Page 13 of Accidentally Mine

Roselynn

W ednesday morning, two full days after that morning meeting with Brent, our conversation had run through my head about a million times.

Because of him being a constant in my mind, this morning I settled into a booth at the Starlight Café in downtown Boston and ordered myself a chocolate croissant.

I damn well needed chocolate. The atmosphere wasn’t as good as the Common Café, and neither was the coffee or the hospitality, but I’d learn to live with it.

I had to.

The Common Café had been making me too nervous. I couldn’t let anyone— anyone —get too close. Not a chatty waitress, and definitely not a guy with a face so gorgeous it made me want to weep.

If I was going to stay in Boston for any length of time, I needed to be smart about it. And going to the same café to use the Wi-Fi, keeping a routine that meant people would easily know where to find me…that wasn’t smart.

I shouldn’t have gone back there that last day.

That was for sure. Something about Mr. Tall Dark and Handsome had compelled me to.

Maybe he reminded me of the man on the Pike, but it was more than that.

He didn’t have the obvious ego that Anthony had.

I could sense a kindness in him, just in the way he talked to the waitress.

I’d always hated how Anthony treated service personnel, like they were lower than him.

He treated most people like they were lower than him, but I hadn’t really noticed that at first. And he’d treated me so well.

At first, he’d doted on me like a princess.

Those first few months had turned out to be total bullshit.

Now, I was hyperaware of the way men acted. Any sign of possessiveness or cockiness sickened me.

Brent hadn’t been like that. When I looked at him, I saw a kindness in him that would probably make my mother proud. But it was no use dreaming. Plus, I didn’t trust myself anymore to judge the character of a man. I’d failed so utterly before.

Still, my traitorous brain wouldn’t give up examining my situation for loopholes that would miraculously allow me to hand over my phone number like Brent had asked.

Was it because I’d avoided male companionship for so long?

And now, for the first time in over two years, I’d met a person who made me want to open myself up to that kind of connection.

But, how could I? I’d just met him. And I would be leaving soon.

Anyway, why would he want to get involved with me? If he knew who was after me, and who would be after him if he pursued me, he wouldn’t stick around for long.

It was better this way. Making myself anonymous. Invisible.

As I sipped my coffee and looked around, I didn’t see a single face that worried me. No suspicious glares. No creepy leering. No lingering sense of déjà vu.

Perfect , I thought, trying to convince myself that this was enough.

I threw myself into my latest story and worked through the early afternoon, checking my phone so that I could be sure I got back on time to make Aunt Marie lunch.

When I finished laying out the eighteenth installment of Blood Run Road for the publishing platform, I had just enough time to make it back to Aunt Marie’s.

I started to power down my computer when I sensed someone watching me.

Whirling, heart in my throat, I froze when I met Brent’s chocolate-brown eyes.

“What are you writing?” he asked casually, as if I’d told him to meet me there.

I exhaled the gasp that had caught in my throat. “What are you…?” My heartbeat skittered in my chest, making speaking difficult. “How did you find me?”

He didn’t answer, just looked down at me with those hypnotizing brown eyes. I felt whatever resolve I had crumbling, my sexy parts tingling as my libido came back at full-bore, a juxtaposition to his stalker-like appearance.

I jutted out my chin. “Answer me.”

He let out a low, sexy rumble of a laugh and scrubbed a hand through the hair at the back of his neck. “As well as you answered all my questions the other day, Roselynn ?” He said my name like a taunt. Like he knew it wasn’t my real name.

Indignant, I shot out of the booth and quickly started to pack up my things. If he could find me, then anyone could. I might as well have painted a target on my back.

“Don’t go,” he said quietly, sitting down in the booth seat opposite mine. “I’ll tell you how I found you if you’ll just calm down.”

I huffed, my fingers clenched around my laptop, and stared at him, his dark eyes betraying nothing but curiosity. I wanted to be tough, angry at him. I pulled my hat down lower over my eyes so they wouldn’t betray what I was really thinking…namely, that a huge part of me just wanted to jump him.

What the hell, Rebecca? Where did that come from?

I’d buried that part of myself, learned to live without it.

It had been a long time since I’d had sex.

In fact, the last time I had, I’d laid under Anthony, counting down the moments until it was over and wishing I could be anywhere else.

That probably didn’t count. Neither had all the other times he’d pinned me down and had sex with me when I’d claimed to be too tired.

