Her question startled him, and he realized he’d been staring at her braid. “What?”
“My project.” She grinned. “Oh my, that kiss really scrambled your brain.”
Max was surprised to discover his arousal was under control now. Maybe it was the memory of the frantic chase after the lady in silver, or his worry for her. Or maybe it was the way Ember was smiling at him now, although he doubted it.
“Uh…yeah. Of course I’d like to see your project.”
“Good!” She grabbed his hand and began to pull him toward the lathe. “Because I have been meaning to ask you for some help with it.”
“Anything,” he vowed.
At the lathe, she beamed to him. “I am hoping to show these to your boss. I created them, and I want to make more of them and sell them to the ladies. I know they will be popular—my sisters have helped prove that—but I do not have the capabilities to manufacture them at the same rate, not in the little workshop at the inn.”
Max clasped his hands behind his back and rocked back on his heels, trying to follow along with her explanation. She was so animated as she waved her hands about, he doubted she even was aware of the damp spot on her blouse where his mouth had been.
But he was aware of it.Wooo-boywas he aware of it. He could see the darker pink of her areola through the fabric and remembered the hard bud of her nipple…
Focus, cowboy.
“I have been using scrap metal—the ends of the ingots mostly, since sheet metal will not work. It took me months of scrounging—and Lawrence said it was allowed, considering who my Papa was—to find enough bronze and brass to make matching heels for mine and Bonnie’s shoes, but Tiffany’s were simpler. I have to turn them here on the lathe, since I cannot form the heel in my workshop. But then I take it back and do all the engraving there, then attach it to the rest of the shoe.”
She was looking at him with excitement, as if he were supposed to know what she was talking about. He loosened his hands to offer her a shrug and a bemused grin. “I’m sorry, love. I don’t understand what you’re telling me.”
Clucking her tongue, she whirled around and began to turn levers. He stepped up beside her and realized she was releasing her project from the lathe. When she handed it to him, he held it up in the light of the lantern to examine the two-inch-long, two-inch wide cylinder.
“What is it?” he asked. Hadn’t she said something about a heel?
“Here. This is my template.”
And that’s when she beamed and held up a completed shoe.
It was a little odd to realize his hand was shaking slightly as he reached reverently for it. He held it beside the cylinder and realized they were identical. She was turning heels for fancy ladies’ slippers. The completed shoe in his hand was red, and the metal of the bronze heel was burnished to a shine and engraved with a delicate design of gears.
It was identical to the shoe he’d hidden upstairs in his office.
“You made this?” His voice was a hoarse whisper.
“Yes. Do you like it? Do you think your boss would be interested in manufacturing them?”
Andrew Prince likely wouldn’t care one way or the other, but Max didn’t want to dampen her enthusiasm. “I think it’samazing. Women wear these sorts of things?”
“Of course. Women’s fashion—especially among the wealthy—is all about showing off. And impracticalness. When we wore these to the ball last week, they caused quite a sensation. My sisters already have ladies clamoring for their own pair.”
Whenwewore these to the ball.
Ember had been at the ball.
Max stared at her, his pulse hammering in his ears, suddenly understanding why her hair had tugged at his memory. He’d seen it before, loose and curly, and hanging down her back. Her back, encased in a silver gown while her face had been hidden by a mask decorated in a delicate design of gears and machinery to match the heeled slippers.
Ember was the lady in silver from the ball!
She wasn’t aserving lassat all, was she?
