by Jan Irving
Probably why she was so self-conscious about her looks, he thought with annoyance. Women shaped like women weren’t found on magazine stands or in movie theatres. They were made to feel ashamed of their curves.
He paused, realising belatedly that he’d automatically carried sweet little Jenny Ann to the door of his kitchen. What was he doing?
He rubbed his eyes with his free hand. Just hadn’t been getting enough sleep…
“Put me down.” Her voice was timid, uncertain. It would have broken his heart—if he had one.
Screw it. He shoved open the door and plunked Jenny on one of his kitchen chairs. She immediately pulled her legs up to her chest, shielding her body from him.
“Aw, hell.” He backed away from her, rubbing the back of his neck. “I just thought”—he blew out a breath and she jumped—“I’d make you an omelette.”
“Omelette?” She looked up at him, her dark eyes serious.
“Yeah. You know, it’s not just for breakfast anymore?” he cracked. She didn’t smile, but she also didn’t run, so he took it as a good sign.
She rubbed her forehead. Her long brunette hair was free of its habitual no-nonsense bun and he saw that it must be long enough to reach her plump ass. Jesus, what would it be like to lie down with her and have all that dark, silken stuff on his body?
He looked away.
“Anything you don’t like in your omelette?”
“Ah…” She blinked. “No. I’m not picky.”
“Good thing if you’re going to eat my cooking, sweet cheeks.”
He had a pan out before she said, again so softly he could barely hear her, “I don’t like being called ‘sweet cheeks’, thank you very much.”
He grinned, unaccountably happy to get a rise out of her. It sure beat coming home to her sitting on her porch swing, staring out at the horizon with haunted eyes. Or, worse, hiding in her house like she had for weeks after she’d been attacked.
Taz squeezed his eyes shut and blocked that thought. He couldn’t… He couldn’t think about that. Whenever he did, it made him crazy.
She was so delicate. A man his size could knock her over without a second thought and she’d been attacked by three men…
Don’t think about it. The pan rattled against the burner in his shaky grasp. He released it, then ignited the flame. A flashback of what she’d looked like in her hospital bed hit him. Her face covered in bruises, as if a man had beaten it with his fists, one eye swollen shut, the stitches on the side of her neck—
“I have some Jack cheese.”
“Okay.”
He glanced at her and saw she was sitting up at his table now, her head in her hands. “What time is it?” she asked, her voice sounding too tired for someone in their early twenties.
“Just after three a.m.”
Her lips stretched into a smile with no warmth. “Oh, that late, huh?”
“Because last night it was one thirty when you did your midnight gardening routine? Yeah, things are looking up, sweetheart. You’re getting closer to daylight hours.”
She swept him a look out of eyes the colour of moss agate. “You don’t have to get up every night and rescue me when I go bonkers.”
“Yeah, I do.” His voice was flat, uncompromising.
“Because you’re a professional fireman. I get it.”
He shrugged because no, she didn’t. Rescuing someone had always been secondary to him. It was the thrill of the dare, the risks he took that had made him who he was. He knew he lacked Battalion Chief Fred James’ commitment to serve and his best friend Luke Cade’s passion for helping people. He knew it but could experience only emptiness.
For him, it was the rush of doing something that might, just might, get him killed.
When he pictured what it meant to care about someone, he heard the snap of a lighter, the sound of his mother’s voice.
Hiding in a closet when he was very young. Making breakfast for her to sweeten her temper. He knew to run if any of her johns looked at him with interest but sometimes…he couldn’t get away…
“I have, what do you call them, fresh yellow peppers?”
A faint warmth in her eyes, like a spark in the darkness. “You raided my vegetable garden again.”
His lips quirked. “Guilty. But they are great with fresh steak.”
“I wouldn’t know. Vegetarian here.”
“Of course.” She was too nice to even eat meat. He had to stay away from her. He’d been trying for months but somehow she’d sneaked under his armour, so he watched her and wondered. Made it impossible for him to sleep through the night.
And made it impossible for him to leave her alone in her grief.
She hurt and he could feel it. It haunted him like wrenching music.
The contents in the pan sizzled, the only sound in his kitchen until the birds woke up and began to chatter outside as he made her omelette. When it was done, he cut it in half and placed it on two plates.
He sat down at the table next to her but not too close.
The strung wire tension of her shoulders seemed to ease. He wished he could reach out and push her hair behind one of her ears.
“It’s good.” She looked so surprised that he cocked an eyebrow.
“Glad you like it. It’s the first time I’ve ever made breakfast for a lady.”
She blinked. “You have, ah, ladies here all the time.”
He gave his attention back to his early breakfast. “They don’t sleep over.”
It was quiet again except for the sounds of their eating. When he glanced over to measure how much she was putting away, he relaxed when he saw she had ploughed through most of her omelette. She was a little thing, which oddly only made those lush breasts look larger.
“You’re right,” she said. “I never realised it, but your visitors’ cars are always gone in the morning. I, uh, just thought they were early risers.”
He had to grin at that idea, but then it sank in, how she’d had that insight into his private life. She was his neighbour, she knew things about him—when he forgot to put out the trash, what time he came home on a Friday night—and possibly insight into his unconventional love life.
The thought sent a burn of heat to the base of his neck. He didn’t know if it was embarrassment or arousal.
Jenny never made things easy on him. She was not an easy woman.
“Have you…talked to anyone?” He’d been dying to ask her the question for weeks, but she’d been so fragile when he’d first caught her in her sleepwalking act that he’d been afraid to push.
She swallowed hard and he got up, grabbed a mug and filled it with coffee fresh from his timed maker.
