The Matchmaker

Very lucky, indeed.

Rapidly Molly spread the dough’s surface with softened butter. She sprinkled on brown sugar and cinnamon, then added her special secret ingredient, making plans for her encounter with Mr. Copeland all the while. When a strategy finally occurred to her, she smiled.

After all, Molly reminded herself, there was no call to be cowardly. Marcus Copeland was only a man. A man, oddly enough, who seemed immune to her dresses’ allure, but a man nonetheless. Once she’d dealt with him face-to-face, how much trouble could he possibly be?

As Marcus might have expected of a woman, she was late.

Annoyed despite his determination not to be, he turned away from the edge of the lumber mill yard, where he’d been watching for Molly Crabtree to arrive. According to Thomas, one of his longtime buckers, she had agreed to come to the lumber mill nearly two hours ago. Where was she?

Two men walked past, carrying a crosscut saw between them. This was the third trip they’d made across the yard, Marcus knew. Other men loitered nearby, some bearing double-blade axes or sledgehammers and others propping their weight against the springboards they should have been using to work with. Instead, far too many of his men were spending their time waiting for Miss Crabtree to arrive.

Just like him.

Damnation.

Marcus couldn’t put his plan into motion until Molly Crabtree got there. It required the cooperation of his men, which was why they loitered about when the sun was nearly overhead. For the tenth time that day, Marcus removed his hat, shoved his hand through his hair and wished he’d never agreed to help the Morrow Creek Men’s Club discover the identity of the matchmaker.

If he’d known it would take this much time from his day, he’d never have swallowed the notion at all.

“There’s the signal, boss!” one of the sawyers yelled, pointing down the well-tended dirt path leading toward town. “She must be comin’!”

Sure enough, Marcus glimpsed a red bandanna being waved wildly between the swaying pine tree boughs. At the sight of the signal he’d instructed his foreman to use once he spotted Miss Crabtree headed their way, his belly lurched with something very close to excitement.

Impatience, he told himself sternly. It was impatience he felt to have this chowder-headed business behind him, not excitement.

Marcus was still reminding himself of that fact when the woman came into view, wearing a close-fitting dress and a bonnet nearly as enormous as the one Deputy Winston had drawn on the caricature at the saloon last night. For an instant, his thoughts lingered on the other, rounder, softer and equally impressive attributes he’d given Miss Crabtree in the picture. Marcus wondered if as little exaggeration was involved there as had been involved with her hat.

Shoving that enticing mystery aside, he turned to give his men the second signal. Marcus raised his hand, prepared to gesture with it…and realized that not one of his men was looking at him. They all stood with stupid, eager grins, slack jawed and glassy-eyed, watching Molly’s feminine, side-to-side swish as she made her way down the path toward the lumber mill.

They were hopeless.

So was Marcus, by the time she recognized him and ran the last few steps toward him. Lord, but the woman was a sight to behold.

Her face was alight with good humor, pink cheeked and delicately shaped beneath the brim of her flower-bedecked hat. A few tendrils of honey-colored hair had escaped its confines to tease her lips, drawing his attention to their tempting fullness. Sucking in a deep breath, Marcus took an instant to prepare, then treated himself to an up-close view of her fine woman’s figure in that waist-hugging dress.

No wonder his men had gone slack jawed.

For the life of him, in that moment Marcus couldn’t imagine a single reason why Molly Crabtree, as delightful looking a female as he’d ever seen, had grown into a spinster. How, he wondered to himself, could it be that no man had ever stuck a ring on her finger and made her his own?

Then…she opened her mouth.

“Morning, Mr. Copeland,” she said brightly. “Beautiful day, isn’t it? I’m so glad we’ve finally had this chance to meet face-to-face. Why, I don’t think we’ve ever said two words to each other, and that’s after you’ve been living here in Morrow Creek for the past two years! Can you imagine that? I guess we’ve just never had a moment to spare, what with you working on your lumber mill, and me working on my various ventures. Busy, busy, busy. That’s us.”

She paused for breath. For an instant, Marcus believed her chatter had come to an end. But then she looped her arm companionably in his, started walking them both toward the two-story lumber mill behind them, and just went on.

