Page 5 of More than Words Can Say

Zach had zero experience with babies, but he’d raised a little sister from the time she was four, so he figured as long as he didn’t have to change any diapers, he should be all right. A few bounces on his knee had settled Tali, and a quick snatch of Ephraim as he rolled toward the corner edge of the desk had averted disaster until the missus blew back in five minutes later and shuffled the children out with a half-hearted apology for the interruption.

“Audrey wanted me to partner with a family man,” Reuben explained. “Someone established, with a wife and children of his own. She worried a bachelor wouldn’t be dependable in the long run without a family to anchor him to the community. But I couldn’t escape the feeling that you were the one God meant for me to bring into the business. So we arranged a test.”

“That whole bloody nose fiasco was a test?” Zach shook his head.

Reuben slapped him on the back, finally meeting his gaze. “One you passed with flying colors, my friend. Audrey gave your selection her full endorsement after she saw the way the children took to you. She assures me kids have a sense about people.”

Reuben quickstepped to the side to take a dead beetle out of Tali’s little fist before she could get it into her mouth. After tossing the bug into a far corner of the lumber shed, Reuben turned a teasing glance back on Zach.

“Now she wants me to find you a wife so you can start becoming the family man she intended you to be in the first place.”

“Not gonna happen,” Zach grumbled. Family didn’t fit into his plans. Freedom did. A married man wasn’t free. He was tied to responsibilities, demands, expectations. Expectations that could ruin a man when he failed to live up to them. He’d tried the family thing once, only to hurt those he cared about most. He wouldn’t fall into that trap again.

“Here you are.” A feminine voice echoed from the shed entrance.

Reuben’s face lit up, and he turned faster than a spindle on a lathe to greet his wife. She was a tiny thing. Her head barely reached Reuben’s shoulder, and her thin frame gave her a delicate appearance that was pure bunk. She might look like a bird, but she had birthed six healthy babes, and even more impressive, she actually managed to control them. Even now, the menagerie clomped down the stairstep planks with exclamations of “Mama!”

She ignored the calls momentarily, her attention focused solely on her husband as he strode across the expansive lumber shed to meet her. He wrapped her in an enthusiastic embrace, as if they hadn’t seen each other a scant hour earlier, and she gazed up at him with an adoration that pained Zach to watch.

He turned away from the tender display, a far too common occurrence where the Sinclairs were concerned. It was the only downside to this partnership. Reuben was disgustingly in love with his wife and didn’t care who knew it.

An ache radiated through Zach’s chest, but he ignored it. Sure, having a woman who looked at you as if you were the hero of her dreams would have its merits, but since Zach was the furthest thing from hero material, envy served no purpose. No female would ever look at him that way, and it was just as well, since the only thing worse than not having a woman look at you that way was to disappoint one who did and having to watch the admiration seep from her gaze. He knew that pain.

Sweet, cheerful, loyal-to-the-death Evie. The little sister who had adored him, called him her hero, and placed him on a pedestal he had no right to occupy. Yet her adoration made him believe he was better than he was, that he might actually deserve her high opinion. He hid the uglier parts of his nature from her, and for several years had even managed to hide them from himself. But nothing stayed hidden forever, and when the truth of his darkest deed came to light, her adoring gaze had faltered and fizzled into disappointment and shame.

Every time she looked at him after that, he felt the change. A carpenter shaving away at his heart with a chisel couldn’t have hurt more. She might still love him and proclaim him family, but things had changed between them and would never go back to the way they had been before. It was why he’d left.

Part of why he’d left, Zach corrected, as he pasted what he hoped was a passably pleasant expression on his face. The Sinclairs were headed his way, their brood swarming around their feet.

He’d mainly wanted to escape the sorghum farm and cut the familial tether that kept him from the freedom he craved. A freedom he now enjoyed. Audrey Sinclair could scheme all she liked. Zach wouldn’t be shackling himself to any female. Ever.

CHAPTER

4

I can’t believe I’m doing this. Abigail smoothed the skirt of her second-best ensemble, wishing she could eradicate her nerves as easily as smoothing a few wayward wrinkles from the russet fabric of her skirt. The high collar of her ivory shirtwaist didn’t help matters, strangling her with the jet brooch she wore at her neck in honor of her father’s passing.

With trembling fingers, she retrieved the business proposal sitting on the hall table in her rooms above the bakery. She’d spent the better half of the last week crafting and reconfiguring the document until she had the recipe just right. Her family’s future depended on her ability to bribe a man into marriage without forfeiting her control of the bakery. No easy task.

Then again, running a bakery on her own for the last year while her father lay ill had been no easy task, either, and she’d accomplished that feat. She’d manage this one as well.

Lifting her chin, Abigail slid the document into the small satchel already hanging from her right shoulder and marched down the stairs into the darkened bakery.

They closed at three in the afternoon, since most of her breads sold out by midday, which gave her a few precious hours to conduct business of her own before everyone scattered to their homes for the evening. She’d spent one of those hours bathing and debating with her sister over which outfit to wear. Rosalind had wanted her to wear something bright and cheerful. Abigail preferred a more sober, businesslike ensemble. This wasn’t a romantic rendezvous, after all. It was a negotiation. Besides, they were still mourning Papa. Standards might be more lax in the west than back east, but even here, pinks and yellows would be frowned upon by the townsfolk. So they’d compromised on the ivory blouse with the mourning brooch. The touch of lace on the bodice along with the gently puffed sleeves would have to suffice for displaying her femininity.

Exiting from the kitchen into the alley, Abigail locked the door behind her, then turned her feet toward Sinclair’s Lumberyard. She might as well try for the top prize first. If he didn’t pan out, she’d approach the next bachelor on her list.

Unfortunately, she only made it halfway to her destination before being waylaid by a man who was neither a bachelor nor on any type of desirable list in her estimation.

“Miss Kemp.” Samson Gerard waved and crossed the street, neatly blocking her path along the boardwalk and making it impossible for her to pretend that she hadn’t seen or heard him.

Abigail halted and nodded, not trying terribly hard to hide her impatience. “Mr. Gerard.” The spindly man looked even less Samson-like than usual today, dressed in a brown checkered suit with trousers so tapered that his legs resembled sticks. Perhaps if Mrs. Gerard frequented the bakery more regularly than the milliner’s, her husband would have a little more flesh on his bones.

“Are you ready to accept my offer?” His unctuous smile settled on her like a family of bugs crawling over her skin. “I’ve asked around town, and it doesn’t seem that you’ve sought a partnership with any of our local businessmen. I applaud your intelligence in forgoing that route.”

Abigail bristled at his condescending tone. She hadn’t needed Samson Gerard to point out the perils of partnering with a third party who didn’t share her passion for the bakery. Handing over the reins to a man who deemed himself better equipped to make financial decisions than his female partner simply because he had the ability to grow chin whiskers grated on her every nerve and would surely cause dissention. Not to mention the fact that an outsider helping himself to a hefty chunk of her profits every month would leave her and Rosalind with a pathetically small income.

Abigail longed to tell Gerard to stuff his offer in his hat and leave her be, but a wise woman never burned a bridge she might need to cross at a future date. If her marriage scheme didn’t pan out, she might find herself at Gerard’s door.