Angel (Bartered Hearts 1)

Her head cocked. Just slightly. “She’s not home at the moment. If you’d care to—”

“Melisande?” a woman called from deeper in the house.

And then…then it was here. This moment he’d been trying to delay. It was her voice. Jessica’s.

He hadn’t heard it in so long, and his heart tried to leap with joy at the sound, but he slapped it down. No. This wasn’t right. This was wrong.

The first woman looked over her shoulder, and a shape moved out of the shadows of the hallway. Her head was down, her eyes on the towel she was folding, but Caleb would’ve recognized her even from behind. Her hair was a color of red he’d never seen until he’d met her. Dark and deep and looking as if it might be cool to the touch. And her shoulders, always straight and proud.

Her head rose, and Jessica’s forward motion stopped.

Even past the screen and the dimness, he could see the shock on her pale face. Shock and fear. She was quiet for a long moment, but she finally broke the silence. “What do you want?” she asked in that beautiful voice. He couldn’t see much of her eyes. He didn’t want to.

“You’re a whore,” he said, meaning to ask it, but spitting it out instead.

She stood straighter, those proud shoulders moving back. “This is private land.” Still the voice he knew, but icy now. Hard. “I’ll ask you to leave it. Good day.”

Caleb didn’t move. They stared at each other, though he could see nothing of her eyes except a pale glimmer.

“Bill,” she called out. A big shadow moved in the hallway behind her.

“Right,” Caleb muttered. She’d have muscle here. Any whore worth her salt would. “Right, then.”

He took a step back and removed his hat as he turned, meaning to wipe the sweat from his eyes before he got on his horse for the long ride back to town, but Jessica suddenly gasped. Caleb froze, hand going to his gun at the alarm in that sound.

Her voice stilled his hand. “Caleb?”

The disbelief in that one word told him she hadn’t known him until now. He wasn’t sure if he regretted removing his hat or not. He could have let her take him for a stranger and walked away. She wouldn’t even have known he was here.

He glanced back, and she was shaking her head. But she stepped forward then, and it was her in the sunlight. God, it was Jessica as he’d always known her, and in that second, everything else fell away. After all, he’d spent two years dreaming of that face and only the past few hours imagining that she had betrayed everything.

“Caleb,” she repeated, more certain this time. But the two years must have hit her in that moment too, and she glanced at the woman who now stood beside her. Jessica’s gaze darted between the two of them before settling on Caleb again. “It’s all right, Melisande.” She turned around and called, “It’s fine, Bill.”

Melisande didn’t move. Neither did the dark shadow of Bill in the hall.

“It’s fine,” Jessica repeated, turning back to Caleb. “I know him.”

Melisande walked away. Her shadow joined the man’s, and they both disappeared into the back of the house. Jessica seemed frozen now, her skin fading to the color of snow.

Her blue eyes stood out like sky. And her mouth, so sweet and kissable. “You’re a whore,” Caleb repeated, almost ashamed at the words. Yet they were accurate. She was here. In this whorehouse. Just as he’d been told.

And she was changed. Thinner now. Her full mouth flatter, her jaw tight beneath it in a way it hadn’t been two years before.

He heard his heart then, beating so hard he could feel the rush of blood in and out of it. In and out. Her eyes were still so blue, but maybe her mouth wasn’t sweet. Maybe it had always been a harlot’s mouth.

“I’m not.” She raised a trembling hand to her temple and laid it there. “It’s not true.”

Fury surged through him again, because he could feel the hope. He wanted to believe her. He wanted to just nod and say, “Of course,” and sweep her into his arms. Of course she wasn’t a whore. He’d been awful to ever consider it.

He ducked his head and put his hat on to hide his face. A man didn’t have to be polite to a prostitute, did he? “Then what are you doing here, Jessica?”

“This is my house.”

“I mean,” he growled, “why is this your house, in the middle of nowhere, with these strangers, and why is the whole town calling you a whore?” When he raised his head he found she’d lost her calm. Her lips parted as if she meant to draw a breath, and her hand clenched in a fist as those blue eyes filled with tears.

Caleb felt like he was watching from far away, feeling the horror of what he’d said. To Jessica. She was the most refined woman he’d ever met. She always had been. He’d loved her from the day her father brought her to town. She’d been twelve and so pale and ethereal and educated, and Caleb’s fifteen-year-old heart had surrendered without a second thought.

He would’ve suffered in silence his whole life, he would’ve never said a word, but for the awful truth that she’d liked him too. She’d smiled when he’d tried to avoid her. She’d blushed when he’d blushed. And on her fourteenth birthday, when he’d dared to kiss that tempting mouth, she’d sighed into him and kissed him back.