Fragile

by Shiloh Walker

  This job was no different. In some ways, it was even harder, because in a war, he expected to see the ugly side of human nature. He’d gone into the army, and the Rangers, because he wanted to make a difference somewhere in the world.

  In places like Iraq, Afghanistan, and Colombia, people knew bad shit was going to happen. Here, in his home country—he couldn’t quite explain it. He knew it, yeah, but actually seeing it was different. What people did to their own flesh and blood. Even to total strangers. And the kids were the hardest.

  Logically, considering the shit his mom had put Quinn through, Luke should have been a little more prepared. But then again, he doubted anything could have prepared him for the sad little girl in front of him.

  “Can you open your mouth for me, Miz Ellie?” he asked gently. She did so obediently and without making a sound or moving an inch. He wished she’d cry. There was something so completely messed up with a four-year-old little girl sitting as still as death while a doctor probed and prodded at her.

  And she continued to do it throughout the entire exam. When the nurse drew blood, she didn’t even blink. When he laid her down and did the required physical exam, probing her belly, checking her genitalia for signs of molestation, she simply lay there like a little doll.

  By the time Luke had finished his exam, he was wondering if she could talk.

  Devon Manning stood at Ellie’s side and smoothed a hand down the girl’s tangled, filthy hair. “You’re a brave girl, aren’t you, Ellie?”

  Finally, some kind of response. She flicked a glance up at Devon and then looked back down at the floor.

  “I’ll be back in as soon as I can,” Luke said softly. Unable to resist, he reached up to touch the little girl’s face, but she froze. She didn’t move, flinch, or pull away; she reacted the same way a wild animal would, retreating inside herself, as though if she were still enough, quiet enough, he wouldn’t see her. Sighing, Luke let his hand fall to the side, and he left the exam room.

  “Poor baby,” Sarah Hensley said. A registered nurse with a friendly, freckled face, Sarah was more likely to laugh than cry, more likely to defend than attack. But when Luke glanced down at her, she had a mama bear look on her face. There was an angry light in her eyes, and she met his gaze and said, “That girl’s mama needs to burn in hell.”

  Flipping through the rest of the chart, Luke murmured his agreement. “According to the report, she’s probably doing just that right now. Her john beat her to death a few days ago. Kid’s been alone in their apartment for God only knows how long.”

  “That poor baby doesn’t look like she’s had a good meal in weeks. Longer.”

  Luke glanced at her. “Maybe you should see about getting her something to eat. Some chicken nuggets or something from the cafeteria.”

  Sarah smiled. “And maybe some ice cream. Ice cream always makes my kids feel better.”

  An hour later, Luke went through the lab work on Ellie. He’d wanted to get to it before this, but another trauma came in, and he’d been called in to assist with that.

  His legs felt leaden as he walked to the room where Ellie and Devon waited. Seeing that small, sad face was hell. Before he opened the door, he took a deep breath and counted to ten. Didn’t help. He still had an ugly little knot in his chest, and he didn’t know whether he wanted to snarl and break something or just cuddle the little girl against his chest and promise nobody would ever hurt her again.

  Ellie Reynolds and the other little kids like her were going to break his heart all right.

  ELLIE was a heartbreaker; that was for sure. Devon Manning got her heart broken on a regular basis, but Ellie was going to be a memorable one. Right then, Ellie lay on the bed, curled into a tight ball, sleeping like she hadn’t slept in a week.

  Easing up from the hard stool by the bed, Devon watched Ellie’s face for a minute to make sure she wouldn’t wake, and then she started to pace the small confines of the exam room.

  Small, scared, and scarred, Ellie was a sad little thing, but it wasn’t too late for her. She was only four years old, and half of her life had been spent in the care of foster parents, foster parents who loved her. One set of foster parents, the Parkers, really stood out in Devon’s mind, and if she had anything to do with it, Ellie was going to go back to those people.

  Hell, Ellie shouldn’t have ever been removed from them. Devon knew the courts had good intentions, but the road to hell and all that. Putting that child back with her strung-out mama who had no desire to stay sober, it all translated to one thing: a BFM.

