by Christa Wick
I had at least a handful of reasons for not wanting him to look closely at me. I didn't want to admit it, but reason number one had nothing to do with the rules about staff, or the possibility he was studying my face because—heaven forbid—he had seen me at my other job. Nope, the biggest reason was that I could feel his gaze penetrating parts of me I didn't want touched.
Everyone at Harbor House thought they "knew" me. They only knew the shell, from the young teen who had found shelter within these walls to the young woman who had stayed on to become a counselor to kids in the same purgatory in which she had once lived. No one knew about the topless dancing, how I flashed my tits and gyrated around a pole or the reason why I did so.
I was just Rhea Butler, resident counselor and unofficial big sister to fifty plus teens. And I desperately wanted to keep it that way.
5
Rhea
"We should probably go someplace a little more private," I suggested when Wylie continued to stare.
"I was just thinking the same thing," he answered, his deep, smoky voice curling around me.
Waving the folder with the forms, I hastily corrected my intent. "There's more to talk about when it comes to volunteering than what's on these sheets. I don't like talking about the challenges in frank terms when the kids are around."
"Understood."
He smiled as he responded. I felt my whole body light up. His eyes were more than drop dead sexy. They were beautiful, especially with the smile he wore right at that second. A devil's grin would have made my panties catch fire, and my pussy immediately douse them. But this was a sweet shaping of his lips—open, accepting, even protective.
I got lost in his beautiful face and the next thing I knew he was starting to stand. Moving too quickly to join him, I lost my tight grip on the folders, spilling some of the forms onto the table. I sat back down and gathered them up.
When I was ready to make another attempt at getting my big butt out of the chair like someone who wasn't a graceless spaz, I ran into a new problem. Wiley was directly behind me by then, his hands resting lightly at the top of the chair's back.
I looked up and over my shoulder to see him staring down, his gaze almost absent. I would have labeled his expression "dreamy," but that would have been nothing more than wishful thinking. Before I could prompt him, he snapped back to the present and began to slowly draw my chair away from the table.
I rose, legs shaking for some dumb reason, and whispered a rough "thanks."
Gesturing for him to follow, I wobbled my way down the hall that led to one of the private counseling rooms. With his longer legs, he was quickly on my heels, gently bumping into me when I stopped in front of one of the doors and drew a key chain from my pocket.
"Rhea...that's from mythology, isn't it?" he asked, his big body so close I could feel the heat of his breath on the side of my face.
"Don't know," I lied.
I knew too damn well, but I didn't like conversations that connected the mythological origin of my real name, a titan, with the origin of my stage name, Gaia, the primal earth goddess and mother to Rhea.
"As I recall," Wylie drawled over my shoulder as I unlocked the door and pushed it open. "She was married to that bastard Cronus."
"Not my forte," I lied again and pointed at the chair I wanted him to sit in.
A fresh smile, this one close to that devil's grin I never wanted to encounter, played over his lips as he complied. But then his expression turned serious. "She saved children, too."
Just one...
Starting to choke up again, I brusquely sat down, reprimanding myself that I needed to get Thomas Wylie out of Harbor House as fast as I could. Everything about him was so right that he was absolutely wrong.
The mantle of leadership from his Army days as a captain rested invisibly atop his shoulders, lending him an air of gentle authority. His good looks and big body made me want to snuggle my way into the security of his strong arms and stop living just at the surface of who I was. And Alex's behavior earlier was proof I would not be the only idiot tripping over the man.
It was time to shoot his application down before he won me over enough that I let him into Harbor House as a volunteer.
"About your application," I started, opening the folder.
He placed his hands over the forms, his fingertips brushing lightly over mine.
"Before we go any further," he said, the dark, serious tone erupting out of nowhere. "You should know..."
When he paused, I felt my entire body contract. Mr. Perfect was about to tell me he had some nefarious past or charges pending. The ominous cast to his voice suggested as much, each word laced with a loss that was fast approaching.
"Go on," I whispered.
He rolled his lips, nostrils flaring as he drew a deep breath that puffed out his muscular chest.
Damn me to hell, but I got lost in his lips and nose, mentally tracing them as I thought about how many hours of study it would take to truly appreciate just how beautiful the man in front of me was.
Then I remembered his tone and that beauty sometimes cloaked a beast.
"What is it, Mr. Wylie," I prompted again. "What do you need to tell me?"
His lips pursed, the air he had held inside slowly released as he screwed up the last of his courage and finally answered.
"This isn't the first time our paths have crossed, Miss Butler."
6
Rhea
Wylie's confession slammed into me. I wasn't expecting those words, even though I had, with my customary paranoia on the topic, entertained just that possibility earlier in the interview.
"Rhea was the daughter of Gaia," he continued, subtly throwing my stage name at me even though it seemed as if we had merely jumped back to our earlier conversation.
Forcing back the unshed tears that bit at my eyes and inside my nose, I nodded.
