by Rachel Lee
“Thanks.”
With care and extreme caution, she managed to take care of her needs, but when it came time to walk to the door, she felt unsteady enough to call out. “Clint?”
He entered swiftly, offering immediate support. “Let me carry you,” he said this time. “The sweatpants could trip you.”
So it hadn’t just been an exercise of male dominance when he had lifted her before. Relieved, she didn’t argue, and this time she felt no fear when he picked her up. He laid her back on the sofa as if she were fragile enough to shatter.
“How’s your head?”
“Still aching,” she admitted.
“I’m sorry I can’t give you aspirin. But with a concussion, that could be dangerous. And I don’t have anything else.”
“That’s all right. It’s reminding me I’m still alive.”
Something flickered across his face, so quickly that she couldn’t quite read it. She suspected that stoniness would make him a difficult man to deal with. At least with Kevin she had always known just what kind of trouble was on the horizon, even if she couldn’t stop it or escape it.
“Can I get you anything?” he asked. “Food? Soup? A drink?”
“I’m really thirsty,” she admitted. “Would you mind? Ginger ale?”
“Not a problem.”
She let her head rest against the pillow, listening to the hammering storm outside. The thick log walls protected them from most of it, but through the closed windows she could hear the keening of the wind, and sometimes the glass rattled before the strength of it. Not even Kevin, she assured herself, could be out looking for her in this. Thank God.
But what was she going to do when it passed? With no identification or money, or even her debit card, how could she start running again? Fear and grief grabbed her in as tight a grip as the throbbing headache, and for a few seconds she couldn’t even draw a breath. Never before had he trapped her quite this effectively. Always before she’d been able to gather enough resources to run again.
Well, she would find a way, she promised herself. She always had before.
“You’re going to be all right.”
She moved her eyes slowly until she could see Clint standing beside her, holding out a tall glass of ginger ale. For a moment he seemed to swim, then the world stabilized again. “Thanks.” She reached out and took the glass, and only then realized that she needed to sit up straighter to drink.
Clint apparently saw the problem at the same instant she realized it. He took the glass back and bent to help her sit up against the pillow. “I guess I must be tired,” he said. “Missing the obvious.”
“Do you never miss the obvious?”
“I miss very little.” An edge in his tone warned her away, though from what she didn’t know. Silently, she accepted the glass back.
He rounded the coffee table and sat in the easy chair on the other side. A book lay open on the end table, and he picked it up to start reading again. Apparently he didn’t feel like conversing.
Which ordinarily would have been fine, but Kay discovered her own thoughts scared her. She didn’t want to be alone inside her own head. But how could you converse with a man who was doing a passable imitation of a brick wall?
A native caution when dealing with men kept her silent. She didn’t want to irritate this man. From his size and strength, he could present an even bigger threat than Kevin, even though he hadn’t done a thing to indicate he might be that kind of person.
She sipped her ginger ale, and a sigh escaped her. At once he spoke.
“Are you all right?”
“Just unhappy with my thoughts.”
“I can understand.”
Maybe he could. She dared to look at him again and found he had set the book aside.
“I guess I should apologize,” he said finally, his tone level, his face unchanging. “I’ve been a hermit for a while. By choice. I seem to have lost the social graces.”
“I’m not asking for social graces,” she said truthfully. “You’ve been very kind to a stranger. I don’t want to intrude more than necessary. It’s just that my thoughts keep running in circles. Unhappy circles.”
“You’ve certainly got enough to be unhappy about.”
It might have been a question, a suggestion or an end to the subject. From what she had seen of him so far, she guessed it was probably a signal to end the discussion. So she took another sip of ginger ale and focused her attention on the fire. She could take a hint. In fact, she was probably hyper-alert to hints, thanks to Kevin.
But Clint surprised her by not returning to his book. “I suggest you plan to stay here for a couple of days.” The invitation sounded grudging, and she looked askance at him.
“Why? You said you’re a hermit by choice.”
“Maybe so, but it seems to me you need some time, some safe time, to make plans and figure out your next move. You can’t just run out of here the instant the storm ends. And I can provide the safety you need.”
He said the last with such calm confidence that she wondered who the hell he was. Or what he had been before becoming a hermit. Not even the most sympathetic cop had ever promised her that much. No, they had been full of warnings and advice, most of which included getting as far away as possible as fast as possible.
“Kevin,” she said finally, “is like a bomb. There’s no telling when he’ll go off, and anyone in the vicinity is probably at risk.”
“I’ve dealt with bombs, and I’ve dealt with worse than Kevin.” A frown dragged at the corners of his mouth but didn’t quite form. “Trust me, I can keep you safe.”
“The cops couldn’t keep me safe.”
“They couldn’t be there round the clock,” he said flatly. “And cops don’t have my training.”
She hesitated, then just blurted it out. “Who are you? What are you?”
His gaze grew distant, as if he could see through the walls and well past the blizzard beyond. A shiver ran through her. “I was special ops for nearly twenty years. And I was good at it. Very good.”
