Redeeming Love (11 page)

And what if Angel did have enough gold to leave? It could turn out the same way it had on the ship or at the end of the voyage when she had been beaten and left behind for those scavengers to find. Those few days on her own in San Francisco had been the closest thing to perdition she had lived.

She had been cold, hungry, afraid for her life. She had looked back on life with Duke with actual longing. Duke, of all people.

Desperation filled her.
I can’t leave. Without someone like Duchess, or even
Magowan, they would tear me to pieces.

She didn’t want to risk going with Michael Hosea. He was by far a darker unknown.

Michael was running out of gold dust and time. He didn’t know how to get through to that woman. He could see her withdraw from him the moment she opened the door. He talked, and she looked through him and pretended to listen, but he knew she heard nothing. She was just waiting for the half hour to be up so she would have the pleasure of telling him to leave.

I’ve got enough dust for one more try, Lord. Make her listen!

Going up the stairs, he was going over in his mind what he was going to say to her this time when he bumped into a redhead. He drew back with an embarrassed apology. She laid a hand on his arm and smiled up at him.

“Don’t bother with Angel tonight. She said you’d like me better.”

He stared down at her. “What else did Angel say?”

“That she’d see it as a favor to have you taken off her hands.”

He clenched his teeth and took her hand away. “Thanks for telling me.”

He went down the hall. Standing in front of Angel’s door, he tried to get control of his anger.
Jesus, were you listening? What am I doing back here? I’ve tried.

You know I have. She doesn’t want what I’m offering. What am I supposed to do?

Drag her out of here by her hair?

He rapped twice, the sound echoing loudly down the dim corridor. She opened the door, took one brief look at him, and said, “Oh. It’s you again.”

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“Yes, it’s me again.” He walked in and slammed the door behind him.

Her brows rose. An angry man could be unpredictable and dangerous.

This one could do a lot of damage to her without much effort.

“I’m not getting anywhere with you, am I?”

“It’s not my fault you’re wasting your gold,” she said quietly. “I did warn you the very first night. Remember?” She sat down on the end of the bed. “I haven’t misled you.”

“I’ve got to go back to the valley and get some work done.”

“I’m not stopping you.”

His face was pale and rigid. “I don’t want to leave you here in this godforsaken place!”

She blinked at his outburst. “It’s not your business.”

“It became my business the minute I saw you.” Her foot began to swing gracefully back and forth, back and forth, ticking off the time. Asleep with her eyes open. She was self-contained. Nothing showed in her beautiful blue eyes.

“You feel like talking again?” She covered a yawn and sighed. “Go ahead.

I’m all ears.”

“Am I putting you to sleep?”

She heard the edge in his voice and knew she was getting to him. Good.

Maybe a little more would send him on his way. “It has been a long, hard day.” She rubbed the small of her back. “And all this talk does get old after a while.”

His fuse was lit. “You’d like it better if I joined you on the bed, wouldn’t you?”

“At least you could go away feeling you’d finally gotten something for all your gold dust.”

Michael’s heart beat hard and fast. He went to the window, shaking with anger and physical desire. Drawing the curtain back, he looked out. “Do you like your view from up here, Angel? Mud, slapped-up buildings and tents, men drunk and singing barroom songs, everyone fighting to survive.”

Angel.
It was the first time he had called her that. For some reason, it hurt. She knew she was finally getting to him. She waited for the rest. He would say his piece, take what he wanted, and leave. That would be the end 77

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of it. All she had to do was make sure he didn’t take a piece of her out the door.

“Or downstairs?” he said derisively. “Maybe you’d like that better.” He let the curtain drop back and faced her. “Does it give you a feeling of power to have me bidding for your favors every night?”

“I don’t ask you to do it.”

“No, you don’t, do you? You don’t ask for anything at all. You don’t need anything. You don’t want anything. You don’t feel anything. Why don’t I just go on down the hall to that redhead’s room? Isn’t that it? The one you said could take me off your hands.”

So that was it. His pride was hurt. “I just wanted to see you leave town with a smile on your face.”

“You want to see me smile? Say my name.”

“What is your name? I forgot.”

He pulled her up off the bed. “Michael. Michael Hosea.” Losing himself, he cupped her face.

Michael.

The feel of her skin made him forget why he was there, and he kissed her.

“It’s about time.” She moved forward against him, setting him on fire.

Her hands moved, and he knew if he didn’t stop her, he would lose—not just the battle but the whole war.

When she unbuttoned his shirt and slipped her hand in, he jerked back from her.

“Jesus,” he said.
“Jesus!”

Stunned, she looked up at him. It came to her with a shock of clear understanding. “How did you manage to make it to the ripe old age of twenty-six without ever having been with a woman?”

He opened his eyes. “I made a decision to wait for the right one.”

“And you really think I’m it?” She laughed at him. “You poor, dumb fool.”

She finally got to him.

Jesus, I misunderstood. This can’t be the one you sent for me.

He could spend the rest of his life trying to make her understand. He 78

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wanted to grab her and shake her and call her all kinds of a fool, and all she did was look back at him with that smile on her face, as though she had finally figured him all out. He was labeled and put in a bin.

