Sweet Mercy

  Don’t miss this reader-favorite story about healing and letting go by New York Times bestselling author Jean Brashear.

  Honey Creek Cottage is the house of Jezebel Hart’s dreams—and the place of Gamble Smith’s nightmares. The place he built with his own hands, every stick and brick a testament to his love for the family he lost. The place now in disrepair, its gardens tangled with loss and neglect, much like Gamble’s heart.

  He can’t bear to live in it. Yet he isn’t ready to let go. Not even to the vivacious Jezebel, who has put her volatile past behind her and wants to plant roots. A woman whose looks, Gamble discovers, can’t match her strength and compassion.

  They come together out of mutual need, but find mutual healing.

  Except…she’s hiding something that could shatter their fragile bond.

  Originally published in 2011.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” a voice roared

  Jezebel spun toward the intruder, lost her balance and fell smack on her behind in the mud.

  Backlit by the rising sun’s rays, a powerful, menacing frame towered over her. “Get off my property.” The man’s voice was guttural and fierce.

  She shaded her eyes as she struggled to her feet—

  And stared straight into the furious face of the man she most did not want to see.

  He advanced on her. “You’re trespassing. Beat it.” She backed into the rock edging and lost her footing again. She grappled for something, anything, to catch her—

  Instead, Gamble did.

  The touch of this angry stranger had nothing in common with the eager, bone-melting caresses of the night before or the man who’d leaped to her rescue. He gripped her arms so tightly she knew she’d bruise.

  “I’ll give you thirty seconds. Then I’m calling the sheriff.” He squeezed harder, his face blazing with contempt. “I’ll never sell this house to you. Got that?”

  Dear Reader,

  Those of you who read my Signature Select Saga novel, Mercy, probably didn’t pick out Gamble Smith for a likely character to be the hero of his own book.

  Welcome to the club.

  I always felt that there was much more to his complicated relationship with Kat Gerard than was visible on the surface, but that novel wasn’t the place for me to find out what drove him.

  I never forgot Gamble, however, or quit being curious about what made him tick. The answer to his seemingly cavalier treatment of Kat, though, surprised me just as much as it may surprise you. I hope you’ll find in him a man both to admire and to love, as I have.

  Jezebel Hart is, on the surface, a very unlikely match for Gamble, but she sure was a lot of fun to write! She’s a walking, talking lesson that family can be found in unlikely places and have ties every bit as strong as blood.

  I hope you’ll enjoy meeting both a close-knit and loving family bound by blood and another, odder family knit together by a woman with a heart big enough to heal a man who thought love was done with him.

  It’s always a special joy to hear from you. You can reach me by post at P.O. Box 3000 #79, Georgetown, TX 78627 or via my Web site, www.jeanbrashear.com, or Harlequin’s Web site, www.eHarlequin.com.

  Thank you for allowing me to come into your lives and share my stories. It’s an honor and a great pleasure to do so.

  All best wishes,

  Jean

  Books by Jean Brashear

  HARLEQUIN SUPERROMANCE

  1071—WHAT THE HEART WANTS

  1105—THE HEALER

  1142—THE GOOD DAUGHTER

  1190—A REAL HERO

  1219—MOST WANTED

  1251—COMING HOME

  1267—FORGIVENESS

  SIGNATURE SELECT SAGA

  MERCY

  SWEET MERCY

  Jean Brashear

  For Ercel, whose existence is the sweetest mercy life has ever granted to me

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  PROLOGUE

  Manhattan

  THE BAGS OF GROCERIES hit the floor with a thud.

  Gamble Smith launched himself from the mattress. Yanked on his jeans. Faced Kat Gerard’s stricken eyes.

  “You said it was over.” Another woman’s plaintive voice from his bed.

  Gamble ignored her. Steeled himself to endure whatever would happen. He had to remind Kat—remind himself—of their terms. Of what he could never give her.

  But even his desiccated heart was apparently capable of too much emotion.

  Kat stirred, finally, from the shocked and frozen silence, her fierce beauty gone slack. She grabbed the soul-baring portrait of herself from his easel. Raced back down the stairs from his loft.

  He charged after her, scarcely caught her before she got to the street.

  She bared her teeth. “I’ll smash it on the pole if you don’t let me go.”

  He dropped her arm, but not to save his work. She deserved a chance to ream him.

  Her look did it for her. At last, she spoke. “A lie, all of it?”

  He cautioned himself to hold fast. “I told you I don’t have room in my life for you.”

  “You did.” Her expression was desolate. “More the fool me that I didn’t listen.”

  Then sour laughter erupted from her chest. “It ought to be funny, you know? I’m the one who decides when it’s over, the one who discards. It’s been that way for years. There are many who’d say this is my just desserts.”

  “Kat—” Guilt flickered. And pity. He reached for her.

  She recoiled as if from a leper.

  He dropped his hand. “It went too far. I can’t—” He exhaled. “You made me feel things I can’t afford.”

  “Why not? Just answer me that. Surely you owe me as much.”

  With the heels of his hands, he rubbed his eyes, then dropped the bomb.

  “Because I’m married.”

  A stunned instant later, Kat slapped him hard, then stared at the imprint on his cheek.

  “I’m not giving this back,” she said of the painting he’d done of her, his finest work yet.

  “It’s yours,” he said, his voice raw. It was the least he could do; the show she’d mounted in her Chelsea gallery had brought him his first taste of fame.

  Too bad the flavor of success was a poor substitute for the sweetness of Charlotte’s kiss. The glory of her love. “Kat…”

  “No.” She dodged his attempt to soothe. “Where is she?”

  “Back in Texas.”

  “You bastard. What the hell are you doing in New York?”

  “It’s complicated.” He glanced away. “I couldn’t paint there. I couldn’t breathe.” Didn’t want to live.

  “So you just walk out, do you? Simply forget her?”

  “No,” he said, voice as hollow as his heart. “I don’t forget.”

  “Go home, Gamble.” Awkwardly, she dashed tears with one hand—fearless Kat, who never, ever wept. Then she gathered herself to leave.

  “Kat.” Gamble’s hoarse timbre stopped her. “Find someone who deserves you. Quit screwing around.” He pointed to the painting. “Let her live. She deserves better.”

  Kat didn’t respond. Without another word, she departed slowly, her proud, graceful bearing diminished.

  Leaving him the only way he knew to be.

  A
lone.

  He watched her go. And bled. That Kat was the one who’d pursued him—relentlessly, in fact, until he’d finally caved—didn’t matter. He should have resisted harder, but even the hollow man he’d become sometimes craved human connection.

  Instead of a simple scratch to an itch they’d both intended, however, Kat had come too close to a heart that was already given.

  Even if the woman who owned it had been dead for two years.

  CHAPTER ONE

  One month later

  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 Charlotte’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 coul
d 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.”

  Drunk as he was, even Bobby got the joke. Louie was near eighty if he was a day, about five-six and scrawny as a hen ready for the cookpot.

  “No fair, Jezebel. Ever’ damn night, I got to look at the most beautiful woman in the world and can’t do nuthin’ about it. Who you savin’ it for, baby?” He tried to nuzzle her neck.

  “My heart belongs to Louie. If he won’t have me, I’m done with romance.” Her dancer’s legs performed a smooth sidestep. Before he could register what had happened, she’d seated him in a booth and was on her way to procure coffee.

  “You are too good, girl,” Darrell murmured. “If I had moves like that, I’d be in the NFL today.”

  She patted his arm and smiled. “Shirley appears to like your moves just fine. Baby managing more than two hours at a time yet?”

  His shoulders slumped. “Don’t remind me.”