THE DEVILS DIME

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Authors: Bailey Bristol
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Julia flinch, retreat, as he’d come toward her to reassure her again that she was safe. That the stalker would never hurt her.
    “How do you know that, Ford?” she’d whispered. “How do you know that?” He’d heard the fear rising in her, dulling the musical lilt that normally lived in her voice. Her suspicion had nearly buckled his knees. Who was she really afraid of? The stalker? Or him.
    His heart had bled, threatened to stop, each time he closed his mouth on the words that would explain it all to her. But the shame of it would have been too much. She’d never have survived it. The last thing he’d wanted to do was make his wife and daughter fearful. The last thing on his mind was to let the world encroach on his blissful home. And in keeping them safe, in keeping them ignorant of the truth, free of the shame, he’d lost them altogether.
    Now it felt as if he’d lost them all over again, and it was a stab to the gut.
    “I’ve moved to New York, Father.” Such an innocent statement. So simple. I’m here. He’d waited years to hear it. But Ford had stood silent, watching his daughter play with the brooch at her neck, his eyes fixed on the oversized amethyst ring, his gift to this girl’s mother the day Adelaide was born.
    Did she know what her mother had meant to him?
    She couldn’t possibly, or she’d have suspected what the sight of her might do to him. Instead, she’d just arrived at his door. Unannounced. Unexpected. And all grown up. His tongue that had guarded his words so carefully for so long simply couldn’t loose itself in her unexpected presence.
    Ford slumped into the overstuffed chair he kept near the window.
    “Damn fool.”
    In one breath he voiced the shocked realization that there was no little girl any more. That his four-year-old daughter was gone. He’d longed to see the child. But the woman she’d come to be was another thing entirely.
    So like Julia.
    His beautiful wife, Julia.
    He hadn’t even asked if the girl’s mother was still alive.

Chapter Five
     
    The rest of the orchestra was just disappearing through the secluded offstage door when Addie heard her name spoken behind her. The deep, warm voice identified its owner even before she turned around, and Addie wondered at the little leap her pulse had taken upon simply hearing it.
    “Why, Miss Magee. Darned if playing like that doesn’t make me want a dish of ice cream.”
    She surreptitiously mopped the perspiration from her forehead with the back of her hand and turned toward the familiar voice. She’d seen him there in the dining room, wanted more than anything to just plunk herself down and get acquainted. But after playing for an hour and a half with a bad shoulder she was dripping wet and faint with hunger. Utterly unpresentable and bent on slipping away.
    But he’d found her.
    “That is,” he continued with a slight bow, “if you’d care to join me.”
    “Well, Mr. Pepper—”
    “Jess.”
    “—Jess.” Addie looked squarely into the eyes of the man who’d just asked her to step out for ice cream. His informal approach sent a conflicting bevy of alerts. What did his familiarity mean? Did he just assume she was available? Or was he really interested in spending time with her?
    She loosened the frog of her violin bow and turned to clip it into the lid of the violin case. As she reached to snap the case shut, the pain in her right shoulder escalated to alarming new heights, and Addie knew the only place she should head was home for a medicinal poultice.
    “But I really must get home,” she insisted, settling the case into the crook of her left elbow. If ice cream had any medicinal value, she’d have taken him up on it and slathered the numbing cold mixture over her burning shoulder.
    But one look at the face of the man who’d injured it in the first place with his stairwell slam and she herself seemed bent on melting away. His riot of dark hair waved one direction and curled another and framed his face

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