Her Keeper

by Rianna Campbell

  “I don’t want to do this in an alley. Can we go somewhere to talk?”

  “The only place I’m going is home. To bed.” Amanda replied. He raised an eyebrow and she rolled her eyes. “Alone.”

  “Let me take you home then. It’ll save you a few bucks and it’ll be a hell of a lot more comfortable for both of us than standing out here.”

  Amanda thought about it for a moment, and though she knew she’d probably regret it, the idea of having a guaranteed seat in a warm, comfortable car was too tempting to refuse. Her feet ached, she had the start of a nasty headache and her back was killing her.

  “Fine,” she agreed with a sigh.

  “Thank you,” Parker replied. “I’m right over here.”

  He led the way and a few minutes later she was snugly ensconced in a heated seat that felt like it had been sculpted from a cloud being chauffeured home by a suspiciously quiet man.

  “You said you wanted to talk, so talk,” Amanda said, leaning her head back against the seat and closing her eyes. Just for a second. It was just getting too hard to keep them open.

  Maybe it would be easier to stay mad at him if she didn’t look at him. Besides, it wasn’t like she was going to fall asleep.

  CHAPTER TEN

  She was absolutely fucking adorable. He’d hardly been able to keep his eyes off of her once he’d seen her sleeping so peacefully in the passenger seat. It was a miracle he’d managed to get them to her apartment in one piece.

  He parked out front and came around to her side. She was curled up in the seat, leaning against the door, so it was a little tricky, but he managed to reach in and steady her while he opened the door. She mumbled something in her sleep but didn’t wake.

  He picked her up and shut the door with his foot. She hardly weighed a thing and he figured he could do this for hours if he needed to. Still, her slight body was a warm, comforting weight in his arms. He didn’t even want to think about putting her down, but he couldn’t stand out on her stoop all night.

  She shifted and sighed, leaning her head against his shoulder and putting a hand on his chest. He swallowed hard against the ache that had formed beneath her slender fingers.

  He climbed the stairs and knocked on the door with his knee since both hands were currently full of precious cargo.

  The door swung open and a tall, lanky kid with a god-awful goatee stood there gaping at him. He took a breath like he was going to speak, but Parker glared at him shaking his head.

  “Don’t wake her,” he said quietly. “Room?”

  “Through there,” the kid replied, giving him a skeptical look. “Who are you?”

  Parker ignored him and stepped past him into the house. The kid, to his credit, nimbly stepped aside to let him pass, closing the door behind him. He then hurried around to lead the way.

  Parker looked around as they walked through a living room that was overstuffed with furniture. One wall was consumed with a couch and two chairs, while the other had a desk and a bookshelf shoved into one corner.

  A large flatscreen was mounted on the third wall with a set of shelves built of rough boards and cinder blocks underneath. Clearly, each roommate had contributed something to the space and it was an eclectic mashup of different styles and qualities. They passed a kitchen on the right that looked about the same size as the one in his apartment, which was to say very, very small.

  Down the hall to the left was a room with glass double doors that was clearly meant to be some kind of study or maybe a dining room, but that someone had converted into a bedroom by covering the glass with that clingy window film.

  He hoped that wasn’t Amanda’s room or he was going to flip his shit and wake her up. Those doors had notoriously shitty locks and that film made them less transparent, but not completely opaque.

  Luckily, the kid with the goatee walked right by that room and another door on the left. At the end of the hallway, there was another set of doors opposite each other and one at the end of the hall that appeared to be a bathroom.

  The kid opened the third door on the left and pushed it open without stepping through.

  Smart kid.

  Parker walked in and immediately caught the scent of vanilla and some kind of spice he couldn’t recognize. He closed his eyes and took in a deep breath.

  The room was very much Amanda’s style. Sleek, simple furniture of good quality mixed with a seemingly haphazard array of artistic touches. A fuzzy green pillow here, a bright red throw blanket there, a Van Gogh print on the wall- just enough to keep the room from feeling too sterile.

  A queen-sized bed sat opposite the door and he walked around to the unmade side. Clearly, that was the side she preferred. Every muscle in his arms tightened, as if reluctant to let her go, but he forced them to relax and placed her gently on the bed.

  She was still sleeping heavily and he wanted to stay and watch her for a while, but no doubt the kid at the door was going to have questions and he didn’t want to seem like any more of a creep than he no doubt already did.

  Pulling off her shoes and draping the red throw over her, he turned and walked away. Not only was their talk going to have to wait, but it was also going to be far different than the one he’d planned.

  Something had shifted the moment he’d held her. He cursed himself for not being a stronger man, a better man. But there was no way he could walk away now, even though he knew there was only one way this would go.

  Sooner or later he would crash and burn, and this time he may not walk away from the wreckage intact. He might be leaving a piece of his soul behind in the process.

  ✽✽✽

  Amanda had had the strangest dream. She’d been floating, completely weightless, until she’d landed on a cloud. The weirdest part had been that Parker was floating above her, looking down at her, watching her. It was… nice. Surreal, but nice.

