Page 41 of Kiss an Angel

He rose and walked toward the door. “We’ll deal with the consequences tomorrow. Don’t try to leave the trailer. I promise that I’ll find you if you do.”

She heard the chill in his voice and wondered what kind of punishment he would impose. It would be harsh, of that she had no doubt.

He opened the door and stepped out into the night. She heard the roar of a tiger and shivered.

Sheba watched Alex walk away from her. As she gazed down at the two hundred dollars he’d given her, she knew she had to get away, and moments later she was speeding down the highway in her Cadillac, not caring where she was going, merely needing privacy to celebrate Alex’s humiliation. For all his pride and arrogance, Alex Markov had married a common thief.

Just hours ago when Jill Dempsey had told her Alex was married, Sheba had wanted to die. She’d been able to tolerate the ugly memory of the day she’d lost her pride and degraded herself in front of him because she’d known he would never marry anyone else. How could he find a woman who understood him as well as she did, his twin, his other self? If he wouldn’t marry her, he wouldn’t marry anyone, and her pride had been salved.

But today all that had come to an end. She couldn’t believe he had rejected her for that useless little toy, and the memory of herself, crying and clinging to him, begging him to love her, grew as fresh as if it had just happened.

And now, more swiftly than she could have imagined, Alex was being punished and she could keep her head up. She couldn’t imagine a more bitter blow to his pride than this. At least her humiliation had been a private one, but his was revealed for all the world to see.

 

; Sheba hit the button on the radio and flooded the car with the sound of hard rock. Poor Alex. She pitied him, really. He’d passed up the chance to marry the queen of the center ring and ended up with a common thief.

As Sheba Quest flew down the moonlit North Carolina highway, Heather Pepper sat huddled behind her father’s Air-stream with her thin arms wrapped around her chest and her cheeks wet with tears.

Why had she done such an awful thing? If her mom were alive, she could have talked to her about it, explained how she hadn’t planned it, but the cash drawer had been open and she hated Daisy, and the whole thing had just happened. Her mom would have helped her straighten everything out.

But her mom wasn’t alive. And Heather knew if her dad ever found out what she’d done, he would hate her forever.

8

“Here’s the shovel, Miz,” the elephant man said. “And there’s the wheelbarrow. Get the truck mucked out.”

Digger, who took care of the animals for Neeco Martin, the trainer, pushed the shovel at her and hobbled away. The old man was wizened and arthritic, and his mouth had collapsed from lack of back teeth. Digger was her new boss.

Daisy stared dully down at her shovel. This was her punishment. Somehow she had expected that Alex would keep her confined in the trailer, using it as a traveling jail cell, but she should have known he wouldn’t do anything that simple.

Last night she had cried herself to sleep on the couch. She had no idea when he’d come in, or even if he’d returned. For all she knew, he could have spent the night with one of the showgirls. Misery welled inside her. He had barely spoken during this morning’s ride other than to tell her she would be working for Digger and that she wasn’t to leave the lot without his permission.

She looked from the shovel in her hand to the interior of the truck. The elephants had already been unloaded from the massive trailer through wide sliding doors in the center that opened out onto a ramp. Her stomach rolled, and a wave of queasiness brought the bile up into her throat. There were piles of it inside. Piles. Some of the piles were almost neat, with pieces of straw protruding. Others had been squashed by giant feet.

And the smell.

She turned her head away and took a gulp of fresh air. Her husband believed she was a thief and a liar, and as punishment, he’d exiled her to work with the elephants, even though she’d told him she was afraid of animals. She looked back inside the truck.

Sweet Mary McFadden.

Defeat swept over her, and at that exact moment, she knew she’d failed. She simply couldn’t do this. Other people seemed to have hidden reservoirs of strength to draw upon in times of crisis, but she didn’t. She was soft and useless. Everything her father had ever said about her was true. Everything Alex had said. She wasn’t good at anything except making party conversation, and that had no value in this world. As the late morning sun beat down on her head, she looked into her soul and couldn’t find even the smallest vestige of courage. I give up. Her shovel fell to the ramp with a clatter.

“Have you finally had enough?”

She looked down at Alex standing at the bottom of the ramp, and she slowly nodded.

He gazed up at her, his hands resting on the hips of his faded jeans. “The men have been betting on whether or not you’d even make it inside the truck.”

“How did you bet?” Her voice was barely more than a whisper, and it had an awkward little croak to it.

“You weren’t raised to shovel shit, angel face. Anybody can see that. But just for the record, I stayed out of it.”

Not from any loyalty to her, she was certain, but only to protect his reputation as the boss. She regarded him with a distant curiosity. “You knew all along I wouldn’t be able to do this, didn’t you?”

He nodded slowly. “I knew.”

“Then why did you make me go through it?”

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