by S. J. Drum
Jesus. At exactly what age did old ladies decide this cotton candy-meets-beehive hairdo was stylish? He had to shut down her tirade before she started poking her bony fingers into his chest. Though Dalton would never hurt a lady, or any senior citizen, he did have two feet of height over the tiny woman and was as amazed by her fearlessness as he was annoyed.
“Ma’am, I’m gonna take care of everything.” He held a hand up to stop her when she opened her thin lips to interrupt. “You won’t pay for any tile except the black marble that was originally agreed upon. My records show that I ordered the correct tile from my supplier so it must have been a shipping mistake. I’ll contact the company and get this pink mess removed and the black marble re-ordered. It’s an inconvenience, nothing more.”
The woman huffed before crossing plump arms over her chest. “What about our deadline? Will I be compensated if you don’t finish the project on time? I want a discount!”
Lord, give me strength.
“There is no reason we can’t still finish the project by the deadline.” Dalton looked to Anderson for confirmation. The man nodded before slapping his hard hat onto his shiny head. “There’s plenty we can work on without the marble. Now, if you’ll go on back inside, I’ll call my supplier and get this straightened out.”
“But—”
“Please, ma’am. The sooner I make this call, the sooner you’ll be smoothing your hands over that lovely black Italian marble you picked out.” Dalton added a grin, hoping his charm worked on little old ladies the same way it worked on younger women. Well, not exactly the same way.
She bobbed her head, setting another quiver loose on her wispy hair helmet. “All right, young man. I’m counting on you to make this right.” She wagged a finger at him before spinning on her white, low-heeled pumps and moving back to her front door.
“That is one scary lady.”
Dalton eyed Anderson and gave him a grunt of agreement. “I’ll call Harris, get this clusterfuck straightened out.”
Dalton walked away without further instruction, trusting Anderson to get the crew off their asses and working on an area of the project not involving the marble tiles. He did not want to make this call, knowing he’d have to speak to Rachel. They hadn’t parted on good terms and the way she’d behaved and spoken about Lucy had shred every last ounce of respect Dalton held for Rachel.
Turning his head, he twisted his neck until he heard and felt a satisfying pop. Best to get it over with so he could pick Lucy up from Hart’s Ink and take her home where she’d be safe. Dalton trusted Jed and Dez but knew he wouldn’t be able to relax until he laid eyes on Lucy. Her parents were up to something and it had Ross’s stench all over it.
He hoisted himself into the cab of his truck after retrieving his cell from the front pocket of his jeans. Tapping the screen with his thumb, he found the number for Elegance Supplied and pressed Send.
“Elegance Supplied, this is Rachel. How may I help you?”
Rachel’s husky voice shot a bolt of unwanted lust through Dalton. He couldn’t remember a single time he’d spoken to her in the past without the expectation of a sexual encounter in the near future. Damn. He didn’t want anything to do with Rachel anymore but his body was like one of Pavlov’s dogs, conditioned to respond.
“Rachel, it’s Dalton. I need to speak with Harris.”
“Mmmm,” she purred into the phone. “Dalton, how lovely to hear your voice.”
“Don’t play games. I need to speak with Harris, now.” The demand sounded rougher than he’d intended but he needed this conversation to be over.
There was a silent pause, then the sound of Rachel taking a deep breath before she spoke. “I’m sorry, Harris is out of the office at the moment. Is there something I can help you with?”
Dalton used his thumb and index finger to squeeze his temples. Her tone hadn’t sounded suggestive. Maybe she could actually help him with the tile problem. He explained the issue, along with the fact that the order slip contained the correct color, and waited for a response.
“That’s terrible. Unfortunately, considering the cost of the mix-up, you’ll need to come into the office and speak to Harris in person.”
“Damn. When is he due back?”
Dalton heard the sound of keys clicking on a keyboard and envisioned Rachel checking her boss’s calendar.
“He should be back within the next half hour. If you’d like to come now, I can fit you in.”