  Her head was foggy and it took her a good minute to figure out where she was and what had happened. And then she’d immediately covered her face with a pillow and screamed in frustration.

  Why the hell was she always making an ass of herself in front of Parker? With any other person on the planet she could be calm and composed and witty, but for some reason every time she got within arm's reach of that man, she turned into a complete and utter idiot.

  She stood up and undressed, noting that someone had at least removed her shoes for her. But the rest of her work clothes had to go. She tossed them into the hamper and made a beeline for her bathroom. Twenty minutes and a scalding hot shower later, she was feeling a little better.

  A quick look at the clock told her it was after nine. It was her day off, so she pulled on a pair of shorts and a t-shirt so as not to shock the roommates, and practically sprinted for the kitchen. She was absolutely starving.

  The last time she’d eaten was on her break at work yesterday afternoon. She would usually grab a snack when she got home, but obviously, that only applied to when she was conscious.

  The whole place was pretty quiet, which was odd. Jace and Dylan would be at work since it was Monday. But Rick and Bobby both worked odd hours so it was unusual for her to have the place completely to herself, even on a weekday.

  Of course, Bobby could just be sleeping since he was not an early riser. Either way, it was nice to have some peace and quiet for a change. Rifling through the fridge she pulled out eggs and cheese and some fresh mushrooms and got to work making herself an omelet.

  She was a talented pastry chef, which was a fact, not a flex, but when it came to regular cooking, she stuck to the basics. There’s a saying that baking is a science and cooking is an art, and she found that very accurate.

  With baking, the measurements were standardized and the outcome was predictable. If you put things together in certain amounts and in the correct order, you would consistently get the same thing every time. That wasn’t to say that there weren’t different recipes, but the basics of each item didn’t change much.

  Once you knew how to make a plain whit
e cake, you could figure out how to make pretty much any other kind of cake. Being able to cook one pasta dish, told you next to nothing about how to make all the other pasta dishes.

  She was contemplating this philosophical difference while she sauteed her mushrooms when a creak from the couch in the living room caught her attention.

  She’d been sure the place was empty- unless maybe Bobby fell asleep in front of the TV again. She turned off the burner and set the pan aside while she went to check.

  “Mornin’.”

  Amanda squeaked and jumped backward, nearly slipping on the wood floor. She hadn’t expected to come face to face with Parker in her own living room.

  “Jesus,” Amanda shouted, putting a hand on her chest to calm her racing heart. “Why do you always do that?”

  Parker looked like he was trying not to smile, which just pissed her off more. The way things had been going between them, he should be on his knees apologizing to her, not scaring the shit out of her because he thought it was funny.

  “What, and I can’t stress this enough, the fuck are you doing here?” she asked, putting her hands on her hips.

  “We didn’t get to talk.” Parker shrugged.

  “You waited on my couch all night to talk to me?” Amanda asked, not sure if she should be weirded out, angry or flattered. She suspected his answer would have a lot to do with that.

  “Yes, and I would have waited a lot longer if I had to. This is important to me,” Parker said, taking a step toward her.

  “What is?” Amanda asked, crossing her arms over her chest to keep some kind of barrier between them. Also, she wasn’t wearing a bra.

  “What you think of me is important.” Parker ran a hand through his hair. Which, by the way, looked way too fucking good for someone who’d slept on the couch all night. “I can’t stand the thought that I might’ve… scared you.”

  Amanda looked at him, dumbfounded. He didn’t appear to be joking. In fact, he looked like he was genuinely upset about it. That still didn’t mean she had any fucking clue what he meant.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” she asked, shaking her head.

  “Look, you were clearly upset when you left Elysium the other night, and I… I felt like I must have scared you.”

  Amanda thought over the events of that night from his perspective. He had no idea that she’d been upset because she felt like he was constantly rejecting her. All he knew was that he’d said some intensely… personal things, and gotten way into her personal space. She could see how that might have come off to a woman who wasn’t interested as overly aggressive.

  Jesus Fucking Christ… he has no idea.

  Before she could stop it a snort of laughter escaped her. The snort became a giggle, which then evolved into a full-on wheezing, doubled over, can’t breathe kind of laugh, of which Parker clearly did not approve.

  He stood there, jaw clenched and arms crossed, while she laughed herself silly.

  When she’d finally stopped laughing and had taken a few deep breaths to restore oxygen to her brain, she apologized.

  “I’m sorry, I just…” Amanda paused to cover a residual giggle with a cough. “You could not be more wrong.”

  “What do you mean?” His arms dropped to his sides and his brow furrowed.

  “I mean, you didn’t scare me.”

  “No?” he asked, taking another step forward.

  Amanda refused to back up. If she gave him an inch… well she might end up giving him everything.

  “No. I’m not intimidated by you. You don’t frighten me,” she replied, hitching her chin up a notch.

  “Really?” he asked, taking yet another step. They were practically chest to chest, yet again, and she had to tilt her head way back to look up at his face. “Not even a teeny, tiny, little bit?” he added, leaning down until his face was just inches from hers.

  “Nope,” she replied, making sure not to break eye contact. “Not even a sliver.”

