“By doing your damn job.” She came here because she wanted some ink. So that was what he was going to do.
As he pushed back from the desk, he kicked the chair she’d dragged over and knocked her purse over. The journal fell out as he scooped up the purse. He went to dump them both back on the chair, but found himself flipping through the journal. She hadn’t done much of anything.
But then he stopped.
One page held her neat writing.
She’d titled it. That was typical Abby, although it made him a little nervous. Wreck this life. What the hell . . .
But the first few goals had him smiling. Tell off Roger. Cool. Flip off the photographers? He’d been telling her to do that for years. Stop worrying so much. Wonderful.
The tattoo...yes. She was serious.
But the last one had the blood draining out of his head.
Fffffuuuuccckkkkk . . .
Snapping it closed, he dumped the book on top of her purse and shot upright. Have a fucking affair? What the hell?
Thunder crashed inside his head. At least it felt that way, although more than likely, he was having a stroke or something. His feet seemed to get in the way as he turned around and started for the door. They needed to talk.
Abby had just broken things off with that prick she’d been engaged to. She was upset and feeling a little lost, needed to do something crazy. He could understand that, he thought. And while he was completely on board with her learning to live a little, the idea of her having a fucking affair with some guy who wouldn’t give a damn about her made him want to chew glass and break things. Lots of things.
Still, that journal was her personal property and he hadn’t had any right to go rooting through it. He hadn’t expected to find anything like that and how could he explain that he’d read it? He couldn’t lie to her. But did he tell her that she needed to think this through?
Damn it.
Following the sound of her voice, he stopped in the doorway and made himself close his eyes while she finished placing the order.
Breathe, man. Gotta breathe. Gotta think. Gotta be calm.
First he had to explain just how he’d managed to see it in the journal. He hadn’t exactly been prying...well, he had, but he was her best friend and he was nosy, and she knew that, and . . .
Feeling the weight of her gaze, he lifted his lashes, not looking directly at her. Not yet.
But Abby wasn’t looking at his face.
She was eyeing his arms. Catching her lower lip between her teeth, she tugged on the soft curve and he almost went to his knees at the sight. A second later, she glanced away, but then she looked back.
The thunder that had been crashing inside his head grew louder and louder.
Have a torrid affair.
Damn it, if she was dead set on that idea, she could have an affair with him, he decided.
Even as the idea slammed into him, he tried to brush it aside. He’d kept what he felt wrapped up and buried deep for years. Spilling it now?
Just wondering if you’re ever going to do anything about it.
It’s complicated . . .
Hell. He was lecturing Abby about living life and letting go, and here he was, afraid to grab on.
The woman he wanted like he wanted his next breath was standing right there and he was afraid to even make a move.
She turned away as he stood there, still wrestling with the very thought of it, need burning in him and twisting him into tight, hungry knots. Damn it. Damn it. He needed to do this—
“It will take about an hour or so,” Abby said.
I’m thinking longer—
“They’re pretty busy.”
“What?” Distracted, he dragged his eyes away from the curve of her ass and focused on what she was saying.
“The pizza place. They said it would be about an hour or so—asked if they should come around to the back and I told them yes.”
“That’s fine.” He dragged a hand down his face. “Ah...I need to get back to work.”
“I was thinking about going to grab some wine or something.”
Good idea. Wait. “You can’t.” He turned around and headed back into the main area of the shop, found the consent forms he needed. Abby was behind him, although he hadn’t heard her. When he turned around, she was just a foot away and the scent of her went straight to his head and Zach had to wonder just what in the hell he’d done to get this kind of torture thrown into his life.
“I can’t go get wine?” A smile curved her lips as she tipped her head to look up at him.
“I can’t do the tattoo if you do—I won’t put one on anybody who has been drinking. Saves me trouble later on. And you need to read through the consent form and sign. Make it all nice and legal.”
“Ahhh . . .” She took the paper and moved over to one of the seats, crossing her legs as she started to read. “I guess I should be totally clearheaded. Otherwise, I could end up having arms like yours.”
“Nah. I might try to talk you into having Forever Nate’s tattooed on your ass, but that’s it.” He gave her a strained smile and turned around. Distance. Serious distance was needed here so he could get back on track.
As he headed down the hall, she called out, “Yeah, sure. I’ll do that when you have a heart with Kate somewhere on you.”
Once he was in his office, he rubbed the heel of his hand over his chest.
What in the hell would she do if she knew he already had her written on his skin?
Not Kate, of course.
He hadn’t fallen in love with Kate.
He loved Abby and always had.
He’d loved her when she ran away from California all those years ago...and he’d waited until she stopped running, so he could follow.
He’d loved her when she came to him and told him she was getting married...to a man who didn’t deserve her.
And now she was laying out a plan to go and have a torrid affair. With who?
Curling one hand into a fist, he crossed back to his desk.
“Why in the hell not me?”