Dalton narrowed his eyes, wondering if her voice had gone lower at the end or if he’d only imagined it. Hell, it didn’t matter. He needed this problem taken care of ASAP. “Fine. I’m on my way. Thanks, Rachel.”
Her cheery response of “No problem!” sent a cold touch of foreboding trickling down his spine. He jammed the key into the ignition and started his truck. Just go in there, deal with Harris and get the hell out. What could go wrong?
* * * * *
“Should we call an ambulance?”
“We better call Dalton.”
“Not yet. She passed out but she ain’t injured. I caught her before she fell.”
The voices pinged around inside Lucy’s head, stirring her out of the darkness.
“He’s gonna be pissed. Left her with us for an hour and she’s fucking unconscious.”
“Just wait.”
Someone was patting her cheek. She wanted to tell them to knock it off but her limbs and lips wouldn’t respond to her commands.
“Wake up, Lucy. Come on, hun. Wake up.”
She lay upon something warm and soft. Why would she want to wake up?
“That’s not how you bring someone out of a faint.” A masculine voice. Dez?
“How are you supposed to do it, then?” A deep, growling voice. Jed.
“You need to smack her. Shock her out of it. Patting her gently isn’t gonna do it.”
What? No! Don’t slap me!
“I’m not going to slap her. Jesus.” Thank you, Jed.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” The feminine voice had to belong to Abigail.
Smack! Lucy gasped and her entire body jumped as if electrified as the burning heat of a slap registered across her cheek. On instinct, before she even had her eyes open, she threw herself to the side, falling a few feet before landing on the unforgiving industrial carpet. Her eyes finally flew open and she recognized the tattooing table above her head and three shocked faces towering over her. Still in the grips of her flight instinct, she scurried backward until something hard and cool hit her back, stopping her retreat. She pressed her face into her drawn-up knees and covered her head with her arms, preparing for the punch or kick heading her way.
“What the fuck was that? What’s she doing?” she heard one of the guys ask.
“Lucy? It’s just me, Abbey. I’m sorry for slapping you. I was afraid you wouldn’t wake up. I’m sorry if I hurt you.”
Lucy started to shake, a terrible tremor wracking her entire body as her mind caught up to reality and realized she wasn’t in danger. Get a grip, idiot. These people are your friends. They’re gonna think you’re crazy.
She worked to slow her breathing, trying for the even breaths she’d learned to use when hit with a panic attack. A warm hand settled on her shin. She jerked away from the touch but forced herself not to run.
“Lucy? Talk to me. Tell me how to help. What’s wrong?”
It took everything Lucy had to force her arms away from her head and raise her face from her knees. Fuck. She hadn’t felt like this since the first few months after leaving Ross.
Now that she was awake, her face no longer hurt and she realized Abigail probably hadn’t hit her as hard as she’d thought. “Okay.” Her voice sounded like sandpaper. “I’m okay.” She ran a shaky hand through her hair before raising her gaze to meet Abigail’s. “Nothing to worry about.” A macabre laugh escaped her lips. “Just a little flashback with a side order of panic attack.”
Abigail’s shoulders drooped in relief. She spun around and planted her butt on the
floor, her back against the cool metal cabinets, close enough to Lucy that their shoulders touched. “Damn, girl. You scared the hell out of us.”
Lucy glanced around the room, finding Dez and Jed nowhere in sight. “Do me a favor and tell the boys not to bother Dalton. He worries enough as is.”
Abbey raised a dark brow and bumped Lucy with her shoulder. “You sure? You might feel better if Dalton’s here.”
Lucy sighed. “I’ll be fine. I just need a few minutes to myself. Please don’t bother Dalton at work. I’ve been a big enough burden already. Don’t let the boys call him away from a job site.”
Abigail pushed to her feet with a grunt and looked down at Lucy, hands on hips. She opened her mouth, paused, then shut it and pulled her lips between her teeth as though she had something to say but decided to stay quiet. With one last appraising glance, Abbey turned from Lucy and left the room to track down Jed and Dez.
