Free Beautiful Bad Man by Ellen O'Connell Page A

said, “I shouldn’t.... If you don’t like Caleb I won’t.... Did your uncle call you that?”
    “No, he never called me by my name that I can remember. The one who called me Caleb....” He gave her an assessing look before reaching for his coffee. “Go ahead and use Caleb. It’s good.”
    Scars stood out on his hands, straight white lines, thin and thick, short and long. The fact she hadn’t noticed before proved how much he had upset her that day in the house.
    “I didn’t make those scars, did I?”
    She almost bit her tongue, embarrassed to have asked anything that personal and rude. What was the matter with her tonight? Before she could withdraw the question and apologize, he answered.
    “Only one.” He traced one thin line that ran from the base of a thumb and disappeared under his shirt sleeve. “I’d still owe you if you made them all.”
    “You really don’t owe me anything. You never did, but if you felt you needed to do something, you did more than enough.”
    He ignored her, still fingering the scars. “The rest are from skinning knives. After I got away from your wagons, I skinned for the buffalo hunter who found me for a few years. When I started, the other skinners thought it was funny to jerk the hide so the knife slipped.”
    “But that’s dangerous.”
    “It was all dangerous.”
    “What did you mean when you said that buffalo hunter thought you owed him forever for saving you?”
    “He thought he had a slave for life, and for five years, he did.”
    “And then you left him?”
    “And then I killed him.”
    She gasped and dropped the fork.
    “Why the surprise?” he asked. “You know what I am. Not worth saving, right?”
    One corner of his mouth curled in a cynical half-smile, and his dark eyes chilled her to the bone. Once she had thought brown eyes always warm. No more. Why would he tell her a thing like that? To scare her, that’s why. Her first instinct, to jump out of the chair and run, died.
    “If you’ve changed your mind and don’t want company for supper, say so. Otherwise stop trying to spoil my first time in a restaurant.”
    The half-smile widened into a real one, even if it was in that controlled, inward way.
    They ate in silence for a few moments before he said, “Talking about slaves, you can’t mean to be that old lady’s slave forever. What are you going to do?”
    “Not kill her.”
    He ignored both her tone and the words. “Now that you’ve cleaned out your place, are you going to sell?”
    “How do you know I cleaned it out?”
    “I stopped by to see how you were doing yesterday. I figured you had to be in town and came looking.”
    “Well, I’m not selling. The Carburys helped me pack and store things in their barn. I’m going to work here as long as I can, and then I’ll have cash money and can go home.”
    “Go home and do what? Sit and starve again?”
    The harsh growl of his voice had people at other tables turning to stare, then looking away quickly. Norah didn’t want to quarrel with him in public. In fact she didn’t want to quarrel with him at all. Not tonight. Tonight was going to be a good memory in spite of him.
    “I’m not sure yet. I’ll think of something. I always wanted goats, but Joe wouldn’t hear of it.”
    “Goats.”
    At least that took the snarl out of him. “Goats. On our way out here all those years ago, we met a farmer who kept goats. He told us how they’re much easier to keep than cows. They give a lot of milk for their size, and since you don’t keep just one, they don’t all freshen and go dry at the same time, so you always have milk. You can sell goats’ milk. And cheese.
    “Cheese.”
    “Yes,” she said firmly. “Or if not that, something else. If I can keep earning long enough and save, I can find a way. Mr. Van Cleve’s last offer for the farm was a hundred dollars, you know. I can earn that in ten months.”
    “Van Cleve and Preston will be after you again if you go back. So long as you’re