♥
Look for other titles Shiloh Walker
The Grimm
Urban Fantasy Romance
Candy Houses • No Prince Charming • Crazed Hearts
Tarnished Knight • Grimm Tidings • Locked in Silence
Blind Destiny
The Ash Trilogy
If You Hear Her • If You See Her • If You Know Her
The Secrets & Shadows Series
Burn For Me • Break For Me • Long For Me
Deeper Than Need • Sweeter Than Sin • Darker Than Desire
The FBI Psychics
The Missing • The Departed • The Reunited
The Protected • The Unwanted • The Innocent
The Doubted
The Hunters
Paranormal Romance
Hunting the Hunter • Hunters: Heart and Soul • Hunter’s Salvation
Hunter’s Need • Hunter’s Fall • Hunter’s Rise
And more
About
Shiloh Walker has been writing since she was a kid. She fell in love with vampires with the book Bunnicula and has worked her way up to the more…ah…serious works of fiction. Once upon a time she worked as a nurse, but now she writes full time and lives with her family in the Midwest. She writes romantic suspense and contemporary romance, and urban fantasy under her penname, J.C. Daniels. You can find her at Twitter or Facebook. Read more about her work at her website. Sign up for her newsletter and have a chance to win a monthly giveaway.
Pieces of Me
Available Now
I woke with a scream echoing in my ears.
It was one a.m. but the lights shone, bright as day, in my room.
Being in the dark was enough to terrify me. Cowering in the middle of my bed, I drew my knees to my chest and shivered.
“I’m free.” I drew in a breath, let
it out. “I’m free.”
The sound of my voice grounded me, a little.
“I’m free.”
It took several minutes of breathing, of talking to myself before I no longer felt like the nightmare was going to overwhelm me. Longer still before I was willing to uncurl from the protective ball I’d curled into as the echoes of the dream washed over me.
I got out, I told myself. I got away. He doesn’t control me anymore. I’m not just a thing.
Carefully, feeling like I might break, I got out of bed and padded into bathroom.
“You’re you,” I said. My voice was rougher than it had once been, husky. A guy at a bar had told me it was sexy as fucking hell—those had been his words.
I wish I could appreciate the compliment. But my sexy as fucking hell voice had happened because I’d spent too much time trapped in a very real hell and I’d screamed until I’d damaged my vocal cords.
Hard to appreciate having a phone sex kind of voice when that’s what it took to get it.
Still, at least I can talk now. I stared at my pale reflection and spoke again. “You’re you. You’re Shadow. And you got away.”
I was no longer the nothing, the nobody he’d made me. I was no longer just a silent scream in the dark and that was what mattered.
Because the dregs of the dream still clung to me, I stripped out of my clothes and climbed into the shower, turning the water on as hot as I could manage. Standing under the spray until the water started to chill, I let it wash away the stain of the dream as I continued my morning mantra.
I’m me. I can leave my home. I can go shopping. I can go to the beach.
“He isn’t here to stop me.”
Outside, the sun was starting to edge up over the horizon and the fist of terror began to ease. Daytime was always better. I was too old to be afraid of the dark, but I wasn’t going to feel shame over that small thing.
I had too many other things to be ashamed of.
Wrapping a towel around myself, I used another to dry my hair and moved to stand in front of the mirror. The woman staring back at me from the mirror looked like an urchin, a wet, bedraggled one.
I turned away from the reflection and grabbed my robe. I’d get coffee. I’d get to work. I’d make myself forget…for a little while.
And I’d pretend it was enough.
It wouldn’t be though.
Nothing was ever enough.
There are times in my life when I look back over the years and it’s like I’m watching a film of somebody else’s life.
My life seemed to stop when I was twenty. Completely stopped, and some other stranger took over. It wouldn’t surprise me to see a headstone, complete with my name.
Here lies Shadow Grace Harper…her life stopped at age 20.
My name truly is Shadow. My mother loved the TV show Dark Shadows, but the name Barnabas didn’t really suit a baby girl and none of the female cast had really appealed. But she liked Shadow Grace and my dad indulged her. Always.
He indulged her, spoiled me. Then, when I was sixteen, they both left me, stolen in a car crash when a tired truck driver fell asleep at the wheel.
I was sent to live with an aunt who barely tolerated my existence.
It wasn’t all that terribly bad. I didn’t like her, she didn’t like me but we managed to co-exist, right up until I turned eighteen. Then I left that tired, gray house behind, heading for the quiet, bucolic charm of Pawley’s Island, South Carolina, buying one of the charming old mansions and settling in for what I’d hoped to be the life of an artist.
Life changed a few months later when I realized so many of the kids my age were going off to school. It was too late for me to try to get in anywhere, so I’d spent that year having fun and doing all the things I hadn’t been able to do with my aunt, while getting ready to start college a bit later.
At nineteen, I started college—attending the University of Massachusetts. I kept the Pawley’s Island house, letting a realtor talk me into using it a vacation property while I was in school, because sooner or later, I’d come back there. I loved Pawley’s Island, loved the laziness of the place, loved the sunrises on the beach, the people. Everything about it, really.
