Authors: Maddy Barone
“You kissed another man in front of me.” Stone’s voice was utterly level, completely flat. “Because of your temper tantrum I nearly killed Mel’s brother.”
“I know.” Sara pressed trembling hand over her mouth to muffle her wail. “I’m sorry. I am so sorry. I know saying sorry isn’t going to change what happened. But it’s all I have. These past two years? I’ve tried to always think of other people first. It hasn’t always worked, because sometimes I’m still selfish. But I’m trying, Stone.” There was a desperate, helpless wail hidden beneath her brittle self-control. “I’m trying.”
Rose was moved by the raw emotion in Sara’s voice, but Stone seemed unaffected. Rose was ready to kick him, but a bell clanged violently outside the cafeteria. The chatter in the cafeteria immediately ceased. Sara caught her breath and stood up.
“I have to go,” she said, apparently forgetting that her cheeks were wet with tears.
“What was that?” Rose asked.
Sara was tense, body turned toward the door. “All available personnel have to go to the emergency room. That’s the signal for a mass casualty episode. I have to go.”
Stone stood up too. His face was still impassive, but Rose thought she detected a hint of worry in his posture. “I’ll go with you.”
“You can’t.” Sara left them and called over her shoulder, “I don’t know when I’ll be home. This might take a while. Maybe I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Rose watched the younger girl join the stream of people leaving the cafeteria. “I think she honestly regrets what happened at Mel’s ranch,” she told Stone. “It looks to me like she has become more responsible. Look at how she reacts to an emergency.”
Stone’s lips flattened, but he didn’t reply to that. “Let’s go back to Sky’s place.”
“Sure. I wonder what the emergency is. It has to be something pretty big if everyone in the hospital is going to help.”
They scraped their plates and Sara’s into the waste bucket, and put them into the wash bin. Stone walked her out of the hospital the way they came in. They didn’t see anyone on the way out but as they walked around the front of the hospital they saw what looked like a stream of people. Some were being carried on stretchers and Rose was shocked by their blood-smeared clothing.
“Oh, no,” she said. “This looks like the aftermath of a big accident on the interstate.” But there were only a few cars in Omaha. Could the bus have hit something?
Stone put a hand on her arm to keep her from rushing forward to help. “Looks more like a battle to me.”
A bar fight? Probably not in the middle of the day. Stone was right though, maybe the people did look like the survivors of a battle. There was a man with blood pouring from a gash on his forehead. Another man had a black eye and cradled a bloody hand against his chest. A large number of City Guardsmen were circling the injured, holding rifles as if guarding prisoners, not escorting accident victims to the hospital.
Stone touched her arm. “Let’s get you home.”
He steered her away from the hospital and made her hurry while he kept his gaze sharp on everyone they passed. On the way home, they were stopped several times by City Guardsmen. Each time they were required to show their identification papers and answer questions about where they were going and why. It reminded Rose of long ago history classes about World War II and how citizens of Europe had to account for themselves to the authorities. Clearly something had happened, and it couldn’t be good.
“No,” Stone said, when she told him to ask the next Guardsman they saw what had happened. “Sky will bite my head off if you get hurt. Ask him when you see him. He’ll probably know all about it.”
Chapter 16
The music downstairs faded. Rose, sitting propped up by pillows in Sky’s bed with her book in her lap, looked at the clock she had brought in from the pink room. Not quite two in the morning. The Limit closed at two o’clock on Saturday. She yawned and punched the feather pillows into a better position and debated whether to continue reading. She was pretty sure the next chapter would culminate in a sex scene. Captain John and his band of rugged mercenaries would force their captive women to submit to their lust, and in about two pages the women would be hopelessly in love with their captors. Rose did not find the idea of being forced to submit sexually especially romantic, but her body would probably react to certain descriptions. Sky would be coming up soon and the last thing she wanted was for him to smell arousal from her. No sense giving him ideas. She closed her book and laid it on the night stand beside the bed.
Half an hour later she heard Sky’s feet on the stairs. The men in the Pack all walked with a silent tread, so she decided he was walking loudly on purpose, to give her warning of his approach. That was nice of him. She glanced down at herself to be sure her nightgown covered everything properly. After a moment she realized she was clenching the edge of the blanket and made herself relax, smoothing it over her breasts and tucking it under her arms.
