Notorious in the West by Lisa Plumley

Author:Lisa Plumley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2014-01-22T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

The only person more implacable than Olivia Mouton with a mission to roust a man from his bed, steal away his whiskey and bring him into the sunshine, Griffin realized four days after his creek-side outing with Olivia, was Olivia Mouton with a mission to introduce a man wholesale to Morrow Creek—and to all its many residents in a nearly nonstop parade of faces, names and backslapping bonhomie.

By the end of the first day, Griffin’s jaw ached from rare, unaccustomed smiling. By the end of the second day, his ears rang with half-remembered conversations and bellowed spontaneous greetings. By the end of the third day, his hand shot out at the least provocation, permanently in a state of readiness for a handshake. His throat felt sore from interminable chatting with the townspeople and with Olivia herself.

If he was honest, Griffin would have had to admit that he liked it. He liked knowing people who—true to Olivia’s example—did not care who he was, or did not know who he was, and bluntly accepted that, in the West, it was a man’s right to start over.

Griffin wanted to start over, he discovered as he accompanied Olivia to the millinery shop, to the livery stable and to the cooper’s yard. Maybe that was what had pushed him to come to the territory, he reckoned—a desire for change that he hadn’t been able to acknowledge, even to himself. He wanted to forge a simpler life. He wanted to be free of the Turner legacy. He wanted to follow the straightforward example of Morrow Creek’s residents and live according to his own rules. He wanted to awaken in the morning to birdsong—MacGillivray’s Warbler, Olivia informed him—instead of carriage traffic. He wanted to spend his days with honest folk—the cobbler, the railway men and the hardworking staff of The Lorndorff—instead of with scheming industrialists. He wanted to smell roses and spice cake and buttermilk toast instead of factory smoke and coal fires.

He wanted to be with Olivia.

The more time Griffin spent with her, the more he believed it to be true. Their creek-side outing had been...miraculous.

Holding Olivia in his arms had shown Griffin that there was goodness and pleasure and sweetness in the world. Feeling her touch him—feeling her stroking him without shirking or steeling herself to do so—had been revelatory. So had Olivia’s insistence—so unlike Mary’s—that she didn’t believe a word of his vaunted, ever-formidable “legend.” For the first time in his life, Griffin felt improbably at peace. He wanted to share that.

He wanted to share it with Olivia, if she’d let him.

Feeling all too mindful of his missteps with Mary, Griffin was careful to be courteous, yet interested, when in Olivia’s company. He did his utmost to behave honorably, yet passionately, toward her. When he held her hand, he made it plain that he was in command of their togetherness. When he kissed her, he did so not as a platonic friend, but as a man...a man who wanted more than he could reasonably expect or should practically allow himself to take.

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