  Big fucking mistake.

  Unfortunately, she saw a lot of them in her line of work. This one, though, it was going to end all right. She’d damn well see to it. Poor Ellie wouldn’t realize it now, and she may never realize it, but her mother dying was the best thing ever to happen to her.

  “Will she be okay?”

  Devon turned and looked at the doctor. He stood at the doorway, staring at Ellie with grim eyes.

  Now there was another heartbreaker. Sexy and absolutely mouthwatering. Dr. Lucas Rafferty hadn’t shaved in a couple of days, and his clothes were so damned rumpled, she figured he’d been sleeping in them. Heavy-lidded gray eyes, creases carved into the hard lines of his face, and a long, rangy build, he looked more like a warrior than a doctor.

  Devon had been drooling over him from afar for weeks, but this was one of the few times she’d actually had any direct contact with him without a third party.

  Ellie’s soft snores drifted through the room, reminding Devon there was a third party—she was just sound asleep.

  Forcing her attention away from the sexy doctor and back to the little girl, Devon hoped he couldn’t see the hot flush on her cheeks. “You’re the doctor. Shouldn’t I be asking you that?”

  Dr. Rafferty cocked a brow at her. “Physically, yes, she’ll be fine. I’m more worried about the rest of her. You’ve been doing this awhile.”

  A sad smile curved Devon’s lips up. Yes, she had been doing this awhile. Devon didn’t just work for Social Services; she’d been in the system. Briefly, thank God. Sometimes she liked to think her life really began when Eden found her.

  All the time before that? She preferred to think of it as somebody else’s life or a nightmare. Her parents had died in a car wreck when she was three, and Devon had ended up going to live with her mother’s sister. Aunt Cyndi hadn’t been too bad, at first. She’d sure loved spending the money that should have been used to care for Devon. Then the money ran out. There was a trust fund set aside for Devon, but Cyndi couldn’t touch it. It was meant for Devon and Devon alone. Used to living the good life, Cyndi wasn’t going to go back to scraping by.

  Cyndi ended up finding herself a rich man to marry, and she wasn’t overly picky. Boyd Chancellor came into Devon’s life when she was nine. He started molesting her within four months of marrying her aunt. He raped her the night she turned eleven, and it had continued until she was thirteen.

  “A birthday present—you’re a big girl now . . .” Shame, shock, and horror had kept Devon silent. Drugs were the easy outlet. Until she started getting in trouble, skipping school, and then she got caught stealing. She ended up in juvenile court, and that led to community service and therapy.

  A sharp-eyed therapist pieced together what had been happening to Devon, and Boyd landed in jail. Devon had landed out on her ass. Cyndi accused her of seducing her husband, and she beat the shit out of Devon before dragging her ward out of the house and leaving her on the wraparound front porch in front of the house that had been built with money from Devon’s rapist.

  “Don’t you ever come back here.”

  Yeah, that was the life she preferred not to think about. Life really started with Eden, then with the Mannings. Eden, with her wiry gray hair, overbright lipstick, and oversized plastic-framed eyeglasses probably didn’t fit anybody’s idea of salvation. Completely, without a doubt, Eden had saved her. For that, Devon thanked God every single day. Now she did her best to save ot
her kids, like Eden had saved her.

  Moving to stand by Ellie’s side, she stroked the little girl’s dirty gold curls. They were matted, tangled, and filthy. The girl looked like she hadn’t had a bath in months, and that was entirely possible. She needed to get the girl cleaned up before they did much else.

  Without warning, Ellie awoke, lying on the narrow bed and staring up at Devon. The look in her eyes wrapped a fist around Devon’s heart. She swallowed the knot in her throat and forced herself to smile.

  “Hi there, pretty girl. Nice nap?” she asked gently as Ellie sat up. Forcing herself to smile, she glanced over at Luke and said, “Ellie is going to be fine; aren’t you, sweetie?”

  Ellie didn’t so much as blink.

