Saving Her (Her Protector Book 2)

by Katy Kaylee

  And I didn’t need to aske Jake to know how he felt about Zoe Brown. One look at his face when he talked about her was enough to tell me that he was just as deep as she was. I’d known his feelings for a while, even if he still probably hasn’t admitted it to himself.

  I shook my head at the two of them. They had something so great together, such a wonderful chance at love, and they were missing it because they were both too afraid to admit their true feelings to each other.

  The thought caused a pang of bittersweet anger to flare in my chest. Lucky bastards. They didn’t realize how good they had it. To love someone that loved them back.

  They didn’t know how it felt to waste years pining away for someone and something that would never happen.

  “Cut it out, Beth,” I whispered to myself, kicking my own self-pity to the curb. I didn’t have time for that shit. I had my own life to live.

  I rolled my eyes at myself, noticing the little scrap of white on the chair that Zoe had just vacated.

  “Oh, Zoe! Wait you dropped this!” I shouted, but she had already disappeared down the hallway. Intrigued, I leaned forward and grabbed it. My breath stuck in my throat as I read the words printed neatly on the page. I had to read it three more times to make sure I’d understood it right.

  “Holy shit.”

  26

  Jake

  “Oh my sweet Minnie. What has the bad man done to you? Oh, my poor sweet girl. She has a pedigree, you know! She’s a championship horse!”

  I bit my lip to keep from saying what I really wanted to. Which was that I did nothing to the damned horse, I just fed the poor thing the food Mrs. Holster had requested because it was cheaper.

  “You should have told me that she was allergic to barley.” I told her with as much patience as I could. She just huffed, rolling her eyes up at me.

  “Well, how am I supposed to know that?”

  “She’s your horse!”

  “Exactly, so why should feeding her cost three times more than it costs to feed me.”

  I stared at the woman in shock.

  “You wanted me to use the cheaper feed, which caused an allergic reaction, which is why Minnie looks like a sunburned dog with mange.”

  I patted the horse on the rear so she would know that I didn’t mean anything by the words. They were just the truth. Her hair was patchy and bald in places from her scratched and biting insistently and underneath the skin was red and puffy.

  I stopped feeding her the cheaper feed that her owner had requested immediately, and had billed her for the difference, which is the only reason Mrs. Holster was there in the first place. When I’d first called her to tell her about Minnie’s symptoms and adverse reaction the woman hadn’t seemed to mind nearly as much.

  “Well, I hope you aren’t really expecting me to pay extra for you torturing my poor horse.” She said, crossing her arms and glaring at me. I grit my teeth, grinding them together in anger. She didn’t give a damn about her horse. All she cared about was her bank account. The dollar signs that she thought the horse would someday make her.

  “You know, I had my sister Beth out to take a look at Minnie. She prescribed some medication to help with the symptoms, which I paid for since you didn’t seem inclined,” I shot the woman a glare but she just shrugged and looked away.

  “She did some bloodwork and mentioned something I thought was interesting. I guess Minnie’s sire was a red piebald. Didn’t you say that her lineage was traced back to a champion racer? What was the name?”

  “Lightning Crest.” Mrs. Holster said, suddenly looking shaken. I should have felt bad. I didn’t.

  “Lightning Crest. That’s right. He was a white stallion, wasn’t he? Pure white if I remember. Not a piebald?”

  “No…no, most certainly not.” Mrs. Holster drew herself up, still a good bit shorter than I was. “I don’t know what you’re implying.”

  “I’m not implying anything at all.” I gave her a sweet smile, clenching my teeth behind it. “Just thought you should know that Minnie might not have the pedigree you thought she did. She’s a good horse though. Sweet as pie.” My grin widened, “I’m switching Minnie’s feed back over, you’ll get my bill next week. Have a fantastic day now!”

  I turned away, leaving her stuttering as I led Minnie back into the stable and caught Owen’s grin from where he stood just inside.

  “That was awesome.” He said and I just shook my head.

  “No. That was what Zoe would call a bad business decision. I might have just lost us a paying customer.” I sighed, and then gave in the smile tugging at the corners of my mouth, “It was pretty awesome though.”

  “Hell yes, it was.” Owen said with a cackling laugh as he went back to raking hay, “About time you told her off. Mean lady. She doesn’t care about Minnie at all.”

  “No, no she doesn’t.” I patted the horse again, scratching her behind her ears in the spot I knew she liked and gave her an extra sugar cube. “You deserve a hell of a lot better than her, Minnie.”

  “Maybe you could buy her. Maybe I could buy her.” Owen said, staring sadly at the poor animal. “I would take care of her.”

  “I know you would, but horses are expensive to own and there’s no way that Mrs. Holster would give her up. Especially not to me.” I let out a sigh, “I imagine in a day or so I’ll get a call from her telling me she’s on her way to pick up Minnie and I won’t see another dime from her.”

  Knowing it was probably true, I still couldn’t regret it. Besides, it was the truth. Whoever had sold her Minnie had also sold her a whole shit load of lies, probably with an inflated price tag to go along with it.

