by Zoey Parker
My Dear Miss Abby…
They had begun early on when he was still sounding charming, if a little off.
I have seen every last one of your movies and think you are an absolute charm. You are a gift to us all and I can only feel blessed personally to have been so close to greatness through your work.
It was all gushing flattery. And I admitted it, part of me liked it. It was nice to be told you were doing good work, that you were spectacular. But I also noted the flowery word choice and the rambling letters about how I was like a true star, bright and burning long after my time had come and gone.
That started to get creepy and it only got worse from there.
I want you to know how happy you’ve made me these last few months, the letters began to tell me, like a man speaking to his lover, how you’ve made me glow with joy and a careless frivolity. You’ve made me the happiest man alive.
And that was how I began to understand that the tone of his letters were changing. He was telling me how good we were together and how much in common we had, how we were connected.
The letters started to describe things in my life that left me feeling uneasy, and one, just one, included a picture of me that could have been from the paparazzi—but probably wasn’t.
“The letter with the picture,” Kade questioned, still seeming tense and angry. “That was when they started having details? And when they started getting angrier?”
I nodded. “Some of the things in the letters he could have known from the press,” I admitted. “But some of it…” I shook my head. “There were details that the press didn’t have and the pictures didn’t show. And yet he knew them. It means…it means that he must have been watching when…” I tried to hold back a sob, but couldn’t. I clamped my hand down hard across my mouth, at the very least trying to quiet the noise.
“Shh,” Kade told me, his voice gentle again as he pulled me against his broad chest. “Shh, it’s alright. Everything will be alright.”
I didn’t really believe him, but I wanted to. So I let myself lean against him and sob a moment as he stroked my damp hair. We stayed like that for a while before I finally pulled away, using the bottom of my t-shirt to wipe at my tears.
At least I’m not wearing makeup, I thought stupidly. It was the last thing that mattered, all things considered, but my looks were safe enough that I didn’t have to really be worried or afraid. They were something almost neutral to think of.
When I’d calmed down, he pushed the coffee toward me. “Drink your coffee,” he commanded as I watched him pull out his cell phone.
I accepted the mug, but eyed his phone suspiciously. “What are you doing?” I asked him before taking a sip.
He looked over at me, considering something before he finally said, “I’m calling Caleb.”
I was up in a shot, spilling a little of my coffee over the sides and onto the counter. “No! You can’t!”
But Kade only shook his head. “I’m sorry, but this is a big deal now. If you really do have a stalker—”
I winced. This was the first time anyone, myself included, had called it what it really was. Someone was stalking me. And if that didn’t terrify me, nothing would.
“—then we need to inform Caleb. Maybe he can use the letters to track him. At the very least, he’ll know how serious this is.”
I was shaking my head, though I knew in my heart that Kade was right. I was just being stubborn and didn’t want to admit it. “We don’t need to do anything!” I argued. “He doesn’t have to know, no one does. This can stay between you and me and…”
I broke off because he was giving me a strong paternal look, and I didn’t really like it when a man I was attracted to gave me fatherly looks. I wanted them to look at me like I was lust incarnate. I wanted them to see me as a goddess, someone to lust after and admire and adore. Not as some child they needed to protect.
But then his gaze eased and I saw that beneath that so-called paternal look was something else. It was just as protective, but it was darker, too. Deeper. He stepped close to me again, setting his phone on the counter beside my spilled coffee. Then he put his hands on my upper arms, wrapping them around the skin just beneath the edges of my sleeves so that I could feel his heat soaking in through my skin.
“I promise you, I will protect you,” he told me seriously, his voice solemn as though he were taking a holy vow. “I will stand by you and make sure that you are safe no matter what. I won’t let anything happen to you, Abby, you have my word. But you’ve got to help me. You’ve gotta let me protect you. Won’t you let me do that?”
I stared up into his dark eyes, mesmerized by them. I felt as though I were falling into their deep, dark pools, wrapped up in something as thick as tar and as warm and soft as a blanket. It was something I wasn’t sure I could ever get out of. Something that would trap me and keep me and damnit, I wanted to let it.
Licking my lips, I finally nodded. “Yes, I’ll let you.”
In that moment, all I wanted to do was reach up and kiss him. I wanted to tangle my hands in his hair and hold him against me until our bodies were so close that they were one. And I thought that maybe he was feeling that same thing—those smoldering eyes, the way they darted to my slightly parted lips—but then he swallowed heavily and nodded once. His full mouth dipped into a small smile.
“Thank you,” he said.
Then he pulled away. I was left with a bereft feeling and at the same time like I was coming down off of one hell of a drug.