  Devon didn’t let that slow her down. Ellie was young. She was sweet, she was scared, and she needed love. That was all. Devon was going to make sure she got it. Looking back at Dr. Rafferty, she said, “She’s going to be fine.”

  He stared into her eyes for a long moment, and then he nodded. “I’m going to hold you to that. One of the nurses is going to come in, clean her up some.”

  He turned, and as he walked away, Devon didn’t once stare at his butt. She might have glanced once or twice, but hey, that wasn’t staring, right?

  Looking back down at Ellie, she pushed the girl’s tangled, filthy hair back from her face. “What do you say, pretty lady? You feel like getting cleaned up a little? Then I’ll take you to see somebody special. Somebody who misses you.”

  The little girl looked down. She didn’t say a word, but she reached out a small hand and laid it on Devon’s forearm. Lightly. One second passed, then another. When Ellie started to stroke Devon’s arm the way she’d stroke a kitten’s fur, tears formed in Devon’s eyes. She blinked them away and murmured, “That’s a girl.”

  STANDING in the driveway, Devon stared at her car and swore. She had a staff meeting in forty minutes, and she was already running behind. Getting downtown in anything under thirty minutes would be a miracle, and she hadn’t even eaten breakfast.

  The coffee she’d guzzled when she realized she’d overslept had her wired, and now, the bagel she’d been wanting from Panera Bread wasn’t going to happen. She needed something in her belly besides the caffeine, but more than that, she needed a ride to work.

  And somebody to change her damn tire or fix the flat or whatever in the hell somebody did when the tires didn’t have air. How fricking strange was that? The two tires on the driver’s side were completely flat, and she knew they hadn’t been when she went inside last night.

  Hitching up her pants a little, she crouched down beside the front tire and eyed it, although she had no idea was she was looking for. Even if she saw a nail or something, she wouldn’t know how to fix it. Anything mechanical, automotive, or electrical was out of her range of expertise. Well, unless it involved changing a lightbulb, flipping a blown fuse, or putting gas in the car. That, she could manage. But she hadn’t even managed to hang up a picture straight when she moved into her own place three years earlier.

  Her adoptive father, Reece Manning, had done all of that for her, trying not to laugh as he studied her dismal attempts to hang a few pictures up on the wall. Those dismal attempts had ended up requiring some drywall work and a gallon of paint. She stared at the tire for another minute and then pulled out her cell phone.

  A familiar voice answered, “Hey, sweetheart. If you’re calling to cancel dinner this Sunday, you’d better think again. Your mother will skin me.”

  “Hi, Daddy,” she said, smiling despite herself. “I have a flat tire. Actually . . . two.”

  She heard the concern in his voice. “You’re not stranded anywhere, are you?”

  “No. Hadn’t even left for work—and now I’m going to be late.”

  “I could be there—”

  She interrupted quickly. “I’ll find a ride, but I wanted to know if you could come out and take a look. I’d hate to have to pay a tow truck.” And that immediately led to a lecture on why she should have AAA. She listened, nice, polite, and obedient—for the first thirty seconds. And then she interrupted, “Dad, I’m sorry, but I’m running late for a meeting, and if I don’t want to get fired, I need to get a ride.”

  Getting that ride took a couple of phone calls and a bribe of cookies. Her coworker Noelle McIntosh wheedled some cookies out of Devon in exchange for a ride, and by the time they got to work, the meeting was already under way.

  Following the oh-so-fun staff meeting was a meeting with a child just recently assigned to her. He was there with his dad, and within three minutes flat, Devon knew these two males were going to be a pain in the ass. Tim Wilder didn’t want to be there, his dad didn’t want to be there, but more than some, those two needed to be there. Anger management was just the tip of the iceberg for Tim.

  Amazingly, though, as rough as the day started out, it actually got better. She spent half the morning in court, grinning with pride as one of her clients stood before the judge. After two years on probation, two years of hard work, and a lot of arguments on both sides, Sloan Chapman was being released from probation. In another three weeks, Sloan turned eighteen, and he was joining the navy. His juvie record would be sealed, and he’d have a fresh start.

