Always (9 page)

“Why, they’re better and better each and every day. Maybe you haven’t heard, but Lettie’s expecting again.”

Emily’s expression brightened. “That’s wonderful. Congratulations.”

Billy winked. “We couldn’t be happier, of course, but after four lads, I think Lettie’s hoping for a lass to keep her company.”

Emily actually laughed, and Ross couldn’t help noticing how beautiful she was with an honest to goodness smile on her face. There had been a time, long past, when he had been able to make her laugh, too. God, how he missed those times, their special friendship, their unspoken camaraderie. He missed it so badly that it made his heart hurt to look at her. “Well,” she said, “what’ll it be today, Billy?”

“Since Moneysacks Gallagher here is buying, I’ll order some of those chicken and dumplings with a nice thick slice of rhubarb pie for dessert.”

Blowing an errant strand of hair from her face, Emily pulled an order pad from the pocket of her apron and took down Billy’s order. For a week now, Ross had watched her scurry about, attempting to keep up with the midday crowds that swarmed the understaffed cafe. The owner, Jacob Groff, was a notorious penny-pincher. As long as business was brisk, he cared little that his waitresses were overworked.

“Chicken and dumplings and rhubarb pie.” Emily bit her lip as she scribbled the order on her pad. From behind her, two or three impatient customers called out, “Waitress!” “Miss!” “Miss!”

Emily ignored them. “Will that be all, Billy?”

“I do believe so.”

She didn’t bother to look at Ross as her voice proceeded to turn flatter than a pancake. “And
you
?”

Ross didn’t reply. Emily wore a smudged white apron over a black day dress, and after he allowed his gaze to slide down over the gentle curve of her breasts, he focused upon the waistband of that apron. With a sharp stab of guilt, he dropped his gaze to the table. But that proved it, didn’t it? Her waist was still so narrow he could span it with his hands. The rumors couldn’t possibly be true. If Emily had ever borne a child, he’d forfeit seven months of Uncle Sam’s back pay.

“Well?”

Ross looked up to see that she was waiting with one eyebrow arched. And there it was, the wall, the same impenetrable barrier she had erected between them at the funeral. It made Ross want to take her by the shoulders and shake her. Even if it was true that he’d had a hand in building that wall, he was more determined than ever to tear it down, brick by brick, if necessary, to find the old Emily.

“I’ll have the same,” he said.

“Fine.” She started to turn away.

“Except—”

She stopped and turned back, irritated. “Yes?”

“What kind of pie did you say you have today?”

“I didn’t.”

Ross gave her a cool smile. She wasn’t going to get away from him so easily. Not today. If he couldn’t make a dent in her damned wall with good intentions, then he’d be content to annoy her. “Could you list them for me, please?”

“Rhubarb, gooseberry, raisin, apple, shoofly—”

“Excuse me, but is that apple schnitz or fresh apple?”

Emily pursed her lips and raised her gaze to the ceiling, a sign of aggravation Ross remembered well. “Schnitz.”

“And would the raisin be fresh-baked?”

Emily’s gaze refocused on him. Her eyes were very, very dark blue today. “Fresh-baked today, Mr. Gallagher. Now, would you please—”

“I think a slice of shoofly pie will touch the spot.” Emily gave him a scathing look before marching back toward the kitchen. She ignored the many choruses of “Miss! Miss! Waitress!” that followed in her wake.

After she was gone, Billy leaned across the table. “What’s that all about? I thought you were friends.”

Ross picked up a butter knife. Very slowly, he tapped out a beat of pure frustration on the tabletop. “That was a long time ago. Time changes all things, Billy.”

Billy shook his head. “Not that much, boyo. Something’s botherin’ her, and that something has got to do with you.”

“When did you get so smart?”

Billy’s gray eyes twinkled. “Is that why you offered to pay for my food? Did you think maybe I could soften her up a bit for ya?”

Ross gave a humorless laugh and tossed down the butter knife. “Let’s just say I figured she wouldn’t be able to look the other way so easily with you at the table.”

Suddenly, an earsplitting crash came from the kitchen. From the sound of it, Ross estimated six or seven dinner plates had bit the dust. He had been in here every day for the past week, and only one meal had passed without some mishap taking place in the back.