The door opened with a squeak and Rose looked up to see Sky come in. He paused in the doorway, staring at her. An expression crossed his face but was gone too quickly for her to identify it. Wonder? It seemed like it might have been awe, but that didn’t make sense.
“I stayed awake tonight,” she said brightly.
“I see that.”
He slid his jacket off and crossed the room to hang it in the closet. Rose watched him, enjoying the view of broad shoulders narrowing to a slender waist and the perfect fit of his trousers over the curve of his butt. He turned back, tugging his tie loose to flip it over a hook on the wall and paused to stare at her. Rose wiggled her toes against the mattress under the weight of his gaze. It was a relief—and a disappointment—when he looked away and sat in the chair next to the dresser. His face looked tired as he bent to take off his shoes and socks. His glossy dress shoes hit the floor with little thumps.
“How was your day?” he asked.
“Fine,” she replied automatically. “How was yours?”
He let out a groan as he leaned back in the chair and scrubbed his hands over his face. “I don’t even want to get started on that yet. Let’s talk about your day first.” Still slumped in the chair, his head leaning against the wall, he opened his eyes and raised one eyebrow at her. “Can you explain why Paint is grinning like an ape and walking into walls as if he’s lost his other eye?”
Rose tried to keep the giggle in, but it gurgled out. “He asked Katelyn if he could court her and she said yes.”
“Ah. That explains it.” He smiled, and it was a real smile that showed her he was happy for Paint. “So what did you do today?”
“I helped tidy up the reception rooms this morning, and then I went with Stone to the hospital to meet Sara. Do you know her?”
“I do. What did you think of her?’
Rose tapped her finger on her chin in thought. “It’s hard to make a full judgment after talking to someone for only half an hour, but I liked her. I think she’s sincere when she says she’s sorry about kissing Mel’s brother. I think Stone is being too hard on her.”
“Maybe.” He loosened the first two buttons on his shirt and leaned his head from side to side to stretch his neck. “I used to think so, but when I saw that man in the train station at Kearney touch your arm, I understood how Stone feels.”
“That’s totally diff…” She trailed off when she saw him tug his shirt out of his pants and continue unbuttoning it. “What are you doing?”
He glanced at her. “Getting ready for bed.”
Her eyes widened almost painfully when he stood up and his hands moved to his belt. “Wait. You should change in the bathroom like you did this morning.”
“Change?” he echoed in obvious confusion. “Into what? I’m going to bed, not back downstairs.”
Her eyes went from saucer-wide to narrow slits. “What are you wearing to bed?”
“The same thing I always do: nothing.”
“Uh-uh.” She crossed her arms over the blanket and glared, even while she wondered what he’d worn last night. “If you want to sleep in this bed, you’ll wear something. Otherwise, I’ll go sleep across the hall.”
For a long moment he just stood staring at her, his shirt hanging open to show a narrow sliver of brown chest. He shrugged. “Fine. I have some shorts somewhere.”
He bent over the dresser and rummaged through a drawer, coming up with a pair of raggedy shorts. He straightened up and looked directly at her. “I’m not going across the hall to change. You can either turn your head away or we can just turn the lights off.”
Was it worth arguing over? “Okay, you turn the lights off
and
I’ll look away just to be sure.”
“Don’t look away on my account.” His tone was sweetly provocative. “I don’t mind you looking at me.”
“Ha!” she said, ostentatiously turning her head away. She didn’t tell him she longed to examine his naked body. After all, it wouldn’t be fair since she wasn’t about to display herself for his benefit.
Darkness made everything so much more intimate. The jingle of his belt, the rasp of a zipper, the slide of fabric, and then the dip of the mattress when he sat down sent her heart into overtime. He settled himself beside her, leaning his shoulders against the headboard and arranging the covers. Rose swallowed and dug her fingernails into her thigh to try to control her breathing.
“What else did you do today?” he asked.
