When Wednesday arrived, Matthew called for Eli to watch the customers, grabbed the green velvet reminder he’d hurt her feelings, and hopped in his truck. When he reached the boarding house, Matthew was glad to see the girl’s car gone, relieved he could just dip inside and leave her coat with Mrs. Fontanne.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Emerson.” Mrs. Fontanne’s hook-nosed profile turned, the woman glancing up from her sewing. “What can I do for you today?”
Quickly clearing his throat, he grumbled, “Miss Elliot left this at the grill a few days back.”
The offensive softness was held out for the woman to take.
“Well, she ain’t here.” Chubby fingers waved to the nearby hooks on the wall so the man might hang it up himself. “Ain’t seen hide nor hair of that girl since she up and yelled in my face. Rude woman has been gone for days.”
His brows drew down further. “She check out?”
“Hardly. All her stuff’s still upstairs. Who knows where she went. She never tells me squat. Just comes and goes as she pleases.”
The little connections were starting to line up. Matthew’s tone grew cool. “You been prying into Charlotte’s life, Mrs. Fontanne?”
The old biddy’s eyes darted up from her sewing. “There’s got to be a reason she turns her nose up at the young men in town. Why she don’t work.”
“What young men?” The question passed his lips before he could bite down on the toothpick between his teeth and keep his yap shut.
“For your information, Matthew Emerson, I’ve had three of Monroe’s finest bachelors at our table trying to help that poor woman out. And she’s hardly paid them any mind. Miss Elliot must be over twenty-five—if she ain’t married or looking to marry, then something’s just plain wrong with her.”
Without a word, Matthew fisted his hand in Charlie’s coat, turned, and left.
Pausing at the porch, he looked up to the greying sky and smelled an oncoming storm. Not two seconds later, the fully loaded trucks of the Grimes boys rushed past, the bootleggers trying to make a run before the coming rain made roads muddy and business perilous.
“Damn fools,” Matthew grumbled, opening his truck door and tossing her coat on the passenger seat. Driving like that in the middle of the day round Gap Mills was bound to get someone hurt.
* * *
“Damn fools!” Charlie shouted against the wind for what must have been the twentieth time. She was soaked to the bone, coatless, and struggling to move down the muddy Devil’s Hollow Road.
The twisting motorway had it out for her, she was certain. Just before rain started to dump from the sky, some speeding hooligans ran her off the road. With her wheel caught in a flooding ditch, she had struggled for nigh on an hour to get the car moving, only to slip and sprain her ankle.
Shivering from the chill, arms hugged to her chest, Charlie once again second-guessed her decision to walk back to town. She’d been limping along for so long the sky had grown dark. Between the storm and the lack of moonlight, she wasn’t sure she would be able to find her car even if she went back for it.
Gritting her teeth, she pressed through driving rain and heard the metallic creak of a sign swinging in the gusts. Across a nearby field, a flash of lightning struck a tree, illuminating the pitch black long enough for Charlie to see a building on her left. Limping forward, Charlie cursed again when she found herself staring at the dark windows of none other than Devil’s Hollow Roadhouse.
A boom of thunder hurried her up the steps, where she had no choice but to beg help from the insufferable man who lived inside.
The worn wood of the door needed a fresh coat of paint, rough under her knuckles when she knocked hard enough, she hoped, to be heard over the storm.
“Matthew!” Her call was loud, desperate. “Matthew Emerson!”
About to resign herself to a night sleeping on his porch, Charlie hung her head and vigorously rubbed her freezing arms, cursing herself again for leaving her coat. When the door swung inward and bare toes filled her vision, Charlie slowly raised her dripping head.
He was glaring at her by the light of a lantern. “Where the hell have you been, woman?”
She knew she looked a mess, felt her hair plastered to her skull, probably pale as a ghost. Teeth chattering, she chose to be saucy. “I went for a drive. A rather long—”
Before she could finish, he pushed open the screen and yanked her out of the dark. Once the door banged shut, the silence was awkward. Smoothing her hand over dripping hair, wiping her face as best she could, Charlie mumbled, “My car was run off the road a few miles back. I’ve been walking in that storm for…” She trailed off, realizing she was wasting her breath trying to engage Matthew Emerson in conversation.
Graceless and without invitation, Charlie kicked off muddy shoes and hobbled towards the stove. Matthew followed, kneeling down to build up the blaze.
* * *
With the light of the fire, he turned his face up, watching her shiver in her soaked cotton dress—a dress that clung to her body to the point of indecency—every curve, every secret place outlined.
Glancing to her face, he found what he’d spent weeks secretly searching for.