Beautiful Lies by Emilie Richards Page A

nothing. I am alone!”
    â€œNo, you’re not. You have me, and I’m not going to let you starve yourself, or sell your body, or allow this to defeat you.”
    â€œI want to die.” The anger was gone, and she felt such a profound sadness that she could hardly bear it. She rested her head in her hands and began to sob again. Not hopeless tears, as she had shed at Bobby Chinn’s, but tears wrenched from a soul still encased in her unworthy body.
    Tom joined her on the bed and pulled her into his arms. “Go ahead, sweetheart. The last days were terrible. But I promise, things are better now.” He brushed his hands over her hair, soothing her. “I won’t let anyone hurt you again. Not ever again. I’ll take care of you. I promise. I promise.”
    â€œWhy?”
    He didn’t answer.
    â€œWhy you did come to look for me? Why you did fight for me?”
    He still didn’t answer.
    â€œWhy?” she repeated.
    â€œShh…Isn’t it enough I did? That I found you and I’m going to help you?”
    She pushed against his chest until he let her go and she could see his face. “What did you hope for?”
    â€œThis won’t make things better.”
    â€œTell me!”
    He sighed, and his face was sad. “I thought of you often while I was at sea. I knew I shouldn’t, that you were to be married. But I couldn’t forget you. So when I came back, I just had to be sure you were gone. Then, I thought, I could let you go.”
    â€œYou have not let me go. I am dead, but you have not let me go. Not even now.”
    â€œNo.”
    She was disgraced and undeserving. But this man, this handsome American man with the kind eyes and the peaceful soul, did not care. He had come to find her. He had risked his own safety, and he was asking for nothing in return.
    Yet he wanted her. She could see he did. And this was something good, something to wash away the sickness of Bobby Chinn and the other man, who had stripped her naked and gazed at her breasts with cold, hard eyes before he offered Chinn money. She was dead to her own people, but she was not as dead inside as she had believed.
    â€œI will do for you the things I did not do for Bobby Chinn and the man who was to pay for me,” she said softly. “I will do them for you because you would not let me go, even when you should.”
    He shook his head, but his hands tightened on her shoulders. “No. You don’t even know me. And you’re a good woman, despite what you believe about yourself. You deserve marriage, and I don’t know if I’ll even be allowed to marry you here, or what kind of life I could give you. There will be another man who’ll overlook what happened to you, a man who will take you as a wife, despite Chinn.”
    â€œNo, there will be no man like that. Because what I did not do for Chinn, I will do with you.” She leaned toward him before he could protest and pressed her lips against his. He was warm, and his chin was smooth and smelled of soap. He groaned against her lips and tried to push her away. She lifted her head and saw in his eyes what he denied. “You say I am not dead, Tom Robeson. If this is so, then you must show me.”
    â€œWillow…”
    She kissed him again, and he said her name once more. But this time differently. She felt his hands under her hair, warm and strong through the thin cloth of the robe. She pressed against him, pressed the breasts the men had stared at against Tom’s chest, until she was cleansed by the hot sweetness of his body.
    â€œI will give you what they would have taken,” she whispered.
    He groaned and pulled her closer.
    And she found she was alive after all.

6
    A rcher kept an eye on Viola for the rest of the evening, but Freddy Colson interested him more. Colson was a colorless man with thinning hair he slicked back so rigorously that strands clung like leeches to his scalp. He had an