Lucy stood and stared around the quiet studio in a daze. She glanced down at her hands, watching her fingers curl into her palms, release, curl, without registering the sensation. She felt curiously numb, as though she weren’t really a part of herself anymore. The same detachment she’d used to overcome so much in her life slipped back over her, comforting and impenetrable. Strange, she’d gone so long without it, opening herself to the world and all the raw emotions it held after leaving Ross. Even knowing it was something only a coward would do, she let the numbness settle.
“What? When did he leave?” Dez asked into the cell phone pressed against his ear as he entered the room, followed by a frustrated-looking Jed and a nervous-looking Abigail.
Lucy wished everyone would calm down. She wanted to tell them not to worry but the apathy that accompanied her detachment kept the words from forming and being pushed out between her lips. Nothing could touch her now, nothing could reach her with her mind encapsulated in this safe place.
She tilted her head to one side, felt the slackness of her face as she studied Dez’s changing expressions. His long blond hair had been let free of its usual ponytail and now he ran a hand through it with rough strokes as if agitated. The scar running from his nostril to his upper lip twisted with a sneer when he growled a woman’s name. “Rachel?”
The name made her sluggish heartbeat trip, piercing her for one quick jab through her newly reestablished armor. Though she only heard one side of the conversation, she knew Dez must be speaking about Dalton. He wasn’t at the construction site like he’d said. Dalton had lied, seeking out his former—or not-so-former—lover instead of staying with Lucy.
Another layer of steel poured into the thick casing around her mind, making Lucy feel as if she were no longer in the room at all, like maybe she was watching this whole scene through the lens of one of those expensive cameras she’d always wanted but never could afford. Distantly, she watched Jed’s jaw harden and Abigail move close enough to Lucy to throw an arm around her waist, as if she needed to be held up, supported in the face of the betrayal she should be feeling.
“Son of a bitch, mother fucker!” Dez hit the End button with his thumb and shoved the cell into his back pocket. He stared up at the ceiling as if trying to decide whether the truth or another believable lie from yet another person in her life would better befit the situation.
“It’s okay. Don’t worry about hurting me and don’t lie to me. I understand what’s happening.” Lucy’s voice sounded hollow and odd, even to her.
A pained look crossed Dez’s face when he lowered his gaze to meet hers. “No, you don’t understand. Your ex-husband was in town as of 2:00 a.m. last night and I imagine he hasn’t left. Smart son of a bitch.” Dez exhaled loudly and set his hands upon his hips. “He must have someone using his credit card because I’ve been tracking it to track him and purchases have been charged to it from Cincinnati in the last twenty-four hours. And unless he has a program that imitates IP addresses so well even I can’t figure it out, which I doubt, the bastard actually has someone going to his house and sending emails from his home computer. Several have been sent out in the same time frame from his home IP address. Clever fucker.”
The three faces staring at Lucy gave her the strange urge to giggle. They all looked as if they were waiting for her to pass out or lose her mind. But it wasn’t going to happen, not now, now that she was in her safe place.
“How do you know he’s here, then?” Jed asked.
“I’ve got a few of my guys keeping an eye out for him, just in case. Never hurts to cover all the bases. Glad I did this time. Just got news one of them saw Ross at Lucy’s apartment building.”
“Did he break in again?” Lucy asked, not worried but curious.
“No. The contact I talked to while you were in here with Abbey said Ross went straight to Brad’s apartment, knocked and was let inside by Brad. Stayed for thirty minutes, then took off.”
Lucy stared, feeling nothing, reminding herself to blink every few seconds.
“Isn’t Brad Rachel’s brother?” Abigail asked, stepping a bit in front of Lucy as if to protect her from the answer.
“Yeah, babe. And I don’t know what Dalton’s doing with Rachel but it can’t be what you’re thinking. He’s a good man.”
Abigail snorted, fists clenched at her sides. She looked indignant enough to make up for Lucy’s lack of emotion.
“This is actually perfect,” Lucy said, her words cutting through the tension in the room. Everyone looked at her as if she’d lost her mind. Maybe she had. “Ross being here, I mean. If he’s here, I can go back to Cincinnati and get inside the house.”