"If you're here to blackmail me..." Realizing that criminals extort more than money from their victims, I trailed off on the warning that I couldn't pay him anything to keep his mouth shut.
"Not at all, though I understand why you might think so." Taking the forms from me, he started to fill in the remaining blank fields.
"So, what...you followed me here and realized that Harbor House would be a great volunteer opportunity?" My tone turned the question into exactly what it was—an accusation.
"No, I decided volunteering might be a good way to convince you—"
I interrupted him with the flash of my camera phone as I took his picture.
Clearing his throat, he rolled his eyes at me and continued. "To convince you that I really am not a crazy, creepy stalker despite reasonable first impressions."
I jiggled the phone at him, displaying the photo I had just taken, then switched to my messages app, my fingers tapping at the keyboard with a furious pace.
"This is going out to several friends," I lied, still tapping, the message destined for what I knew to be a disconnected number. I should have left it at that, but I didn't want him stalking me at Harbor House or Tuttle's. "Including my friends at the club."
"You don't have any friends at the club," Wylie corrected, the smug tone and truth of what he had just said freezing my fingers. "Do you have any real friends, Rhea? Friends you don't have to play caregiver to—grownups who know what you do during the day, here, and where you go at night?"
Fuck, he had me on that one. But if it was so freaking obvious I was a loner and a loser, why was he even interested?
The answer popped into my head directly after the question finished bouncing around inside my skull. People like him—crazy or criminal or both—always looked for the most vulnerable member of the herd, someone they could easily exploit.
Anger started my lips trembling. He had no idea who he was fucking with.
Wylie's dark brows knitted together. "You're mad? Or..."
I forced the quiver from my mouth and glared at him.
"Right, hornets' nest mad," he said, finally revealing t
he devilish grin I has suspected him so capable of.
It didn't matter that he had stalked me from one job to the other and gained an audience with me under false pretenses—my reaction to that grin was exactly how I had expected it to be. My nipples went hard and hot juices pulsed from me to drench my panties.
Snatching the top form from his grip, I woke the sleeping computer on the desk and opened up several search registries that the shelter had access to. I typed his full name, age, place of birth and basic physical markers like skin type and hair into a search routine one of the kids had cooked up for us.
Hitting enter, I waited for more bad news to appear on my screen and confirm my worst suspicions about him.
Wylie stood and came around to my side of the desk. I tensed at first, but the energy coming off him felt like pure curiosity. If he was some crazy, serial killer or something like that, he wore one hell of a mask. I was sane, sober, street wise—and one hundred percent ready to believe the harmless, good-natured routine he was selling.
Thomas Wylie was anything but harmless—even if my search of the criminal databases and sex offender registries came up empty.
I pointed at the chair he had vacated.
"You're on the wrong side of the table, Mr. Wylie."
He complied, but he had hardly given up trying to convince me that I should let him volunteer.
"Those searches seem sensible," he started, his voice dipping low and turning almost coy. "But it you were really worried about me, you would have called help in here already. Your gut is telling you to trust me, Rhea. Listen to it."
He was right but I couldn't admit it. I shoved the form back at him and flicked the pen so that it rolled toward his waiting hand.
I was in a tough spot, one of my own making, at least partly. I would have to give Director Coombs a reason for turning Wylie down. I would have to lie, something I sucked ass at doing. It would have to be a believable lie, too, some reason that this man who looked perfect on paper with his past military leadership was a bad fit for Harbor House and shouldn't be given a chance around the kids.
The kids...
"You missed the fact that Alex was flirting with you," I said, my thoughts coalescing around a way I could possibly force this supposed man of honor into withdrawing his application.
His brows shot up then his head tilted as he drew a slow breath in. "Well, I don't know that I've ever had a man or a boy flirt with—"
I started to choke on whatever spit was in my mouth. A perfect specimen of man meat didn't live almost thirty-one years without getting hit on by another man. Alex had all but crawled in his lap out in the common room!
Recovering, I waved the excuse away. "A lot of the teens, both boys and girls, are here because of gender issues, whether they like the same sex or feel like they are the opposite sex trapped in the wrong body. Some of the kids have diagnosed and undiagnosed conditions like Asperger Syndrome."
I paused, waiting to see if he needed me to explain but he gave a slow nod of understanding.
"You have to be here because of the kids, not for some reason that has to do with me. All of the adults in their lives before Harbor House have let them down and they deserve a damn sight better than some guy chasing skirt in weird and novel places."
He pressed his lips together, his head bobbing lightly, as if he was measuring each word.
I felt like I had actually reached him, like maybe he was a good enough guy to realize he had to leave and not come back.
"So, tell me, Mr. Wylie," I said when the silence started to stretch. "Are you volunteering for the kids or for yourself?"
"The kids," he answered, the earnest tone shocking me. "The kids will come first, I promise you."
First?
I started to shake my head, to tell him his answer wasn't good enough. But then my gaze fell on the manual we handed out to all new volunteers.
"One more thing before I can approve your application," I said, reaching casually for the manual. "One more promise I need from you."