“I’m so happy you invited me here today. I just know we can come to an agreeable arrangement. My baked goods are unlike any others in town, you know. They’re positively unique.”

Marcus nodded, too distracted by the pleasurable feel of her slender arm cradled in his to offer much more to the conversation. She smelled spicy, he thought, and sweet. Like pumpkin pie, or gingerbread. Cinnamon, Marcus identified after a moment. Cinnamon and sugar.

Mmm.

He had a sudden impossible yet wholly irresistible image of himself together with Miss Molly. Alone. In his imagination, Marcus unfastened the first tiny pearled buttons on her dress. As he opened her gown, he kissed the warm, creamy skin he’d revealed at her neck. She tasted of spices as delicious as any he’d sampled…and of some, more exotic still.

Transfixed, Marcus let himself be led toward the shade of a stand of pine trees a few feet from the mill’s main entrance. Beside him, Molly struggled with the covered wicker basket she’d brought. Marcus chivalrously helped her lower it to a ponderosa stump.

Freed of her burden, she rummaged through its contents. Her movements sent her blue-checked skirts swishing against her legs, and the clump of men who’d followed them pushed closer. As one, their combined gazes dropped to her stocking-clad ankles.

A stern glance from Marcus had them all busily examining axes, tightening suspender straps and looking purposefully toward the towering pines beyond. With a shake of his head, Marcus dismissed them to await the next phase of his plan.

“I’m glad you could come on such short notice,” he told Molly when they were alone again. “I don’t often do things without planning first, but I—”

“Oh, but you should! The things you don’t plan for are often the most enjoyable of all.”

The very notion made Marcus frown. Fail to plan? Unthinkable. “Be that as it may, I did have some ideas in mind for us today.”

She quit fussing with the basket she’d brought and looked up. Her eyes were blue, he noticed inanely. As though that mattered a whit to discovering if she was really the secret matchmaker.

“You do?” Molly asked.

“Yes.”

“Well, then.” She smiled up at him, and turned so they faced each other fully. “I guess you’d better tell me what you have in mind. For us to do together, I mean.”

Together. Suddenly, all manner of unified activities occurred to Marcus. Things they could do together—very close together. As though guessing his thoughts, Molly lowered her gaze coquettishly, encouraging him to lower his gaze, too…all the way to those remarkable feminine curves of hers. Lord Almighty. Was Molly Crabtree flirting with him? It would seem so.

’Twould be fitting, if she were truly the matchmaker.

The matchmaker. Reminded of his mission, Marcus smiled back at her. He was no mere boy, to be dumbfounded by a feminine smile and a handful of enticing words.

Was he?

Hell, no. With new determination, Marcus cleared his throat and got on with his plan. “I couldn’t help but notice you outside the lumber mill yard these past weeks,” he began.

It wasn’t strictly true. His foreman, Smith, had enlightened Marcus about Molly’s continued vigil outside the mill yard, and the rest of his plan had sprung from there. Looking at her now, though, Marcus couldn’t imagine how he’d missed the sight of her.

Had business success turned him blind to the appeal of a pretty woman? Suddenly ill at ease, he wondered if his friends in the men’s club were right, and he needed to socialize more.

“If you mean to make me leave that spot,” Molly interrupted, turning back to her basket with shoulders gone suddenly stiff and defensive, “I’ll have you know that the road is public land, and so is its edge. You can’t force me away from there. Why, the whole town would probably be in an uproar if you so much as tried.”

“Hold on. There’s no call to get riled up. I never said I was asking you to leave, Miss Crabtree—”

“Molly, please.” Her shoulders relaxed, slim and delicately curved beneath the blue checked fabric of her dress.

“Molly.” He liked the sound of it. The intimacy of it. “Friends ought to call each other by their first names, don’t you think so?” She rose, holding a napkin-wrapped bundle in her small, elegant-looking hands.

“Uh.” He experienced an unprecedented urge to take those hands in his and slowly pull her closer. With a frown of confusion, Marcus wrestled down that impulse and settled for answering her question instead. “Yes, I do. Especially if you agree to the proposition I have in mind.”

“Proposition?”