When was the last time I’d made love? Had I ever?

Once I’d buried that physical need, I hadn’t missed it.

Until now.

Maybe because I’d never met anyone like this man sitting in front of me, quietly watching me, hands laced in front of him. He wasn’t loud and abrasively demanding, like Anthony, barking out orders and shouting insults when he didn’t get his way.

No, this man’s quiet confidence was even more unnerving.

He motioned with his chin that he wanted me to retake my seat, and with that calm motion, the fight went out of me. I was so tired of running, hiding, melting into the background. I slumped into the seat and raised my eyebrows in question. “So?”

“I had a friend follow you,” he explained.

I clicked my tongue. He had me followed? A shiver climbed up my back, gripping my neck tight. How had I not noticed that I was being followed? “Well. That’s creepy. Who the hell—”

He lifted a hand for me to stop. “I apologize for that, but I felt it was necessary.” There was something in his eyes. He wasn’t angry or berating me, but there was a sort of reprimand there. I suddenly felt like I was the one who should be apologizing to him.

“I don’t see why.” I looked around, wondering who else was watching me that I hadn’t noticed.

Using cafés for work had been stupid. Yes, I needed the Wi-Fi to publish my stories, and my aunt didn’t have it.

But I was putting myself in danger by leaving her house.

I needed to up my game. I grabbed my bag and started to slide out of the booth. “I need to—”

“Go,” he finished, shaking his head. It was getting damn annoying, him finishing my sentences. “No, you don’t. Stay for a minute and tell me what you’re afraid of.”

It wasn’t a request. It was a command. He leaned forward, those dark eyes pulling me in. There was no question—this man did things to me. Things no man had ever done before.

I gnawed on my lip, mentally scanning the minefield of what I could and couldn’t say. I leaned forward, took one last look over my shoulder, and whispered, “I have a jealous ex.”

He leaned forward too, and we could almost kiss we were so close. His face didn’t leak any emotion or concern. “How jealous?”

“If he saw us here, together…he wouldn’t be happy.”

I waited for the worry to appear in his eyes, or for him to turn tail and decide I wasn’t worth getting to know. Most men would think that was too messy.

But he didn’t flinch.

“Doesn’t that scare you?”

He gave me a curious look. “Why should it?”

Maybe he didn’t understand what he was getting into. What kind of monster I was talking about. But the less he knew about Anthony, the better.

My coffee was cold by now, and the waitress here wasn’t the best about warming it up.

But I took a big gulp of it anyway. “I was finishing up the latest installment of my serial. It’s called Blood Run Road .

It’s about the zombie apocalypse. My aunt doesn’t have Wi-Fi, so I have to come to the café to upload it. ”

He raised an eyebrow. “Let me see.”

I didn’t share my stories with anyone, but now, I felt an inexplicable urge to do so. I lifted my laptop and opened it to the page where my series was for sale.

“That’s impressive,” he said, scanning the page. “Rebel Reid?”

“My pen name. Because I’m anything but.”

“Ah. Good girl, huh?”

I smiled. “Good as they come.”

He tutted and shook his head. “Somehow, I doubt it.”

I lifted a shoulder. “Doubt all you like. It’s true.”

“We’ll see about that,” he said, his eyes glinting confidently, which made my whole body alight with tingles.

I was sure I’d never responded to a guy this way.

“Maybe we will,” was out of my mouth before I could stop it.

I gnawed on the inside of my cheek. What was I doing?

This could be bad. I’d chalked my blindness with Anthony up to being young and na?ve and not knowing better.

Since then, I thought I’d developed a better sense of intuition, and it’d kept me out of trouble.

But now, my intuition was silent. All that I felt was this hunger, an urge in my center, pulling me toward him.

Now, he knew my pen name, which no one else knew. Opening myself up could only get me in trouble. I needed to shut the hell up.

“I’ll have to read it,” he said, pointing to the computer screen and apparently noting the title in his phone. The name slipped off his tongue like a dirty word. “ Rebel .”

I ignored the flush of heat that started to climb up my chest. “Do you like zombies?”

He crossed solid arms over his broad chest, one sleeve lifting and revealing an expensive watch. It made me think of Anthony’s father, Malcolm, the leader of his crime family. The man collected millions of dollars’ worth of watches. I suppressed the memory.