Mail Order Bride Mishap (Into the West #3)

Chapter 16

“C’mon in out of the rain, both of you, and let me see those wonderfully ugly hats,” Fiona said, already grinning with relief as she held her apartment door wide to allow Emmie and Muriel room to enter.  She glanced out at the gently falling rain in the gray afternoon light, saw the townspeople scurrying along toward their own homes before closing the door and turning around to take her guests’ coats.

Emmie and she hadn’t really talked since the opening of Miss O’Toole’s Unique Hat Emporium a week ago, though when they had seen each other they’d spoken quite warmly, if not lengthily. Fiona had invited Emmie and Muriel to Sunday afternoon tea today ostensibly to thank them for all their work in helping her open her store, but really she’d wanted to clear the air about the aborted wedding and her subsequent flight, and see if she and Emmie could still be friends.

She’d lamented the loss of Emmie’s friendship to Cookie one evening after work, and he’d offered up some sage advice, imbedded in his usual grouchiness.

“If’n ya feel like you’ve done somethin’ wrong, li’l girl, apologize. But what, exactly, d’ya think yer apologizin’ for? Ya didn’t want to be shackled to Miz Emmaline’s peacock of a brother? Why would you think a sorry needs to be said?”

The old man had been wiping down his stove at the end of the supper hour when Fiona invited herself into his kitchen. After his usual comment about people disregarding the sanctity of an artist’s workshop, which she’d also ignored, he’d accepted her presence and asked her why she felt the need to hang around looking as if someone had just shot her best hunting dog.

She’d taken a seat on the made-up cot in the corner and had attempted to explain, picking at the edges of one sleeve as she did so.

“I guess I want to apologize for using her home, her hospitality, and then running off without telling her the reason why. I was brought up better than that, Cookie, and I let my parents down, let meself down, when I took the coward’s way out.” Here she looked up at him, felt her face flush as she finally admitted aloud what she’d been thinking ever since her break-up with Edward Townsend.

Cookie continued scrubbing at the surface of the stove as if he’d found a particularly stubborn stain, though she knew for a fact that he kept the cleanest kitchen she’d ever seen, and his stove in particular. By watching him cook you’d think he was a slob, the way he threw ingredients into pans and stomped around his domain grousing. But for all his bluster he was very particular when it came to cleanliness. So now she wondered at his studied absorption.

“Cookie? What are you thinking that you’re not saying?”

He worked in silence a few more seconds before at last turning about and leaning against his already sparkling cooktop. Pinned her with a direct gaze under gray brows while he wiped at his hands with the rag.

“I’m thinkin’, Miss O’Toole, that yore needin’ to explain more’n she needs to hear it. Miz Emmaline, all of us, really, have done stupid things in our lives where we’d love to have a do-over. But, no matter how often you go over in your head what you done and how you’d change it, you won’t ever get that chance agin. Believe me, I know.”

Here he paused, and she could see him looking inward, far, far away from the kitchen where she and he now discussed her life choices. And she wondered about the decisions he had made that he wished he could go back and change. Wondered what he had done as a young man that he regretted.

Before she could articulate that question, and perhaps derail this conversation at the same time, he seemed to shake off his brown study and returned to the here and now. Speared her with another one of those direct gazes that never failed to make the recipient squirm. As she now did.