his lips. A dress form draped in white linen hung by a hangman’s noose from a beam on the right side of the porch. Light glinted off the surface of the handles of a pair of scissors protruding from the figure. A wet red stain streaked the white fabric. A woman’s nightgown, Trace realized. “Go back to the wagon, Jenny. Get the girls and head over to my place.”

She shook her head, pushing around him to approach the dangling obscenity, lifting a finger to touch the splotch of color. “It’s from the shop.” In her trembling voice, Trace heard fear, but also a trace of anger. “The gown is mine. They’ve been in my home, too.” Bringing her hand to her nose, she sniffed. “Paint. It’s only paint.”

Trace’s boots scuffed the porch as he reached for her arm, tugging her away. “I’ll check it out. Go on, Jenny, go on back to the wagon.”

“No,” she said flatly. “This is my house. My concern. A lamp is on next door at the Littys’. Send the girls over there. Mary will gladly keep an eye on them.”

“You’re not going in there. Whoever did this may still be inside!”

She spared him a glance. “Whoever did this is gone. I can feel it. Take care of the girls and I’ll wait for you. But only for a minute.”

Cursing beneath his breath, Trace dashed for the wagon, saw his daughters safely next door, then hurried back to Jenny. As he sprinted up the front walk, she marched into the house, Trace right on her heels.

He damn near ran over her, so abruptly had she stopped.

Jenny moaned softly. Trace whispered, “Sonofabitch.”

Furniture in the parlor had been overturned, books and papers lay strewn across the floor. Leaving her standing dumbstruck in the parlor, he moved to search the premises. The tiny kitchen showed similar signs of abuse as did a bedroom she apparently used as a sewing room.

He assumed the last room must be her bedroom. Walking on near silent feet, he approached the open doorway. At first glance, all he noticed was the pool of red.

The sight struck a chord deep within him. He remembered another night and another room. Only that night, the pools of red had not been paint, but blood. Real blood. His wife’s blood. “Good Lord, lady,” he said, his voice a croak. “What sort of trouble are you in?”

THE FOLLOWING morning Jenny woke with the roosters. She rose from her bed filled with purpose, ready to follow through with the decision she’d made last night while cleaning her home, mopping up and throwing out reminders of her unwelcome visitor.

She’d be darned if she’d let this incident frighten her or cause her to cower in any way at all. With dress orders to solicit and a business to save, she had no time for more of these upsetting pranks. Big Jack could take his silly superstitions and feed them to his precious cows for all she cared.

And she intended to tell him just that.

Jenny washed and dressed and left her house. The weather this first week of September could be summed up in a word—blistering. With a glance toward the cloudless sky, she snapped open her parasol and marched toward downtown.

On this first Monday of the month, she had every confidence she’d find Big Jack Bailey at the Tivoli Restaurant near the courthouse. The city council was scheduled to meet today at noon. As a rule, all issues to be voted on later that day were decided over breakfast at the Tivoli by a handful of Fort Worth’s most powerful citizens. Big Jack counted himself among their number.

Jenny’s anger was a powerful force itself. Last night’s shenanigans, combined with her upset over Trace McBride’s proposition, had pushed it past its limits. She couldn’t do anything about McBride, but she could darn well have a chat with Big Jack. She should have confronted the rancher weeks ago when the rumors first surfaced. She should have taken that very first threatening note and slapped his face with it.

Town was bustling this morning. Hammers pounded at a new building going up on Seventh Street. Wagons rattled by filled with freight. A young boy on his way to school accidently bumped Jenny with his lunch pail. Smiling, she accepted his polite apology and thought of the McBride girls. Yesterday Maribeth had glumly informed her that she and her sisters were due to start at Blackstone Academy today.

She wondered if Miss Blackstone was ready for the McBride Menaces.

Eyeing the Tivoli Restaurant sign, she wondered if Big Jack Bailey was ready for Jenny Fortune.

Peering through the plate-glass window, Jenny spotted Bailey, the mayor, two of Fort Worth’s most prominent attorneys, and three of its most successful businessmen at a large rectangular table near the back of the restaurant. She took a deep, fortifying breath then walked inside.

The room smelled of fried eggs and Cuban cigars. Jenny smothered her reaction to the odor and greeted each man politely by name. Turning toward a scowling Jack Bailey, she said, “I’m sorry to interrupt, but may I have just a few moments of your time?”

Cold gray eyes glared from beneath bushy salt-and- pepper eyebrows. “What for?”

“I’d prefer to explain to you in private.”

He shook his head. “No, I’m doing business here. I don’t—”

“Aw, go ahead, Big Jack,” one of the attorneys said. “See what the little lady wants.”

The little lady would like to tell you off for calling her a little lady, Jenny thought. Instead she offered a smile as sweet as spun sugar and waited silently for Big Jack Bailey to lumber to his feet.