Chapter 28
“Theo…”
Maggie’s steps slowed as she stood in front of Holmes’ building, shocked to find Theo Stein standing there like he’d always known where she’d lived. “How did you know where to find me?”
“I asked at the boarding house where I dropped you off at last time,” Theo replied carelessly, as if he’d dropped her off a dozen times or more. He lowered his voice, his gaze even more playful than before. “I’m glad to hear you using my Christian name.”
“I didn’t mean to,” Maggie replied sharply. The last thing she needed was Theo Stein taking yet more liberties, and here, of all places. She glanced through the front window of the drugstore, glimpsing Brendan beyond, standing by the counter, before turning back to Theo. “What are you doing here?”
“If you didn’t mean to, then it was a telling slip,” he told her with a grin. “Don’t be priggish now, Maggie, please.”
“Priggish!” she exclaimed, acknowledging ruefully that now she did sound priggish.
But she didn’t want Theo Stein here, involving himself in her life, her success.
He was too dangerous, and any kind of entanglement with him could ruin everything.
Mrs. Stein, she suspected, would not be pleased to know he was here, or that they’d renewed any kind of acquaintance.
And having the likes of him associating with the likes of her…
well, it was sure to encourage the most salacious kind of rumors, especially now she had so many in society watching her.
Watching and waiting for her to fail, no doubt.
Theo laughed, seeming to enjoy her outrage. “Your former landlady isn’t very pleased with you,” he remarked, a hint of slyness in his voice, his hands shoved in his pockets. “She claimed you were a fallen woman.” He raised his eyebrows, clearly waiting for an explanation.
“She’s mistaken,” Maggie replied coldly, her cheeks flaming at the thought of that conversation. She suspected Harriet O’Malley would relish telling Theo what she thought of her. “Very mistaken,” she added, in case he got any sort of reprehensible notion, and Theo laughed again.
“Oh, I’m sure,” he replied, and she couldn’t tell if he believed her or not. “Listen, are we going to stand on the streetcorner all day? I came here to take you out for a celebration.”
Maggie shook her head slowly, flummoxed and a little alarmed—as well as, she knew, undeniably flattered—by his obvious and unabated interest. “Mr. Stein, we don’t have the sort of acquaintance that allows you such a liberty,” she told him as crisply as she could, determined to sound pragmatic rather than priggish. “You must realize that.”
“I know you stick to such old-fashioned notions of propriety,” Theo told her with an insouciant shrug, “but we do have that sort of acquaintance. At least, we will.” He paused importantly while Maggie stared at him in befuddlement. “I’m your latest investor,” he announced grandly.
“My latest… investor?” She shook her head, not wanting to be drawn into whatever madcap plan he’d devised to spend time with her—a compliment in its own way, but one she didn’t intend to indulge.
Having Theo come all the way to Englewood to find her was alarming enough.
“I don’t have any investors,” she told him. “Which I am quite sure you know.”
“You do now,” he replied with a cocksure grin. He jabbed his chest with his thumb. “Me.”
Maggie folded her arms. “You’re my investor?
” she repeated skeptically. “Funny that I didn’t know about it.
” She glanced again at the window and saw Brendan moving about, stocking the shelves that ran along the back wall of the store.
She really needed to send Theo Stein on his way, but she didn’t dare risk offending him.
“Come have a champagne lunch with me,” he coaxed, “and I’ll tell you all about what I’ve planned.”
“A champagne lunch?” Maggie scoffed, determined not to be deterred—or tempted. “I’ve never heard of such a thing!”
“All the more reason to experience it,” Theo replied swiftly. He rocked back on his heels, his dark, rumpled hair falling over his forehead, his luxuriously lashed eyes sliding her a sly, sideways glance.
He was relentless, Maggie reflected uneasily, and she didn’t understand why.
She wasn’t anything other than ordinary, but perhaps it was her reticence that Theo Stein found so appealing.
Plenty of shopgirls, Maggie knew, would take a champagne lunch with a wealthy, well-connected—and handsome—man like Theo Stein any day of the week, and without asking any uncomfortable questions about it, either.
“Come on, Maggie,” he cajoled. “Just lunch. I have something special to show you.”
Alarm and curiosity warred within her. “Something special,” she repeated in the same skeptical voice.
“You won’t want to miss it. I promise. And I’ll behave like a perfect gentleman.”
“Like you did before?” she retorted, and he laughed, refusing to be drawn.