“Why the hell would you ever want to do that?” Abigail asked.
“Because I know where I can find proof that I’m telling the truth. I remembered something, something I’d blocked out.”
“That’s good,” Jed said. “What kind of proof?”
Her voice devoid of emotion, she told them. “Pictures. He liked to take pictures of me after he hurt me. Sometimes while he hurt me. He called them trophies.” Lucy grabbed the hem of her shirt in both hands and slowly raised it to expose the circular burn scars on her stomach and chest. “He’d hit me that day. It was the first time he’d hit me so hard I’d been knocked unconscious. When I woke up, he had me tied to the bed, a camera on a tripod set up in the corner of our bedroom, and he was straddling my hips, leaning over me with a cigarette between his lips. I remember thinking it odd because I’d never known him to be a smoker. Then he started this.”
Lucy ran a fingertip over one of the raised burn scars, remember the smell of burnt flesh, the grating laugh of a monster. Despite her numbed mind, her eyes welled with tears and she absently wiped them away with the backs of her hands after dropping her shirt.
“He called it his artwork. Wanted to capture the moment so he could enjoy it again later. He left me tied to the bed while he loaded the pictures on his home computer and printed them out. He put them in a box on the top shelf of our bedroom closet. I don’t know what else is in that box. I wasn’t stupid enough to go snooping through his things and to be honest, I didn’t want to know.”
“Oh, Lucy. I’m so sorry that happened to you.” Abigail hugged her, sniffling back her own tears.
“I’m fine now. I’m glad I remembered. Now I can get the proof I need.”
“No offense, but you don’t look fine. You look like you’re in shock.” Dez studied her, his brows drawn in a fierce expression.
Without responding to Dez, Lucy continued talking. “With Dalton…busy…and Ross here in Clifton, it’s the perfect time for me to go back to the house.”
She held up a hand to stop the arguments forming on the lips of the three other people inside the studio. “And, I’m going alone.”
“Like hell you are.”
“No fuckin’ way.”
“Dalton will cut off my balls if I let you leave without protection.”
Lucy shook her head, in no mood for pleading or reasoning with these people, even if she did consider them friends. “I’ve bee
n a prisoner long enough.” She pinned each of them in turn with a hard stare. “I won’t ever be kept prisoner again, not by my psychotic ex, not by my fears and not by well-meaning friends.”
“At least let us call Dalton,” Abigail begged.
Lucy swallowed hard, an image of Dalton entwined with a thin-bodied woman sweeping through her mind. “As far as I’m concerned, Dalton made his choice. Besides, this is something I need to do alone. Ross is here, I’ll be safe. I don’t know what I’m going to find inside that box and I don’t want an audience there with me.”
She walked toward the door and paused, waiting for Dez to step to the side so she could exit. He ran a hand over his face, inner conflict clear in his eyes as he stared her down. With a sigh, he stepped aside.
“This is a mistake, Lucy. Let one of us go with you. Don’t do this alone,” Dez called to her back as she moved through the hall to the rear exit.
When she reached the back door of the building, she turned to look back. Dez, Abigail and Jed all stood in the hallway with varying expressions of anger and concern. “It’s time I stood up for myself. By myself. I’ll make the drive and be back here before midnight.”
“Stay with us. You can’t stay in your apartment with Ross hanging around and I doubt you’ll want to stay with Dalton. Stay with Jed and I tonight, at least give us that much.”
Lucy thought for one silent moment, then gave a nod to Abigail. “Okay. I’ll see you when I get back.”
Lucy pushed open the door, a hot wave of humid summer air rushed to greet her as she stepped outside, feeling more like she was walking through a dream than on sweltering blacktop.
Chapter Fifteen
Dalton pulled to a stop on the narrow paved parking lot in front of the Victorian house that had been converted into a showroom and office for Elegance Supplied. After shutting off the engine, he climbed down from the cab and shoved the keys into his pocket, looking over the small parking area with a frown. Harris’ pretentious BMW was nowhere in sight, Rachel’s vehicle the only other car in the lot.
