Free Echoes of Darkness by Rob Smales Page B

God she knew. He didn’t think he could bring himself to explain. “A beautiful young woman such as yourself, out here, alone, with a man.”
    Her eyes remained uncomprehending. He bit his mental lip and tried to smile confidently, though it felt like a weak, awkward grin.
    “Come, come, Evangeline. You’re a grown woman. Do I really have to spell it out for you?”
    He held his breath.
    Her eyes went suddenly wide with shock as the import of his words finally struck home. Reading her correctly, Devin squeezed just as she jerked back, and her hand remained trapped within his own, though he was nearly pulled from his feet.
    “If your father is in the house,” he said, words fueled by lust and panic tumbling out of his mouth, tripping over one another in their effort to be heard, “we can always go into the barn for privacy—I understand that’s how things are done out this way?”
    “Mr. Capshaw!” She tried to free herself again, but Devin hung on, desperate to keep some kind of control over the rapidly worsening situation. “But . . . you’re a married man!”
    Devin thought about Margaret, still back in Boston with their daughters. Never an attractive woman, even when they were younger, he’d married her for the money her father would eventually bequeath to her. She had started out homely and had only gotten older, their two children more a testament to the power of strong drink than to love. Nowadays, when she puckered up for a kiss she resembled nothing so much as a cat’s backside—and was nearly as lust-inducing.
    Still, the thought of the trouble he’d be in if Margaret somehow found out about this little attempted indiscretion caused his throat to constrict, his voice trembling ever so slightly.
    “I won’t tell her if you won’t.”

    Eva’s mind went blank for a moment when the little man with one muddy shoe introduced himself. He waited a beat, apparently letting his identity sink in, then started speaking once more. Her first coherent thought was well, well, so this is The Banker from Boston. At least that explains why he’s talking through his nose .
    Shock followed this thought, then anger at the realization that her long-wished-for confrontation had just happened, and she had effectively missed it. She felt a flicker of pride at the thought of what she had said and how she had said it, though she knew herself well enough to admit she would never have been able to make that speech had she known just whom she was making it to.
    Then his words penetrated the emotions roiling inside her, and it all just swirled away—the shock, the anger, and the pride, like he had pulled the plug from a drain.
    Everything I said, pouring out my heart, and he simply brushes it aside! All this—the casual ruining of people’s lives—it’s all just business to him.
    The more he spoke, the more her heart filled once again with indignation, though it was tempered by the sure knowledge that nothing she said or did was going to affect him in any way. The cold emptiness in her heart moved into her stomach, and seemed to crowd out everything inside. She had a sudden and powerful urge to visit the outhouse.
    Everything: all Father’s hard work, all of her prayers—none of it mattered.
    We’re losing the farm. My God, where will we go?
    “Of course,” he said, “you could give me a reason.”
    Her heart fluttered in her hollow breast, a startled bird in a cage. “A reason? Me?” She reviewed his last few words in her mind, trying not to let hope push her into misapprehension. “To do what, change your way of doing business? What do you mean?”
    Please, Lord, let him be as aboveboard as he claims. I don’t think I could take it if this were a trick.
    She more than half-expected him to laugh in her face at the suggestion he might alter his personal business practices just for her, and you could have knocked her over with a feather when, rather than laughing outright, his answer was somewhat