Kade snatched up his phone and dialed Caleb’s number. It rang several times and then my uncle must have picked up because Caleb was talking. He was explaining what was going on and I winced, waiting for him to tell about the dangerous disaster that had been last night. But he didn’t. Instead, he focused on the letters and how he thought they might have been connected to the man who attacked me the other night.
I folded my arms across my chest, waiting as he spoke. There were pauses where Uncle Caleb spoke and I couldn’t hear that, obviously, then Kade would answer again.
“No, no name or address,” Kade said in a gruff voice. He was half turned away from me, but every so often he would look my way, his eyes a smoldering promise of what could be.
I couldn’t figure out why he hadn’t kissed me.
Doesn’t he want me? I wondered silently but didn’t like that thought at all, so I turned back to my coffee and waited for him to finish the conversation.
I listened as Kade went on about the letters—and I could hear the strain in his voice. Whatever Caleb’s reaction, it was very obviously not good. Not even a little bit. Which I hadn’t expected it to be. At some point, I heard Kade say, “…she’s in the shower,” causing me to glance over at him. It was followed by a sly smile and a “Did you still want me to take the phone to her?”
As I realized what he was saying, I felt a smile unfurl on my lips. Kade winked at me and I covered my mouth to hide a giggle. I watched him as he continued to talk to Caleb. I suddenly wanted to know what Caleb had to say to that, but not enough to actually speak to him. Kade’s smile flickered for an instant, but it was so quick that I might have imagined the whole thing.
I watched him a while longer, then reached for my coffee again.
They spoke for a while and I drank my coffee. It wasn’t hot enough to burn off my taste buds, but it was still plenty warm. When they were finally finished, I heard Kade’s boots on the floor as he approached me.
He put a large, warm hand on my shoulder and when I turned to look at him my stomach did a flip-flop. I sucked in a quick breath, suddenly feeling deprived of oxygen, though that was utterly ridiculous. As I looked up at him now, I wondered what it was about him that made me want to curl up against him, to run my hands along those large, hard muscles. Why I wanted so desperately for him to kiss me and slide his tongue into my mouth.
“I told Caleb,” he informed me, though of course I obviously already knew. His voice was deep and heady, his eyes twin dark pools
. “He’s going to look into it, but I’ll have to get the letters to him.”
“I thought you said you weren’t going to leave me?”
No, that wasn’t exactly what he said. He had said that he would protect me against everything, but how was he going to do that if he wasn’t here with me?
He frowned a little at that, but nodded. “I know. And I meant it. But we’ve got to find this asshole, Abby. Look, he said he’s going to call me back. We were interrupted and he still needs more info. I’ll see if someone else will pick up the letters.”
He didn’t look wholly happy about that and it made me squirm a little. How could he already want so badly to leave? Hadn’t things shifted between us?
But then I wondered if it wasn’t only me who had shifted. I remembered the passion of that kiss the night before and decided that, no, this was definitely not one sided. At least not entirely. He wanted me, that much I was ninety percent sure of.
“Okay,” I told him in a small voice. “Good.”
His eyes burned into mine and I wondered at how easily I found myself drawn to this dark, handsome man.
Chapter Eight
Kade
When I called Caleb, I could see how much Abby didn’t want me to. It was written across her features, in her eyes. But I had to do it. I knew she was scared, understood that there was probably more to that, too, but it didn’t matter. The only way to make her permanently safe from this psychopath was to give Caleb all the information.
“Hey, boss,” I’d said when he answered, trying to get up the courage because Caleb may not have been the type to kill the messenger, but he wasn’t exactly one to be thrilled with that messenger either. “I’ve got…I’ve got news.”
“What is it, Kade? Is Abby alright?” I could hear by the cool, calm tone he used that if my answer wasn’t She’s fine, I was about to become very, very dead.
“She’s fine,” I told him quickly. I debated telling him about last night and the incident with the man who assaulted her, but I figured it was unrelated to the letters and all that Abby was currently dealing with. That didn’t mean that the prick shouldn’t spend the next eternity burning in hell, but telling Caleb about that might throw him off the right track which was dealing with this stalker. More than that, I could guess that Abby didn’t want to talk about it.
“Then what’s going on?”
Already Caleb was starting to sound impatient with me and it was how I knew that he was pulling long hours. Most of them were probably related to the guy who had attacked Abby, but I was sure there was a chunk devoted to the business, too. He couldn’t close up shop just for this—though I was willing to bet he’d considered it. But in the end too many people’s livelihoods hung in the balance. He had to think of his men, too.
“I’ve got some information on our guy,” I began, not sure how to really approach this.
“A name? Address?”
I shook my head, though of course he couldn’t see that, so I said aloud, “No, no name and no address.”
“Then what have you got?” he snapped, sounding equal parts pissed and frustrated.
