Courting Trouble Read Free

part?’’
    ‘‘No, no. I just need a short word with you, if you don’t mind.’’
    The baby’s complaints turned from belligerent to downright frantic.
    ‘‘Might I come in?’’ she asked.
    He glanced toward the sound of the baby. ‘‘This is a rather awkward time for me. The store will be open in another hour. Perhaps you could stop by then?’’
    Her immediate instinct was to nod and scuttle away. But she needed a husband and she’d decided Mr. Crook would do quite nicely.
    She pulled the screen door open and stepped inside, forcing him back. ‘‘No, I’m not sure that’s a good idea. You go ahead and tend to yourself and the baby, though. I shall wait right here for you.’’
    ‘‘Really, Miss Spreckelmeyer.’’ He frowned, and already she found herself wanting to smooth down the patch of hair sticking straight out from his head. Perhaps it was a sign.
    ‘‘I’m afraid I will be busy right up to store opening,’’ he said.
    ‘‘I understand. Run along now. I’ll be here when you get back.’’
    He hesitated.
    She removed her shawl and hooked it on a hall tree. ‘‘Go on with you. I’ll be fine.’’
    She had to raise her voice to be heard over the baby’s screeches. After another second or two, he turned his back and disappeared up the stairs that led to his personal quarters.
    The closing of a door abruptly cut off the baby’s cries. A baby who desperately needed a mother. She squelched that thought for now. First things first.
    She glanced around the narrow storage area. She’d never been in the back of the store before. It smelled of lumber, leather, soap, and grain. Empty gunnysacks lay piled in a corner. Shelves lined two walls and held a hodgepodge of tools and gadgets, dishes and jars, cloth and brooms. Harnesses, straps, and whips hung from ceiling hooks.
    A couple of crates sat shoved against a wall with sacks of grain leaning against them. A wooden bar bolted the large barn-like door where barrels were delivered. The unvarnished plank floor beneath her feet had turned gray from exposure.
    Mr. Crook’s store was only two years old, the first competition the old Flour, Feed and Liquor Store had seen since opening in 1858. With the Texas Central Railroad now coming through town, businesses were popping up everywhere.
    Essie moved through the curtained barrier between the storage room and the store, stepping onto the stained, varnished, and newly shined floor of the Slap Out. Sunshine seeped in around the edges of the drawn window coverings, filling the store with muted light.
    She took a deep breath. This was her first taste of what her role as Mrs. Crook would be like. The large, still room invoked a sense of peace, tranquility, and rightness.
    She belonged here. She just knew it. Mr. Crook might not have bid on her basket yesterday, but he needed a woman and helpmate. That baby needed a mother. And Essie was the perfect candidate for the job.
    She just wished she could remember whose basket Mr. Crook had bought, but that entire auction was nothing but a muddle in her mind, as fragmented as an unfinished puzzle.
    She strolled behind the counter, her bootheels clicking against the solid floor as she ran her fingers along bolts of wool, dimity, gingham, percale, linen, and lawn cloth. She skimmed her hand across balls of yarn in every color of the rainbow, then tapped one side of a scale, setting it to swinging and causing its brass pans to jangle.
    She picked up a bottle of Warner’s Safe Nervine—reading the label’s claim of healing, curing, and relieving of pain—then set it back down and scanned the vast assortment of tonics, pills, and powders. She’d have her work cut out for her learning which medicine was best for what.
    Beside these items, drawers and bins stretched from floor to ceiling across the middle section of the wall, each carefully labeled compartment filled with spices, coffee, tobacco, candy, buttons, peas, and most anything else imaginable.
    And if