Garrett let his head drop back with a groan. “Sadie, notagain!”
As the daughter of one of Manhattan’s “nouveau riche” set, Miss Sarah Wilton knew everyone who had access to power and those who desired it. Those who were secretly chafing under the moralistic Vanderbilts’ social oppression and those who outwardly abhorred it. She penned prose that could convince the Pope to give up his faith, could converse with a beggar on the street or the mayor of New York with equal proficiency, and had shouldered enough of the weight of running the society to allow Ben to take a day off.
But the womanneverremembered to keep the furnace fueled. “How are the coal stores?”
She finally looked up, and, not for the first time, the beauty of her eyes floored him. Blue irises, the color of the sky in summer, fixed on him in utter confusion. “How should I know?”
Garrett groaned again, pushing to his feet to trudge to the basement where he found, unsurprisingly, not a single lump of coal. He returned to the cavernous space that had once held fire engines but now housed the printing press and a motley collection of work tables, where Sadie remained poring over the news, pen in hand. “We’ll have to light the wood stove in the back room; we won’t be able to keep it warm in here once the sun goes down.” Which, Garrett realized as he looked out the window, had already happened.Fuck me, indeed.
Sadie appeared not to have heard him, but lifted an envelope in his direction. “For you. Rose dropped it off earlier.”
Rose, Ben’s new wife, a displaced English socialite-turned-suffragette. Also, the woman who was hellbent on seeing Garrett settled down. When he plucked the envelope from Sadie’s hand, he realized her fingers were trembling, and a pink flush had crawled up her neck.
Without taking his eyes off Sadie’s profile, he withdrew the enclosed card, covered in Rose’s neat, delicate scrawl.
My dear friend Eloise has returned from London! She looks forward to your calling on her tomorrow. I hear wedding bells in your future!
An address near Central Park followed, but the details swam in his vision. Rose was at this again? Every time she stopped by the firehouse, she came bearing the name of another woman that she planned to shove in his direction.
After tossing the card on the table next to Sadie’s newspaper, Garrett rubbed his temples and attempted to focus on the task at hand: obsessing over the curve of Sadie’s collarbone—that is,determining the next steps for the suffrage society. “All right, brilliant soothsayer of suffrage.” He mocked a worshipful bow to his not-secretary. “What should we do about Linden?”
She said nothing, merely stared at the card he had cast aside.
“Sadie?”
With a jolt, she shook her head but did not meet his eye. “We need to make revisions to the newsletter. The members will want start a letter-writing campaign immediately if we are to make headway before the February session begins.”
“The January newsletter has already been printed.” He gestured towards the stacked and bound papers beside the massive geriatric printing press.
“We’ll have to revise it. If we don’t mention this bill, everyone will assume it’s not important and ignore later pleas for assistance. We have to reprint, and tonight.”
She stood and marched to the press, and Garrett cursed his luck. The reprinting was not a significant concern, although that would be a tremendous hassle, not to mention the expense.
No, the reprinting was a minor inconvenience compared to the catastrophe that wasSadie wearing a skirt.
Because Sadie refused to wear petticoats, or a bustle, even in the coldest weather, meaning that when she moved, the fabric of her skirts pressed against her thighs and hugged her round bottom.
Meaning he imagined his own hands hugging that beautiful bottom, his face pressed between those thighs.
Fuck, he needed to buy looser trousers.
Chapter 2
Ifonlyhewouldwear looser trousers.
Sadie sighed as she slid the tile for the masthead into place,Brooklyn Women’s Monthlyin reverse elevated lettering below an etched rendering of the iconic bridge. She’d reset the type twice now because she’d been so distracted she turned Ben’s entire editorial upside-down.
But how could she not stare at those thighs? The man was built for labor in the Adirondacks where she’d summered as a girl, as though he spent his free time felling logs and dragging canoes or other small ships in and out of bodies of water.
Preferably shirtless.
“Focus, Sadie,” she hissed over the gurgling of the steam heating below the crank. The usual acrid tang of the ink muddled her senses, and as she bracketed the lettered tiles into the bed and snapped it into place, a familiar calm came over her. She fancied herself something of a printing press whisperer, able to make the ancient machine sing. Or, more accurately, whirr and creak so loudly she could barely hear herself think.
Therefore, she didn’t notice Garrett’s approach and nearly jumped out of her skin when he spoke. “Th… rhm… bull … o… me?”
She shook her head and cupped her hand around her ear. “What was that?”
He gestured towards the front door. “I said, … str… ad… go…”