Michael lost his temper. “If that’s the only way you want it, so be it.” He slammed out the door and strode down the hall. He went down the stairs, straight across the casino, slapped the swinging doors out of his way and went out. He kept on walking, hoping the night air would cool him down.

Michael…

Forget it! Just forget I ever asked for a wife! I don’t need one that badly.

Michael…

I’ll stay celibate.

Michael, beloved.

He kept walking.
God, why her? Tell me that. Why not a gently reared girl,
untouched until her wedding night? Why not a God-fearing widow? Lord, send me
a plain woman, kind and enduring, someone who would work at my side in the
fields, plowing, planting, and harvesting! Someone who’ll get dirt beneath her fingernails but doesn’t have it already in her blood! Someone to give me children or
someone with children already if it’s not in your plan for me to have my own. Why
do you tell me to marry a harlot?

This is the woman I have chosen for you.

Michael stopped, furious. “I’m no prophet!” he shouted at the darkening sky. “I’m not one of your saints. I’m just an ordinary man!”

Go back and get Angel.

“It’s not going to work! You’re wrong this time.”

Go back.

“She’s good for sex, I’m sure. She’ll give me that much, but nothing else.

You want me to go back for that? I’m never going to get more from her than one measly half hour of her time. I go up to that room with hope and come out defeated. Where’s your triumph in this? She wouldn’t care if she ever saw me again. She’s trying to pass me off to the others like a…a—No, Lord.

No! I’m just another faceless man in a long line of faceless men in her life.

This can’t be what you had in mind!” He raised his fist. “And it’s sure not what I asked for!”

He raked his hands through his hair. “She’s made it plain enough. I can 79

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have her anyway I want. From the neck down. Excluding the heart. I’m only a man, Lord! Do you know what she makes me feel?”

It started to rain. A cold driving rain.

Michael stood in the dark, muddy road a mile out of town, rain running down his face. He shut his eyes. “Thanks,” he said harshly. “Thanks a lot.”

Hot, angry blood pumped fast through his veins. “If this is your way of cool-ing me off, it’s not working very well.”

Do my will, beloved. I drew you up from the desolate pit, out of the

miry bog, and set your feet upon a rock. Go back for Angel.

But Michael held his anger close like a shield. “Nothing doing. The last thing
I
want or need is a woman who doesn’t feel a thing.” He started walking again, this time heading for the livery stable where his wagon and horses were.

“It’s a poor time for traveling, mister,” the liveryman said. “A storm’s coming.”

“It’s as good as any, and I’m pure sick of this place.”

“You and a thousand others.”

Michael had to pass the Palace to leave town. The drunken laughter and the piano music grated. He didn’t even look at her upstairs window as he drove by. Why should he? She was probably working. As soon as he got back to his valley and forgot about that hell-bound girl, he would feel better.

And the next time he prayed for God to send him a woman to share his life, he would be a lot more specific about the kind he wanted.

Angel was standing at her window when she saw Hosea go by. She knew it was him even with his shoulders hunched against the downpour. She waited for him to look up, but he didn’t. She watched him until he was out of sight.

Well, she had finally succeeded in driving him away. It was what she’d wanted from the start.

So why did she feel so bereft? Wasn’t she glad she was finally rid of him?

He wouldn’t be sitting in her room again, talking and talking and talking until she thought she would go crazy.

He had finally called her Angel.
Angel!
She raised a trembling hand and 80

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put it against the glass. The cold seeped into her palm and up her arm. She pressed her forehead against the pane and listened to the drumming rain.

The sound of it made her remember the shack by the docks and her mother smiling in death.

Oh, God, I’m suffocating. I’m dying.

She began to shake and let the curtain fall back into place. Maybe that was the only way out. Death. If she were dead, no one could ever use her again.

She sat on the bed and drew up her knees tightly against her chest.

Pressing her head against her knees, she rocked herself. Why did he have to come to her? She had come to accept things the way they were. She had been getting by. Why did he have to destroy her inner stillness? She clenched her hands into fists. She couldn’t get rid of the vision of Michael Hosea driving away in the rain.

She had the awful gut feeling she had just thrown her last chance away.

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Five

Death is before me today. As a man longs
to see his house when he has spent many years in captivity.

P A P Y R U S

F R O M

A N C I E N T

E G Y P T

The storm lasted for days. The rain streaked the glass like tears, washing the grit away and making watery images of the outside world. Angel worked and slept and looked out over the shanties, clapboard buildings, and sagging canvas tents lit by a thousand lanterns until dawn. No green anywhere. Just grays and browns.

Henri would be serving breakfast now, but she wasn’t hungry, and she didn’t feel like sitting with the others and listening to their squabbles and complaints.

The rain came harder and faster, and with it came memories. She used to play a game with her mother on rainy-day afternoons. Anytime it rained, it grew cold in the shanty, too cold for anyone who didn’t have to be there.

The men stayed away, warming themselves in a comfortable tavern, and Rab stayed with them. Mama would set Sarah in her lap and wrap the blanket around both of them. Sarah had grown to like storms because then she had Mama all to herself. They would watch the large drops on the glass pane touch and grow and finally slide down into a river on the frame. Mama talked to her about when she was a child. Just the happy things, the good times. Mama never spoke of being turned away by her father. She never spoke of Alex Stafford. But whenever she was quiet, Sarah knew Mama was 83

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