  Zoe would have known how to handle it. She would have known exactly what to say to have everyone parting ways happy and satisfied. She was good with people like that, in a way that I never would be. I knew the land, I knew the horses. But beyond that was, well, it was just beyond me.

  Thoughts of Zoe had my mind spiraling back to what Lucas had said. All day I had tried to ignore it. Tried to shove it away. But every time I thought of her, I thought of those words too.

  She’s a stranger…What do you even know about her?...She’s lying to you…she isn’t who she says she is.

  It was those last two that had really stuck with me. Because she sure as hell wasn’t a stranger, not to me. I knew her just about as intimately as one person could know another. I knew what made her gasp, what made her moan, what made her cry out in pleasure. I knew what she sounded like when she came while I was buried deep inside her, or brought her to orgasm with my tongue.

  I knew that she loved pizza and didn’t really care for wine. She loved the color red. And when she needed an extra dose of courage she would pull out that little tube of scarlet lipstick, paint her mouth, and drive me crazy every single time.

  Because I knew exactly what she could do with that mouth.

  I also knew she gave Owen secret piano lessons that I wasn’t supposed to know about. I knew that she went out of her way to learn a new joke in sign language everyday just so she could make Westley laugh in that rusty way of his.

  I knew that she had made that old rundown farmhouse into a home. And I knew that she gave with her whole heart.

  I also knew that she’d been hurt in the past, badly. And it still made her flinch if she was surprised my someone. It made her face wash out white as a sheet when she saw a threat scrawled on a fence but she didn’t bat an eye at standing up for me against three men who were much larger and much more dangerous than she was.

  I knew that Zoe was still affected by her past with her ex, I caught it in the shadows of her eyes sometimes when she thought I wasn’t looking and let her guard down. She gave so freely but there was still so much about her that I didn’t know. So much that she held back, that she never spoke about.

  And that’s why Lucas’s words were eating away at me from the inside out. Worming their way through my brain, infecting all of my thoughts until it was driving me insane.

  It
didn’t help that just the thought of Zoe’s ex, or anyone for that matter, laying a hand on her infuriated me.

  “I, uh, I have some work to take care of in the office,” I told Owen, handing him Minnie’s reins, “Will you see to Minnie? Make sure she gets her medicine, and Beth sent over some cream to help with the itching.”

  Owen nodded, taking the leads and I turned and walked towards the office, my thoughts still churning.

  I don’t know what made me do it, but before I could stop myself I was sitting in front of the computer, pulling up the search engine. I typed in her name first. Zoe Brown. A hundred results popped up on the screen but none of them was my Zoe.

  I wracked my brain for everything I actually knew about her, things I had gleaned from parts of conversation when she’d revealed more than she thought she did. For instance, I knew she’d grown up in California and had lived in Los Angeles before making her way all the way towards Utah, without a car.

  It made me shake my head. She must have been terrified, to leave everything behind like that. To just pick up and run, however she could. Taking trains and busses, and all the while looking over her shoulder just waiting for her ex to appear like a spectral from a nightmare.

  My hands clenched into fists in rage at the thought of how much he had terrorized her. Zoe was the strongest, sweetest person that I had ever met. How anyone could ever hurt her was beyond my ability to imagine.

  I added a few extra words to my search, narrowing down to California, and then Los Angeles. Still nothing appeared.

  I was about to shut the whole thing down when I remembered hearing Zoe play. It was obvious that music was a huge part of her life, even though she never brought it up. I had been shocked the first time I’d heard her play. She was classically trained, that was for certain.

  On a whim I typed in Zoe Brown, Los Angeles, and Piano all into the little box on the search engine and held my breath.

  When the page loaded on the screen I found myself looking at pictures of her. Of my Zoe. Image after image of her on stage, playing piano to a sold out auditorium, photos of her smiling to the cameras, her lips painted cherry red, with other musicians.

  I went numb as I clicked on a video of her performing. The video had been filmed on a cell phone so the quality was mediocre at best but that didn’t dim Zoe’s radiance at all. I watched, transfixed, as her fingers flew over the keys of a grand piano, a tight red dress hugging curves that I knew intimately. But I didn’t know this woman.

  Zoe Carlyle plays sold out show at Macarthur Pavilion Hall. That was the title of the video. Zoe Carlyle not Zoe Brown.

  She had lied about her name? Lucas’s words echoed again, even louder. She’s not who she says she is. What the hell else had she lied about? Who the hell was she?

  My hands where shaking as I closed the video and tabbed back to the search page, typing in her real name this time. The first result that came up was a notice from a small, local police department outside of L.A.

  It stated that Miss Carlyle had been missing for almost a year and if anyone had any information regarding her disappearance to call the number listed.

  My hands were shaking so badly that I could hardly dial the numbers. It only rang one time before a soft sounding voice on the other line answered.

  “Officer Kenilworth.”

  “Yes, I may…I may have information on the missing woman? Zoe Bro– Carlyle.”

  There was a sharp silence on the other end of the call before the officer spoke again, this time his voice sounding not nearly as soft.

  “Yes? Have you seen her? Do you know her whereabouts?”

  There was an edge to the questions that made me grit my teeth, but I was in so much shock I answered anyway.

