Excerpt of Sweet Mercy by Jean Brashear

IN HIS DREAMS, she was always there in the cottage he'd built for her, every stick and brick a testament to love.

Her face was a song, her smile the grace note. A waterfall of golden hair spilled halfway down her back; the soft hazel eyes had been his lodestone since he was ten and she was eight. He'd understood then that his purpose in life was to protect her.

But he hadn't counted on needing to safeguard her from herself. From her fierce desire to bear his child, despite the danger the doctors had predicted.

Gamble Smith stirred on the lumpy mattress. Whipped his head from side to side, seeking the path back to heaven. One more sight of Charlotte, ensconced in the swing on the wide porch she'd wanted. Another moment to sit with her and rock while they examined the dogwoods he'd planted as saplings. Or wander through the fragrant rose beds he'd dug around the back, now bursting with color.

"Unhh — Don't go," he begged her. Stay this time. Charlotte rose, one hand tenderly pressed to the gentle mound he had cursed. The saddest eyes in the world begged his understanding. With her other hand, she blew him a kiss, just like on that last day. He'd left her only long enough to retrieve a surprise — the crib he'd made as a peace offering.

But he'd returned too late. Always too late. She lay where she'd collapsed when the clot had hit her lung, a porcelain angel, on the porch where she'd waved goodbye to him with a promise.

That she would be fine. That he should have faith. That love would be enough.

Lies, all lies.

Charlotte was gone, leaving behind her a man, a life, a dream.

Without a heart.

Sirens crashed into his restless slumber. "Charlotte —" Gamble jerked upright and groped the mattress beside him. "Charlotte, I'm —" Sorry.

The screech of tires. The swoosh of bus air brakes. A roar of city traffic, not the lazy rustling of East Texas pines.

His head sank into his hands. He was still in New York.

He wrenched himself from the mattress, pulled on his jeans and sought escape in his work.

FOR THE FIRST few breaths of the morning, he thought maybe he could finally do it: paint that portrait of Charlotte he'd promised her years ago, after he'd stored away his brushes and pigments. Turned to painting houses to pay the endless medical bills required by an enlarged heart, weak and pumping abnormally.

But no matter how many times he rendered other women with bold strokes, his hands trembled as soon as he attempted the only project he really cared about: the picture Charlotte had wanted from him. She'd grieved over the sacrifice he'd had to make of his art; he never had. Nothing, not even the work that sustained his soul, had meant as much to him as she did.

The buzzer squawked downstairs. Gamble wiped his hands on a cloth and considered ignoring it.

Then he remembered that it wouldn't be Kat anymore. As the owner of the gallery with first rights to his work, she'd expressed, often and loudly, her fury that he refused to have a phone in this derelict warehouse that was both home and studio, requiring that she seek him out when she needed to contact him.

But he hadn't seen Kat in a month. The necessary correspondence had been conducted via messenger and limited to crisp sentences. Checks delivered, paintings surrendered, all into the hands of intermediaries.

Just business. Simple commerce.

As he and Kat should have done all along. And if he missed the spice she had brought into his gray days, well, it was no more than he'd earned.

Anyway, Kat was engaged now, to a far better man. One who deserved her.

While Gamble was painting as if he were a man possessed, suddenly the toast of the town. He ate when he remembered and slept when he could no longer hold a brush. And somewhere in the haze of it, he thought he recalled getting a letter from his brother, Levi, that someone had made an offer to buy his cottage.

Charlotte's cottage.

Where Gamble couldn't bear to live.

When he'd walked away from Three Pines, Texas, he'd left everything and everyone behind. Only twice in the year he'd been gone had the loneliness forced him to call home, and when he had, his family's understanding had nearly broken his resolve.

But he couldn't stay in Three Pines, where Char-lotte's memory was in the very air he breathed.

The buzzer insisted. "All right, all right." He threw up his hands. He wasn't getting anything done anyway. Down the stairs he went. "Yeah?"

"Messenger."

He opened the door. "Who is it from?"

"No idea." In a rush as all New Yorkers were, the kid shoved an envelope at him and held out a palm for the tip.

"Oh." Gamble patted the pockets of his paint-smeared jeans, unearthed a couple of ones. "This enough?" Kat had harangued him to set up a proper bank account. He still sent all but the bare minimum he needed back to Three Pines. He wasn't here for money; he was in New York to honor a vow. To find a reason to keep going.

"Whatever." The messenger's scowl said Gamble could have done better, but he simply waved and left.

Gamble stood in the open doorway and stared at the envelope in his hand. Finally, he opened it and read.

This isn't New York. Buyers aren't waiting around every corner. You wanted to give me your power of attorney, but I'm not signing these papers for you, Gamble, and I'm not mailing them to you, either. Mom misses you; we all do. If you're ready to sell the cottage, then come back and prove it.

Gamble was already shaking his head in annoyance when he scanned down to the bottom of the page.

P.S. Mom's birthday is in two days, and yes, the painting you did for her arrived in good shape, but I'm holding it hostage until we see your ugly face.

Gamble chuckled at his elder brother's taunt. He sighed and dropped his head. Rubbed the bridge of his nose and wished that Levi would leave him the hell alone, knowing there wasn't a chance that would happen. The Smith clan stuck like glue.

He rolled his shoulders, tried out a series of arguments.

Then trod back up the stairs to pack.

Three Pines, Texas

"I HEARD THAT, LOUIE." Jezebel Hart paused in the act of clearing a table of beer mugs and nudged the jar she kept for fines in her favorite customer's direction.

"You couldn't have. The damn jukebox is so loud a body can't hear himself think."

Jezebel lifted one eyebrow. "That'll be three dollars now."

Along the bar rose a chorus of snickers and hoots.

Louie slapped one hand on the darkened wood. "Bossy —" he managed to stifle the curse word, if just barely " — woman."

"Gimme." She picked up his mug and wiped the bar beneath it. "It's for a good cause." From the proceeds of her No Profanity jar, she'd been able to fund a community Christmas dinner for all those facing the meal alone. The first swear word by each person, customer or staff, was a dollar; succeeding offenses in a given night doubled the previous amount. Refuse to pay, and you were banned from the premises for a week.

Sure, they'd grumbled when she'd instituted it last October, Louie loudest of all, but he'd eaten every bite of that Christmas dinner and come back for seconds.

"No way to run a bar," Louie muttered the whole time he was digging out his wallet.

Jezebel leaned closer, just in case she could catch one more slip of his tongue.

Louie slapped three bills on the ancient oak. "Don't see why Skeeter had to go and leave us with a fascist."

They grinned at each other.

With a name like Jezebel and exotic dancing in her checkered past, she figured that running a bar was about as much peril as her mortal soul could afford. She was out to balance the scales.

She resumed cleaning a table. Bobby Redstone ambled up behind her. "Jezebel, baby —"

She recoiled from the assault of whiskey fumes. "Last call for you, sugar." She smiled. "But there's some coffee with your name on it."

"Baby, I'm dyin' for love of you." He made a sloppy grab for her long curly hair. "C'mere. You kiss me now."

She glanced over at Darrell Garrett, her cook, bartender and bouncer — all six foot five and three hundred pounds of him — and shook her head to restrain him. At five-ten, she was no pushover herself. She'd been dodging male hands since her abundant curves seemed to spring full-blown at fourteen.

She slipped an arm around Bobby's waist. "I can't risk Louie getting jealous — you know that. No telling what that man might do. Break my heart if he messed up your pretty face."