Seeking Sanctuary

by Annie Anderson

  “That works for me. How soon do you need me?” I still needed to find a place to live – one that would accommodate the family expansion project currently growing in my uterus.

  “Is yesterday too soon?” he asked with a grin, and at that moment I wished I’d never have run into him on the street. I sure as hell wished I wouldn’t have socked him for all I was worth with the dainty pair of brass knuckles I had hidden in my jacket pocket. I wished Cole never happened and I wasn’t a damaged piece of trash.

  In another life, if I were another girl, I could see falling for that grin. The way it pulled slightly more to the left than to the right, the way his full lips stretched into a real smile, showing straight white teeth, the way he gave away his chuckles freely. Yeah. I would have to be blind and stupid not to fall for someone like that. And if I didn’t have as much baggage, if I didn’t have someone other than myself to think of, if I wasn’t the woman I was, he would be the best bet.

  But not for someone like me.

  All of those ifs totaled up to a big fat zero in my books because someone like Levi – who gave a shit about a stranger, who was willing to help me out when I needed it, who took the word of someone like me – needed someone a hell of a lot better than me. I felt my answering smile dim just a bit, but I plastered it back on to reassure him.

  “I can stop by today to see what I’m working with. See if I need to get any office supplies or anything,” I offered, and that seemed to relax him. Why he would be anxious, I had no idea, but I didn’t question it.

  “Sure thing. Let me pay, and we can head back to the shop,” Levi said as he stood and crossed the diner to pay at the register, talking with Constance as she rang him up.

  Constance didn’t wait on us, and something about the way she stayed behind the counter serving the few patrons there told me something. That counter was her home, her perch. She was almost like a bartender the way she slung plates like one would sling drinks. I didn’t think she regularly served her guests out on the floor, making me either unique or pitied. Maybe both. That thought tugged at me, stinging my chest like a whip.

  I stood, gathering my purse, waving at Constance and waiting by the door for Levi. They were talking in low voices, and I didn’t want to interrupt their conversation, especially when in all likelihood they were talking about me. Levi nodded at something Constance was saying and then leaned over the counter to give her a peck on the cheek. It was sweet in a way that I hadn’t seen very much of in my lifetime.

  It also helped me notice all the things about him that I hadn’t fully grasped before. Levi was nice. He’d give a five-dollar tip on a two-dollar cup of coffee. He walked with an almost bashful grace, hunching his shoulders as he stuffed one hand in his pocket, the other casually holding the to-go cup of coffee. I had a small love affair with his hands in my mind for a moment. His fingers were long and in no way delicate, yet somehow, they seemed gentle. Like he could coax a transmission into acting right or give just the right squeeze in a hug. It felt shitty that I hit him when he seemed to only try to keep me from busting my ass on the pavement.

  “Ready?” Levi asked when I made no move to go, spacing out between the ogling of his rough, work-hard hands and whenever he opened the door. He held it open for me, and I couldn’t recall the last time someone made that gesture. It seemed so small, but the sting of how much I’d been neglected – when an open door was enough to make me teary – was similar to one of Cole’s slaps.

  And just like that, I was back in my office, hearing the wet fleshy sound of the letter opener slice through Cole’s abdomen. I shook my way out of the memory before it could pull me under and remembered to respond to Levi.

  “Yeah.”

  The word came out rough when I didn’t mean it to, and I refused to acknowledge the look it brought to Levi’s face or the way the brisk Colorado air dried my eyes for me.

  I was defending myself. I was protecting my child. I had the fundamental human right to do that.

  No matter how many times I said those words to myself on the drive and in my room and on the short walk to the garage, I still felt in the wrong somehow. I knew I wasn’t – maybe the whole not calling the police bit, but the rest of it, I was entirely justified. Perhaps it was the money that was weighing on me.

  The walk to the shop was quiet, only a few soft words from Levi pointing out a shop I might find interesting. I filed the handmade leather shop that also sold gold and silver bangles and other hand-forged jewelry in the back of my mind to inspect later.

