Chapter 2

 

Tempest knocked on Lydia’s door, then smoothed a hand over the waist of her blue silk dress. Her stomach roiled a bit with nerves and excitement. Would Bram come as he’d promised? She shot a surreptitious gaze down the street, but she didn’t see him.

The door opened, and Lydia stood there, a warm smile on her face, her blond hair as perfectly coiffed as always. “Tempest, come in. Come in.”

Sweeping through the doorway, she embraced Lydia. “I invited one more guest,” she said, easing back. “I hope you don’t mind.”

“Not at all. If she enjoys opera, she is more than welcome.” Lydia shut the door and gestured for Tempest to join the knot of guests already assembled in the parlor.

Tempest blushed. “I believe he does.”

“He?” Her friend whirled around and stared at her with wide, twinkling eyes. “Who? Where?” She linked her arm with Tempest’s and guided her to a corner of the room. Ever since Lydia had married Calvin last year, shortly after Tempest had met her, she’d been intent on matchmaking. But none of the men her friend pointed out to Tempest had stolen her breath or her attention the way Bram had, especially in so short a time.

“Well, he’s newly arrived in town.” Tempest couldn’t keep a smile from pulling at her lips. “And he came into the store earlier today. I was actually looking for my ledger again and I found it under my hammer. So I lifted it and . . .” Her gaze wandered over the faces of Lydia’s guests, but it stopped on a now-familiar one. Bram locked eyes with her over the glass of punch he was drinking. Tempest’s pulse began to sprint.

“And?” Lydia pressed. “What about the hammer?”

Tempest leaned close to hiss, “He’s here.”

“Who?” Her friend frowned in confusion, her voice rising. “Who’s here?”

“Shh. The man I’ve been telling you about. He’s over there talking to Calvin.”

Lydia glanced in the men’s direction, but instead of grinning, her consternation increased. “That can’t be him.”

Tempest turned to face her friend. “But it is. That’s Bram Wakeman. I met him earlier today and invited him to the party.” She threw another look at Bram. “He’s really quite charming and likes the name Tempest, even though he did say it fit me. Something about my hair and the mess I’d made—”

“Tempest,” Lydia said in a low voice as she squeezed her arm. “Do you know who Mr. Wakeman is?”

Their conversation was growing more puzzling and irritating by the moment. “Of course I know who he is. He’s the man I met today who is new in town and who I invited to come this evening.”

“I think you’d better sit down.”

“Lydia, what’s going on?” she asked as her friend steered her toward a chair, away from Bram, and practically pushed Tempest into it. She crashed onto the velvet seat with a huff. “What is the matter with Mr. Wakeman and how can you possibly know him?”

Wringing her hands, Lydia shot a glance at the men. “I only met him tonight, but Calvin met him this afternoon. He invited him to the party and Mr. Wakeman said a friend of ours had already invited him. I didn’t realize that friend was you.”

Tempest shifted in the stiff chair—it had never been her favorite in Lydia’s parlor. “I don’t understand the problem.”

“Did he tell you why he’s here in Idaho City?”

She thought back over their conversation, but she couldn’t recall Bram explaining his reason for coming to town—only that he was new and not a miner. “No, he didn’t. But why ever should that—”

“He’s renovating the vacant saloon.” Lydia put a consoling hand on Tempest’s shoulder. “And he’s turning it into a mercantile.”

Tempest blinked, certain she hadn’t heard right. The town already had a successful mercantile—hers. There was no need for two. “Ar-are you certain? He didn’t say a thing . . .”

She moistened her dry lips as a measure of panic crept up her spine. Competition could mean the loss of profits, and a loss of profits could mean the loss of her store, and the loss of her store could mean the loss of her independence, freedom, and solitude. She’d have little choice but to return to living like a permanent houseguest in the home of one of her brothers.

“I’m so sorry,” Lydia said, her eyes snapping with the same indignation beginning to smolder deep down inside Tempest. “When Calvin asked about your store as competition, Mr. Wakeman said if Idaho City ended up with only one mercantile again, he strongly hoped it would be his.”

Her anger surged from a slow burn to all-out flames. She’d been taken in completely by his handsome looks and appealing manners. And all the while, Bram Wakeman had only been a wolf trussed up like an innocent lamb.

Tempest charged to her feet. “Excuse me, Lydia.” She set her sights on Bram’s guiltless, smiling face across the room. His nerve to accept her invitation . . .

“What are you doing?”

