She sighed, long and deep. “There’s a part of me that appreciates that, Thomas. Truly. But simply put, I don’t need your help.”
“Ever again.” He may as well finish her thought. Because she wasn’t just refusing help with Olivia’s surgery. She was bound and determined to never need help from him in the future, and her silence now only confirmed it.
She’d told him she wanted more money, that things would be better once they had some funds set aside, a bit of a nest egg so they’d never have to end up in the tenements. So he’d gone and done exactly that, and now she decided his money wasn’t good enough? She used to look at him and see potential, see what he could become, even if he was only an immigrant living from one banknote to the next. She’d never been like her cousin-in-law, Henry, who treated the immigrants working for him like dung clinging to the soles of his boots. Nor had she been like the townsfolk in his Cornish village who’d decided he was fated to be a gambling drunkard while his mother yet carried him in her womb.
But now? He huffed and turned for the back door. He didn’t know what she’d become now.
And she still doesn’t know about my shoulder.
But telling her that meant confessing he was no longer the able-bodied man she’d once loved. Plus it would mean telling her how he’d injured his shoulder, which would lead to why he’d returned—and why he’d truly left in the first place.
She wasn’t ready to hear any of it. He stepped around a table heaped with clothes and over a pile of socks. Did she always keep her shop this cluttered? A person couldn’t walk from one side to the other without stepping around half a dozen piles of things and skirting two or three tables.
“You seem to get a lot of business,” he gritted through the frustration that still clung to his voice.
She gave him a bitter laugh. “Too much. As though you can’t tell by the state of this place.”
Yet another thing that had changed about her. When he’d left, she’d wanted everything to be neat as a pin.
“I should check on the girls. I’m surprised they haven’t come in yet and asked about the bakery.” He’d leave the discussion about paying for Olivia’s surgery for another day, when it had achance of actually being a discussion rather than an argument or shouting match.
But the toe of his boot snagged on a basket of something or other on the floor, and he went careening toward a table piled with shimmering green fabric and papers.
“Be careful,” Jessalyn called. “That’s my satin.”
He attempted to catch himself, but the table wobbled beneath his weight.
Crack!
He landed with a thud on the floor, the wooden table splintering around him while the papers went flying.
“Oh!” Jessalyn raced toward him. “I knew it was too messy in here. I’m so sorry.” She gathered the shiny material in her arms and moved it to another table, then turned to survey the rest of the damage. “Are you all right?”
“Fine.” Or he would be if not for jarring his shoulder.
“Just look at my sketches.” She scratched her head, a frazzled type of panic on her face. “I should have put them away last night, but I meant to organize them first.”
“Guess now they need to be extra organized.” He grabbed one of the papers that had landed by his hand.
The dress was beautiful. The sketch alone caught his breath, almost making him ask what color it would be when it was finished. But he didn’t bother to open his mouth, because he was already imagining the dress on his wife in a pale blue shade that matched her eyes. With her silky blonde hair curled and piled atop her head, she’d be the loveliest woman in Copper Country.
Not that she needed a fancy dress to be beautiful, but?—
“That goes here.” She took the paper from his hand and set it on the sewing machine, which was covered with more of the shiny, deep green fabric.
“It would be prettier in blue,” he muttered. “Like your eyes.”
“What was that?” She bent and started piling papers into her arms.
“Never mind. Is that your design?” He gestured toward where the paper now sat on the sewing machine.
“Yes. I’m making bridesmaids’ dresses for a wedding next summer.”
“In Chicago?” No one in Copper Country would have dresses so fancy for bridesmaids. This must be one of the wealthy clients she’d spoken of, one of the reasons she planned to move.
The back door opened without so much as a knock, and Isaac Cummings poked his head inside. “Your girls are asking about… Oh. Looks like you had a bit of a mishap.”
“You could say that,” Thomas drawled.
