by Stacy Eaton
Only a few more days. The leather was cold under my hands as I leaned over the arm of the couch.
Only a few more days. His hands were slick with sweat as he clawed at my hips.
Only a few more days. I was thankful for the soft material under my hips as he punched into me.
Only a few more days. I chanted the words as he worked himself in and out of my body.
He finished in record time, and I was again thankful. No words of love were spoken, no soft caresses, no lingering kisses. I stood and let my dress fall down over my thighs.
I peeked at him and his self-satisfied smile on his lips.
Only a few more days.
I excused myself and went off to the bathroom to get cleaned up. In the small powder room, I placed my hands on the granite counter and hung my head. Hot tears burned my eyes, and I contained a sob deep in my chest. I was worth so much more than this.
I deserve to be loved and protected, not used and abused! I shouted the words inside my head.
I shook my hair back from my face and checked the skin on my neck. At least he didn’t leave any marks there, or anywhere else on my body.
I should be grateful for that, at least.
* * *
Finally, the night before he was to go away on his trip arrived. My nerves were cranked to their tightest setting, and I kept waiting for him to tell me that he knew about my plan.
Could I possibly pull this off without his knowledge? I dared to pray.
I heard the door open and close with a bang. A sliver of dread tore down my spine. I spooned the enchiladas I had made onto a plate for him and set it on the table.
Todd dropped his jacket over the back of his chair and pulled it out without a word. Oh, this was not good. He never looked at me as he cut a piece and put it into his mouth.
I took my time plating my dinner and came around to the table as quietly as I could, making sure not to scrape the legs of the chair on the tile.
As I put my fork in my mouth I nearly chocked on the explosive level of tension in the room. With each tick of the second hand my apprehension mounted. Surreptitiously, I glanced at the large wooden clock in the dining room as I attempted to swallow my food around the lump in my throat. The sound of his fork on the china flayed every nerve ending in my body.
When he spoke, I startled and had to cough once to remove the food from my throat.
“What? My sweet loving wife isn’t going to ask me how my day was?” He dropped his fork to the plate.
I wiped my lips, “How was your day, honey?”
I saw his hand slash out toward me and tried not to flinch when he grabbed a handful of my hair and yanked it toward him over the table. “I shouldn’t have to remind you to ask that question.”
My eyes were closed tightly to control the pain. “I’m sorry, Todd. You seemed to have had a rough day. I was only giving you some peace. You know I would have asked you.” And if I had asked, you would have flipped out on me anyway, so what’s the difference, I thought to myself.
He shoved my head away, releasing my hair. I sat up straight in my chair. “Look at the mess you just made!” he yelled at me, he was in an even worse mood than I had anticipated.
I glanced down at my blouse. Enchilada sauce from when he had pulled me over the table covered my shirt in a Rorschach blot. I tried to wipe it off with my napkin, but the sauce had already done the damage to the silk.
“Jesus, you can’t do anything right, can you?” he shouted as he stood up. “You have to ruin everything!”
I kept my eyes on my plate, afraid to lift them to his face in case he thought I was going to defend myself.
“All I wanted to do,” he lifted his plate off the table and threw it across the room, shattering it when it struck the wall, “was come home for a nice quiet evening with my loving wife, and you have to go and ruin that.”
“I’m sorry,” I apologized as was expected of me. I stood to go clean up the mess he had just made, knowing that he expected me to do that, too. Before I could step away from the table, he was on me, his large strong hand wrapped around my throat. I reached both of mine up to try to pry away his fingers from my trachea.
My alarmed gaze landed on his heated stare, and I panicked. Did he find out I was leaving him? Did he know something? Was that why he was so mad?
His fingers tightened around my throat, cutting off the oxygen and blood to my brain. “You’re not sorry, are you?”
“Yes,” I squeaked out.
He came closer, his eyes looking almost feral with the sneer on his lips. “You have no clue,” he seethed. “You ruin everything, you know that? Ever since I met you, you have ruined everything. You are lucky I put up with you.” He shoved me away, and I sucked a lungful of air into my chest as I grabbed the countertop behind me to steady myself. Before I could get a second breath in, he was on me again.
He grasped my throat again as if he had enjoyed seeing me gasping for breath. I saw his other hand arch in and felt the sting as it connected with my face. Tears slid down my cheeks as the burn registered in my mind.
I’m not going to get a chance to get my freedom, I thought sickly. He’s going to kill me before I even get a chance to leave.
He smacked me again, blood dripped off my lip. The sight of the blood would either wake him up or excite him more. He got closer to me and glared at me. “I can’t believe I married you,” he spat out harshly. “You are nothing but a cheap whore.”
Spots danced in front of my face as my lungs fought for much-needed air. He pulled his head back and slammed it forward into mine. Sheer agony exploded in my head as my nose broke. My knees buckled, and I began to fall to the floor as darkness clouded around me.
