The Lawman Takes A Wife. Anne Avery

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ Sheriff.” She slid her hand free, palm tingling from the contact. “We’re glad to have you here at last.”

      “You’ve had trouble?” The question came too quickly, as if he’d had it prepared beforehand.

      “Oh, no,” she hastily assured him. “No trouble. Not really. Not that sort of trouble. Only, if there were trouble, we’d rather have a sheriff around than not.”

      He nodded, glanced at the disordered counter, then let his gaze slide along the shelves of goods that lined the walls behind her.

      Nervous, she nudged a couple of the button boxes in the drawer on the counter in front of her. The faint clack of the buttons shifting was comfortingly normal.

      “I take it you’re introducing yourself to the shopkeepers?” she said. “That’s very commendable, such dedication to duty. And on your very first day, too.”

      That came out a little more stiffly than she’d intended. She was used to men who weren’t much on conversation—a couple of her customers shopped mostly by grunting and pointing—but she wasn’t used to being quite so aware of the male on the other side of the counter. It was…unsettling. And strangely intriguing.

      “We—the shopkeepers here in town, I mean—we’re very glad to have you. Things were getting to be so…difficult. Arguments, you know, about who was going to be sheriff and—” She smiled. “Well, let’s just say there was a good deal of discussion before the town council agreed we’d be better off getting a man with your…er, your experience.”

      Heaven help her, she’d been about to say “your reputation.” Surely it was her imagination that his shoulders stiffened as if he were expecting a blow.

      “I’m not sworn in yet,” he said, deliberately not looking at her.

      “I’m sure Mayor Andersen will take care of that little matter just as quickly as he can.”

      “Mmm.” His gaze slid from the table in the center of the store with its eye-catching stacks of tinned fruits, to the glass-fronted case where she kept the sweets, to the rack made of antlers that displayed a range of ropes and twine, then over to the artful arrangement of tin washtubs and willow baskets that she’d hung on the wall at the back.

      At the sight of a man mannequin with a rolled theatre bill in its waxen hands and sporting a ready-made suit, stiff-collared white shirt and bowler hat tipped at a rakish angle, he blinked and glanced back at her, clearly surprised.

      “Never seen a store quite like this.”

      His eyes were blue, Molly realized, not gray, as she’d thought. She wrenched her gaze from his face before it became obvious she’d been staring.

      “It’s proven very handy, putting things on display like this.” There was an odd little catch in her throat. She cleared it, tried again. If she hadn’t known it was mere foolishness, she’d have sworn she could feel the heat of him clear across the counter. “This way, folks can find what they’re looking for without me having to fetch it off some shelf or dig it out of some drawer first. Saves a lot of time for everyone.”

      She didn’t tell him it also increased her profits significantly. With so much right out in the open where customers could get their hands on it, more often than not they walked out of the store with at least one or two things they hadn’t intended to buy but hadn’t been able to resist. Sometimes they bought so much they forgot what they’d originally come for and had to come back to buy that, too.

      Molly smiled at the mannequin. Since she’d installed it in the store, she’d doubled her sale of men’s hats and fancy dress clothes. Sales on cravats and ties had more than tripled and showed no sign of slacking. She’d already started to look for a child-size mannequin to go with it.

      She hadn’t bothered with a female form since there were cheaper ways of tempting her women customers.

      The sheriff wasn’t interested in mannequins any more than the rope and twine. His gaze swung back to the glass-fronted display case where she kept her candies and sweets.

      Without speaking, he walked over, making the floorboards groan at every step. Staying safely on her side of the broad counter, Molly followed.

      “Saw your display out front.” He bent forward, forehead furrowing as he studied the array of riches behind the glass.

      From this angle, she could see the back of his neck. His hair was too long and poorly trimmed. It brushed over the top of his collar in a ragged ruffle that made her itch to set it right. She’d always trimmed Richard’s hair, just sat him in a chair and gone to work with her scissors until he was neat and presentable. Better than any barber, or so he’d always said.

      Her hands twitched at the memory of how a man’s hair felt sifting through her fingers, of the heat and texture of his skin.

      She smoothed her palms down the sides of her skirt, cleared her throat. “Did you like it?”

      Confused, the sheriff glanced up from his perusal of the case’s contents. “Like it?”

      “The display. In the window out front. Did you like it?”

      “Oh.” His jaw worked as if he were chewing on the question. “It was…nice. Real nice.”

      “Thank you.”

      If he heard her, he gave no sign of it. His attention was riveted on the display. After a moment’s careful consideration, he pointed with a blunt-tipped finger. “Those chocolate drops, there. They the bittersweet kind?”

      Molly craned to see what he was pointing at. “No, that’s milk chocolate. But I can get the bittersweet if you’d rather.”

      He shook his head but didn’t take his gaze off the collection of sweets. Molly had seen that look in the face of children who couldn’t decide how to spend their precious pennies, but she’d never seen a grown man take it so seriously.

      “Try one of these chocolate creams,” she said on impulse, moving behind the case. She slid open the glass door at the back and plucked a cream in its paper nest from the box. “They come all the way from New York. Try it.”

      He eyed the chocolate on her open palm, then glanced at her, clearly embarrassed.

      “Think of it as a welcome to Elk City,” she said.

      Delicately, frowning in concentration, he plucked the chocolate from its nest, then popped the thing into his mouth whole. She watched his mouth work as he tongued the confection, fascinated in spite of herself. His eyes closed and an expression of bliss softened the hard lines of his face.

      “Good?”

      He blinked back to an awareness of where he was. “That’s…fine. Real fine.”

      He said it reverently, like a man who’d experienced a small miracle. She wasn’t sure, but that looked like the faintest trace of a blush under his dark tan.

      “Told you!” Smiling, she impulsively slipped a half dozen into a little paper bag. “Have some more.”

      He glanced at her, then the bag, then backed away, shaking his head.

      Molly СКАЧАТЬ