The Matchmaker

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For a moment, Marcus only went on with what he’d been doing—frowning the baking powder into submission. Then he shifted his gaze to her face. He shrugged. “I have my reasons,” he said.

Leaving Molly to wonder, for all the rest of that day, exactly what those “reasons” of his really were.

Chapter Five

M olly Crabtree was a singularly confounding woman, Marcus decided after a morning in her company. She chattered nonstop, but never seemed to reach any kind of conclusion. She smiled reassuringly at him when he made mistakes, yet looked discomfited when he performed his unfamiliar tasks correctly. She gazed at him often, touched him occasionally, and nearly drove him mad with the way she held the tip of her tongue between her teeth while concentrating…but somehow managed to sidestep every flirtatious advance Marcus made.

This last put a serious splinter in his plans. He’d come downstairs that morning intending to use everything at his disposal to end Molly’s cautiousness, win her confidence and extract the truth about the matchmaker from her. He’d expected her to crumble beneath his charm. He’d expected to have her babbling by noon. Instead, he’d survived three hours of biscuit tutorials, with nary a sign of weakening on Molly’s part.

Was it possible he’d found the only person in Morrow Creek who possessed as much stubbornness as he did?

Marcus didn’t think so. After all, it was widely known that women were indecisive creatures, prone to flights of fancy and changing interests. All he had to do was figure out Molly Crabtree, and he’d have this task completed. How difficult could it be, he asked himself, to reckon out one woman’s true nature?

He’d have her tallied by sundown, Marcus vowed. He’d have the matchmaker’s secret delivered to the members of the Morrow Creek Men’s Club by moonrise. Tonight, the rafters of Murphy’s saloon would shake in celebration.

The only trouble was—and Marcus was certain it was but a minor glitch—that she’d put him completely off balance. He could find no logical excuses for Molly’s behavior at all. No matter how he tried, he could not anticipate her actions. She was a puzzle to him.

He should have realized the challenge that lay before him from the first. What kind of woman bypassed a leisurely stroll in favor of work? What kind of woman nattered on about her bakeshop with as much zeal as some ladies discussed quilting? Only Molly.

As the morning wore on, Marcus became uncomfortably certain that, had he waved an issue of Godey’s Lady’s Book in front of Molly’s face, she’d have used it to flatten biscuit dough. She was singular. Confusing. And, he had to admit—however begrudgingly—fascinating to him.

He wanted to figure her out. And then, to best her. Marcus refused to believe there might be any more to his interest in her than that.

“Watch this,” he told her, brandishing a round copper biscuit cutter. “The third time’s the charm.”

“Very well. Have at it.”

Molly gestured toward the flour-dusted rectangle of biscuit dough before them on the worktable. It was their latest batch. The first had yielded breadstuff so tough it had nearly chipped his tooth; the second, flat mounds too brittle to do anything but crumble when touched. Molly had proclaimed herself mystified at the biscuits’ failure. Marcus knew that her lamentable baking skills were likely at fault.