LITMIR.BIZ

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night when my dipshit boyfriend decided to be cute. Didn’t quite work out for him, though. I guess the judge had no sense of humor. He was convicted. Did time.”

      “Did?”

      “He’s either out by now or due to get out.”

      “Can’t he help you with his son? With the kids?” Noah asked.

      “Oh, please. No, he can’t. And besides, I’m not going back that way. In fact, I’m not going back. Period.”

      He smiled at her. “Have you always been this stubborn? This strong willed?”

      “Uh-huh. For all the good it’s done me.”

      “So—where did the husband come in? If that’s not too personal?”

      “Nothing personal about it, Rev. I was a working mom with two little kids and two jobs. He was new in the area and came into the real estate office, looking for something to rent or buy. I was the office manager. Our agents didn’t find him anything, but he kept coming back, was real nice, real friendly. I thought he was a stand-up guy. Trevor was only two, my gramma had died a year before, and I was having a real hard time holding everything together. I didn’t rush into anything—I made him act nice for six months. I didn’t have much time to date, but I never had a single date alone with him—if he asked me out for dinner, I told him the kids went where I went, and that wasn’t a problem for him. He did a lot of talking about wanting to be a family man and just hadn’t found the right woman yet. I took that as a good sign.” For a moment she looked away and couldn’t connect eyes with Noah. “I knew I didn’t love him, but I was so tired,” she said softly. “So scared I wouldn’t be able to take care of my kids with my gramma gone. My kids saw more of the babysitter than they saw of me.”

      She looked back at Noah and said, “I married him and quit my job because he wanted to take care of us. It didn’t take two days before I knew I’d made a big mistake. He insisted I dress real dowdy and awful. He had rules. He needed to be right about everything. Ridiculous demands. He started trying to get me to give up my independence on the first day! He wanted me to sell my car, and he took his computer to work, out of my reach. He doled out money for food … It was terrible. And I wouldn’t play along, which made him so frustrated and angry. I mean, I knew in two days it was a bad deal, but I gave it almost three months. Then I packed up our stuff while he was at work, picked up Danielle from his private school, and we were history. I went back to an old boss, the lawyer, to draft a divorce petition. That gave poor old Arnie the impression I had a rich, classy lawyer. I didn’t ask for anything, so he couldn’t contest it. I just wanted out.”

      “He didn’t fight it, then,” Noah said.

      “Not legally. But he threatened me. He said if I went through with it, he’d be my worst nightmare. We had been divorced for about nine months when he made a case for custody. There’s where I wasn’t too smart—I couldn’t see how he had a leg to stand on. He wasn’t their father, we’d lived with him less than three months, and I didn’t think I needed any help keeping my own kids. And, like I said before, I’d never done better for myself workwise. I had a good job, made good money, was taking good care of my kids. That club is totally legal. Maybe it’s not tasteful, but it’s legal. Most of the women dancing in there are single moms. That judge—he had it out for me. Maybe I should’ve let him buy me dinner.”

      Noah’s eyes narrowed and he glowered. “He didn’t want dinner.”

      “Yeah, that’s why I said no,” she said.

      “You were blindsided,” he said.

      “Yeah. There’s so much I don’t know. I should have called my old boss again. I did call him afterward. What a nice guy. He said there wasn’t much he could do for me, but gave me the name of a friend of his who worked for a legal-defense office that did charity work. He called them for me, and that brings us to today. Hey,” she said, “this is still part of the silence pact, right?”

      “Absolutely, Ellie. I don’t gossip.”

      “Because I’m not ashamed of anything, but I’m not stupid. All the stuff I’ve screwed up? I’m bound to be judged pretty hard by people who don’t know me. But it’s not even that—it’s the kids. I don’t want them judged because I—”

      “Don’t worry,” he said. “Our conversations are private.” He concentrated for a minute on the chocolate cake, which didn’t get as much appreciation as it deserved.

      Noah had a lot of experience counseling people who were down on their luck, many of them actually in need of food and shelter. He’d seen worse than what Ellie was going through, but just the same he was mighty impressed by her toughness, her fearlessness. She wasn’t dependent on him for anything. All she needed was a job chit to take back to that crooked judge in eighty-one days, collect her kids and get on with her life. Meantime, he’d help her any way he could. He was glad he’d taken a chance on her.

      “I’m not embarrassed I had that job, you know,” she said, lifting a bite of cake to her mouth. He lifted his eyes to hers. “The owner of the club—he’s a great guy who liked to take good care of his girls. And the funny thing was, the ones who didn’t mind getting right down to cracks and nipples weren’t always the most popular ones….”

      One end of Noah’s mouth lifted in a half smile. Ellie laughed.

      “I guess I’m a little too straightforward for you, huh?” she asked. “Thing is, all I had to do was wiggle around with those pom-poms or the white nurse’s hose held up with a garter belt and I did just fine. I think Madonna wore less on stage half the time than I did in that club. The people were usually nice, the customers didn’t give us any trouble. ‘Course, we had a plus-size bouncer, just in case. It was just work. It paid the bills. It’s not something I wanted to do forever. I was always on the lookout for something better.”

      “You shouldn’t have lost your kids over that job,” he said. “Worst case, they should have been left with you with visits from Child Welfare. They would have seen in no time that the job wasn’t damaging to the children. That was crap, what happened to you.”

      She just looked at him for a long moment. Then very quietly she said, “Thanks. I guess coming from you, that’s saying something.”

      “Coming from me?” he said, lifting one dark brow.

      “You being a minister, and everything. I know you don’t approve of that kind of place—or of the women in it.”

      He gave a shrug. “Ellie, I don’t have an opinion about your last job. There’s plenty about it to admire,” he said.

      “Like?”

      “Like a mother who would do just about anything to take care of her kids.”

      “Well, be real clear about that, Rev. If I hadn’t lucked into that job, I would have done just about anything. When it comes to the kids, I’m all out of false pride.”

      Soon, he thought, I’m going to see her kids. And I bet I see something remarkable.

      “Do you ever want kids?” she asked.

      “I did,” he said quietly. A bunch of them, if possible.

      And so did Merry—she wanted them right away. “I think this little town church is going to be my kid for a while.”

      “Sometimes I think the deal I got with Arnie was just what I deserved. I married him because I thought he was safe for me and the kids. He seemed all right, he made a decent living, he was okay that I had children while a lot of guys run for their lives when they find out you come with kids. I wasn’t attracted to him, I wasn’t in love with him. So maybe that’s what I deserved, huh?”

      Noah didn’t have to consider it. “Never think that,” he said. “No one deserves cruelty of any kind. Not on their worst day.”

      Just then, the door opened and Mel came into the bar. She went first

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