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“We are interested.” Lily wasn’t happy with the deal, but she and Daisy were backed into a corner. “But only if after six months, we can apply the rent money toward the price of buying the property.”

“I think we can work with that,” the judge said.

“Will we need to sign a contract?” Lily asked.

Miz Raven’s voice popped into Lily’s head. Don’t be disappointed . This gives you the ability to leave the area if you decide you can’t make a good living in this town .

“Not since this is just a monthly lease. If I decide to sell the property, we will draw up a formal contract and deed,” the judge said. “I have the keys here if you are agreeable to a thirty-day lease, after which time I will have the right to renew or not.”

Daisy reached up and took the keys once he handed them over.

Lily stood up with her hand out for a shake. “How much do you want for a month’s rent?” She was concerned he might not renew after a month but hoped that her fears were just anxiety.

The judge shook her hand and then dropped it. “The fair market price is ten dollars a month. I will need the first month’s rent now.”

“Why can’t you sell it to us?” Daisy asked.

“I still want to hold some cards in this blackmail business,” he hissed at Daisy, then raised his voice back to a normal volume. “Like I said, I might want to sell the place at a later point.”

Lily opened her purse and handed him some crispy bills. “Then we can begin to move in today?”

“And we won’t need to come to the courthouse?” Daisy asked.

“Yes, you can and”—he lowered his voice again and shifted his gaze over to Daisy—“no, you won’t, not until next month when your rent is due. If I’m not in the office, you can leave it with my secretary, Benjamin.”

Frank didn’t waste a moment hurrying over to the judge’s table. “What can I get for you this morning, sir?”

“Pancakes and a cup of coffee,” he answered.

“Do you know these ladies?” Frank asked.

“No, but I just rented the old hardware store to them. I bought it this weekend from Preacher Jones. Just between me and you, I don’t expect them to last more than a month.” The judge slid a sly glance over at the women and chuckled.

Lily’s Irish temper didn’t flare up too often, but at that moment, she wanted to slap the judge, even if it landed her in jail.

Frank turned around, shot them a dirty look, and then rushed back over to talk in low tones to the people at a table on the other side of the room.

“Looks like the cards are stacked up against us,” Daisy said. “How is it possible to adore a man for months and then hate him so much after only a few days?”

“Hate and love are two strong emotions. I’m not feeling much of the latter right now, but I’ve got a whole wagonload of the former in my heart,” Lily said.

“From the look on your face, I’d say that you are the stick of lit dynamite today,” Daisy teased.

“Probably a whole box full of explosives,” Lily told her. “But to answer your question, when you can be indifferent to him is when you are truly over the image you had of him being a wonderful man.”

“Then I’ll work on that and realign those cards that I said were stacked against us,” she declared.

“If we can buy enough furniture and get it delivered, we can be out of here by tomorrow morning,” Lily said. “So let’s go see Mr. Maguire about buying what we need so we can get out of this place. That might put me in a better frame of mind.”

Frank came back to their table. “If you leave the hotel before Friday, I will apply what you have already paid toward your food bill and the extra it will take to have your trunks delivered to the old hardware store,” he said.

Lily clasped her hands in her lap to keep from standing up, looking down on the man, and knocking him flat on his skinny ass. “Thank you, Mr. Calvin.”

“But ...” Daisy flashed a fake smile. “It’s not a hardware store anymore. It is now a seamstress shop.”

“Not for long,” Frank replied with a smug look on his face.

Lily picked up her mug and took a sip of the coffee. “Someday women all over Texas will figure out how much better this is than a cup of weak tea.”

“That day will never come,” Frank snapped before he headed across the room to wait on two more men who had sat down at the judge’s table.

Lily held the cup tightly in her hand to keep from hurling it across the room. Maybe if she did, the coffee would stain Frank’s mustache and make it more visible.

Daisy broke the rage in Lily’s heart when she threw up her hand and waved. Lily jerked her head around and saw Beulah peeking in the window with a big smile on her face. She motioned for the woman to come on in, but she shook her head and pointed down the street. “Got to get back to the store.”

Lily nodded and forced a smile.