She didn’t know how to respond to that. Should she congratulate him? Admire him? But no. Something in that rigid face told a very different story. “I don’t want you to have to go back to that. To relive it.”
At that the facade cracked, and he looked startled. Then the stone returned. “Sometimes,” he said after a moment, “you don’t have a choice.”
Chapter 3
The night passed without further conversation. Either weariness or the concussion, or a combination of both, kept causing her to nod off. Every half hour or so, he woke her, then let her fall back to sleep.
Then, finally, she knew it had to be morning because she awoke to the smell of frying bacon. The aroma made her mouth water, and she realized she was ravenous. When she pushed herself cautiously upright, she was delighted to realize the room no longer spun. The crazy carousel was gone.
Her head still ached, but not as badly, and most of the pain she felt now was in her cheek and around her black eye. There were aches and pains from running in the cold, from the other blows Kevin had heaped on her, but nothing she couldn’t ignore.
Moving carefully, pulling the legs of the sweatpants up as she walked, she made her way to the bathroom and freshened up a bit. Then, upon returning to the living room, she pulled one of the heavy curtains back and looked out on the still-raging blizzard.
It was early yet, still dark outside, but even so, she could tell visibility probably didn’t extend much past the porch railing she could barely see, buried as it was in snowy drifts and further concealed by wildly blowing snow. Even after the storm passed, just getting out the front door would probably prove to be a challenge. “Good morning.”
Startled, she almost jumped but managed to remember her unsteadiness in time. Gripping the window frame, she turned to see Clint standing in the doorway of his kitchen. “Good morning.”
He gave a half-smile. “Glad to see you can get around. Are you hungry?”
“I thought it might. Do you want eggs and toast with it?”
“Please. Eggs any way you like.”
“Can do.”
He turned and vanished back into the kitchen. “Coffee?” she heard him call. “Please. Black.”
Apparently she wasn’t quite back up to snuff. Realizing she had begun to feel shaky, she made her way back to the sofa and sat. At least now she could sit upright. Last night’s ginger ale still sat on the coffee table. It had gone flat, but that didn’t keep her from drinking it down in one long draft. Heavens, she was thirsty.
Clint returned just long enough to set a mug of steaming coffee in front of her, then vanished back into the kitchen. He’d added a couple of logs to the fire, and the flames leapt high again, making the room toasty. The fire also cast enough light that she didn’t feel any desire to turn on one of the lamps.
It was like being in a warm, cozy cave, she thought. Surrounded by thick walls, safe from predators. But as she’d learned all too painfully, safety was an illusion, one that, in her life, rarely lasted for long.
There was a wooden table with three chairs in one corner of the room, and it was there Clint served their breakfast. He waited for her to get there on her own, watching her as if measuring her steadiness, but not intervening. She didn’t want to admit, even to herself, how ready she was to sag into the chair by the time she got there. It wasn’t that far, but never before in her life had she felt so weak.
Of course, she hadn’t eaten much for days.
Clint apparently believed breakfast should be the day’s biggest meal. She found herself looking at platters heaped high with toast, bacon and scrambled eggs.
“That’s enough for an army,” she remarked in surprise.
“I think you’re hungrier than you realize,” he responded.
“I think I’m going to prove you right.” She was famished, in fact. Except for the cocoa and soda last night, and the crackers and little bit of cinnamon roll, she hadn’t eaten in days. Whatever Kevin had intended to do with her, feeding her hadn’t been part of it. Three days, she figured. Three days since he’d kidnapped her from Killeen. But that was just a guess, since she’d been stuck in his trunk a lot of the time.
“Want to tell me what happened?” Clint asked.
“Not really.” But she knew she would tell him anyway. If the thoughts wouldn’t stop running around in her head, where could the harm be in speaking them out loud?
“Eat first,” he suggested. “That’s the most important thing.”
It was. With a shaking hand, she helped herself to healthy portions of eggs, toast and bacon. Hungry though she was, it still seemed difficult to focus on chewing and swallowing. The better she felt, the more the urge to flee grew in her. She had learned that when she held still, danger would find her.
And she could no longer believe it wouldn’t find her, regardless of what this man promised.
“So what do you do?” he asked. “For a living.”
“Whatever I can. Usually that’s waiting tables. It’s one of the easiest jobs to get when you’re new in a place.”
“Do you enjoy it?”
“Mostly. The money is good enough if you work in the right restaurant.”
“Do you have any savings?”
“Probably not anymore.” Her mood sank again, and she poked at the food on her plate with her fork.
“You know, you should call your bank and tell them your credit card or whatever was stolen on the day you were kidnapped.”
“No!” Panic gripped her heart in an icy fist. “Don’t you understand? He always finds me somehow. If I poke my head up, they’ll want to know where I am. They’ll want to know where to send another card. They’ll want me to sign things. Once that happens, he’ll find me.”
He sighed. “You’re right, I guess. Sorry, I’m still kind of an electronic Luddite. I keep forgetting that somehow everything is available if you just know how to look for it.”
