Into the Whirlwind (20 page)

She caught her breath. If there was a settlement in the wind, she needed to know immediately. Without a second thought, she hopped off the stool and snatched her cloak. “I’ll be back soon,” she called to the others over her shoulder.

“What kind of business?” she asked the moment she stepped into the chilly autumn air.

Zack tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow and tugged her alongside him as he strode down the street. “My, my, aren’t we single-minded,” he said with a grin.

The street was dense with wagons hauling building supplies and workmen lugging sacks of barley into the brewery. Chicago had been a boomtown as far back as she could remember, but as the frenzy of reconstruction was added to regular business, it was hard to find space on the streets.

“You seem remarkably jolly this afternoon,” she said, breathless from keeping up with his strides. He flashed her a heart-stopping smile as he pulled her behind an ornate iron lamppost. Big arms clamped around her, he whispered in her ear, “I am jolly because I’ve convinced Hartman to buy that piece of paper you’ve got tucked into your bodice. No court case, no waiting for your money. Two thousand dollars, payable in cash.”

Her gaze flew to his. “Are you joking?” she asked. Her back ached from days of sorting bricks in order to collect five dollars per wagonload.
Two thousand dollars
. Two thousand dollars would buy materials for a year. It would pay her workers until she could ship her watches to the East Coast. Two thousand dollars meant work and hope and dignity.

“I wouldn’t joke about something like that, Mollie. Hartman is flat broke until the bank releases an insurance payment at the beginning of November, but then we will pay you.” He touched a
finger to the collar of her blouse, sending shivers racing through her. “All you have to do is sign the back of that piece of paper. We leave it at the bank and close the deal as soon as the money comes through. It will all be written up in perfect detail. You can take it to Frank for review.”

The weight of anxiety she didn’t even know she had been carrying lifted away as she smiled up into his flashing dark eyes. Zack wasn’t trying to cheat her, he was smoothing the way.

Everything was falling into place exactly as it should.

It took less than an hour to go to the bank and draw up the paper work for the proposed deal. Could it really be this easy? Zack and the banker lined all the documents up and assured her she’d have plenty of time to review them with Frank before closing the deal.

Afterward, Zack found a quiet courtyard to escape the bustle of the street. Surrounded by an ivy-covered stone wall and sheltered by the spreading branches of a hawthorn tree, it seemed they had just stepped into a refuge from the commotion of the city. Zack lowered his forehead to hers, and she savored his strength as she settled against him. “I need to go to New York and Philadelphia to wrangle with the insurance companies,” he said. “I’ll be gone at least two weeks, maybe three. We will close the deal when I return.”

She nodded, already missing his warm, irreverent presence.

“You are
it
, Mollie,” he whispered. “You are exactly the sort of woman I have always wanted to find. The city can burn to the ground, but you don’t lose your head. You are passion and intelligence and beauty, and I love you to the bottom of my soul.”

Mollie’s breath froze in her lungs. She wasn’t ready for this. Zack was a wild, unpredictable force of nature, while she lived
in an orderly world of ticking watches and production schedules. She wasn’t ready for this, but there was no stopping Zack.

“I want you out of that church and into someplace safe,” he said. “I want to
marry you
, Mollie. Say yes.”

She couldn’t even draw a breath. Her life had been swept up into a whirlwind, smashed into pieces, and then reassembled into a wild and exciting world with which she had no experience.

She risked a glance at his face. “You know this terrifies me, right?”

His gaze did not waver; it only became more tender as he caressed the side of her face. “I’m betting you’ll brave it out.”

She wanted to, but this wild, impulsive urge was frightening. She needed time to process the disordered jumble of feelings that were so unfamiliar to her. “I need to get back to the workshop and see about getting diamond powder.”

He cocked a brow at her. “I lay my soul at your feet and you want to talk about buying supplies?” He smiled as he leaned down to touch his forehead to hers again. “I want to marry you, Mollie. Say yes. Say yes, and we’ll be one for the ages.”

“I can’t. Not yet.”

“When I get back from New York.”

“Not then either. Zack, I’m not impulsive. You can’t rush me into something like this.”

Zack winked down at her. “How about I rush you into lunch, then?” If he took offense at her refusal to budge on the proposal, he gave no sign of it as he strode down the street, whistling in good humor. Mollie had no desire to be trapped inside a fancy hotel dining room, so Zack bought zesty German sausages from a street vendor. She was amazed at the amount of spicy mustard Zack slathered on the bratwurst wrapped in freshly baked bread, but it was delicious. They found a place to eat away from the crush of pedestrians on the street. She held their food as Zack
wrapped both hands around her middle and lifted her onto the ledge of a brick wall. Then he hopped up beside her.

“There is something I’ve been meaning to ask you,” she said as she handed Zack a bratwurst. It was a little awkward, but if Zack was the man she was going to marry, she needed to know what she was getting into.

“Yes?”

“That story about the fish. Is it true?”

Zack’s grin was roguish. “I don’t know. What have you heard?”

“Something about a hundred pounds of fish dumped on a merchant’s fancy desk. Is it true?”

Zack took a large bite of his sausage and watched her through laughing eyes as he chewed. How could she consort with a man with such a shocking reputation? She was a safety-and-security girl, and Zack was an untamed force of nature. He finished chewing and sent her a wicked grin. “It was trout,” he said proudly. “And we’ve never had substandard fish palmed off on us since.”