“How much willpower did it take for you to grin like that?” Daisy asked.

“More than a week’s worth,” Lily answered. “I hope the women’s auxiliary takes off like a cannon shot and we show men like Frank, Preacher Jones, and even the judge that women can do whatever they damn well please.”

Daisy giggled. “Including swearing in public.”

“Even that,” Lily hissed. “We might not live long enough to vote, but we’ll do our best to take steps toward letting other women go to the polls.”

“Amen, sister,” Daisy agreed and then chuckled. “I mean, cousin .”

When Daisy and Lily opened the squeaky wooden door into the wagon yard, an elderly man swept his hat off with a flourish.

“Good mornin’, ladies. I’m Elijah Maguire. What can I do for you today?” A rim of snow-white hair circled around an otherwise bald head, and his brown eyes sparkled. “Do you need to rent a wagon or a couple of horses? I have sidesaddles.”

“Thank you. We have rented the old hardware store and plan to start a seamstress shop,” Lily answered.

Daisy inhaled the musty scent of horses and dirt blended together with the smell of coffee and bacon, and was reminded of the stables behind the brothel.

After she’d learned to enjoy the freedom of riding without a sidesaddle, she had often saddled up her favorite horse and ridden the path around the acreage that went with the Paradise.

“I heard something about that,” Elijah said. “What I’ve got for sale is in the barn out back. Go on out there and make a list of what you want. I can’t make a delivery today, but I can rustle up enough men to deliver it tomorrow.”

Daisy pulled a small piece of paper and a stubby pencil out from her beaded purse. “How do we know how much each item will cost?”

Elijah settled his hat back onto his head and motioned for them to follow him.

“There’s a tag hanging on each one. I don’t gouge the folks I do business with, so I keep my prices fair.

” He slid back the barn door to reveal a space filled with everything from the coveted sewing machine to crates full of bedding, pots and pans, and even fabric.

“Y’all write down the name of whatever it is that takes your fancy and the number on the tag.

That way I’ll know what to deliver tomorrow. ”

Daisy headed straight for the sewing machine and wrote down the number and price on her paper. “This, for sure.”

“I’ll leave you ladies to it,” Elijah said and disappeared through the open door.

In thirty minutes, Daisy’s paper was full on both sides. She added up the total cost and whistled through her teeth. “We better start making money the first few weeks.”

Lily looked at the final number and nodded. “That’s more than half of our funds, and we need to save back enough to live on for at least two months. We will have to cross out some of the items.”

“We have to buy the sewing machine and the crates of fabric, but we could do without the icebox. We’ll need the stove, but we could use our chests to keep our clothing in and do without the two dressers.” She ran a pencil line through three items.

“We need the crate with the bedding in it—and that comes with the doilies, which will dress up the shop,” Lily said.

Daisy ran her finger down the list and said, “How badly do we need the kitchen table?”

Lily frowned and cocked her head to one side. “We could put it in the shop to use as a cutting table by day and a place to eat by evening after we close up.”

“The sofa could also go in the shop for the ladies to sit down and have tea—or coffee—while they pick out the fabric they want us to use for their dresses or undergarments,” Daisy suggested.

“That sounds good,” Lily agreed. “All I need in my room is a chair and a bed. Later, when we are shipping our creations to the big cities, we can buy fancy furniture.”

“Or build a huge house like the Paradise,” Daisy dreamed out loud. “And show Mr. Perfect Judge Wesley that we’ve come up in the world.”

Lily giggled. “Even if we did, we’d be too busy to ever spend much time there. And if we’re truly independent, we won’t give a damn what he thinks.”

“I’m afraid that I’ll have to work on that because I still want to make him pay for treating me— us —like trash.

” Daisy tucked a long, blond strand of hair back up into the bun at the nape of her neck and refigured the amount on her notebook.

“We can afford the rest because we won’t have to order fabric to work with. ”

“Why don’t we use the shelving on the west side of the store to show off our stock,” Lily said.

“When we do need more, maybe Beulah can help us with that. I saw a few bolts of calico in her store.”

