Is she dense?
“No.”
“I didn’t think so,” she said and smiled again as she joined him on the floor, sitting directly across from him. Her actions, disarming as they were clearly meant to be, shocked him too. The floor was filthy, and the room stank from his unwashed body and his waste—which hadn’t been emptied from the overflowing bucket in the corner since before they last fed him three days ago.
What’s she up to?
“Tell me about yourself, Mr. Nichols.”
“What do you want to know?” Curious now, he told himself that talking required nothing from him. Besides, he had been alone too long. Seeing and speaking with another human being was…nice.
“How did you come to be here?”
He scowled at her. “The same way every other man came to be enslaved.”
“A raiding party took you?”
“We fought a war and lost.”
“I meant something a little more recently.”
Jake hesitated. This was his most civil conversation with a woman since before the war, which sent people running for their lives while its destruction leveled cities and towns across the globe. Again, a pang of regret twisted inside him. So many had died in the war that destroyed their world and altered its social conventions completely. Women, no longer considered the weaker sex, controlled everything now. Men were their slaves, thanks to losing a second civil war they foolishly started themselves.
Raiding parties, like the one that had captured Jake, traveled into the mountains searching for runaways, uncaptured men, and the women who helped them, to sell at auction. In Jake’s case, the Raiders had help in acquiring him.
Another reason for his resentment of Bret Masters.
“A woman fooled my friend and betrayed us,” he finally responded to her question. “The Raiders showed up, I was taken, and sold at the Auction Hall to Dar…uh…Miss Cain. When she got tired of abusing me, she locked me up down here and left me to rot.” He sounded angry and bitter, but he didn’t care.
“Tell me what you did before the wars. What kind of work did you do?”
He glared at her, wondering again what her game was, but he saw no reason not to tell her. Giving her the answers was far preferable to another beating.
“I worked in construction for a number of years,” he said, “and did some ranching for several more after that.”
“So, you’re trained in building houses and caring for livestock?”
“Yeah…” he said warily.
Jewel asked for more details about the work he did and he told her, but his suspicions amped up his anxiety level once more. He sat taller, his whole body and consciousness on alert. What the hell does my work history have to do with anything? No one had asked him any of this before. No one cared.
“That’s quite a resume,” she said, smiling again.
Jake grunted in reply and averted his gaze.
“Would you like a chance to leave here for a few months?”
His eyes snapped up to her face. He frowned as his heart rate sped up and he waited for the punchline. Was she screwing with his head like Darla? Dangling a carrot in front of him, getting his hopes up, only to snatch it away again?
“It’s not a trick,” she told him, apparently reading his thoughts. “There’s a job in need of your particular skills if you’re interested.”
“What kind of job?” he asked, still cautious. This seemed too good to be true. “And where?”
“A friend of one of the other council members is building a new home,” Jewel told him. “Her ranch foreman, who also happened to be responsible for the construction, had an accident and died. She has a number of decent workers, but no one with enough experience to oversee the work now. She asked the council if we knew of anyone who could fill in, and your name came up.”
He croaked out a rusty laugh. No way did his Mistress tell anyone about him. She wanted him to suffer. Jewel smiled when he said as much.
“I didn’t say it was Darla.”
He scowled at her again. Is this for real?
“The job would last about six months or so,” she said as if he’d asked. “Do you want it?”
He stared mutely at the floor. Could he trust her or believe her story? What if this was just another one of Darla’s mind games?
He was silent so long she must’ve assumed he wasn’t interested, because she stood up and dusted herself off. “I’m sorry we couldn’t come to an agreement,” she murmured and stepped toward the door.
“Wait!” The chains connected to his wrist shackles rattled against the wall as he abruptly sat forward.
She turned back to him and looked down into his upturned face, her expression impatient now. “You have something to say?”
He took a deep breath, wavered, and then dived in. “What’s the woman like? The one who needs the house built?”
Jewel smiled again, the annoyance melting away.
“She’s nothing like Darla if that’s what you’re worried about. She won’t beat you or starve you. You’ll be working in the sun, have three meals a day, and a bed to sleep in at night.”
He dropped his eyes to the floor. His mind blazed through the assorted possibilities, while his chest tightened with uncertainty.
Sobs from the slave down the hall had started up again. The other man’s torment spurred Jake’s decision.
Jewel shifted her feet, and Jake tilted his head to meet her amber gaze.
“Are you interested, Mr. Nichols?”
He hesitated. Wary prickles crept over his skin and his heart stuttered, but there really wasn’t any other choice.
“Yes,” he said, and a shudder of hope passed through him. The reemergence of the once-lost emotion sent another wave of terrified tingles racing up and down his spine.
“Very good,” she replied with a smile. “Let’s get you out of here. Your temporary Mistress is anxious for you to start right away.” She turned to the guard outside. “Hailey, would you unchain him, please?”
As Hailey released his shackles from the wall and helped him to his feet, Jake’s stomach fluttered with the shock of escaping