  It took us less than five minutes to walk the short block to the garage. The silence between us wasn’t necessarily uncomfortable but rather charged. I didn’t know what it meant, but I knew for certain Levi Grady wasn’t for me. Mooning over another guy when I’d just put the last one in the ground wasn’t exactly a good life goal.

  Cole was my first boyfriend ever. Obviously, I wasn’t capable of picking a good man. I was swearing the lot of them off for the rest of forever and focusing on better goals. Ones that involved not going to jail. Ones that involved motherhood and babies and getting my shit together in the tattered paper sack that was my life.

  Men did not factor. Never, ever, ever again.

  We reached the garage – a sprawling wide warehouse-type of building with six tall, roll-down doors surrounded by a sloping parking lot. Each bay was open, a car or truck up on a lift or a bike on the ground with a man beside it with a wrench or tool in his hand. Next to the bays was a central office with wide picture windows and ‘Grady’s Garage’ stenciled in cobalt blue with orange accents. I’d been in Colorado long enough to know those were Broncos colors and to pay the proper respects. The garage was busy, and if the parking lot was any indication, they weren’t short on business and wouldn’t be for some time.

  I was about to comment on this when a slim, royally pissed off looking redhead marched out of the office door like she was on the warpath. Her hair was a deep shade of auburn that only a truly gifted stylist could manage as I doubted it was her real color. It suited her, I’ll give her that.

  Her clothes were fashionable and expensive. Artfully distressed jeans paired with a silky white camisole all under an emerald and white floral-patterned kimono that fell to her knees. Her sky-high, pale pink, pointed-toe pumps coordinated flawlessly, highlighted by the skillfully haphazard rolled cuff to her jeans. Hell, she’d probably paid more for those jeans than I did my whole wardrobe. If she were walking a runway, I wouldn’t be surprised.

  The face went with the outfit. Creamy, pale skin only enhanced by a rosy glow and a cute dusting of freckles over her nose and cheeks. Her ice-blue eyes were piercing and mean as they slid to me and then back to Levi. I knew already what kind of woman she was. She only confirmed it when she spat out her next words with enough venom to down an elephant.

  “Replaced me already, huh? Funny. If I knew you wanted trash, I could have saved myself a lot of time.”

  I knew women like her.

  I’d seen them my whole life. They saw my small stature and my lily pale skin and thought I was weak.

  Thought I was easy pickings.

  Well, I might be a lily, but the most beautiful of water lilies grow from the thickest of mud.

  6

  LEVI

  For fuck’s sake, I could not catch a break. Pippa waltzing out of my office like she had any right to be there was the icing on a pretty spectacular shit-show of a day. And things were looking up for a minute.

  “Nice fuckin’ mouth. What are you doing here, Pippa?” I growled as I pinched the bridge of my nose, my patience already gone with this woman. My brother, Orin, warned me not to nail the elusive Pippa Stillman of the Harmony Creek Stillman’s. But did I listen to my wise older brother?

  No. No, I did not.

  But Orin was smarter than me in a variety of ways. When I finally got enough sense to scrape her off, AKA sobered up from a night of drinking, the damage had been done. Pippa had absolutely no intention of letting me go so easy and h
ad I been thinking with anything other than my dick, I wouldn’t have started it with her in the first place.

  Pippa Stillman wasn’t a local in Evergreen – not the way she should be since she had been living here for the last five years when her daddy up and bought the old Echo Mountain Ski Lodge. Granted, the old lodge needed the upgrading, and Hank Stillman was a nice enough guy.

  His daughter was another story altogether.

  She hid it well enough, but I’d come to find out that Pippa was a snake in designer clothing. She was venomous and mean. Had I been thinking of anything other than the size of her rack and the shape of her ass, I would have noticed the fangs, but alas, I had not.

  “Pippa? What the fuck is she, a Pomeranian?” Isla murmured under her breath, and it took all I had in me not to laugh. Given the situation, the levity was welcome.