“Advancing on the enemy.”

 

• • •

 

Bram watched Tempest move through the small crowd with as much deadly force as her name warranted, her brown eyes as cold as frozen leaves. She knows. He’d hoped to ease her into a conversation regarding his true reason for coming to town, but it seemed Calvin’s wife had beaten him to it.

Swallowing past his suddenly parched throat, as if he hadn’t emptied his glass of punch just now, he set the cup down and made his exit from the conversation. He met Tempest halfway through her determined charge. Thankfully she’d left her hammer back at her store.

“You—you snake,” she hissed, her cheeks nearly as flushed as her hair in the firelight. “You Benedict Arnold. There I stood making a goose of myself and you going on about how you didn’t know what you wanted to buy. I ought to—”

He cut off whatever she felt she ought to do by taking her elbow gently in hand and steering her toward the door. Bram had no wish to cause a scene, especially in front of potential customers. “Let’s discuss this elsewhere, shall we?”

“Unhand me, you villainous traitor. You . . . you . . .”

“Dastardly scoundrel,” he supplied, feeling the truth of every single one of the cutting names.

She looked momentarily surprised that he would join her tirade before her expression hardened again. “Yes, that one works as well. Along with rogue, reprobate, and scalawag.”

“Don’t forget rascal, rake, and cad.”

“And ungentlemanly, dishonest, sneaky . . .”

Each word cut a little deeper and obliterated any hope he’d entertained all day for coming to know Tempest better. But then again, he’d known that wasn’t a possibility the moment he’d left her store, hadn’t he?

Calvin’s wife intercepted them as they reached the doorway, her chin tilted in defiance to him and protection for her friend. “Tempest. Mr. Wakeman. Is everything all right?”

Bram nodded stiffly. “I would simply like to speak with Tempest outside.”

“It’s all right, Lydia,” Tempest said in a limp tone. “I’ve decided to let the blackguard have his say before we never speak to each other again.”

Her friend swept aside, allowing them to pass. Bram dropped his hold on Tempest’s arm as he slipped out the front door behind her. The instant it closed she spun to face him, her countenance furious. “You were spying on me this morning. Getting the lay of the land before you made your move.”

There was no sense in denying it, though it pained him to see the hurt the moon revealed in her eyes. “Yes, I was. And it isn’t an excuse, Tempest, but I didn’t expect the mercantile to be run by a woman. You took me completely by surprise.”

“Then that makes two of us,” she countered. “I didn’t take you for a cheat when I met you this morning.”

“I’m not a cheat,” he voiced with conviction. “I had every intention of telling the store’s owner that he would have some competition and see what was not being offered to the townsfolk that I could supply.”

Tempest crossed her arms over her blue dress, one that emphasized a trim waist and heightened the color of her hair. “And yet you didn’t say a word. That is lying by omission, Mr. Wakeman.”

“Bram,” he urged, wishing to at least keep that tiny piece of familiarity between them. “And you are right. I didn’t say a thing.” He plucked at his perfectly arranged tie for a bit more air. “And for that I am sorry. I should have told you myself.”

“Don’t think because I am a woman that I’m going to make this any easier for you.” She speared him with her gaze. “This store is my life and I will not let it fail. And so it is you, Bram Wakeman”—she jabbed her finger into his chest—“who will have to bow out.”

The smile that began to form on his mouth at her passion died at hearing her words. “And don’t think that because I am a man and you are a woman that I won’t be just as fierce in making my store a success. I, too, have reasons for needing my venture to prosper.”

One eyebrow lifted in a haughty look that made Bram feel as if she were taller and looking down upon him rather than the other way around. “I’m not afraid of a little healthy competition.”

“Nor am I.”

“Good.” She moved to the door and gripped the handle, her wide skirts swinging like a bell around her hips. “Then it will not come as a surprise to you when you’re packing up your shelves and boarding up your newly opened store to return to wherever it is you came from.”

He thought of the disheveled papers and disorganized shelving he’d observed in her mercantile this morning. She greatly underestimated his natural instincts for order and business and his desire to succeed. “Then let the best storekeeper win.”

“Oh, she will,” Tempest intoned in an icy voice as she swished her way inside.

Bram took in a great gulp of night air to ease the tension, and regret, lodged in his shoulders and chest. His eyes went to the stars above. They stood as cold and distant as Tempest herself did now. He didn’t want to see her livelihood shattered, and yet, he wouldn’t back down. He and his store weren’t going anywhere.