Candace had been born in a bordello, the product of her mother’s miscalculation and an unknown, faceless john. She’d often wondered why her mother had kept her, but she’d never asked, and had never been told—until yesterday. The Manager, as he was known to everyone living and working there, was used to paying for abortions for his “girls,” though he resented the need for them, and the girls under his management felt his fury, when they slipped up. Candace’s mother had been too far along for an abortion by the time she’d had to admit her pregnancy, so the Manager had made her a deal. She would be allowed to have the baby in the safe confines of the House, but the child would belong to him.
The irony of a white woman selling her white baby to a black “manager” had been lost on her mother, or it had at least been ignored in favor of the opportunity to remain in the high-class establishment. If Candace had wondered over the years about why she was treated differently from the other girls, many of whom were only young teenagers themselves when they’d arrived, she hadn’t thought to question it. The Manager had always scared her a bit, in spite of his well-dressed, soft-spoken, polite appearance, if only because all the women in the house obviously feared him. Still, shouldn’t she have questioned the clothes? The comportment and music coaching? The exercise regiment? The schooling?
Of course, I should have, she realized now, when it was too late. Though in a different way, I was as much a fool as my mother.
This time when she shivered there was more than the cold behind it. She would never forget that last conversation with her mother. Had it been only this morning? Her mother had come to her at dawn to tell Candace she had to get ready. She would turn eighteen at midnight, and the Manager would be coming for her.
Why, Mama, why?
Because he owns you, baby.
How could you do this to me?
Because he owns me, too.
The deal had been struck the night the Manager had found out about her mother’s pregnancy, but he’d become even more interested when he’d learned Candace’s mother was carrying a girl child. He’d paid for everything over the years—her education, her health, her physical training, her musical training, her dance lessons—everything that would make her a prize worth a great deal of money to a certain kind of man who would be willing to pay top dollar for such a commodity: a genteel young lady, all packaged in a beautiful, untouched body. Candace had begged and pleaded with her mother, but in the end, she had been locked in her room. The sound of a bolt sliding home on the outside of her door had left Candace paralyzed with fear, knowing there was nothing for her to do but run, if she could only find a way out.
A quick search had uncovered the fact that most of the windows in her room had long been painted shut, but she had found one chance. There was a very small hexagonal window in her bathroom, high in the wall across from the vanity, that could still be opened for ventilation. It was doubtful anyone would have considered the possibility that Candace could fit through it, or would even try, since her room was on the fourth floor, but desperation had lent her both strength and courage. She’d had to wait until after dark, and she hadn’t been able to take anything with her other than the clothes on her back, but thanks to rigorous physical training—which she now realized had been intended to keep her physically attractive—she’d had the strength and agility to squeeze through the tight window and climb down the side of the building. The old Victorian house had had plenty of dormer roofs and decorative trim to hold onto, and her light weight, slender hips, and yoga practice made it physically possible. She’d dropped lightly to the ground just as the neighborhood church bell tower had rung the hour at eleven p.m.
Ten minutes later, she’d been safely away, but the heavens had opened, leaving her drenched to the skin and wishing she had thought to shove a coat out the window in front of her. She hadn’t dared, of course, because someone might have seen it fall or it might have caught on something on the way down, leaving evidence of her flight behind, but as she shivered in her cold corner of the alley, she wished she’d taken the chance. Could someone die of exposure in the middle of a bustling city? She’d read climate analyses of Nashville as a part of her science studies. Situated where it was, the temperatures were usually relatively mild, even in winter. But Candace was for the first time realizing that “relatively” was a tricky word, when you were worried about more than a higher-than-normal power bill.
She managed to pull the top piece of cardboard out from under her, leaving her sitting on a slightly less soggy surface. She then wrapped it around herself, and though it was soggy wet, it still managed to block out the worst of the stiff breeze coming down the alley. She crossed her arms and curled into the tightest ball she could manage.
Now I lay me down to sleep… The words one of the maids had taught her when she was a little girl suddenly appeared in her mind. I pray the Lord my soul to keep; if I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.
Not for the first time, Candace wondered if she had a “soul to keep,” and if she did, was there a God who cared? Shivering in the darkness, she prayed it was so.
“Got her!”
