by Amber Lynn
The hope that they’d vouch for the guy was dashed when the guy cleared his throat. Instead of just waking them from their stupor, it sent them rushing out of the room, straight into the front of the diner. Willow didn’t know if that was what he was going for, but it got her attention.
Turning her gaze around, her eyes gravitated all the way up to his chin. She could see Connor still hadn’t moved. He wasn’t usually a deep sleeper, and she didn’t have time to consider the sudden change.
“We’re just fine,” she said, her voice a little stronger than her other responses had been. “We live upstairs. If you go out the back…”
Her words trailed off as he turned and made his way out to the alley. She had a chance to blink and think about the groan she swore he murmured for only a second before she rushed after him. By the time she caught up, he’d already scaled the not quite rickety, but definitely in need of a coat of paint, staircase and was standing on the landing next to her door.
“Please tell me she cleaned the place up before she moved you guys in.”
His words almost sounded pained, but that made no sense. She hadn’t really thought about him seeing her living space, but the idea he had an inkling of what was behind the door made her feel a little embarrassed. It wasn’t something she felt often, so it caught her off guard. The thought of him seeing her personal things, or lack thereof, hadn’t crossed her mind.
“It’s clean,” she said a little defensively as she worked her way around him, careful not to touch any part of him, and opened the door.
No, it was not locked. That fact was apparently enough to illicit another groan from the guy. He made it sound like this was just as painful for him as it was her. The thought almost made her laugh, but she was too busy scanning for anything she wanted to hide from his view.
The action was in vain, since the usual sparse furnishings hadn’t changed since she went to work that morning. It still looked like no one lived there.
“If the little guy wasn’t in my arms, I’d have a few choice words for this. You can’t live here, Laura. Not with him. Shoot, not if it was just you.”
She shouldn’t have been shocked he used her fake name, but she was. He’d clearly asked someone for it. She assumed Rachel had told him, but she had no idea why he’d ask in the first place, or how he knew where to find her. There was so much confusion going on in her head at that moment, she was fairly certain she had no idea which way was up.
“Put him down on the couch, please,” she said.
Ignoring the comment seemed like the best way to deal with it. He was dressed nice enough that there was no way he knew what it was like to have no money to your name. He had no clue what a person was willing to do just to make sure there was a roof over their head. It didn’t matter if the roof sometimes leaked, judging by a couple of stains in the corners of the room.
“No,” he said firmly. “You guys can stay at my place. I don’t know what Rachel was thinking not just giving you her spare bedroom, but I’ve got a room for each of you.”
He retraced his steps before Willow could get a word in, taking Connor with him. What the hell was going on? And why did this guy think he had a say in any of it?
Chapter 8
He knew he was overreacting. Actually, he wasn’t. Taking them to his house instead of a hotel was a little intrusive, but they shouldn’t have ever spent a night in that dump. Brayden didn’t even make it more than a step in there and he filled the space.
How long had the two of them been there? The smell of the grease from the diner downstairs permeating the walls was enough to make him gag. Not to mention the couch, if you could even call it that, looked like it was a century old. And she’d asked him to lay the kid down on it.
No. He shook his head just thinking about it.
What was Rachel thinking? She seemed protective of the woman, but she’d let her live in those conditions.
“Wait,” a small voice called behind him.
He was already down the stairs and heading down the alley. He figured going through the diner to get to his car would only put more roadblocks in his way, so the long way it was.
“Would you slow down and talk to me, please. You can’t just take off with my son.”
Brayden’s long gait should have given him enough of a head start that he could get the kid tucked in his car before she caught up, but her huffs of breath made it clear she was running after him. He felt like a jackass for scaring her. That was the furthest thing from his goal, but he couldn’t think about where they’d been staying.
The last tenant Rachel had in that place turned out to be a prostitute. Everyone knew Candy, which apparently was not her real name, just a stage name, was a stripper, but they didn’t know she was screwing guys in the apartment for money. It didn’t matter how many cleaning crews Rachel got in there. The apartment was no place for a kid.
Brayden heard rumors that it wasn’t exactly straight sex Candy provided. He had some fun ideas when it came to the bedroom, but the things he heard about going on in that apartment were kind of gross.
“Please,” she said again.
The panic in her voice finally broke through, and Brayden turned to look at her. He was almost to the street, just a few more steps and he could’ve gotten them both in his car and on the way to a clean place.
She stopped and lifted her hand to her chest as she took a few deep breaths. Shit. He felt like an ass. Even if he was trying to help, he’d gone about it the wrong way.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you think I was taking off with your son. I just…that place…”
He wasn’t sure what to say. He wanted to come up with something that would make her trust him and come with him to his house.
She darted a look up to him. He noticed, yet again, that those purple eyes of hers didn’t make it all the way up to his eyes.
“I understand that someone like you doesn’t expect to walk into a place like that, but it’s fine for me and Peter.”
