He cleared his throat. “Uh, aren’t you going to finish whatever it is you’re doing?”
“Oh, right.”
She turned her back to him and forced her eyes to scan the nearest table for the basket of buttons. Not there. Maybe they were on the floor?
She glanced around for the rather large basket with its brown handle, or tried to, but her gaze kept drifting back to Thomas. He was making such a mess of things. Her plans had been so simple before. Go to Chicago, start a dress shop, help other people, start a factory, help even more people. But she’d made every one of those plans with the assumption her husband was dead. What was she supposed to do now that he?—
Thunk!
She looked down, where her foot had just discovered the basket of buttons—and knocked them over.
Served her right for letting Thomas distract her.
“Here, let me help.” Thomas made his way through the cluttered shop with a large sack in his hands. Had he been carrying it when he walked inside? “After we get this cleaned up, maybe I can order some trousers from you?”
Trousers. “I didn’t realize you had work for me. I thought you were here to…”Argue. Debate. Demand.She looked back down at the spilled buttons rather than finish the sentence.
He squatted beside her, his large hands scooping up buttons at twice the rate of her small ones. “I don’t mind waiting. Your windows are so large I can see half of North Street.”
“Um, all right. That’s… nice?” Why would he want to watch North Street through her window?
They both reached for the last two buttons. Her hand got there first, but Thomas’s large palm clasped overtop of hers an instant later. Warmth rushed up her arm. She dropped the buttons and yanked her arm away, only to feel a different kind ofwarmth flood her face. That had been a simple bump of hands. Nothing more and nothing less. Why was she letting herself get so flustered over it?
Thomas picked up the last two buttons, dropped them in the basket, then stood and set the basket on a table. A moment later his hand appeared in front of her face, still as large and rough and familiar as when he’d worked in the mine, though he claimed he’d owned and ran a hotel for four years. “Can I help you up?”
She could get up just fine on her own.
But she wouldn’t, because a man helping a lady off the ground was a completely innocent thing—just like a man and woman accidentally bumping hands.
He helped her to her feet and released her hand immediately after, his every action painfully proper, which drenched the room in even more awkwardness. She’d made three children with the man. How could such simple contact between them be so stilted?
“My trunk was lost in the storm. I’ve been to the mercantile to purchase clothes, but, well…” He dug into his sack and pulled out a pair of trousers.
Trousers. Yes, best think about the trousers and not her husband’s large, calloused hands.
She ran her gaze down him. He’d never been able to purchase manufactured trousers, and she’d been making his clothes for as long as she could remember, right up until the day he’d left. The ones he held out now looked to be two or three inches too short. “What kind of fabric?”
He shrugged. “You pick. Just as long as it’ll match the shirts I bought yesterday.”
“Do those fit?” Manufactured ones had always been too tight across his shoulders.
A flush spread up his neck. “Ah, better than the trousers.”
She glanced at the strip of plain cream shirt peeking out from beneath his open coat. “Is that one of your new shirts? Take off your coat and let me see.”
He shrugged out of the plaid mackinaw that looked just like the others in her pile of mending. The taut movement across the fabric on his shoulders already told her the shirt was too tight.
“Turn.” She twirled her finger in the air. “Stretch your arms in front of you.”
He did so, and she sighed. He’d already strained the material along the back of the two shoulder seams to the point the fabric would fray. “That needs to be mended too. I’ll have to look at the stitching to see whether it can be saved, but it could be I need to make you an entirely new shirt.”
“Do you think you can alter the trousers to fit? They were the longest the mercantile had.”
She looked at the pair of gray trousers hanging limply from his hand. She could make some minor alterations, yes, but she doubted she could find enough extra material to let out. “If you haven’t worn them yet, you’re better off returning them and getting your money back. Your shirts too. I imagine you have a tailor make your clothes in Deadwood.”
“Nothing in the stores there will fit either.” He shrugged, then reached behind him for another pair of pants. “I suppose if I’m returning everything I haven’t worn, there’s little hope of you repairing these.”
She clapped a hand to her mouth and surveyed the seam split and fraying down the seat of his pants. She couldn’t help the laugh that rumbled from her chest. “Oh, Thomas. Tell me you did that in your apartment and not somewhere in town.”
