Free Stolen Little Thing (Little Thing Series Book 1) by Sasha Gold

to low hum of their voices. He imagined them fretting over Esme, trying their best to make everything perfect for the wedding. It wouldn’t matter what she wore. He was sure she would look like an angel. His angel.
    In the night, he woke up with a start from a terrible dream. In it, Esme left him, vanished from the house, fleeing from her wedding day.
    Sweat beading his brow, heart pounding, he had crept like a thief down the hallway to her room. Outside her door, he listened.
    Wind was blowing around the house, and downstairs the grandfather clock chimed softly, but he heard no sound from Esme. He waited, anxiety tightening his chest until he was ready to burst through her door. Then he heard her shift in the bed. The breath Luke hadn’t realized he’d been holding blew from his constricted lungs. He leaned against her door, remaining there until his heartbeat slowed.
    The rest of the night Luke passed in a deep sleep. He did not wake until he heard the women talking in Esme’s room. He smiled to hear Esme’s voice. He couldn’t make out what she said, but it pleased him to hear her first thing in the morning.
    There was much to do to prepare for the wedding, and naturally, the women had the lion’s share of the tasks on their shoulders. It couldn’t be helped that his bride had to get up early. He had it easy. He could wear any good suit. Her dress was what everyone would notice, not his duds. Tomorrow, she could sleep in until noon if she wanted.
    Satisfaction warmed his heart. Everything had worked out perfectly. She’d readily agreed to the marriage, maybe because of the letter from her father. But, maybe the letter had nothing to do with it. After all, Esme had always been wrapped around his little finger. Once, when she was just a little girl, he’d sold her an orange kitten, a mangy stray, for a nickel. His mother had made him return the money to the “poor gullible Duval girl.”
    He never thought of Esme as gullible, but she was certainly willing to do anything for him. Any time she visited Blanco with her uncle, to go to church or the mercantile, she would arrive at the livery, her eyes bright, looking for him. No matter where he was working, grooming a horse, tacking on a horse’s shoe, or repairing a bridle, she would seek him out to say hello and offer him some small gift, a bag of candy or a bit of copied verse. She was devoted to him from the start, and it didn’t take long for the devotion to become mutual. The affection he felt for her was brotherly at first, demonstrated with teasing and tormenting. Out of earshot of the adults, he could have talked her into paying for a barrel of monkeys.
    Luke smiled at those memories, like the time he’d sold her a ticket to a swimming hole in Honey Creek, one that didn’t really exist. She’d been thirteen then, and he’d charged her another nickel, telling her he was selling it half-price on account of her being a pretty girl. This time his own conscience made him return the coin, and she’d smacked him soundly on the shoulder when he confessed his ruse. Unable to resist tormenting her just a little more, he told her no one paid to swim there anymore – ever since they’d discovered the man-eating sharks, and she’d believed that too.
    Over time, Luke’s feelings grew from brotherly to something quite different, and that had been the beginning of all the trouble. Once Randolph Duval got wind of the young romance, he put a stop to his daughter’s visits.
    When Luke first heard Esme was returning to Honey Creek after so many years, he was incensed. It was a painful reminder of the threats Randolph Duval made when Luke was nineteen. He promised to “send some boys to pay him a visit.” None of Duval’s threats had concerned Luke since he’d always relished a good brawl, but the possibility that the old man would make Esme’s life difficult did concern him. That was when Luke stopped writing to her.
    Years later the idea that the one woman