"Absolutely," he said, his tone just as earnest and surprising as before.
Placing the manual in front of him, I leaned forward, held his gaze and tried to read the hazel depths as I fired my last shot across his bow.
"You have to find yourself another titty bar."
7
Wylie
Standing in front of my bedroom dresser, a clock on one side and the volunteer manual on the other, I studied the length of my hair. I had last cut it the day I visited Tuttle's. By military standards, the month's growth since then was downright messy.
I laughed at myself, knowing it wasn't military standards I was worried about.
Scooping up the manual, which I had read through at least half a dozen times, I turned to the much loathed page eleven. I didn't hate the entire page—just a few lines among a page full of necessary rules.
No fraternization among staff, to include volunteers.
The prohibition was followed by an explanation, both of what fraternization was and why it was a bad thing for the teens at Harbor House. Reading the explanation, I had a feeling Rhea had written the whole damn page, probably after some other volunteer or staff member tried to get a little too friendly with her.
Residents of Harbor House are frequently from broken homes or homes with tumultuous family dynamics. For many of the teens, staff and volunteers become pseudo-family members. Discord between staff and volunteers involved in an intimate relationship, and the inevitable breakup that follows, can have the same emotional impact on a troubled teen as would a divorce in their biological family.
My attention kept drifting back to "inevitable breakup." My plush beauty was neither an optimist nor a romantic. She was, in fact, something of an emotional brick wall. Her little manual locked me out at the shelter and the sneaky promise she extracted from me not to visit Tuttle's again had me locked out there, as well.
Volunteering at the shelter, seeing Rhea come and go Monday through Saturday, knowing where she was headed, knowing men were seeing what I couldn’t—it burned like hell.
But I had a plan, had been working on it since my first shift volunteering when Alex inquired once again about the extra copies I had of Catcher in the Rye. I had finally culled all the collectible, high dollar books from my father's collection. I wanted to donate the rest, at least the ones deemed filled with appropriate content, to Harbor House.
I had already purchased and installed sixteen floor-to-ceiling bookshelves in the common room, adding five-hundred and twelve feet of shelf space. Now I just needed her to sign-off on the books. And it wouldn't be fair if I had to box them all up by myself, not with an old shoulder wound and a week's worth of rain that had half of Memphis wondering if it was time to build an ark.
According to Miss Butler's beloved volunteer manual, my house was off limits to the teens. So if someone who loved books wanted to share that love with the teens of Harbor House, she was going to have to haul her sweet ass to my home and help me pack—an act to which she had finally consented.
Of course, she still didn't trust me and wouldn't let me pick her up. She had also assured the kids several times over the last few days at a louder than normal volume for her that she would be at my house this Sunday helping retrieve the books. And she had pointedly reminded office staff that she would be out Sunday on the task.
I guess that was in case I had plans of going all Hannibal Lecter on her.
Hearing the doorbell, I wiped roughly at my face to erase the grin erupting at the thought of eating Rhea Butler all afternoon long.
Walking down the long hall from my old room to the entry parlor, I worked to straighten my jeans as my cock threatened to crawl up my belly and get the afternoon off to a very bad start.
Opening the door, I was greeted by a familiar face, just not the one I expected to see.
Mae Weathers, the secretary at Harbor House for the last twenty plus years, squeezed past me. One of her broad southern hips gently bumped mine as s
he turned and told me to keep the door open.
"Rhea found a few extra bins and she's pulling them from my backseat."
"Yeah...okay..." I floundered with a response. This was not the scenario I had in mind. I had hoped for uncensored conversation with Rhea. I couldn't push my agenda at all at the shelter, couldn't be flirty without openly violating the manual—and attracting attention from the interested teens that I sure as hell didn't want to attract.
But in my house, her coming across a favorite book, or one she wanted to read but hadn't yet gotten round to securing a copy—I could work with that. The books were as much a lure as any of the real lures I'd cleared out of one of the spare bedrooms.
"I hope you have some better lines than that," Mae said, casually bumping me again as she spotted the library through the open French doors. "Oh, sweet heavens, is this what we get to take back?"
"Whatever ya'll think is okay to put on the shelves." Puzzling over the relevance of Mae's "better lines" quip, I was slow to answer. I was even slower in realizing Rhea had made it to the door, her arms and hands too occupied with the empty bins to work the latch on the screen door.
"Wait," I said, seeing her as she was about to put the bins down on the walk.
I opened the screen door, skimming past her to hold it while she entered, then immediately felt like an idiot for not taking the bins from her.
Rhea took no notice, proceeding straight to where Mae stood in the library. Putting the bins down, she pulled her backpack out of the top one and placed it on the floor next to the bins. Next she pulled out two short boxes before she turned to the nearest shelf and began reading spines.
"You sure you don't want to sit on a table and do that?" Mae asked, a certain tone to her voice that I recognized from when she was correcting one of the Harbor House teens on their lack of manners.