Yeah right, and if he felt even an ounce of conviction in her voice, he’d consider letting her sway is opinion. More importantly, he forgot in his shock of where she was living that the real issue was the dead man who gave her the scar on her cheek. He didn’t know why, but he’d decided there was no way it was a childhood injury.
“That place isn’t fine for a troop of performing cockroaches. I love Rachel and all, but there are plenty of other options of places to live.”
Something slithered in her eyes at his words. He didn’t know what the emotion was. It was there and gone in a blink of an eye.
“She said there aren’t any hotels within walking distance.”
The woman bit her bottom lip as she spoke. Unlike most of the women Brayden met, her lips were pale, naturally pale. Somehow, without an ounce of makeup on her face, he found her to be the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. The thought made him shake his head and quickly move on with the conversation.
“There aren’t, but a fifteen-minute drive is definitely worth not having to stay there.”
If his hands weren’t full with the kid, he would’ve pointed to the disgusting flea-ridden apartment. Rachel, and anyone else who knew they’d been staying there, was on his shit list for the foreseeable future.
“I’m sure that may be, but I don’t have a car. You can’t expect us to walk that distance every day, twice.”
Brayden hadn’t considered that. Not that it made any difference in the ideas he had. His thoughts were more focused on the fact that her eyes traveled the four inches from his chin to his eyes. The touch of anger he saw there again took his mind places it didn’t need to be.
He'd said he wasn’t trying to be creepy, but God he felt like the biggest creeper getting turned on by, well, basically everything about the woman. He wasn’t a monk, even with a dry spell after Megan left him. His libido shouldn’t throb through him like a train straining to get to the next stop.
“I don’t want you to walk anywhere. As ni
ce as this town is, there are jerks like Benny out there, and I prefer not having to worry about whether one of them takes advantage of you. How many times have guys come onto you in the diner?”
Her brow furrowed. He didn’t think the question was hard, but she wasn’t jumping to answer.
“Did I not hear the rumor mill right? Benny tried to grab your ass or something today, right?”
The question reminded him that a knife was mentioned in the retelling of the tale. He looked down at the woman in front of him and tried to figure out if she had the weapon on her. It had to have been just a steak knife from the table. She was so thin that anything in her pockets would clearly stick out, even under the stained apron she wore.
She laughed, which shocked Brayden enough he took a step back. Her lips curved up and he swore under his breath, quickly covering the kid’s exposed ear as soon as the word left his mouth.
Fuck him. Her scared and slightly angry looks were something. But when the woman smiled, unicorns might as well have just hopped out of the alley.
“Were you just trying to find where I hide my knife,” she asked, her words a little too sweet.
He shrugged, or at least started to and realized he didn’t want to jostle the kid. So instead, he tilted his head to the side and lifted the shoulder the kid wasn’t on. It was a sad portrayal of a shrug, but it was all he had.
“It’s strapped to my ankle. I figured Rachel wouldn’t like it very much if I wore it attached to a belt loop.”
Brayden wasn’t sure about that, but he was too shocked to mention it. He’d thought for sure she’d just picked up a knife from the table. His eyes glanced down to her ankles to try to ascertain whether she was joking.
No bulges stuck out of the jeans on either ankle. It was a little hard to tell for sure, since he didn’t know how far up her boots went, but by that point, he pictured the knife as a samurai sword, and he knew there wasn’t one of those hiding under her jeans.
She waited a few moments, for what he wasn’t sure. Then, she bent down and rolled up her right pant leg and deftly extracted a thin black blade from her boot. It was matte, so the sun didn’t glint off the edges. Brayden still expected it to as he swallowed hard.
Turning it from one side to the next, she showed off the fact it existed for a second. It was out a max of thirty seconds before she tucked it back into what he hoped was its sheath. Carrying something like that just in her boot had to be dangerous.
Not that he was a knife expert. He just dealt with sharpened metal on his feet every day and had more than once met the wrong end of a skate blade.
“Now, if you don’t mind. I’ll take my son. As it is, I was planning on moving on anyway. Since you’ve made it clear you don’t approve of my living conditions, I’ll try to find something better in the next town.”
It was strange to see the one-eighty performed in front of his eyes. He’d been worried about someone hurting the woman, and truthfully, he still was, but her meekness had evaporated, and he had a feeling she’d stab him before she let him put her son in his car.
He took a step back, not to make a run for it, like he thought flashed through her thoughts. The way her eyes darkened to almost black made it clear she went to a dark place fast. He just wanted to give her a little room. The four feet between them didn’t seem like enough.
“Come on. I just wanted to talk, and that apartment is in desperate need of a fumigation. If you don’t trust me enough to take the conversation to my place, how about we just go sit in a booth in the diner. I’m sure you know it’s between rushes, so we’ll have some privacy.”
The suggestion should’ve come sooner, but he didn’t want to share her. He’d rather talk in the alley than go in the diner, but the alley wasn’t much better than the apartment.
“My next shift starts in less than two hours now. I need to get my son and take a little nap, so I can pick up my paycheck tonight and be on my way. Far away from guys trying to touch me and butting into my business.”