“We can ask her, for sure.” Lily found another crate stacked full of fancy fabric—brocade and silk. “We need to look around a little more. If there’s more like this, we definitely won’t have to order anything for a long while.”

“I’m amazed anyone would give away these gorgeous bolts of material.” Daisy sneezed as she prowled through several more areas.

“Gorgeous, but dusty.” Lily brought a hankie from her purse and handed it to Daisy. “All this dust, plus what’s waiting for us in the store, is going to have us sneezing all day tomorrow.”

Daisy wiped her nose and handed the hankie back to Lily. She’d left hers by the washstand in their room.

“Keep it. I have an extra if I need it. We’ll also be washing out bedsheets and hanging them up to dry, so we can make up the beds. Can you believe that we’ve been lucky enough not only to find a place but also all this good stuff?”

Daisy tucked the handkerchief into the sleeve of her jacket. “Got to admit that it does put me in a little better mood.”

“Once we get the store cleaned, we could run a clothesline from one end of the kitchen area to the other and hang the sheets in there,” Lily suggested.

“Great idea!” Daisy was now glad that they were only renting the building. Buying the place would have severely limited their resources. They might have had to sleep on the floor and eat mush three times a day until their business took off.

“Are we ready?” Lily asked, then pointed to another crate of fabric. “We’ve got to have that one, too. I see batiste for undergarments and some spools of ribbon.”

“Okay.” Daisy wrote down the numbers and descriptions. “But unless we want to starve, this is it.”

Elijah poked his head inside the sliding door and asked, “Y’all about done? It’s gettin’ close to my lunchtime.”

Daisy turned around and headed across the floor. “We have our list, but we would be very interested in any more bolts of fabric that you might come by.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Elijah said. “Let’s go settle this up.

From what all is written here, I reckon that it’ll take more than one wagonload to get it all delivered.

I can understand the preacher wanting to clear out the store, but sometimes it breaks my heart when folks have to unload precious stuff off their wagons before they head west. I happened upon the pianos in both of the town’s churches that way.

At the beginning of a trip, people don’t realize that they’ll be lucky to get to the West Coast with the clothes on their backs and maybe an intact wagon.

When they have to unload their prized possessions .

..” Elijah’s chin quivered. “It’s downright sad. ”

Daisy just nodded, but the memory flashed through her mind about how close she had come to loading her meager things into a covered wagon and going west with her distant cousin.

Before she could make up her mind, Miz Raven had come along.

Later, Daisy got word that all the folks in that caravan had been wiped out long before they even reached their destination—first by cholera, and then the rest were killed in a raid carried out by bandits.

“What are you thinking about?” Lily asked as they followed Elijah to the tiny room he called his office.

“Choices and the difference they can make in our lives,” she answered.

“That’s the gospel truth,” Lily said.

Elijah sat down in a chair on the other side of a desk that took up most of the room. “If you’d have come in here tomorrow, we couldn’t have gotten your stuff delivered before Friday. Day after tomorrow is July Fourth, and that’s a big deal here in Autrie. Folks come from all parts of the area.”

“What happens?” Daisy asked.

“People set up stands to sell baked goods and all kinds of food, and the ladies sell eggs, embroidered pieces, and other things. The little boys run around poppin’ firecrackers or playing cops and robbers with toy guns.

It’s quite a day, and there’s usually at least one duel before the day is out.

The town doctor stays busy from daylight to dark,” he explained between figuring the price of all the items. “And that comes to ... Wait a minute ... if you spend this amount, you get a ten percent discount, so the total is ...” He rattled off the sum.

Lily opened her purse and counted out the money. “Thank you for the discount, and we were serious about any more bolts of fabric.”

Elijah shoved the money in a drawer and nodded. “Pleasure doing business with you. If things don’t work out for you, then come see me and I’ll buy all this back from you.”

“It’s going to work,” Lily assured him.

We are not going to fail, Daisy thought as she and Lily headed back outside. She pulled a fan from her purse and tried to create a little air. It didn’t help, so she folded it and put it back. “We sure aren’t getting much encouragement from the menfolk in town.”

“No, we are not, but we can prove them wrong,” Lily declared.