Somehow, not being able to look at him made it easier to talk to him. “Not much. I helped in the kitchen this afternoon. I helped Mrs. Nord and the girls fill the trays for the guests this evening. I didn’t go out of the kitchen though.”
“Good.”
“How about your day? Are you ready to talk about that yet?”
She couldn’t see him so she wasn’t sure, but it felt like he tensed. She had an odd urge to pat his arm comfortingly.
“My day went well enough until…” Buried under the smooth voice was strong emotion. He was hiding something. Rage or pain? “About three months ago a girl named Odell Graham turned nineteen years old. Her family scraped together enough money to pay the Single Status Tariff when she turned eighteen, but they couldn’t do it again this year. She had to go to work in Gabe Benson’s house.”
“Gabe’s Girls? I’ve heard of that place.”
“It’s not a nice place.” His tone was flat, with a serrated edge of anger. “Most of the girls there give their clients the bare minimum. It’s what most men can afford, so it’s the best known establishment in Omaha. The girls aren’t treated very well there.” In the dark, his voice sounded tight. “Some women like being businesswomen; others hate it. Odell hates it. I tried to bring her here to work, but Gabe wouldn’t let her go.”
“Why did she go to him at all? Why not come here right away?”
“The establishments take turns. When a girl turns eighteen or has to go to work, the house whose turn it is gets to decide whether to accept her or pass to the next house. It was Gabe’s turn and he decided to take her. Odell is very pretty, and she looks younger than she is, and a lot of men will pay extra to spend time with a young girl.”
Disgusting. He was silent for so long that Rose leaned over an inch to nudge him with her shoulder. She wished she could do more, like hug him. “What does that have to do with your day?”
He sighed heavily. “There are so many ugly things about Omaha that I don’t want you to have to know about. But I suppose I can’t keep it all from you. Today Odell ran away from Gabriel’s house and took refuge with her father and brothers. She refused to return to Gabe’s. He called for the City Guard to collect her and return her to her job. Her father and brothers and uncles and cousins took a stand to protect her. Their neighbors joined them. There were dozens of them, but they couldn’t win against the City Guard. There was a small fight. Small, but ugly. Houses burned. And that’s not the worst of it. Last I heard, three people had died, another dozen were wounded, and Odell was forced back to Gabe’s place.”
“Oh, God,” Rose breathed. “That poor girl. I think me and Stone saw some of the wounded men at the hospital. While we were eating lunch, an alarm sounded and everyone had to rush to the emergency room to help.”
Sky turned and grabbed her arm. Even in the dark she could feel his glare on her. “You were out in that? You could have been hurt!”
His hand wasn’t hurting her arm, but it felt strange to have him touch her while they were in bed together. She knew his eyes could see in the dark, while she was blind. She tried to arrange her face to show soothing calm. “We didn’t see any fighting. We just saw people being brought to the hospital as we were leaving. I was okay. Stone was with me.”
He removed his hand but only after allowing his thumb to run up and down her upper arm. Even with her cotton nightgown sleeve covering her skin, his thumb left tingling trails behind. “Thank goodness for that. Things are tense in Omaha right now. With the vote coming up in a few days, people are already on edge. And now with the situation with Odell, things are even worse. The whole city is ripe for a riot. I know that women in Omaha are usually safe going around by themselves, but I’m going to make a new rule that any woman leaving The Limit has to have at least one man with her.”
That sounded serious. Rose frowned. “What do you mean, ‘ripe for a riot’?”
“The city has been restless for a while. I think a lot of the fathers and brothers in Omaha aren’t willing to sacrifice their women anymore. They see the mayor driving around in a car and wearing expensive suits while they have to send their women to work in houses because they can’t afford to pay the taxes to keep them home. The mayor and his friends eat imported food while they starve themselves so they can save every bit to pay for their daughters’ marriages. The trouble today could be repeated over and over on a larger scale. I’ve pointed that out on my visits to Omaha’s council and businessmen. If the council votes to ease the women’s laws, I think we might be able to avoid more bloodshed. But if the vote goes the other way, this city may burn. People—more people—will die.”
That was eloquent. Rose could see how his rhetoric could sway councilmen. She searched for words to say. “I hope everything works out. What do you think the vote will be?”