The look that went along with the latter told him exactly who she thought was butting in. He couldn’t deny it. He’d been focused on finding her and as soon as he did, he practically dragged her away like a caveman.
As embarrassed as that made him, the idea that she was about to leave made his actions seem necessary. He knew nothing about the woman, other than the thought of her leaving felt like someone had just kicked him in the chest.
Chapter 9
It took everything in Willow not to cower. Other than the man’s size in general, he didn’t seem threatening. She wasn’t about to let him take them to his house, though. She had no idea who he was, and even if she did, being under the same roof as a man was the last thing on her list of things to do.
The only way she could think to assuage his plans was to grow the courage she’d only exhibited once before, the night she ran away with Connor. She wasn’t going to win any awards for her acting, but the look on his face seemed to indicate he was buying it.
No, he wasn’t handing Connor over with any quickness, but he wasn’t jogging to his car either. Willow had to wonder if the man was missing a few marbles. Her brain kept trying to play the sequence of events over in her head, and none of the last twenty minutes made a lick of sense.
“Are you running from his father?”
The question caught her off guard. So much so that it took her several seconds to come up with a reply.
“His father is no longer in our lives.”
“And he’s aware of that?”
Was this guy full of questions that dove way too deep for just meeting each other? After that probing question, she kind of wished she’d taken him up on the offer of talking somewhere private. She looked around them to verify there weren’t any busy-bodies lurking, then leveled him with a scowl.
“Did you not get the hint about me not needing a guy butting into my business?”
The bravado in her tone slipped when he didn’t quite return the scowl, but his eyes darkened. Weren’t there other damsels in distress in the town somewhere?
“My sister was married to a guy who broke her arm twice. She also had a miscarriage when they were together and claims he wasn’t the cause. But, knowing what I know now, it’s hard to see it another way. I know I’m stepping into places I don’t belong, but I promised I’d never let someone else go through what she did if I could help it. And after seeing the way both of you acted in the grocery store, I needed to verify you were okay.”
That declaration took every wind out of Willow’s sails. It looked like it took some out of his too, if the deep sigh and look towards the sky was any indication.
Her stomach knotted as she thought about what that woman must have gone through. Yes, Willow had been abused, but very little of it was physical. Her kidnapper couldn’t chance she’d have to go to a hospital.
At least then he couldn’t. She wasn’t sure exactly what he’d do if he caught her. She hoped he’d just kill her, but the bastard would probably take her back to the basement.
“Is she still alive?”
Whether the situations were the same, Willow knew abuse cases didn’t always have the outcome hers had so far. Not everyone got away.
“Yeah,” he said nodding his head. “She owns a little thrift shop in town, and he knows if he comes within a hundred miles of her, I’ll kill him.”
There was no give in his words. Willow believed whole-heartedly if his ex-brother-in-law showed up, the man would be dead.
Hearing the story and the mention of the thrift shop, she realized an introduction earlier that week wasn’t by chance. She’d thought Rachel’s friend had studied her a little more intently than socially acceptable but being clueless when it came to all things social, Willow hadn’t been sure.
“I’m guessing your sister’s name is Suzy.”
Up until that point after Willow’s shift on Sunday, Rachel hadn’t introduced her to anyone. Her boss seemed to understand her need to hide under the radar. It had felt w
eird and forced, but she got the feeling the two women were in the same boat as the man, thinking she was on the run from an abusive boyfriend, or husband. Both relationships were just as preposterous.
He nodded his head again. “That would be my kid sister. Look, I get that you want to be independent, but there’s something to be said for letting someone else take some of your burdens.”
“Like a complete stranger? You know how crazy that sounds, don’t you?”
Crazy seemed to be putting it mildly. She thought he’d gotten away from the crazy idea of him sweeping in and rescuing them from the apartment that didn’t meet his standards, but she had a niggling feeling they were right back to it.
“You’ve been working for Rachel, haven’t you? What if I offered you a job?”
If he wasn’t still carrying Connor, she would’ve run the other direction at the suggestion. She’d done a job for another crazy guy for way too long. And she had a feeling some of the looks he sent her way weren’t as nonsexual as her kidnapper’s. Not only that, she hadn’t felt an attraction on her side of things ever in her life before. She didn’t know if she wanted to understand how different relationships could be between men and women.
“Oh, God,” he said under his breath as he shook his head. “It’s not like that. I’m gone a lot for work, in fact I’m leaving tomorrow and won’t be back for about a week. I thought maybe you could housesit. That way you have a clean place to live, and I’ll pay you a thousand bucks.”
She gasped hearing the number he threw out. A thousand dollars? She’d never seen that much money in her life.
“If you want to stick around, I’m gone at least one week a month. Really, I’m only there about half the month, but most week’s I come and go from the city. The place has a state-of-the-art security system and gate around it. The only way in is if someone inside the house hits a button, or you know the gate code.”
“And let me guess, you have a nice crypt in your basement to keep me.”