  Pippa either ignored Isla’s words, or she didn’t hear them, likely the former, but Pippa was nothing if not delusional.

  “I want to talk to you. There are things left unsaid, Levi, and I’m going to get my say,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest and turning out a foot like she had the right to be mad at me.

  Was this woman high?

  “The last words that were said were, ‘It’s over,’ and if you need clarification on the matter, I kindly ask you to pick up a dictionary because I cannot possibly make myself any clearer.”

  “Sure. You move me out, and in a week, you find some new skank to fill your bed? I don’t think so. You do not get to disrespect me that way.”

  “For god’s sake. She isn’t filling my bed, for one. She’s my new accountant, if my crazy ass ex hasn’t run her off. And you moved yourself in after two weeks of what I would very loosely call dating without so much as a conversation with me about it. Face it, you are a one-night-stand that just will not go away.”

  Pippa had the gall to look aghast, likely hamming it up for our audience that was accumulating faster than flies on shit.

  “Right. Like we haven’t been dancing around each other for years, Levi,” she accused, her hands delicately finding their way to her slim hips, parting the kimono in such a way to show off her outfit more. I used to think moves like that were graceful. Now, I knew that just because a snake was graceful, it didn’t mean it was any less poisonous.

  “If you want to call ‘dancing’ me not knowing you even exist for years and then me being too drunk to say no to you when you release your fangs? Sure. I tried to do this easy. I tried to be a gentleman and give you your pride to not damage your reputation. But holy mother of god, you have to stop. You do not get a say in who I date, or fuck, or anything else. Let. It. Go. Now get off my property before I have to call your father. Last I checked, he likes me more than he likes you.”

  It was true. Hank did like me more than his daughter. Likely because I restored his 1960 Harley Davidson Panhead to nearly mint condition. But my threat did the job as intended because Pippa shut her trap and walked off with a huff, bee-lining to her brand-new Audi and peeling out of the lot on squealing tires.

  Once Pippa was out of the lot, Isla busted out into a loud, guffawing bout of laughter that had her hunching over and holding her sides. The boisterous, if a little grating laugh did not fit her small stature even a little bit, but it was contagious.

  After the last bit of her giggles had subsided, I ushered her into the office to show her around. We didn’t get two steps in before she stopped cold, surveying the desk and cabinets and computer with a look of complete shock.

  “Oh, my god. Did that woman wreck your office? Jesus. It looks like a bomb hit it,” Isla exclaimed, her fingers nearly covering her mouth before she remembered the cut on her lip and changed course.

  I looked around the room again, not noticing anything amiss and replied, “No. This is how it always looks.”

  Isla’s blue eyes grew wide as a rather inelegant splutter escaped her lips. Her eyes roved over the room again, and then her brows pulled down in a sort of determined frown.

  “Where are your office supplies? File folders, labels, binders, things like that?” she asked, but it was more like an order from a General going to war.

  “In the closet,” I supplied, pointing to the wide closet that held all the office stuff we had. Isla skirted around the piles of invoices and payables and haphazard file folders to open the supply closet. She peered in, nodded and spun to face me.

  “I’m taking the job, but…” she trailed off pointed at me, brandishing her index finger like a weapon. “You have to answer the phones and supply me with sustenance while I get this shit squared away. Deal?”

  Like I’d say no.

  “Deal.”

  * * *

  It took Isla less than an hour to make my feeble attempts at organization into something slightly resembling an office. It took her three more hours to establish the payables and receivables once she found them all, and only demanded food about fifteen thousand times. By the time five o’clock rolled around, Isla had utterly transformed the wreck of an office into a functional space, and put me to work dusting the blinds, and pretty much anything she couldn’t reach.

  The files were put away and organized by date, the invoices were stacked and ready for review, hell, she’d even updated the software that was about four turns out of date and had started balancing the accounts. It was like Isla was sent straight from heaven to save my tired ass in the nick of time.

