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the props.
    Joining Betsy at the bench, Cole could see her face in the restaurant’s light. She was beautiful with her raven hair and full lips. A subtle, wild fragrance bounced in the air around her.
    “No, I think she was right this time.” She beamed and slipped her arm through his. “Maybe you could take me for a ride later?”
    “Yeah, maybe.” Bold, this one. “You hungry?”
    “Starving.”
    Her breath brushed over his cheek and she squeezed his arm. Yeah, she was starving all right, but for what?
    Cole stepped to the front door, holding it open for his lovely, if not racy, date. This was good, right? A change of pace. A woman very different from his last. This was so much better than staying at home with sweaty-socks Chris.
    He ordered a table for two at the hostess stand, then eased back, giving his nerves a rest.
    Betsy may not be the one for him, but here she was, in the moment, wrapped in a beautiful pink package. The first moment of Cole’s new tomorrows started here and now.

    C ORA
    She stood eye to eye with him. A riverboat captain. But not her riverboat captain. Not Rufus St. Claire.
    “Hello?” he said, a spark of amusement in his eyes.
    Constable O’Shannon stepped up. “Captain Riske, may I introduce Miss Cora Scott. She runs the dress shop at the end of the avenue there.”
    “Wedding shop,” she said, her eyes still locked with the captain’s—who seemed rather delighted at her discomfort. “I operate a wedding shop.”
    “Well, you have dresses too, don’tcha?” O’Shannon insisted on being right. After all, he was the law around town.
    “We do, yes, for after the wedding. For the honeymoon.” Her skin blushed with embarrassment. “The bride’s trousseau, you see.”
    “Honeymoon?” Riske’s voice teased her and her embarrassment. “I like the sound of that word.” The captain leaned a bit too close, bringing with him the spice aroma of beef jerky.
    Cora took a giant step back. “I’m terribly sorry to have disturbed you.” She wanted to run but feared stumbling over her trembling legs.
    “A pretty woman is never a disturbance.” Captain Riske was a flirt.
    Cora knew better than to yield. She’d never inspired the word pretty from a man. Except for Rufus, who called her his “beautiful coral.”
    “Is there something you need?” The captain’s amusement bordered on mocking.
    “Of course not,” she said. Except to be away. Her pulse throbbed in her ears as she spun around, her heels crunching over the concrete sidewalk, her disappointment loud in her ears.
    Rufus had not come.
    Cora pressed toward the shop, through the rising pockets of sunlight, forcing down her tears, willing her heart to go numb. Why had he not come? What was the delay?
    He said he’d see her in the spring. And she believed him.
    Ever since he’d declared his love for her and asked her to wait for him, Cora had set her heart like a flint to do as he asked, to be true to him, courting no other man. No matter how long it took for him to marry her.
    No man had ever whispered words of love before. Besides Daddy. And even he didn’t say them often.
    The shop was only two blocks away, but the distance felt like miles. Would she ever reach the front steps? Her safe haven?
    The incessant sound of her heels against the gritty sidewalk filled her head, irritating her thoughts. Yet the crunch-crunch was the only way to escape the constable, the captain, and her embarrassment. The only way to escape her disappointment.
    Sweat beaded along her neck, under the wisps of her dark waves. She quickened her steps, yet the shop seemed no closer.
    Cora clutched her skirt and kicked into a run, her muscles yielding to her demand. Faster. Faster. Past the shops. Bumping around the morning pedestrians and their blurred faces, their disembodied voices.
    “Cora, where you going in such a hurry?”
    “Cora, honey? Are you all right?”
    She tripped over Mr. Griggs’s broom as he swept the walk in front of his