  And Devon had one more of the little successes that kept her going.

  By the time Noelle dropped her off at home, Devon had almost forgotten about the car and her promise to call AAA. The note on her kitchen counter had her grinning.

  Happy early birthday, Devon.

  That made her smile. Her birthday wasn’t for another seven months.

  Since I figured you’d forget, again, I went ahead and got you signed up with AAA. Aired up your tires. They were just flat. Must have been a slow leak, although it’s kind of weird having two at once.

  Don’t forget dinner Sunday. And you owe me some cookies.

  It was lying next to the list she’d made up while waiting for Noelle. He must have seen the ingredients for the cookies on the note-pad.

  After a few days passed, she’d forgotten about the tires.

  FOUR

  “I kept my word.”

  He was mouthwatering. Six feet, lean, and sexy, sleekly muscled, like a panther. Heavy-lidded gray eyes and closely cropped wheat blond hair. He kept it almost brutally short. But she thought it might curl if he let it grow long enough.

  When Luke lifted his head to look at her, there was a faint smile on his mouth. His very, very sexy mouth. Devon could picture herself kissing it. She could picture herself moving to him and pressing against him, rising up on her toes and covering that mouth with hers and kissing that sardonic smile away.

  He quirked a brow at her, and instead of reaching for him like she wanted to, Devon reached into her purse and pulled out her wallet. She pulled out the snapshot of Ellie and held it out to him. “I’ve been carrying that around for a few weeks.”

  His eyes dropped down, and Devon watched as his smile softened. “The little heartbreaker,” he murmured. He stroked the edge of the picture with his finger. “She looks wonderful.”

  “She is wonderful.” Under the guise of studying the picture, Devon stepped close enough to him that she could feel the heat of his body and smell his scent. Woodsy. Dark. Sexy. She looked down at the picture and tried to focus on it. Ellie did look wonderful. “The last time she was in the system, she stayed with this family. They loved her. She loved them.”

  “I can see that.” The picture showed Ellie hugging Rob Parker with both arms, her eyes sparkling. She was laughing. “She going to be able to stay with them for a while?”

  Devon tipped her head back and smiled at him. “A good long while. They’re adopting her. There’s no father listed on her birth certificate, and nobody has been able to find any suitable next of kin. The only family member is an uncle who has a history of sexual abuse. No question of whether or not he can take her.”

  He started to give the picture back to her, and Devon shook her head. “It’s for you.
We all need reminders of the happy endings with these kinds of things.”

  His gaze met hers, and Devon felt her heart start doing a weird little rumba inside her chest. The heat inside her belly didn’t completely take her by surprise.

  She hadn’t closed herself off from men. She’d dated; she had even thought she was in love once with a guy she’d dated off and on throughout college. Of course, the two times she’d attempted to develop any sort of sexual relationship with him, it had been a disaster. She’d been attracted to the guy—seriously attracted—but she couldn’t move past her issues.

  After the second failed attempt, Devon had broken up with him, and last she heard, he was engaged.

  She wasn’t a stranger to heat; that didn’t completely shock her. What surprised her was the intensity of it. Devon knew nothing could have prepared her for this. It was like wildfire. It rippled through her, and she knew he felt it, too. She saw it in his eyes, in the odd tension that suddenly took over his body. Their gazes held for a long moment that seemed to stretch out into forever, and then his gaze dropped to her mouth. Devon started to sway closer. The cell phone at her waist started ringing, and the moment shattered. Devon blinked, felt blood rush to her cheeks, and she stepped back. Whoa . . .

  He said her name, but Devon forced herself to smile. With that bright, false smile on her face, she looked down at her watch and said, “Wow. Look at the time . . .” She spun on her heel and headed down the hall, as fast as she possibly could.

  Whoa . . . She fumbled for her cell phone, but by the time her clumsy fingers managed to flip it over, the call had already gone into voice mail. Just as well, because the only coherent thought in her brain was . . . Whoa . . .