“If someone sold me shoddy merchandise, I would have filed a complaint at the Cook County Courthouse.”

“I wanted the problem solved by lunchtime, not the next decade.”

And that was the difference between her and Zack. She played by the rules, and he looked for any way to avoid them. He didn’t actually break them, but he knew where he could bend, skirt, and twist them to his advantage. While she obediently filled out her insurance claim and collected three cents on the dollar, Zack went dashing off to New York to press his case.

Zack dragged her out of her comfortable world, but hadn’t the fire already done that? In this new world, perhaps it made sense to ally herself with someone who was comfortable riding
the whirlwind. Her heart had already been won; it was only her logical and cautious brain that resisted.

Looking at Zack’s handsome face as he grinned down at her, she hoped her brain would be ready to follow orders when he returned from New York.

13

A
little of the excitement faded from Mollie’s life when Zack left town, although she was so busy at the workshop she was lucky to find time for lunch each day. There was a Polish grocery across the street from the brewery, and they sold prepared food to the hundreds of workers in the brewery district. Mollie sat at one of the tiny tables in the corner to enjoy a bowl of
borscht
with Dr. Buchanan, who was helping them with odd jobs at the workshop.

Actually, Mollie was certain that Dr. Buchanan suffered from terrible loneliness. “I like being with the people of the 57th,” he admitted. “I’ve never really had a family like that. Dentistry is a solitary profession. I didn’t think about that when I chose it.”

He had developed a fondness for Polish cooking, and when he didn’t take his meals at the Polish grocer, he hiked across town to share a meal with Zack’s parents. Mrs. Kazmarek had adopted Dr. Buchanan as an “honorary Pole” and was happy to keep filling him with flaki
,
pierogi
,
and kielbasa
.
He had been wandering the city for a week, looking for a suitable room to lease where he might be able to restart his dental practice, but it seemed every available attic, shed, lean-to, or basement had already been snapped up.

Mollie considered her suggestion carefully before mentioning it to him. Self-sufficiency was important to a man’s pride, and she didn’t want to offend Dr. Buchanan, but perhaps there was a mutually beneficial arrangement they could make.

“I will be rebuilding my workshop on my land on East Street,” Mollie said one afternoon as they took lunch. “I don’t need a lot of room for watchmaking, and perhaps I could reserve a corner of the building for a dental shop. I could use a little income from a rental space,” she added.

Dr. Buchanan immediately straightened, hope lighting his eyes. “When do you think you can have the building ready?”

That was the rub. Bricklayers and carpenters were more highly prized than diamonds. “All the builders I’ve spoken to are booked through spring,” she said. “With luck, perhaps I can start building next summer.”

The light faded from Dr. Buchanan. “I can’t afford to wait that long.” He finished his soup, then walked her back to the brewery. “I’ll be back this evening to walk you and the others home,” he said.

“Did Zack ask you to do that?”

Dr. Buchanan twisted the corner of his mustache. “He might have mentioned it in passing. That stash you folks cart back and forth every night is worth guarding, and there are still some rowdy elements on the streets.” He winked down at her. “And it is not like I have been deluged with customers.”

That night, as she fell asleep in the church, she added Dr. Buchanan to the list of people she prayed for.

Mollie emerged from a deep sleep as Alice shook her. “Someone is in the church,” she said in a harsh whisper.

Mollie was still bleary as she pushed up onto an elbow,
listening to footsteps shuffle outside her tent. With the flaps closed, no light penetrated the thick woolen fabric, and Mollie was blind to who was outside. People sometimes moved around at night to use the privy, but never did they stumble about this badly. And it sounded like more than one person.

“Who’s out there?” a loud voice demanded from the opposite side of the church. It was Dr. Buchanan.

The glow of a lantern illuminated the space outside the tent, and Mollie peeked outside the flaps, squinting at the sudden light.

Her heart almost stopped. There were at least six strange men in the church! A redheaded man with a droopy mustache raised a rifle to his shoulder and swung it like a baseball bat at the tent where Ulysses and Declan slept. The tent collapsed and the men inside scrambled beneath the fabric.

“Where are the watches?” the redheaded man demanded. He yanked the tent to the side, wooden posts clattering across the floor. Ulysses searched madly through the blankets for his crutch, but Declan stared at the men, frozen in panic. Mollie felt just as helpless, crouched in the opening of her tent.

The redheaded man spotted her. As he drew the rifle back to strike, Mollie jerked the tent post, collapsing heavy folds of the tent on top of her, but at least she wasn’t paralyzed anymore.

She pushed through the cloth, grasping the tentpole before her. “Get out of here.”

“Where are the watches?” A brutal hand shoved her to the ground. The stranger jerked the tent from where it lay, exposing Alice, who clutched her blankets to her chest, her face white with fear. The man jerked the blanket away and began riffling through their clothes and blankets.

Ulysses hadn’t found his crutch, but he dragged himself across the floor on his strong forearms. “Leave my wife alone,” he
growled. All around the church, people were emerging from their tents.

“Jesse, don’t be an idiot!”

Was that Ralph Coulter’s voice? Another tent collapsed as the strangers swiped at it with their rifles. Declan lunged at one of the intruders but fell when a bull of a man smacked him on the head with the butt of a rifle.