He shook his head. “She was never intended to work anywhere near a kitchen.”

“You can say that again,” Billy agreed. “’Tis a pity the
Gazette
went out of business. Emily would have been a natural to take over for Nathaniel.”

Ross smiled wistfully. “I used to think that girl had ink running in her veins. I’m almost surprised she hasn’t tried to get it started again on her own. The paper, I mean.”

“If the
Herald
weren’t the only paper in town, maybe she could get work. I know she’s a lass, but...”

Ross was about to muster a grunt of rueful agreement when the glimmer of an idea sparked in his mind.

"... but lass or not, she had a flair for newspapering,” Billy was saying. “You know, I never would have said it out loud, but I often thought that if Emily were running the paper it might not have gone adrift. She always had a—”

“Billy, you’re brilliant.”

“Am I, now?”

Wearing a broad grin, Ross rested both forearms on the table. “Absolutely, unequivocally brilliant.”

“Well, then, how is it me wife’s never noticed?”

“You said it yourself. She has a flair for the business, and the
Herald
is the only paper in town.”

Billy’s good humor vanished. “If you’re saying what I think you’re saying—”

“Jack Michaels is retiring next month, did you know that?”

“He’s head of advertising, ain’t he?”

“Right.”

“But what’s that got to do with...?” Billy’s eyes glowed with sudden insight, but then he shook his head. “Oh, no. I know what you’re thinking.”

“Michaels is going to retire, which means his assistant, Freddy Brubaker, will probably be moving up to take his job. That leaves Freddy’s old job open.”

Billy was not so easily persuaded. “You know Emily as well as I do, Ross. She would sooner eat dirt than work for Malcolm Davenport, and working in the advertising department would appeal to her about as much as—”

“But it’s newspaper work, Billy.”

Emily pushed through the kitchen door, balancing plates on a tray. Ross motioned to Billy to hush as she approached a trio of ladies seated at the table next to them. Ross recognized the patrons as seamstresses from the dress shop down the street.

After Emily set three plates of sauerkraut and pork before them and hurried back to the kitchen, the eldest, a woman with steel gray hair, spoke in a plaintive Pennsylvania German accent. “Well, if that don’t beat all.”

The second one in their party, a painfully thin, beak-nosed girl barely out of her teens, looked up, her fork poised over her plate. “What’s that, Althea?”

“It wonders me why Jacob Groff don’t know better than to hire a woman like that. Why, everybody knows about her. It’s not like people are going to forget something as
schondfol
as that.”

“Something as shameful as what?” Eyes big, the young one leaned over her dinner plate so far that her bodice nearly dipped into her sauerkraut.

“You don’t know? Why, that’s the Winters girl.”

“Oh? You mean the same Winters who ran the newspaper?”

“That’s the one. She had to leave town years ago. Everybody knew she was— Well, you know what condition I speak of.”

“Oy, anyhow! You don’t mean...?”

“Don’t say it!”

“I-to-goodness, no!”

“Up the stump and no daddy in sight,” the third one, a pudgy-cheeked redhead, managed to add around a mouthful of food.

The elder one continued, “You’re too young yet to remember, Ruth. It was just after the war started.”

“I remember it,” the redhead said, chewing with relish and buttering a biscuit.

“I cannot for the life of me understand why Jacob would hire a girl like that,” the elder one said. “What kind of reputation does he want? Soon respectable women will stop coming in here. Then you know what’ll happen next, don’t you?”

The young one’s eyes widened. “No, what?”

“Why, just then this place will become no better than a schondfol saloon. Pass me the butter, Grace.”

Ross met Billy’s grim expression from across their table. “It’s too bad they’re women, isn’t it?” he asked in a low voice. “If they were men, they’d be laid out on the floor about now.”

Billy merely shook his head in disgust.

Ross continued, “I can tell them why Jacob Groff hired Emily. He knows the war’s over, and there aren’t many jobs for women. He knows he can get away with working her to death and paying her a pauper’s wages.”

Billy grunted. “Jacob Groff’s so tight he would skin a louse for five cents.”

“You know, I’ve heard some other bad talk since Emily came back to town. It’s making me sick.”