I ran a hand through my hair, glancing over at Abby. She was staring at me with those big blue eyes, making me think things that I shouldn’t have been thinking. I looked away before I got too distracted. “Letters,” I said flatly, because I could feel anger boiling to the surface as I thought of what they said—and of how scared Abby truly was. Poor thing, I thought, wondering how she had kept it together for as long as she had—and how she thought she could possibly have continued to do so without telling anyone.
“Letters?” Caleb repeated, and now he sounded genuinely confused. “What kind of letters?”
I took a deep breath and dropped the bomb. “Letters that are threatening Abby.”
There was a pause, then, “What do they say? How many? Do you think they’re related?” Just then, he sounded very calm, collected even, which had me a little worried. If he was snapping at me or joking with me, we were fine, but this? No, he was on the verge of blowing up and I had a feeling it was because he already knew or at the very least guessed what those letters were.
I cleared my throat. “She has several.” More like a hundred, I thought darkly. “She’s been getting them…” I hesitated. Did I really want to tell him that she’d been getting them for a year and hadn’t told anyone? I wasn’t sure, but I didn’t think that would go over well for Abby, so I simply said, “For a while. She said they started off like any fan mail, but they quickly digressed. He started saying specifics about events that they’d shared together, except that she swears he wasn’t there and that someone who wasn’t there couldn’t have known those details.”
There was another pause, this one longer than the first. I heard breathing, the kind of deep, steady breaths that you took when you were either panicking or trying to tamper down a swell of intense anger.
I could guess which of those he was working on right then.
After a while, he spoke again. “A stalker.”
“Yes.”
“Abby, my niece, has a stalker.”
“Yes.”
There was a moment, then, “What the fuck? How long has she known about this? What the hell is going on there, Kade, goddamn it?”
He continued to throw a litany of curses at me, yelling, and he was loud enough that I held the phone away from my ear so that I didn’t go deaf. I glanced over at Abby and found that she was thankfully staring down at her mug. I didn’t think she’d like Caleb’s reaction, though she had probably been anticipating it.
When he’d stopped cursing, I put the phone back to my ear in time to hear him demand in a hot tone, “Put Abby on. I want to fucking talk to her.”
I glanced again to Abby. She had stiffened, but was otherwise still looking at her coffee. I considered going over to her and letting her have the phone, but I could imagine what that would look like.
Her eyes would be huge and watery, her full lips tugged down in a frown, her lower lip wobbling as she struggled to hold it together. And her cheeks would grow warm as she listened to her uncle tear into her for not telling him about the letters, the stalker. How awful she would feel, how she’d eventually let out a wrenching sob that would cut through my heart.
“Sorry, she’s not here,” I finally lied to Caleb. And before he could jump on me and ask why the fuck I wasn’t with her, I added, “She’s in the shower right now.”
Caleb cursed.
For reasons I couldn’t say, but were probably the equivalent of having the desire to poke a sleeping bear just to see if it would come up roaring and tearing, I slyly added, “Do you still want me to take her the phone?”
At this Abby glanced over at me and I saw her cover her mouth to hide the hiccup of giggles that managed to escape through her lips. I smiled at her and winked, like this was a shared secret or inside joke, just between us.
It was all fun in games—until I heard Caleb’s low growl on the other end, “Don’t touch my niece, Kade. I trust you as one of my men, as family, but I won’t put up with that. Not from any of you mongrels, you hear me?”
I sobered up instantly at his words, though I kept up a good face for Abby who was still watching me. I didn’t want her to know of Caleb’s sudden, not so veiled threat. As I instantly agreed with a “Yes, boss,” I told myself that it was for the best. I worked hard to convince myself that all this supposed chemistry was just nonsense and hormones and my desperate need to get laid. But even as I tried to tell myself that I didn’t want anything with the amazing woman sitting at that counter, staring at me with her huge blue eyes and her too baggy sweats, I couldn’t make myself believe it.
Oh, you asshole, what are you doing to yourself? I wondered miserably, because I knew that as much as I tried to convince myself that I wasn’t thinking of starting something with her, I really had been thinking it. And I’d been wanting it.
“I’ll deliver the letters,” I told him, then hung up the phone with a sigh.
I didn’t like it and Abby didn’t either, but it couldn’t be helped. I had to catch this bastard before Abby got seriously hurt.
# # #
We spent the rest of the morning together talking about nothing in particular. I made her breakfast, which she seemed delighted by for reasons that were beyond me, even though it was only pancakes with some fruit. She had a bunch of fancy food in the fridge like caviar and a few other things that might have been cheese or baby food—either way I wasn’t interested in finding out. But pancakes were easy enough, even if I had to make them from scratch. She had all the fixings for it and I took advantage of the opportunity to do something with my hands. To keep myself busy.