  He made no reply except to smile, slowly.

  “Then what was it?” he asked, cocking his head to the side. “What upset you so much?”

  “That,” she said, jutting out her chin even though it closed the already small gap between them that much more. “Is none of your business.”

  “If you weren’t scared, then was it what I said?” His smile disappeared.

  “Can we drop this?” She turned away and went back to the kitchen. Show of weakness that it might be, she needed some distance between them.

  “Tell me,” he said simply, following her from the room.

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “It doesn’t matter. Now you know that you didn’t frighten me, so you can rest easy. Let’s just leave it at that.”

  “Tell me, Amanda,” he said in a low voice. “If I did something, then tell me. I told you, what you think of me matters.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” she said forcefully. She picked up the spatula and stirred her now cold mushrooms, but Parker caught her wrist, turning her to face him.

  “Tell me.”

  “Fine,” she shouted, shoving him away. “You want to know? I was embarrassed, alright? How could I not be when you’d just rejected me? Again.”

  “What?”

  “Ever since we met you’ve avoided me like the plague. It was like you decided immediately that I wasn’t worth your time.”

  “Amanda, I-”

  “But because I’m apparently a masochist, I couldn’t stop thinking about you even though you’d made it perfectly clear you weren’t interested.”

  “That’s not-”

  “And then- then you’re suddenly saying all of these things and you’re looking at me like maybe you don’t actually hate me and I forgot about all of it. Just like that, I stupidly let myself believe that maybe I was wrong. But I wasn’t, was I? Because when it came right down to it, I gave you the perfect opening and you walked away. You walked away. And I felt stupid and pathetic and-”

  In an instant Parker had wrapped his arms around her, pinning her gesticulating hands to her sides. He kissed her and her mouth opened in shock. He wasted no time slipping his tongue into her mouth and brushing it against hers.

  After a moment, she was kissing him back, matching every move he made. He let go of her arms and she found his chest, digging her fingers into the material of his shirt and holding on for dear life. She moaned into his mouth as his hands found her ass, small though it may be, and squeezed, pressing her close against him.

  He growled in response and the kiss turned frantic. She tugged at his shirt, pulling it up enough so that she could snake her hands beneath it to find his skin. She traced each rib and each hard muscle with her hands, raking her fingernails down his chest to the waistband of his jeans. When she went for his belt, he stopped her.

  Her hands stilled and a moment of panic hit her. This would be another rejection, wouldn’t it? He was pulling away. Again. He backed off slowly as if reluctant to put any space between them, or perhaps because he was afraid that she’d pick up where she left off and keep talking. But Amanda was out of things to say. What happened now was entirely up to him.

  “You’ve got it all wrong, Princess,” Parker rasped, his chest heaving. “Saying I rejected you makes it sound like I had a choice. And I didn’t. I still don’t. But I can’t stop thinking about you, either.”

  “Oh, God, you don’t have a secret wife somewhere, do you?”

  “No,” he assured her with an amused smile. “No wife, no girlfriend, no six kids in bumblefuck, Texas, or anywhere else. It’s just me.” He shrugged, looking away.

  “Okay.” She nodded, relieved but still confused.

  “But you and I? That’s… a bad idea.”

  “Why?”

  “You and I don’t work in the long run.”

  “Why not?”

  “For a lot of reasons.” He sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. “But that has nothing to do with whether or not I want you.” The way his hazel eyes burned
told her that he meant what he said. “And I do want you. More than my next fucking breath.”

  She looked away, her mind churning. In the end, it was her gut she went with.

  “What about the short run?” she asked. He blinked at her, surprised.

  “The short-run would be un-fucking-real,” he replied. “Trust me when I say that you and I would have a hell of a lot of fun before it all went up in flames.”

  She bit her lip, a little nervous about the leap she intended to take, but there was no going back now. She’d made up her mind the second he’d kissed her that she would take whatever she could get for however long it lasted and fuck all the rest.

  It wasn’t smart, and her self-respect might take a bit of a hit in the process, but life was short, and if she could have what she’d been looking for, even if just for a little while, it would be worth it.

  “That sounds like a future us problem, don’t you think?” She stepped forward and slid her hands around his neck. “I say fuck them… and fuck me.”

  His eyes closed and he groaned, his hands finding her hips and squeezing.

  “It’s going to hurt in the end,” he said as if he was giving her one last chance to do the right thing. The smart thing. They were way past that.

  “Maybe. But who knows? Maybe not.” She raised an eyebrow. “I never back away from a challenge.”

  “Don’t I fucking know it,” he whispered as his mouth descended on hers. The kiss seemed to solidify something between them. There was really no going back now. They were on this ride together for however long it lasted.

  As Parker scooped her up and carried her back to her room, she wondered how long would be long enough?

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Parker was sure there was a special place in hell for him for what he was about to do, but he couldn’t seem to care. It was reckless and stupid and would certainly end in disaster, but the moment he’d picked her up out of his truck and carried her to her room, something inside him had roared awake and claimed her.

  Mine.

  Maybe not forever, maybe not even for very long. But for right now, she was his.