  At a quarter to six, Graham stomped in from the garage, probably to razz my ass about Pippa now that he wasn’t swamped in cars. He was older than me by a few years but didn’t show it except for the early graying at one of his temples. He claimed it was a birthmark, but I think he just didn’t want to admit he was getting older.

  “Hey, Boss, are you…” Graham trailed off once he caught sight of me dusting the tallest filing cabinet, and Isla working behind the large monitor. The backlight of the monitor highlighted Isla’s injuries in such a way that I had no doubt Graham’s eyes were laser-focused on them.

  “What the fuck happened to your face?” Graham thundered, his voice like the wrath of God and twice as loud. He didn’t know Isla from Eve, but he was about to lose it. It made sense. Graham’s mama married a mean bastard when he was a kid – she still was, too. But it didn’t matter what Graham did for his mama, she wouldn’t leave her husband. Graham had a thing about a man taking hands to a woman. I’d seen him come wholly unglued more times than I could count over shit like that.

  But Isla didn’t know that about him and jumped as if someone took a cattle prod to her ass. Her demeanor tipping toward the scared rabbit she was this morning, she tugged at the thin scarf still wrapped around her neck, unintentionally revealing a distinct handprint on her throat. Graham looked like he was ready to breathe fire. I’d seen glimpses of it all day, and each time the purple bruising peeked out, I wanted to ram a motherfucker’s head into a meat grinder.

  But Isla didn’t know Graham from Adam. She rolled back from the desk in such a way that I wouldn’t put it past her to bolt.

  “Graham, this is Isla, our new accountant. She’s new in town and needed a job. Isla, this is Graham, one of my mechanics and…” I didn’t get to finish that sentence before Graham mumbled a soft “Sorry” and slammed back out the door.

  Isla turned her wide eyes to me saying a loud ‘what the fuck’ without opening her mouth.

  “His step-father is a bastard.”

  “Ah. Is this going to be a problem?” Isla asked gesturing to her face. Yeah. It would be a problem, but only because I didn’t know the jackhole who’d hurt her and I couldn’t make sure he was rotting in a ditch somewhere.

  I couldn’t fathom why someone would hurt a woman like Isla. She was funny, spoke mostly in movie quotes and fandom references and could swear the ears off the devil. She was cute and kind in a belligerent sort of way that was endearing. I’d spent the last five hours with her, and I just couldn’t process a situation where anyone would want to harm a hair on her head.

>   “Nah. He’ll calm down in a few days.”

  Isla nodded, her eyes shining for a second before she blinked away the wet there.

  “I wasn’t even going to come out of my room today, you know? If I hadn’t been so hungry, I would have stayed in there until my face wasn’t so bad. I can’t imagine what the people in this town think of me looking like this,” she murmured, unable to look me in the eye. “I um… won’t be able to stay permanently. I’ll get you organized and on your feet with a good system, and then I’ll be on my way.”

  She nodded to herself as if she was solidifying a plan in her head. She was bolting. Shit, fuck, and damn. I didn’t want her to go. For some reason – more than me being in a bind with the books, and more than needing an office girl – I needed her to stay.

  In this town.

  In this job.

  Close to me so I could keep an eye on her.

  “Isla…” I started, but she cut me off as she rose from her seat, tossed her jean jacket back on and shouldered her purse.

  “Don’t worry, I won’t leave you in the lurch. I’ll automate the system enough that you could do it or find someone easy,” she said, talking over me but refusing to look me in the eye.

  There wasn’t anything more I could say at that moment that would keep her here in this office with me, so I settled on the only thing that would give me a smidgen of hope.

  “See you tomorrow?” I called softly, moderating my voice a bit so I wouldn’t make her uneasy.

  Isla looked over her shoulder with her hand on the doorknob. Her bad side was to me, and I struggled to hold back a wince. I’d been fighting that battle all goddamn day.

  “Eight a.m.?” she asked, confirming.

  “Yep.”

  “I’ll be here.”

  “You need me to walk you to your car?” I offered, trying to get a little more time with her before she left and maybe never came back.