“Talk can be as hurtful as the cut of a knife,” Billy observed gruffly. “I remember the rumors starting up when she left. Nathaniel never said a word about it to me, and I never asked, but I could tell it broke his heart. It had to be even worse for Mrs. Winters, but she held her head high, she did. Just as you would expect. She’s a fine woman.”

“That she is,” Ross agreed. “And so is Emily. You still think she’s better off working in a place like this than she is at the
Herald
?”

Billy’s tone was doubtful. “Even if Mr. Davenport were willing to hire a lass, what makes you think he’ll hire the daughter of his competitor?”

Ross spread his hands as if to explain the obvious.

“He hired us, didn’t he? His main concern is making money, and that means putting out a good paper. To put out a good paper, he’s got to hire good people. Malcolm knows that. And besides, you know how he’s always put on a big show of harboring no ill will toward Nathaniel. To hear him tell it, it was always Nathaniel’s hot temper that caused bad feelings between them. How better to prove it than to hire Emily? Hell, it would make him look like he’s got a heart of gold.”

“You might be able to convince me, Ross, and you might even be able to convince Mr. Davenport, seeing as how you’re set to wed his one and only daughter, but I don’t know how you’ll ever convince
her
.” Billy inclined his head, indicating to Ross that Emily was emerging again from the kitchen, her serving tray laden with new orders.

“I know you’ve always had a way with the lasses,” Billy continued, “but with that one, well...” He chuckled. “You’re goin’ to need all the luck o’ the Irish and then some, Rossy, me lad.”

*

By the time the dinner rush was over and the kitchen was brought back into order, Emily’s shift was done. She removed her soiled apron, folded it into a square, and tucked it under one arm as she grabbed her reticule. Tonight, as she had every night since taking this job, she would scrub her apron with lye in the kitchen sink at home and leave it to dry overnight in time for her shift to begin again at six the next morning. She called good-bye to the two waitresses who had arrived to take over, then headed through the nearly empty dining room to the hotel lobby that adjoined it.

As if she didn’t have enough to worry about just keeping up with the demands of her new job, Ross had taken to stopping into the cafe each morning for breakfast and noon for dinner. She wasn’t fool enough to believe it was because of the food. He was trying to smooth things over between them, trying to pretend that everything was the same as always. Well, it
wasn’t
the same as always, and Emily knew that the one thing she couldn’t afford to do was allow herself to fall victim to his charm and dimpled smile. She had no intention of putting herself through that kind of misery again. He was set to marry Johanna in two months, and the best she could hope for was that after his wedding, he would keep to his side of town so she could keep to hers.

Emily nodded to the young clerk behind the hotel check-in desk as she rounded its corner to stand before a pine door designated
Manager
. After two brisk raps, she waited for her elderly employer’s grumbling permission to enter.

“Mr. Groff,” she said, closing the door behind her. “Mary’s here, so I’m going home now.”

The gaunt, bald man behind the cluttered desk peered up at her through gleaming spectacles. “What? Three o’clock already?” He pulled a pocket watch from his waistcoat and squinted at its face. “Oh. So it is, so it is.” After replacing the watch, he dipped his pen into an inkwell and returned his attention to his accounts journal.

“Mr. Groff.”

“Eh? What’s that?” The man looked up, appearing annoyed that she hadn’t somehow evaporated into the atmosphere to leave him in peace.

“It’s payday, sir.”

“Payday?” His mottled brow creased. “Already?”

He turned to squint at a railroad calendar on the wall behind his desk. “So it is, so it is.” He arose from his creaking swivel chair and shuffled over to a cast-iron safe in the corner. Pausing, he threw a suspicious look over his shoulder.

Knowing his concern, Emily presented her back. Only then did he proceed to turn the dial on the combination lock.
Snick, snick, snick, snick .. .snick, snick, snick… snick.

Hinges squealed in agony as the door swung open. Coins jingled. When she turned around, it was to see her miserly employer counting out the few bills and change that represented her weekly wages.

He was a skinflint, but at least he had given her a job. With the war winding down, there weren’t that many openings for women, and what with the old rumors that had been stirred up with her arrival in town, Emily had seen more than a few noses turn up when she applied for various jobs. She knew that Jacob Groff had hired her more out of respect for her deceased father than anything else. He had been a loyal patron of Nathaniel’s print shop since before Emily was born.