  “I think so. I just…I want to know. Her ex, the one who abused her. Is he in prison? Is he…Is he still a threat to her.”

  “Elliot Hemsworth?” There was pure scorn in the officer’s voice now, “He never abused her. I’m not sure what lies she’s told you, sir, but if you just tell me where she’s at…”

  I hung up the phone. I couldn’t answer him. I couldn’t even speak. Zoe had lied. She had lied about everything. Was anything she’d told me the truth?

  She had an entire different life, a whole other identity as a pianist and performer who ate at five star restaurants every night and played sold out concerts.

  My head was spinning, my terrible past with Valerie and my present merging into one as the fragile trust that had been growing between us shattered.

  I could see it all now, the lies, the made up stories. And I’d bought them all because I wanted to believe that, for once, someone could care about me just for me.

  I let out a bitter laugh as I sat back, my thoughts spiraling darkly. Well, the joke was on me this time. Like always. Would it ever be different? Would I ever find someone I could truly trust?

  27

  Zoe

  I don’t know how long I walked up and down the sidewalk of Main Street after leaving Beth’s office until I finally found my way to the little diner on the corner. I hadn’t been able to go back to the ranch, or face Jake. Not yet. I still had no idea what I was even going to say to him.

  I sat there, on the vinyl covered booth and looked around. It was nearly empty at that time of day. There were three high school aged kids sitting at the chrome metal counter and an older couple in the booth next to mine. I glanced at them from the corner of my eye, as surreptitiously as I could.

  They were both in their late sixties at least, maybe older. She had short blue grey hair in tight curls and he wore an old fashioned taxi driver hat that looked like it might be as old as he was.

  But it wasn’t their age, or the wrinkles that marred their faces, or the dated clothes that I noticed. It was the way they looked at each other. That’s what truly caught my attentions. They stared at each other as if they were the only two people that existed in the whole wide world.

  It was the same exact feeling I had whenever I was with Jake. He would kiss me or touch me, or if I was being honest with myself, just be in the same room with me, and it was like everything else just faded away.

  He was the only one I could focus on, the one that took up so much space in my mind and in my heart that there just wasn’t room for anything else. It made my chest tighten with emotion as I watched the elderly couple.

  They were so obviously in love that it made me jealous of what they had. The ease between them. They knew each other and trusted each other completely. Is that something I could ever have? That I could ever have with Jake?

  Not unless you tell him the truth.

  The thought shot through me and I felt it like a physical blow as guilt filled me. The truth about what, exactly? About my past? About the stalker that had threatened my life and that I’d run from him like a coward. That the one person I’d thought I could trust and rely on had abandoned me the moment things got hard between us, because I wasn’t his ideal of a perfect wife anymore?

  In Elliot’s eyes, the trauma I suffered, it had tarnished me in a way that I would never be able to get clean again. What about Jake? Would he treat me the same way? What if he turned away and left me all alone just like Elliot had?

  Jake isn’t Elliot.

  I huffed out a breath. I knew that. I knew they were different. Very different people. But that didn’t stop the doubts or fears or panic from rising up inside me like a volcano about to erupt.

  “Can I get you anything, hun?”

  I looked up at the waitress standing beside my table. She was in her mid-twenties with a long blond ponytail pulled up on top of her head and a weary smile on her beautiful face. I glanced down and immediately noticed the swell of her belly straining the red and white cotton of her uniform.

  She noticed where my gaze had stuck and smiled at me bashfully with a shrug.

  “Six months along.”

  “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to stare.”

  “Hey, it’s alright. I get it all the time. At
least you didn’t try and touch my stomach. I can’t tell you how many people think that it’s okay to reach out and rub my belly without even asking.”

  “Really?” I asked, horrified at the thought of strangers rubbing my stomach unwarranted. I wrapped my arms protectively around my middle. “I just…I just found out I’m seven weeks. It was a hell of a surprise. I haven’t even told the father yet. I don’t know anything about being a mother. I don’t know what I’m going to do, honestly.” I gasped up at her in horror, “I have no idea why I just told you all that.”

  She gave me a kind smile. “I get it. It’s kind of…”

  “Terrifying?”

  “I was going to say overwhelming,” She laughed, “But yeah, it’s also scary as hell.” The waitress sat down in the booth seat across the small table from me a leaned close. “I know it can be a lot, especially at first, but believe me, things will work out. They always do.”

  I shook my head.

  “You are way more optimistic than I am.” I said with a laugh and she joined me.

  “I’ve always been told I’m too optimistic for my own good. But it’s true, things usually do work out for the best, even if it doesn’t feel like it at the time.” Her smile dimmed a little bit, “I don’t know if I’ll be a good mother either, but I do know that I will love this baby with every ounce of love I have to give. That has to count for something, right?”

  “That counts for a lot.” I said through a sudden lump in my throat. “I hope it does, anyway. Otherwise I’m screwed.”

  We both shared a look before breaking out in laughter again.

  “Order’s up!” the terse call came in from the window that looked into the kitchen.

  “Well, that’s me.” The waitress said, getting to her feet. “You want something to eat?”

  I shook my head, “I’m not all that hungry to be honest.”