But I had college to worry about and my plans had been to pursue…something artsy.
That had been my plan. Something artsy.
At nineteen, with more money than sense, it had been a viable goal in my mind. I’d get a degree and maybe I’d spent my life painting or teaching. Or maybe I’d just find a way to be happy.
Could that be a life’s goal? A job? Being happy? Finding a way to not be lonely, the way I had been ever since my parents died?
I didn’t know. I no longer understood that girl, but then again, that girl died a long time ago.
It was at U-Mass that I met and fell in love a handsome, sophisticated older man. I was twenty when I met Stefan Stockman. He was fifteen years older than me and he was the beginning of the end for the girl I’d been—that silly, foolish Shadow Grace Harper. After a whirlwind courtship that lasted less than six months, we married.
I’d hadn’t even turned twenty-one.
We were still on our honeymoon when the change started. It was slow, it was subtle…and it was terrifying. Shadow wasn’t a suitable name for his wife, so naturally I became Grace. The loud, boisterous laugh wasn’t suitable, so naturally, I learned to laugh quietly, behind my hand…and then I just stopped laughing at all.
Naturally. It all happened naturally.
And naturally, in my mind, it’s easier to view it all as something that just happened to somebody else. As a movie. Something that I can view as just somebody’s bad dream, not something that happened to me.
The movie ended when I was twenty-five and I woke up in the hospital, just a few short hours after I stumbled out of the basement, freed, oddly enough by a freak tornado that had killed eight people. It killed eight people, but it saved me.
Yet another thing to be ashamed of—the storm killed eight people, shattered the lives of others.
And it freed me. I was so pathetically grateful for it.
Sitting at the table, lost in memories, I sketched, unaware of what I was even drawing until I was done.
When I finished, I found myself staring at a picture of me—my own face. Only it wasn’t right. My face no longer looked like my own, yet another sign of how completely gone that girl was.
After spending months in hell, after being beaten multiple times, plastic surgery had been required to fix the damage. My cheekbone had been broken and healed badly. Swelling and an infection inside my sinuses had required another surgery, and my nose, also the recipient of several hard blows, needed repair as well.
The last beating had left my jaw fractured jaw and I had scars on my body.
I don’t even know where many of the scars came from.
Memories of those months were vague and some were gone completely.
That was another thing I was grateful for—I don’t want to remember any of that time. Even losing a few memories was blessing.
I looked down at my altered face and the dream came back to me.
I’d tried to leave.
That was what had set him off.
I’d tried to leave and he came after me, dragged me back…and practically threw me away, locking me away someplace so dark, so desolate, nobody had even heard my screams.
The phone rang, making me jump.
“Hello.”
“Hello, darling.”
I smiled at the sound of the man’s voice. Only Seth could call me and immediately make me smile. “You better not flirt with me. Marla will get jealous.”
“Marla is standing right here. And she said, hi, honey.” Seth imitated his girlfriend’s New Jersey accent almost perfectly, drawing another smile from me.
“Tell her I said hi back. What are you up to?”
“We’re driving up to Myrtle Beach tonight…going to hit a
bar or two, get drunk. Ride the Ferris Wheel. Come with.”
A pang of longing went through me. “No.”
“Come on, babe…come with us. Have fun. We’ll go to the beach.”
“I can go to the beach here and it’s a lot quieter. Also, there was another shark sighting near Myrtle Beach. I don’t think so.” Sharks weren’t what scared me. I’d faced much worse things than sharks. But I wasn’t going to tell him that I couldn’t handle being in a crowd, unaware of who all was there, who might be watching me.
“If any sharks come near you, I’ll chase them off,” he promised.
“No, Seth.”
He sighed. “Sooner or later, I’m going to get you off Pawley’s Island. You need to learn to have fun again, babe.”
“I do have fun. Every other Thursday, for movie night.”
We chatted for a few more minutes and agreed on a movie for the following day—Thursday, movie night, my favorite day of the week—and then he hung up. After I lowered the phone back to the table, I reached out and traced a finger down the line of my sketched, slightly imperfect jaw.
I wished I had the courage to go with him.
I wished I wasn’t so afraid.
But my ex-husband was still out there.
And worse…he knew where I lived.
I sat at the table and looked outside.
When I saw the man sitting on the steps of the house diagonal to mine, I eased back and tried to pretend I hadn’t seen him.
He’d seen me, though. I knew he had. After all, he was being paid to sit there and watch and wait. Paid to spy on me.
It was like having my ex-husband there, staring at me, watching me.
A silent reminder, You’ll never be free of me…
I ran away from him once, but he just found another way to torment me. That fear of him still haunts me, controls me. He still haunts me, controls me.
He still watches me and I know it, even though I left Boston and moved back to Pawley’s Island. I had money…a lot of it, a fact that probably pissed my ex-husband off. If he could have controlled that money, he could have maybe controlled me, kept me from leaving.
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