Beautiful Bad Man by Ellen O'Connell

material for the most beautiful dress I’ve ever had, and I still have an evening to spend with a man who says I’m pretty. Even if he is lying, he’s handsome in a scary way, and it’s because of him I have the other things.
    His voice came out of the winter night exactly as she expected. “Did your friend get you something not gray?”
    “She did. It’s beautiful.”
    “So where is it?” Close now, his head dipped as he stared down at the hem of her old dress.
    “In my room. I have to make it up.”
    “And you’re not going to even tell me the color.”
    “No, I’m not.”
    “That’ll teach me.”
    “No, it won’t, but I don’t care. Are you sure you don’t want to meet the Butlers? They’re young, but they’re good people.”
    “You don’t want me around good people.”
    “What does that say about me?”
    “You lose your way now and then.”
    That was so close to what Norah thought about her own behavior it silenced her the rest of the way to Tommy’s. At least before he opened the restaurant door, she remembered to say what she had rehearsed as she got ready to meet him.
    “I know you’re going to tell me how I should sell to Mr. Van Cleve, but I’m not going to listen. You can try to scare me or scandalize me, but it’s not going to work. I’m going to have a lovely time, and I’m going to coax you or trick you into telling me about the places you’ve been and things you’ve seen that I never have and never will — things that have nothing to do with killing anyone.”
    “And what are you going to tell me?”
    “I’ll tell you about Baltimore, what I remember, and neither one of us will say a cross word or be angry with the other.”
    “That’ll be a trick all right.”
    Embarrassed again at her own shabby clothing, Norah didn’t really look at Caleb until she removed her scarf and coat and he hung them on the pegs by the door alongside his own. When she did, her heart skipped a beat.
    Clean-shaven, dark blond hair freshly shorn, if the sight of Caleb Sutton had provoked sly glances from other women the last time they’d been here, those women would be falling off their chairs tonight.
    Forgetting all about her old dress, she sailed to the empty table closest to the stove, absolutely certain she was the envy of every female in the room.
     
    H E HAD COME to town resolved to tell her he was using her house and to pay her a fair rent. He’d come to take her out, resolved to convince her to sell the land and stop being stubborn.
    Watching her now, knowing either subject would spoil the evening for her, Cal decided to wait until next time and knew there would be a next time.
    Hard to believe a woman’s eyes could shine like that over eating mediocre food in a small restaurant, and the half-smile playing over her mouth started him thinking thoughts that should be reserved for a different kind of man.
    A woman that pretty in an old rag would light up the room in a new dress with some color, although so long as no one else noticed, he enjoyed the private view of the limp cloth clinging to every female curve again.
    There had to be a way to help her, and if he wasn’t going to urge her to sell the farm tonight....
    “Have you thought of collecting all the Tindell bet money yourself? Collect your next ten dollars, get your friend to bet the next day for you, quit, and even if you split it, it must be hundreds, or would that be the kind of cheat only evil men like me think up?”
    “It would be cheating,” she said primly. Then she laughed. “But we did talk about it. The problem is so many people have bet on those days, we wouldn’t win much. Becky’s husband checked for us. Every day has four or five names down, and some have as many as ten.”
    “Blue.”
    It only took her a moment. “Not blue.”
    He answered her questions about places he’d been and listened with half an ear to her memories of Baltimore.
    “Yellow.”
    “Never yellow. I look sallow.”
    Whatever that