Candace cried out when a big hand grabbed her arm and yanked her to her feet. With her mind befuddled with sleep and the cold, it took her a moment to realize what was happening. Then she panicked and began kicking and scratching, fighting for her life.
“Knock it off, ya little whore!” the man holding her shouted.
He gripped her upper arm painfully with one hand and had his other forearm firmly pressed across her chest. Without thinking, she bit down hard on the part of his wrist exposed between the end of his sleeve and the beginning of his glove.
The man cursed viciously and pulled back his fist to strike her, but a second man grabbed the first man’s arm, holding him back.
“Don’t hit ’er, idiot! You heard the man! She comes back marked up, we don’t get paid!”
“The little bitch bit me!”
“Stuff it,” the second man said. “You know where she lives. You won’t catch anythin’ from her.”
Candace continued to struggle, certain now of who had sent these men after her.
“Well, I’m gonna cuff the bitch anyway,” the first man said. “We ain’t gonna be able to hang onto ’er iffen we don’t!”
Candace tried to twist away, but she felt the cold steel snap shut around one wrist as her arms were yanked brutally hard behind her back. It felt like he was pulling her arms out of their sockets, and she knew she’d never be free, if he got the other handcuff on her.
She screamed.
“Shut up, bitch!” the second man said, jamming his gloved hand over her mouth.
Candace was crying now, struggling futilely as the second cuff snapped around her other wrist. She just managed to turn her head to the side and let out another blood-curdling scream.
“The hell with this!” one of them said, and he slammed his fist into her belly, knocking the wind completely out of her.
She went down, whimpering, and only managed a squeak when they yanked her up painfully by the arms.
The rest was all a blur, but she thought she heard a roar, and suddenly one of the men flew away from her. He screamed and landed with a sickening thud against the far side of the alley. The second man pushed her away from him and must have drawn a gun, because a shot rang out, but a third, huge shadow tackled the man before he could get off another shot, and he screamed as he went down. Candace scrambled away, using her legs to clumsily put some distance between herself and the dark moving shadows. Forced to stop when she came up against the wall, she squinted into the dim light, trying to see what was going on. Daylight was just beginning to lighten the scene on this heavily overcast morning, but she could see enough to know the first two men who had attacked her were down, and there was another, bigger, darker shadow standing over them. She heard a low growl then the shadow seemed to change in form. What she might have sworn was something like a bear was suddenly a man. When h
e turned, he towered over her, and she shrank back in terror.
“I’m not gonna hurt you,” a soft, very deep voice said, as the shadow moved toward her.
She stared at him, though she still couldn’t see him clearly in the dawning light.
“Come on, now, darlin’,” he said, holding out his big hand. “I’ve gotta get you out’a here, before somebody else comes along or these thugs wake up.”
Either scenario made her willing, but she looked at that big, gloved hand and swallowed hard.
“I…I can’t,” she said. “Th…they put ha…handcuffs on m…me.”
He cursed, sounding furious, but when he turned back to the nearest man on the ground, she was unexpectedly certain his fury was not directed at her.
He searched the man’s pockets and finally found what he wanted. In another minute, he was leaning over her and unlocking the handcuffs. When they were free, he threw them toward the back of the alley with an angry snap of his wrist.
“Let’s go.”
She tried to stand—what else could she do?—but she staggered, and it took his firm grip on her shoulders to pull her to her feet.
“Easy, now.” he said, his voice a smooth Tennessee drawl. She shuddered once, hard, and he seemed to really look at her for the first time.
“Shoot, you don’t even have a coat on.”
He shed his own and wrapped it around her shoulders. It was huge, big enough on her that even as he closed it at the front, she managed to slip her arms into the sleeves. They came down to her knees, and he rolled them up for her, one at a time. Inside the coat was warm and toasty. It smelled good, too, clean with a scent of something she didn’t recognize but identified as pleasant.
“That’ll have to do for now,” he said.
“Thank you.”
She looked up to meet his eyes, and even in the early morning light, she saw his were a deep, golden color, unlike any she had ever seen before. They warmed noticeably when he smiled, though, and she felt her first flicker of hope.
“You’re surely welcome,” he said, “but we gotta get goin’.”
He pulled a stocking cap out of the coat’s pocket and pulled it down over her head until her ears were protected from the cold, then took her arm in his.
Candace glanced back at the men on the ground. She thought she saw something shiny and black on the nearest man’s face.
