Kiss an Angel(39)

As Sheba Quest flew down the moonlit North Carolina highway, Heather Pepper sat huddled behind her father’s Air-stream with her thin arms wrapped around her chest and her cheeks wet with tears.

Why had she done such an awful thing? If her mom were alive, she could have talked to her about it, explained how she hadn’t planned it, but the cash drawer had been open and she hated Daisy, and the whole thing had just happened. Her mom would have helped her straighten everything out.

But her mom wasn’t alive. And Heather knew if her dad ever found out what she’d done, he would hate her forever.





8




“Here’s the shovel, Miz,” the elephant man said. “And there’s the wheelbarrow. Get the truck mucked out.”

Digger, who took care of the animals for Neeco Martin, the trainer, pushed the shovel at her and hobbled away. The old man was wizened and arthritic, and his mouth had collapsed from lack of back teeth. Digger was her new boss.

Daisy stared dully down at her shovel. This was her punishment. Somehow she had expected that Alex would keep her confined in the trailer, using it as a traveling jail cell, but she should have known he wouldn’t do anything that simple.

Last night she had cried herself to sleep on the couch. She had no idea when he’d come in, or even if he’d returned. For all she knew, he could have spent the night with one of the showgirls. Misery welled inside her. He had barely spoken during this morning’s ride other than to tell her she would be working for Digger and that she wasn’t to leave the lot without his permission.

She looked from the shovel in her hand to the interior of the truck. The elephants had already been unloaded from the massive trailer through wide sliding doors in the center that opened out onto a ramp. Her stomach rolled, and a wave of queasiness brought the bile up into her throat. There were piles of it inside. Piles. Some of the piles were almost neat, with pieces of straw protruding. Others had been squashed by giant feet.

And the smell.

She turned her head away and took a gulp of fresh air. Her husband believed she was a thief and a liar, and as punishment, he’d exiled her to work with the elephants, even though she’d told him she was afraid of animals. She looked back inside the truck.

Sweet Mary McFadden.

Defeat swept over her, and at that exact moment, she knew she’d failed. She simply couldn’t do this. Other people seemed to have hidden reservoirs of strength to draw upon in times of crisis, but she didn’t. She was soft and useless. Everything her father had ever said about her was true. Everything Alex had said. She wasn’t good at anything except making party conversation, and that had no value in this world. As the late morning sun beat down on her head, she looked into her soul and couldn’t find even the smallest vestige of courage. I give up. Her shovel fell to the ramp with a clatter.

“Have you finally had enough?”

She looked down at Alex standing at the bottom of the ramp, and she slowly nodded.

He gazed up at her, his hands resting on the hips of his faded jeans. “The men have been betting on whether or not you’d even make it inside the truck.”

“How did you bet?” Her voice was barely more than a whisper, and it had an awkward little croak to it.

“You weren’t raised to shovel shit, angel face. Anybody can see that. But just for the record, I stayed out of it.”

Not from any loyalty to her, she was certain, but only to protect his reputation as the boss. She regarded him with a distant curiosity. “You knew all along I wouldn’t be able to do this, didn’t you?”

He nodded slowly. “I knew.”

“Then why did you make me go through it?”

“You had to understand you weren’t going to be able to cut it here. But you’ve been slow to catch on, Daisy. I tried to tell Max that you didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of surviving here, but he wouldn’t listen.” His voice grew almost gentle, and for some reason, that bothered her more than his contempt. “Go back to the trailer, Daisy, and change your clothes. I’m buying you a plane ticket out of here.”

Where would she go? she wondered. She had no place left to run. She heard Sinjun’s barking roar, and she looked toward his cage, but the water truck blocked her view.

“I’m giving you some money to hold you over until you get a job.”

“When we were in the limo and I asked you for a loan, you wouldn’t give it to me. Why are you doing it now?”

“I promised your father I’d let you have a fair chance. I’ve kept my word.”

With that, he turned away and began heading for the trailer, certain she was behind him. It was his perfect assurance that cut through her misery and replaced it with a shot of undiluted rage so foreign to her sunny nature that she barely recognized what it was. He was so sure of her spinelessness that he didn’t even question the fact that she would surrender.

And she would, wouldn’t she?

She gazed back down at the shovel lying on the ramp. Dried manure clung to the blade and the handle, attracting a swarm of flies. As she stared down at it, she realized this filthy shovel was what all the choices she had made in her life had come down to.

With a great shuddering sob, she snatched it up and plunged into the malodorous interior of the trailer. Holding her breath, she pushed the blade under the nearest pile, struggled to scoop it up, and with shaking arms, carried it to the wheelbarrow. Her lungs burned from the effort. She gasped for fresh air and nearly gagged from the smell. Without giving herself time to think, she struggled with the next pile and the next. Her arms began to ache, but she didn’t slow down.