I woke up—not in a hospital or inside a body bag, but on the cold kitchen floor. My face and head throbbed while my throat burned. I lay there wondering what the hell had happened. The room was silent, and I tried to open my eyes. One of them was swollen shut, and my hand went up to gingerly touch it. The whole side of my face was puffed up.
I scanned around the room with my good eye; there was no sign of Todd. Remnants of his dinner plate were scattered over the other side of the room, and one of the chairs was knocked over, but he didn’t seem to be around.
I slowly pushed myself up and leaned back against the cabinet to catch my breath. My head felt like it was going to explode.
It took a few minutes for me to get my bearings and remember what had happened. I didn’t have the energy to stand, so I crawled over the hard tile floor to the bathroom on the first floor. With the help of my arms, I was able to find the strength to pull myself up and look in the mirror.
Who was that looking back at me? I didn’t recognize the swollen face or the blood-matted hair. He had definitely broken my nose. I remembered him smacking me and then head-butting me, but from the looks of my face, he must have punched me a few times after I had passed out.
I pushed my hair back and saw the clear marks of his fingers on my throat. The bruises would not be easy to cover.
As I took in my entire image, I realized that he had almost killed me. My knees quaked, and I tried to hold myself upright, but the pain and the emotion of knowing he had been so close to killing me took me down to the wood floor where I curled up in a ball and cried.
Please, God, let me live one more day, I prayed. Let me live to get my freedom. Give me strength for one more day.
Chapter Seven
Grey
Gloria was a whirlwind. There was no better word to describe her.
Standing back and watching her give out orders, while still being sweet as a sleeping kitten, was like watching a force of nature come through and uproot a town—which was kind of what she was doing to me.
The moment I had accepted her job proposal, she had shaken my hand, and we had returned to the house. During breakfast, we had talked about the design for the rocking chairs. She asked questions about the materials I would want to use, and we even discussed the stain colors.
The moment breakfast was over, Gloria was calling in all her staff, and things got rolling. She had people meeting me at my apartment in thirty minutes to help me pack and bring my items back. She’d asked me how much my rent was for the place, and I’d told her seven hundred a month. She had handed me fourteen hundred in cash and told me to get out of my lease with it.
I held the cash in my hand and stared at it. That was a lot of cash, and she hadn’t even batted an eye. I peered around the house; I guessed the amount was nothing for someone of her wealth.
Amelia had shown me to the garage and handed me a set of keys. “She must really trust you to allow you to take Mr. Withers’s truck out.”
She looked embarrassed that she had voiced her opinion.
“I hope that she does trust me, and I hope you all know that I would never do anything to hurt her or take advantage of her. She is an incredible woman, and I will do everything I can to help her.”
Amelia scrutinized me carefully. “I’m glad to hear that. There is not a person in this house that would not die to protect her.”
I smiled down at her, “I have only known her for two days, and I already feel the same.”
Amelia left me then, and I wandered around the garage. There were three cars inside: the Lincoln Town Car that I had seen the day before, a light blue 1965 Ford Mustang convertible in mint condition, and a deep burgundy Ford F250 pickup truck with an extended cab that was probably a couple years old, but looked brand new.
I whistled as I looked it over. She trusted me to drive this? A few years ago I had peered at the sticker of one of these only to learn it cost more than I made in a year.
I heard a noise behind me and turned. “I thought you would have been on your way already,” Gloria remarked as Tom escorted her out of the house and toward her Town Car.
“Are you sure you trust me to drive this? What if I get in an accident?”
Gloria laughed and waved her hand, “That is what insurance is for,” Tom held the door open for her, “and if you ever want to take out Ms. Lucy, just let me know.”
“Ms. Lucy?” I inquired.
She pointed at the Mustang, “Yes, that was my car, but I quit driving a few years ago. She probably needs a tune up, but you are welcome to take her out for a spin some time. My home is your home, Grey.”
I was humbled by her comment, and my voice came out lower than I had expected, “Thank you, Gloria.”
“Get moving, you have work to do,” she commanded warmly and climbed into the car.
Tom smiled at me as he came around the side of the car. “I haven’t seen her this happy in a long time, Mr. Bloodstone,” he said softly enough that Gloria wouldn’t hear from inside the car.
“I’m glad to hear that, Tom, and, please, call me Grey.”
“Grey it is then. Good luck with your move today.” He climbed into the car and they were on their way.
My landlord had no problem accepting the money I gave him, but pronounced that since I was breaking my lease, I wasn’t getting my security deposit back. At first I was concerned about that, but then I remembered that I was going to be getting paid fifty thousand dollars, and would be able to get a slightly better place and pay off a lot of my debt.
It only took a few hours to pack my meager possessions and load them into the small truck that showed up. Brett, the guy driving the truck asked which items I wanted in storage, and which ones I wanted taken to the house. We separated them on the two sides of the truck, and by four that afternoon, we were pulling up the long driveway at the Withers Estate.
I looked at the house as I stopped in front of the garage. If yesterday I had been told that I would be moving onto this property, I would have laughed hysterically.
Now, I was not only moving onto the property, but I had a job—one that was going to help me pay off a chunk of my debt by doing what I loved to do.
