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Butterfly

Harlequin Enterprises, Ltd.

Chapter One

Sweat ran down the middle of six-year-old China Brown's forehead as she crouched in the cool, dry dirt beneath the porch of her mother's house. Inside, she could hear the murmur of voices and the occasional thud of footsteps as her mother and her stepfather, Clyde, moved from room to room. Every time she heard Clyde's voice she shuddered. It was only a matter of time before he realized his favorite coffee cup was broken. She hadn't mean to do it, but Clyde wouldn't care that it was an accident. He didn't like her any more than she liked him and seemed to look for reasons to reprimand her.

Time passed, and she had almost drifted off to sleep when she heard a loud, angry shout, then the sound of running footsteps coming toward the door.

"China Mae, you get in here right now!" Clyde yelled.

China flinched. He must have found the cup. She'd wanted to hide the pieces, but she'd heard her mother coming and had tossed them into the wastebasket before bolting out the door. Now it was too late. They'd been found.

"China ... so help me God, I'm gonna whip your ass if you don't answer me!" China held her breath. Answer Clyde? No way. He was gonna whip her ass no matter what. Why hurry up the inevitable?

She heard another pair of footsteps - lighter, quicker - then the anxious tone of her mother's voice.

"Clyde? What's wrong?"

Clyde Shubert pivoted angrily, jamming a knobby finger into the woman's face.

"I'll tell you what's wrong. That stupid kid of yours broke my favorite coffee cup."

China heard her mother's swift intake of breath and just for a moment thought about revealing herself. Sometimes Clyde took his anger out on her mother, too. But her fear was greater than her guilt, and she stayed immobile, closing her eyes and praying as she'd never prayed before.

"I'm sure it was an accident," Mae offered, and tried to placate Clyde with a pat on his arm.

But Clyde would have none of it. He shrugged off Mae's touch and cursed aloud before striding to the edge of the porch. China followed his path with a horrified gaze, watching the dirt sift down through loose wooden planks above her head, then blinking furiously when some of the dirt drifted into her eyes. Suddenly her nose began to tickle, and she pinched it between her thumb and forefinger, willing herself not to sneeze.

"China! You get yourself into the house this instant!" Clyde yelled.

China pinched her nose tighter as the urge to sneeze persisted.

"Please ... Clyde ... it's just a cup."

The sound of flesh hitting flesh was as abrupt as China's exit from the house had been, and she knew without doubt that her mother had just been slapped. The need to sneeze disappeared, replaced by an overwhelming urge to cry. She did neither, instead curling tighter into a ball and wishing she could disappear.

"Today a cup. Tomorrow something else. You're always excusing the little bitch. That's what's wrong with her!" he yelled.

Mae flinched, but held her head high. It wasn't the first time he'd hit her. Doubtless it wouldn't be the last. There were days when it shamed her that she'd let herself come to this, but she didn't have the guts to leave.

"Don't call my daughter names. There's nothing wrong with her! She's just a little girl."

Clyde snorted beneath his breath. "Yeah, and one of the skinniest, ugliest kids I've ever seen. You just keep her out of my face, you hear me?"

China bit her lip as she heard Clyde stomp back into the house. Ugly? She was ugly? Tears welled. She didn't want to be ugly. Her thoughts began to race. Was that why she didn't have any friends? Did the kids down the street think she was too ugly to play with?

"China ... where are you?"

Mae's voice startled her, and she almost answered. But a sense of self-preservation kept her quiet, and moments later she heard her mother go back inside.

As soon as she knew she was alone, she rolled over onto her stomach and buried her face in her arms. Ugly. She hadn't known she was ugly. Now it made sense why Clyde didn't like her.

Hot tears welled beneath her eyelids as she lay belly down in the dirt and buried her face in the curve of her arm, her thin little shoulders shaking with suppressed sobs.

The neighbor's yellow cat sauntered into their yard and started beneath the porch, then stopped short, hissing with displeasure as it saw China. Ordinarily she would have jumped and run away, but today she didn't care. Nothing mattered anymore, not even the chance that old Scruffy might scratch her.

The cat sniffed her bare feet, then the backs of her knees, then worked its way up to her face, sniffing and licking at the wash of wet, salty tears streaming down the side of China's cheek.

She gasped and jerked, raising her head too fast and bumping it on the underside of the porch. Scruffy hissed at the unexpected movement and scampered out the other side of the porch to disappear beneath a volunteer stand of Castor beans her mother let grow to keep the moles and gophers out of the yard.

China held her breath, certain that the thump of her head against the underside of the porch had given her away, but when no one came running, she began to relax.

Scruffy seemed to have forgiven her for frightening him and was already in the act of stalking a grasshopper that had landed on a nearby blade of grass. The big cat pounced, and she absently watched the demise of the grasshopper as it disappeared down Scruffy's throat. The cat soon moved on in search of bigger game, leaving China alone with a sense of growing dread. Sooner or later it was bound to get dark, and when it did, she would have to come out. It was a sad but true fact that she was more afraid of the dark than she was of Clyde.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Butterfly by Sharon Sala Copyright ©2003 by Harlequin Enterprises, Ltd.. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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