Eden's Sin by Jennifer Jakes Page A

make you start whoring? Was she the madam?”
    “ No! Alice said I could do the laundry and help her in the kitchen. The madam agreed. I worked with Alice and took care of Sophia in a back room…but it didn’t take me long to realize if I raised her in a whorehouse, she’d be a whore. So I started saving money to send her away to a proper school. But by the time she was five I didn’t have even half what I’d need.”
    She tilted her head to his, needing to see his face for what she was about to tell him.
    “ The madam knew I was desperate for money, and she told me some man would pay top dollar for a virgin and she’d split the money with me.”
    “ Oh, honey.”
    Eden pushed away the images, the pain, the sickly-sweet smell of cologne. Some things weren’t meant to be remembered. “I was thirteen when I had my first man.”
    He frowned, his brows one dark, brooding line, but he took her hand, his thumb rubbing circles in her palm, silent acceptance to continue.
    “By the time I was fifteen, I’d enrolled Sophia in the best girls’ school in St. Louis. I opened my own brothel when I was eighteen. Sophia was doing well in school and I was making plenty of money. When I was twenty-two I met Alexander. The very devil himself. But I didn’t see his cruelty, not until it was too late.”
    Sin clair squatted in front of her, his gaze serious. “He was the one who hurt you?”
    “ Yes. He came by several times a week, always bringing gifts and—” her voice cracked, “and he whispered pretty, pretty words. Words I had waited to hear my entire life. I let myself believe he loved me. And I stupidly stopped being careful until…”
    Dear God, could she say it? Could she tell him?
    “Until what?”
    She swallowed. Hard. “I stopped being careful, until I found myself pregnant.” She gave a hollow laugh, hollow from the shame and guilt and anger that she’d been so damn stupid. “I was truly my mother’s daughter.”
    Pain strained Sinclair’s features, but he didn’t speak. Just nodded for her to go on.
    “ I thought he’d marry me, that I’d become an acceptable part of society. I had so many naïve dreams I thought were coming true. I would be a real lady. Not a whore. Someone would finally love me.”
    “ Eden, don’t.” Sinclair’s jaw ticked, his teeth gritting out the words.
    “ No, let me get this all out. I have to.”
    He closed his eyes . 
    “ The night I told him…” She had to stop as her throat tightened with tears. “I told him about the baby, told him we could have a family. He laughed at first. Not a funny laugh, but a hard, evil laugh. He called me a damned whore and told me it wasn’t his child. When he said that, something in me broke. I started screaming at him, pounding his chest. The baby was his, Sin, it was . After our first time together, I promised him I wouldn’t lay with another man, and I didn’t.” She gazed into his face, willing him to see the truth. And when he opened his eyes, tears welled in the dark depths.
    “ I believe you, honey.” He wrapped his arms around her, holding her against his chest, pulling her down onto the kitchen floor with him until she sat nested in the vee of his legs.
    The memories poured from her now, like a flood, all the pain and anger pushing the words our like water through a broken dam.
    “ He kept calling me a whore, pushing me from my bedroom, out to the stairs. I didn’t realize he had a knife until it was too late, until it was buried deep in my belly. He laughed— laughed—   and said, problem solved . Then he smiled. The coldest, most unfeeling smile I’ve ever seen, and he pushed me down the stairs. I remember falling. The oak landing nearly broke my back. I flipped over and over. My leg bent the wrong way.”
    Tears rolled down her face a nd dripped onto Sin’s legs but she kept going. “I woke a few days later in a hospital. Alice was with me. Alexander had known the right people to have my house closed as an