Johnny punched Bob on the arm. “We’re sorry to have bothered you, sir. Good day to you, Nellie.” He tipped his hat, and both men turned away, but Johnny glanced back over his shoulder at Nellie.

“Insolent pups!” Jace muttered, clasping Nellie’s hand and curving her fingers about his arm. This entire town seemed to be full of lunatics, he thought. Were all the men blind, or just stupid? It was beyond his understanding how any man could be interested in that pinched-face, skinny-flanked, self-centered Terel when Nellie was in the vicinity.

At the corner of Second and Coal they could see Miss Emily’s Tea Shop. “I’m hungry, are you?” Jace asked.

Nellie was still reeling from the encounter with Terel’s young men. Mr. Montgomery had acted as though he were about to strike the men, and he’d said Nellie wasn’t Terel’s “social secretary.” “No,” she answered honestly, “I’m not hungry at all.” She felt too good, too happy to be hungry. She wasn’t aware of it, but her shoulders were straight, and there was a light in her face that hadn’t been there an hour ago.

“Do you mind if I eat?”

She looked up at him. At the moment she would allow him anything. “Of course not,” she said softly.

Inside the tea shop Nellie’s shoulders sagged, for there were three of Terel’s lovely, thin girlfriends. All three wore exquisite dresses and jackets that were as tight as sausage casings on their perfect, willowy figures. Their little waists looked as if they might snap in two.

“I think I should return home,” Nellie whispered, acutely aware of her old house dress, of her straggling hair, and, most of all, of her size. She couldn’t bear to see Mr. Montgomery’s reaction when he saw the lovely creatures.

One of the girls looked up, saw Nellie, gave the tiniest smile in greeting—after all, she’d eaten at Nellie’s house many times—then looked at her companions. But the next moment she looked back and looked up at Jace. For a second the girl lost her composure as her mouth dropped open.

Nellie looked away as Jace escorted her to a table. She took a seat and looked out the window. She didn’t want to see Jace’s face when he saw the pretty girls.

“Nellie, how wonderful to see you!”

Slowly, she turned away from the window to look at the girls standing by their table. They looked like a bouquet of flowers in their lace-trimmed gowns, snippets of fur on their jackets, jewels in their ears, saucy little hats perched on their pretty heads.

She knew what they wanted: to be introduced to Jace. She took a breath. Better to get it over with. “May I introduce you?” she asked softly. She introduced them, but she still couldn’t bear to look at Jace, to see the way he looked at them. One of the girls slipped off her gloves, and Nellie could see the lovely way she moved her little hands.

Vaguely, she could hear Jace and the girls talking, but she wasn’t really listening. It had been a wonderful afternoon, being on the arm of this man and pretending that he was hers.

“Will you excuse us?” she heard Jace say. “Nellie and I are hungry.”

Nellie prayed for the floor to open and swallow her. People her size pretended they never ate.

“Oh,” one of the girls said, looking curiously at Nellie.

“Mr. Montgomery, are you the man Terel said is going to work for her father?”

Nellie at last stole a glance at Jace and, instead of the enraptured expression she expected to see, she saw annoyance.

“I have agreed to work for Nellie’s father,” he said emphatically, “only on the condition that Nellie walk out with me.”

Nellie didn’t know which of them was more stunned, herself or the three girls. In unison they turned to look at Nellie, and their expressions showed that they had no idea why a man like Jace would want a woman like Nellie.

Silently, they floated back to their table, and instantly their pretty heads were bent together as they looked at each other, then at Nellie, and back again.

Turning toward Jace, Nellie was once again speechless.

“This is the strangest town I have ever seen,” Jace said, partly in anger, partly in puzzlement. “You’d think no one had ever seen a man and woman walking out together before. Is Colorado so very different from Maine?”

She started to tell him that the difference was not in states, but in women. What people found odd was that he wanted to be seen with Nellie. But something told her to be quiet. If he didn’t know she was an undesirable, dried-up old maid, she wasn’t going to be the one to tell him. He’d find out soon enough, so why end it sooner than need be?

“Perhaps Colorado is different from Maine,” she said. “Tell me more about Maine and your boats.”

“Gladly,” he said, smiling, for he missed the sea.

Chapter Four

After a lovely tea, of which Nellie ate very little, they went back outside.

“I must go home,” Nellie said, not meaning it. At the moment she felt as though she never wanted to go home again.

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