“Yes,” she said again in that very soft voice.
More questions rose to his lips. He strangled them down. She’s not ready to talk to me about this.
Although why Jenny would ever be ready to confide in him was an audacious thought. Just why did he imagine she’d want to do that? She was a shy little mouse and he…was not.
He fought off the urge to reach out and pull her onto his lap. Make her confide in him.
Patience.
She sipped the coffee. Her hands shook so that the liquid sloshed. Belated shock?
“Jenny.” He steadied her hands with his own until she settled. Her face tightened but she didn’t scream the way she had the first couple of times he’d woken her out in her garden. “Will you try something with me?”
Worried eyes studied him.
“A breathing exercise. You know I, uh, teach yoga?”
Her eyes widened. What had been running through that agile and secretive mind of hers? “Yoga, really?”
Colour burned his cheeks. “Yeah. I took some classes a while back and… Well, now I teach it, okay?” His tone sounded annoyed to his own ears.
She smiled. “Okay.”
“Breath work can be very calming to the body,” he continued, unable to meet the innocent curiosity in her gaze. He knew she was curious about him. Sh
e must sense that he had secrets. “Do you want to try?”
“Would I have to sit in the lotus position or something?”
“Nope. Just put down your mug and close your eyes. You can follow the directions of my voice.”
“I won’t, like, suddenly want to do handstands with one arm or something?”
He laughed, delighting in her sense of the ridiculous. “No, that’s hypnotising someone. I won’t do that.”
He reached out, took the mug from her and put it on the table. He saw with satisfaction that she’d eaten every scrap off her plate. Feeding her gave him a primitive kind of satisfaction, as if she was his woman to care for.
“Close your eyes.”
She chewed her bottom lip, which was pink and slightly less full than the top one owing to an overbite. He thought it was sexy as fuck.
“Close them.” Without thinking, he had used his commanding tone with her but oddly it didn’t seem to freak her out. Instead, she instantly obeyed.
“Now I want you to take some deep breaths. In and out, that’s it. Let your shoulders fall as if you’re sliding into a hot tub of water.”
“Like your hot tub out back?” When she smiled, she had dimples.
He cleared his throat. “Yeah.” Had she seen him out there in the nude?
“I’ve always wanted one of those, but I’d probably pretty mine up with landscaping, give it a fake waterfall.”
“That’s good. Picture renovating mine.” He let his voice drop, become roughened velvet to wrap around her. “You can hear the soft tinkle of falling water and above your head, a breeze is playing with the palm leaves, making them rub against each other.”
“They sound like paper crackling when they do that,” Jenny mused.
“Yes, that’s right, Jenny. As you float on your back you can pick out the stars, the planets hanging above you like points of light. You have nothing to do, nowhere you need to be.”
“Sounds so nice.” Her voice was wistful.
“Now I want you to close your lips and inhale slowly. That’s it, slow, yeah… And now, when you exhale, pretend you’re blowing towards a candle right in front of you. See it, Jenny, a pink candle with a slender flame. You want to blow just hard enough to make that flame flicker but not blow it out.”
A frown line briefly appeared between her eyes as she took her first two scripted breaths, but in only a moment she had it. Again he felt warmth move through him. He was helping her. It felt completely right that she was here, under his roof, fed by his hand, protected from the night terrors by his body and his voice.
“You’re doing so well, my good girl.”
When she slumped back in her chair, her face impassive with deep relaxation, he risked stroking her hair. “Mmmm.” She turned her face towards his touch.
His heart jolted.
Mine.
He yanked his hand back. What was he doing? He knew she’d only responded that way because he’d put her in a light trance.
“Jenny.” His voice was hoarse.
She didn’t respond this time. She was dead asleep, sitting upright in his kitchen.
He got up and quietly put away the dishes and cleaned up. He lived alone, but he was meticulous about cleanliness and not living the careless bachelor life.
Then he couldn’t put it off anymore. He knelt beside Jenny and carefully pulled her into his arms. She was very slight, her head resting against his collarbone.
His heart pounded as he just gazed down at her, seeing the purplish shadows under her eyes. How much sleep was she managing? He knew she worked at home as a computer programmer, which was probably the only reason she’d managed to hold her job while dealing with the fallout of her attack.
Did she catch a catnap only to wake in terror?
He was fucking tired of worrying about her.
He headed deeper into his house, past the door that led to the basement—which he’d have to remember to lock—and up to the second floor where he kept a home office, a master bedroom and the tiny guest room that consisted of a twin bed made up militarily neat. A couple of boxes sat in one corner. The room was barren of any life, but it wasn’t atypical of the rest of his house.
He laid her on the bed and covered her with an old quilt. She looked so small and pale, and again he flashed back to seeing her in the hospital. He remembered hearing her crying one night when he’d come to visit her. He’d frozen outside her room, unable to enter but also unable to leave, as if somehow it was important that someone heard Jenny Ann sob her heart out alone in the dark.
“Sleep, honey,” he whispered and then, because she wasn’t awake and he couldn’t make her afraid, he kissed her forehead.
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About the Author
Jan Irving has worked in all kinds of creative fields, from painting silk to making porcelain ceramics, to interior design, but writing was always her passion.
She feels you can’t fully understand characters until you follow their journey through a story world. Many kinds of worlds interest her, fantasy, historical, science fiction and suspense—but all have one thing in common, people finding a way to live together—in the most emotional and erotic fashion possible, of course!
Email: [email protected]
Jan loves to hear from readers. You can find her contact information, website and author biography at http://www.totallybound.com.
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