“It seems like it. Almost twenty years ago, the post office stopped giving out forwarding addresses so stalkers couldn’t follow people who moved. Maybe that helped back then, but today you can get the address of anyone in the country for a few dollars. And if you have more than a few dollars, apparently you can find out a whole lot more. I’m not sure exactly how he does it, but once I’ve been in a place for a while, Kevin finds me. Three times now. How the hell do you hide?”
“Actually,” he said slowly, “you can hide. But it’ll involve a lot of changes. We can talk about it later.”
She offered to help with the dishes, but he declined, telling her it was better for her to rest. Twenty minutes later, he rejoined her in the living room.
“Do you need to shower?” he asked before he sat. “I can get you some more sweats.”
“Maybe later on the shower.” She needed one, but she wasn’t confident enough of her stability yet, and she sure didn’t want to have to ask this stranger for help with that.
“Sure. More coffee?”
He freshened her mug and got one of his own before settling into his easy chair. The storm outside kept right on ripping around them. He tilted his head to one side. “This isn’t going to blow over soon.”
“That’s okay,” she said. It gave her a few additional hours of safety before she would have to figure out how to move on again.
“I suppose it is.”
No, she realized, it wasn’t. Not for him. He was a self-confessed hermit, and now he was stuck with an invader until such time as he could reasonably boot her out the door.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“For what?”
“Imposing on you like this.”
“Oh, for the love of Pete!”
She shrank back against the pillows. He was an unknown, and she hadn’t meant to anger him. He could do almost anything to her.
But he remained firmly planted in the chair, though he looked disgusted, a change from his usually unrevealing attitude. “Look,” he said, “I know neither of us likes this situation. I prefer my solitude, and you’d sure as hell prefer not to have a lunatic ex-boyfriend trying to kill you, chasing you everywhere you go. But you know what? Sometimes we don’t have a choice. We just have to do what needs doing. And right now what needs doing is giving you the safety and space in which to recover. So what if it disturbs my sacred solitude?”
“I’m still sorry,” she said, weakly, not sure whether she was sorry for angering him or for the whole damn mess.
“Quit apologizing. You don’t have a thing to apologize for. I know I’m not exactly a warm, fuzzy kind of host, but if you think I resent the fact that you need help and I’m here to provide it, you’re wrong.”
“Okay.” She wanted to get away from this topic as quickly as possible.
But even though he could have dropped it there, he didn’t. Evidently he had plenty of thoughts on this subject.
“You have rights, and I have responsibilities,” he said flatly.
Now, that really did confuse her. “What rights?”
“You,” he said, “have a right to exist without terror. You have a right to expect the rest of us to step up and get you away from this guy, since he seems hell-bent on following you wherever you go. You have a right to expect help, and apparently you haven’t been getting it.”
“But you have rights, too.”
“Hell, yeah, but I can protect my own.”
“And you don’t have a responsibility to me.”
“Oh, yeah, I do.”
She tried to shake her head, but as soon as she did, she remembered her concussion as pain stabbed her head. “I’m nobody. You don’t owe me a thing.”
“You’re not nobody. You’re a human being, and that gives you certain rights in my book. And I’m a human being, and that’s enough to make me responsible to do what I can for you.”
Her mouth opened a little as she stared at him. She couldn’t remember anyone ever putting i
t like that before.
He leaned forward, putting his mug on the coffee table, then resting his elbows on his knees. “You want to know one of the reasons why I prefer my own company?”
She wasn’t sure she did, but he didn’t wait for her answer.
“Because too many people have forgotten their responsibilities. Too many people look the other way, or take the easy path. Anything but put themselves out for someone who needs help.”
“Not everyone is like that.”
“Of course not. But too many are, and I’m sick of them, frankly. All this talk of personal responsibility that people toss around overlooks a very important fact.”
“Which is?”
“That your personal responsibility doesn’t end at the tip of your own nose. Or at your own front door.”
She bit her lip, then ventured, “You’ve thought a lot about this.”
“I spend a lot of time thinking about responsibility. My own. Accepting it. Then deciding what it should have been all along.”
She longed to ask him what had put him on such a personal private quest, but didn’t dare. There was a darkness in this man that she could feel all the way across the room. It lurked in his gray eyes like a ghost. Maybe it was best not to know.
He picked up his mug again and sat back, sipping slowly while minutes ticked by.
“Any family?” he asked abruptly.
“Me?”
“You.”
“No. I oh, do you want to hear the whole story? It sounds like a cliché.”
“A lot of life is made up of clichés. Tell me whatever you don’t mind sharing.”
She looked down and realized her hands were twisting together. She forced herself to separate them and lay them flat. Then she shrugged a shoulder, ignoring the ache. Apparently Kevin had hit her there, too. Not that she remembered, there had been so many blows.
“My mother died of an overdose when I was four. Nobody knew who my dad was. So my grandmother took care of me until she died of a heart attack when I was thirteen. After that it was foster homes. Six of them. I don’t think I was easy to deal with. And there’s nobody else.”
