He looked down at her, not moving, barely even breathing. His face loomed over her own, her head tilted back to see the blue of his eyes. She needed to step back, put distance between her and this big, burly man who owned too many of her memories.
If only that big, burly man didn’t have the power to trap her beneath his gaze until she forgot how to move.
“Do you do this with the other men that order shirts from you?” he rasped.
She dropped her arms from around him, then stepped back and pressed the tip of the measuring tape to his chest. “I ask them to bring me their measurements rather than measure them myself. Hold this here.”
“Jess.” His voice still held that raspy quality to it as he took the end of the tape from her.
He swallowed, his gaze darting about the shop before he spoke again. “You should make that dress in blue.” He nodded toward the completed bridesmaid’s dress hanging near the sewing machine. “To match your eyes.”
The ridiculousness of that. As though she had any need for a satin dress. And yet she could see it, the shimmering dress in a pale blue. A woman—not necessarily her, but someone with similar coloring, like Lindy Harrington—standing with golden hair piled atop her head and a necklace glittering at her throat.
She ducked her head and walked clear around him to get his chest measurement. A much safer way of doing things, even if she felt a bit absurd. “You’d better go now. I need to finish these coats before I can start on your clothes.”
“You don’t need to take measurements for my trousers?”
She nearly choked. Heavens, no. There was no possibility she could take his inseam. Not with the way he was looking at her, his eyes hot with something she didn’t want to think about while he spoke of her wearing a blue satin dress. “I recall your old measurements well enough. You haven’t changed clothing sizes, have you?”
He shook his head.
“Then good day, Thomas.”
“Good day… and thank you.” He left the shop on another gust of cold, November wind. But his presence seemed to linger there. His towering form, his woodsy scent, his earnest gaze.
She raised a hand to her forehead and blew out a long, shaky breath. She wouldn’t have trouble keeping a man who argued and made demands of her at arm’s length, but one who quietly watched her? Who asked if any of her customers had been giving her trouble, and talked about her wearing a dress fit for a princess?
If he made good on his promise and stayed until spring, how was she going to keep her distance?
Chapter Ten
“What do you mean you haven’t asked anyone about my jewelry?” Mrs. Ranulfson leaned over the desk in Isaac’s office, her hand splayed across the top of her ample bosom as though she were about to faint.
Isaac pressed two fingers to his temple, which was pounding like a miner with a pickax. Probably due to a night spent tossing and turning while he played out in his mind the conversation he needed to have with his brother. He’d finally concluded that there was no good way to tell Elijah and Victoria that the O’Byrne children’s wastrel of a father had returned for them, but even that revelation failed to bring him sleep.
Then again, the pounding in his head at the moment probably had as much to do with the shrill ring in Mrs. Ranulfson’s voice as his lack of sleep.
“I never said I hadn’t asked anyone. I said I hadn’t asked anyone since you were here yesterday, which was…” He looked at the clock hanging on the wall inside his office. “All of sixteen hours ago. You came in just before dinner, if you recall.”
The woman huffed, sending the large ostrich feathers atop her hat swaying. “If you weren’t looking for my stolen jewelry,then what were you doing? My husband’s the chairman of the Town Council. I’m sure he’d like to know how you’re spending your time as sheriff too. And don’t forget my tax dollars go to pay your salary.”
More like her husband’s tax dollars, since he didn’t think Betty Ranulfson had ever earned a wage in her life.
She raised her eyebrows, her feet planted firmly on the wooden planks of his office’s floor, and he sighed. Might as well list everything, then maybe she’d leave his office complaining that he was overworked and the town needed to actually pay the deputy he was going to swear in today.
“First, I patrolled at The Penny.” He held up a hand to stop the question that was sure to follow. “I don’t imbibe ever, Mrs. Ranulfson, let alone on the job.” Yet another thing his father had ingrained into him.
“Things were quiet there, so I headed to The Wagon, where things weren’t so quiet. I dragged six men in to spend the night behind bars on account of either public intoxication, disorderly conduct, or both.” He’d leave out the part about attempted assault on a lawman. He didn’t want every ruffian who passed through Eagle Harbor to know a group of shanty boys had almost beaten the tar out of the town sheriff.
“No sooner had I released them this morning than Mr. Fletcher came in asking if I could take a look at his warehouse.” That had been after he’d headed out to Elijah’s to talk to him and Victoria about Virgil O’Byrne. However, Elijah had already left to check one of his small trap lines, and he couldn’t quite force himself to tell Victoria about Virgil without Elijah there. “Someone stole a couple crates of spirits along with a collection of baubles and…”
Betty Ranulfson’s eyes rounded and her tongue slipped out to wet her lips. “Things were stolen from the warehouse?”
Isaac sighed. “Now just a minute, Mrs. Ranulfson. Mr. Fletcher lost a decent amount of merchandise with this burglary. You might want to be sensitive about that, considering you recently lost something valuable yourself.”
“Yes.” She leaned forward over his desk. “But certainly everyone needs to know about the robbery, right? This is the first I’ve heard of it, and I’ve already been to the bakery this morning.”
Yes, the town needed to know, but did she have to seem so happy about telling the story? “Like I said, the Fletchers are pretty upset by this, so maybe you could use a little tact?”