“I’ll apologize for that kiss if you want me to,” he told her. “But I think you enjoyed it.”
Her mouth dropped open at the insult, even as a blush of remembrance scorched her cheeks. “That’s neither here nor there,” Maggie fumed, hating that they were discussing it at all, and certainly not wanting to admit he was right. “You shouldn’t have done it.”
“All right, then, I’m sorry.” He took her hand, coming down on one knee, almost as if he was about to propose. Embarrassed, Maggie tried to tug her hand away, but Theo held it fast. “Forgive me?” he asked, blinking up at her, deliberately abject and yet clearly so certain of his appeal.
“Oh very well,” Maggie cried, wanting to end the ridiculous charade. She finally pulled her hand away from his, gesturing impatiently for him to rise. “Now get up from that ridiculous pose.”
“And you’ll go to lunch?” Theo asked, still down on his knee.
She glanced around the street; they’d become something of a spectacle, although at least Brendan had not appeared to notice from inside the drugstore.
“If you insist upon it,” she said with less reluctance than she knew she should have.
She did want to celebrate… even if it had to be with Theo Stein.
And yet, she knew, part of her wanted to celebrate especially with Theo Stein.
As irritatingly irrepressible and deliberately scandalous as he could be, she still found, to her own annoyance, that she enjoyed his company, even as she told herself she shouldn’t.
There was something so laughing and light about him, so rakish and charming.
Every encounter fizzed with an edge of danger that made Maggie cautious and excited in equal measure.
Brendan, she reflected, had always felt so very safe. Theo did not.
“Excellent,” Theo said happily as he scrambled up from the sidewalk. “We’ll get a hansom and go to Palmer House.”
“Is that really the only decent restaurant in town?” Maggie teased.
“It is, indeed,” Theo replied blithely, taking her arm. “And it’s certainly the best place for champagne.”
As they headed down the street, Maggie glanced behind her, and her heart nearly froze as, through the plate-glass window of Holmes’ drugstore, she saw Brendan staring at her from behind the long wooden counter.
He had noticed them, after all. Through the window, his face was an expressionless mask, his eyes like dark, burning holes.
Swallowing hard, Maggie yanked her gaze away and turned back around, following Theo blindly down the street. She didn’t need to feel guilty, she told herself. She wasn’t betraying anyone, and Brendan and she really were just friends now. Good friends.
But she still experienced a churn of uneasy emotions as Theo helped her into a hansom cab, grandly telling the driver to head for the Loop.
Their lunch at Palmer House felt like a repeat, pleasant and uncomfortable in turns, of their dinner several weeks ago.
Maggie tried not to mind the speculative glances and even belligerent stares of the other diners, telling herself she had every right to be there, that she was no ordinary shopgirl but a woman of some recent renown.
Still, she didn’t feel like one as the waiter pulled out her chair, his face a careful mask of impassivity. She felt like an impostor. And worse, like the kind of loose woman Harriet O’Malley had accused her of being.
This time, Theo didn’t order for her, and not wanting the oysters again, Maggie asked for a simple crab salad, while Theo insisted on a bottle of Ruinart.
“To Miss Maggie O’Halloran,” he toasted, holding his coupe aloft, “the most promising milliner west of New York, if not the whole country!”
That morning, Mrs. Stein had toasted her as the most promising milliner in Chicago.
All the flattery—as well as the champagne—was likely to go to her head, but Maggie was determined to stay sensible.
“Now, now,” she protested, laughing a little as she looked around, wondering nervously if anyone had heard such a broad claim. “Surely that’s a little too much.”
“If it is, it’s only a very little,” he told her, clinking her glass. “Did you read the article in the Tribune?”
“I did,” she admitted, blushing, and he laughed softly.
“You should never be embarrassed by your own success,” he told her, his tone turning a little stern. “Or apologize for it. You earned it.”
Maggie took a sip of champagne, the bubbles crisp on her tongue. Two glasses in the space of a few hours! “I’m grateful to those who have helped me along the way,” she replied, thinking of Brendan.
“And there are others who are poised to help you,” Theo returned swiftly. “Myself included.”
“Ah, my investor,” Maggie replied, with a small smile.
Her head was whirling from both the champagne and the tumultuous events of the day. Everything had changed so quickly, and yet she wasn’t sure she could trust any of it—Theo and his champagne promises especially. She leaned back in her seat, leaving her champagne untouched for the moment.