I parked the truck in the garage bay and walked out the back door toward my workshop. Just the thought of being able to work in there put a grin on my face like the one you’d see on a three-year-old on Christmas morning.
That thought caused my step to falter slightly as I thought about Nate, but I forced myself not to be sad. Nate was gone, and I would always love him, but I had to move on with my life. I owed it to him. I owed it to myself.
I stepped over the threshold of the workshop and the sight of it took my breath away. I had always dreamed of having a place like this in which to work. Never in my wildest imagination did I think I would actually get to do it, if only for a short time.
The reminder that this was only temporary dulled the excitement a tad, but I reminded myself that beggars can’t be choosers, so if I had been blessed enough to have the opportunity to work with these tools while staying in this house as a guest and employee of Gloria Withers, I was not going to look a gift horse in the mouth.
Hadn’t Gloria said it was time to take control of my life? This was the first step. Maybe while I was here, I could work on a few more designs and find a buyer or two.
The creative juices started flowing already, and I wanted to jump right in and start working on the designs for the rocking chairs, but first I had to help Brett unload my things from the truck.
I lifted the garage door and found that he was backing in. I hadn’t even checked the upstairs to find out what the living arrangements were, but I didn’t care. It could have an air mattress for all I cared, and I would be happy.
While Brett was parking and getting ready, I took the stairs two at time. At the top was a landing and a door with a standard door lock. I tested it and found it unlocked.
I stepped into the room and stared wide-eyed around me. The house I had lived in during my marriage hadn’t been this nice.
There was a living room area with a leather sofa, chair, and ottoman that would have taken up every inch of my living space in my apartment. A sliding glass door led to a deck off the living room that gave a clear view of the main house. Past the sliding door there was a full kitchen with a breakfast nook that could seat four. The stainless steel appliances gleamed, but the woodwork on the cabinet commanded my attention.
My feet moved without thought as I stared at the intricate scroll work along the edges of the dark wood cabinets.
“Walter did all the woodwork in this place,” Gloria’s voice came from behind me.
“It’s beautiful.” I ran my fingers over the design. “He was very talented.”
“Yes, he was,” she said wistfully. “He loved to come out here in the shop and work.”
“Are you sure you are alright with me working with all his tools? I can’t imagine it is easy to see someone else in his space.”
Her smile remained on her lips, but her eyes held the sadness of loss that I understood too well. “Walter would have wanted someone with talent and his passion to use this space. I know he would approve.”
She ran her hand over the arm of the leather chair. “In fact, the day I met you, I was sitting on the bench thinking about him. Thinking about what I was going to do, and how it wouldn’t be long before I joined him.”
“Gloria—” I started to speak but she held her hand up.
“I know what you’re going to say, but let me finish. I think that somehow Walter knew what I needed: a friend. He led me to that bench at that time to find you so that you could help me finish this project.”
I blinked back tears. I already cared about this woman as much as I had ever cared for my own grandmother, and to think about her not being here much longer tugged fiercely at my heartstrings.
“Well, then I guess I should thank Walter,” I winked at her, “or you could tell him when you see him.”
That got a chuckle from her and broke the solemn mood. “So is this place acceptable? Is there anything you might need?”
“No, this is more than I could have asked for.” I glanced around the kitchen. “I’ll need to borrow the truck again later to get some groceries.”
“Nonsense, you
will eat with me up at the house, or I can have Amelia pick up some things for you.” She glanced around the room once more, “You are going to be too busy downstairs working to worry about cooking food.”
“Okay,” I laughed, “as long as it doesn’t cause any problems.”
“It will be nice to have company. I’ll let you get settled. Dinner will be around six. I’ll see you up at the house then.”
“Alright.” Gloria turned to leave. “Gloria,” I called out to stop her and walked over to her, “thank you.”
She patted my arm tenderly, “You’re welcome, Grey. Welcome home.”
* * *
I found Gloria in the conservatory a few minutes before six. She was sitting at a desk I hadn’t noticed earlier, reading over some papers.
“Evening, Gloria, I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”
She peeled her glasses off her face and laid them down, “Not at all.” She stacked up the papers, “I’m ready for a break.”
“Mr. Bloodstone,” Amelia’s voice had me turning toward the hallway, “would you care for a drink?”
“I’ll take a beer if you have one,” I replied.
“What kind? We have domestic or imported.”
“Um, I’m not picky, whatever is handy.” She smiled and left the room. “Did you want something, Gloria? I can call Amelia back.”
“No, I’ll have iced tea with dinner, maybe a glass of wine after.”
I suddenly remembered that I had something I wanted to show her. “Here, I made a few sketches before I came over.” I handed her three sheets of paper with rough drafts. I bit my lower lip, wondering if she would like any of them or suddenly decide that she had made a grave mistake.
She sat down at the end of one of the sofas and paged through the designs. I couldn’t tell by her expression what she was thinking, and my knees practically shook. I sat on the opposite sofa so I wouldn’t embarrass myself by falling over.