“Don’t look, darlin’,” he said, turning her toward the front of the alley. “That’s nothin’ they didn’t deserve and more for what they were doin’ to you.”
She gripped his arm firmly, trying to pull him around to face her.
“Did they hurt you?” she asked.
He looked surprised. “No. Don’t worry about me.”
“But I heard a shot!”
“He missed.”
He wrapped one arm firmly about her shoulders and the next thing she knew they were back out on the street, winding their way in and out of the growing crowd on the sidewalk. Candace couldn’t help looking over her shoulder, certain those two men had not been the only ones the Manager would have sent out to look for her, but they seemed to have gotten away.
She glanced up at the stranger who now had her firmly under his control and tried to think positively about her change in circumstances, but she failed miserably.
Out of the frying pan, into the fire?
“First thing we gotta do is get you warm,” the man said. “I saw a coffee shop just up here.”
“No!” Candace stopped, or at least she tried to, but the man had a good hold on her.
“What is it, darlin’?” he asked, turning to look down at her.
She glanced nervously back the way they had come.
“Is there gonna be somebody else out lookin’ for you?” he asked, sounding concerned.
She nodded, afraid to look at him.
He took a deep breath.
“Okay,” he said, almost to himself. “I gotta get somethin’ then I’ll take you to the studio with me.”
His eyes skimmed over the shops along the street then he headed for one, pulling her with him. “You can at least get warmed up in here.”
The soft tinkling of bells welcomed them as they entered the shop. It was a music store, Candace saw at once. Guitars, both acoustic and electric, hung on the walls alongside a menagerie of banjos, basses, and mandolins. The floor was stacked with a variety of equipment—drums, amplifiers, mixers, and stands of all shapes and sizes. Her eyes were wide as she looked around the space. She’d never seen such an inventory in person.
“Can I help you?” a man asked as he came in from the back of the store.
“I need some new brushes,” her rescuer said, giving her arm a squeeze and moving toward the back.
“What do you have in mind?”
“Well, I prefer a fixed head and a hickory handle,” he said.
Candace put herself behind a tall window display, so no one outside the store would see her, and turned to watch the two men intermix. She had no idea what her rescuer was talking about, but he seemed to know just what he wanted. She liked listening to him, though. She had been locked inside all of her life. The only men she had ever seen were brutes working for the Manager or that other kind of man who had sat in the audience while she entertained them, singing and dancing. None had been allowed to touch her, thank God, and when the bad men had grabbed her this morning, the feel of their hands on her had terrified her. She hadn’t felt the same at all with her rescuer’s arm around her. It was odd, but for some reason she trusted him.
“You can try them out, if you’d like,” the store owner was saying, gesturing to a drum set he had set up toward the front of the store.
“Thanks.”
Her rescuer sat down at the drums, adjusted the placement of a couple of them, placed his feet on two pedals, and began to play.
It was amazing. There was no music, except for what was apparently in his head, but the smooth sound of the steel brushing along the drum heads and lightly touching the cymbals was mesmerizing. It wasn’t just her opinion, either, because the store owner was standing by, his arms folded across his chest and a look of pure enjoyment on his face.
She turned her eyes back to her rescuer and found herself as taken with his appearance as she was with his performance. He was tall—well over six feet—with broad shoulders and a narrow waist. He wore an insulated red flannel shirt over what looked like long underwear. His jeans were clean but worn; his dark brown boots the same. He held the drum sticks lightly in his huge hands, as though they were made of glass instead of wood. His hair was a dark brown and shaggy, with streaks of auburn that showed under the bright store lights. His face was chiseled but not polished, and when he looked up to meet her eyes, she was hit once more by their deep golden color.
He smiled then, and barely touching the brushes to the largest cymbal, he ended his play in a soft thump of the bass drum.
“That was sure nice,” the store owner said. “What band do you play with?”
Her rescuer did a quick lick on the drums then stood to hold out his hand to the other man.
“I’m Luke Saint of The Four Saints,” he said.
“Well, I am glad to meet you,” the man said. “I’m Chad Burton—the son half of Burton and Son Music. Thought you looked familiar. My wife and I caught your band over at the Full Moon the other night.”
Ian (BBW Bear Shifter Wedding Romance) (Grizzly Groomsmen Book 4) Page 94