11
W ho are these people, and how is this my life?
Caleb was offering her food, but she wasn’t sure if she’d be able to eat. It would be just her luck to puke all over his floors if she tried.
“I’ll make a snack.” There he went, deciding for her again. It had to be at least three or four in the morning, and he was going to cook for her. Was he insane? She covered a yawn and hovered, unsure if she should sit or stay standing as she watched him decide what they should do. She was used to feeling awkward, but she didn’t think he was.
“You’re tired.” Of course, he’d noticed her yawning. “Come on, I’ll show you to the bedroom and grab you something to sleep in.” He didn’t give her time to answer but walked away.
She hesitated a second but figured he expected her to follow him. “I’d love a shower.”
“Bathroom is the door to your right,” he called over his shoulder. “Towels are under the sink.”
She checked the back of the door and breathed out a sigh of relief when she found a key in the lock. “Are you sure you don’t mind? You must have had a long day, too…”
“I don’t mind at all?—”
She yelped and jumped when he spoke right behind her.
“Sorry. I’m used to moving quietly.” He handed her a stack of clothes. “It’s only a T-shirt and sweats, but they’re clean.” He eased past her into the bathroom and rummaged under the sink. “Towels.”
Her body must be on strike or something because she could only stand there and watch as he turned on the shower and stuck his hand under the flow of water to test the temperature.
“Are you a hell-level hot girl, or do you prefer human temperatures?”
“Umm.” She shook herself out of her stupor. “Fires of hell aren’t hot enough.” She was never going to find water hot enough to erase the cold in her bones.
He laughed and turned the dial, then jerked his hand back. “Use whatever shampoo and stuff you want. It’s not girlie stuff, but it’s better than nothing. I’ll ask the guys’ wives to bring you girlie stuff tomorrow.”
“Thank you.” She appreciated everything he was doing. She was just kind of numb; it had been a long day, and she needed to process that she had to run again. Maybe, being here with him, she’d have a slight reprieve to make a plan.
His phone rang from somewhere on his body, and he pulled it out. “That’s Nem. I have to take this. You okay here?” He barely waited for her to nod in response before he left her by herself. “Hey, Boss….”
His voice cut off when she shut the door and turned the key. Only then did she allow her guard down. She slumped against the door and covered her face with her hands. Janek would never stop coming for her. Why couldn’t he just leave her alone? She didn’t want to run for the rest of her life.
Taking deep breaths so she wouldn’t lose her mind completely, she strove for the resilience she hadn’t known she had until she’d had to run for her life. She couldn’t lose that now and slowly stripped off her clothes. If she could resist the tears that burned her eyes until she was under the shower, maybe Caleb wouldn’t hear her cry. She didn’t think she’d be able to cope with any more sympathy tonight.
Rose stepped into the shower and stuck the tips of her fingers under the water until she could bear the heat. Then, she stood fully under it, her head tipped back. The water running down her face washed away the tears.
She almost felt human by the time she’d finished with the shower. Caleb’s t-shirt came down to her knees, and she had to roll the waistband of the sweatpants three times to keep away from her armpits—short girl problems—but she finally felt ready to face reality again.
“Here goes nothing.” She took a breath, unlocked the bathroom, and hesitated, unsure of where she should go. “Caleb?”
“Here.” He appeared from the direction she’d been in before. “I—uh—made some grilled cheese and soup.”
He was still looking after her. Her emotions see-sawed from being grateful and not wanting him to totally take over. “I?—”
“Even if you don’t eat,” he looked a little sheepish as if he knew he was threading a fine line, “will you sit with me while I do?”
How was she supposed to say no to that? “Sure.” She followed him into a small but cozy kitchen.
“I’ve got coffee, tea, soda, or water.” He paused. “Unless you want something stronger.”
“There isn’t a drink on the planet strong enough to deal with life right now.” She sat at the counter next to the stool he’d clearly been using. Sometime while she was in the shower, he’d changed out of his tux and into jeans and a tee. “I’ll have water, please.” If she had coffee, whatever minuscule chance she might be able to sleep would disappear.
“Fresh or sparkling?”
He slid a plate with a grilled sandwich in front of her. Clearly, he had an issue with listening. She wrinkled her nose, unsure if that made him like Janek or not. “Fresh, please.”
“Why the frown?” He twisted the top on a bottle of water and placed it next to her plate. “Talking about it might help you feel better.”
“It’s nothing.” Now that she could smell the cheesy goodness, her belly rumbled, and she decided she was hungry after all. Plus, if she was eating, maybe he wouldn’t ask her fifty questions she wasn’t sure how to answer. She nibbled on a piece of sandwich as he took a seat next to her.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him watching her. He wasn’t even being covert about it. He’d turned on the stool and was facing her. “You’re safe here, Rosey-Posey.”
It was sweet of him to try and reassure her. “Why do you call me that?”
“Rosey-Posey?” He swallowed a spoonful of soup, and she braced herself when she recognized the wariness in his eyes. “Umm—I’m not sure if I should say it; you might shove the sandwich down my throat.”
“Violence isn’t something I’m prone to.” She raised an eyebrow, silently daring him to tell her. “Go on, tell me why?”
“When me an’ Kace were kids, we had a raccoon called Rosey, but we mostly called her Posey?—”
“Posey? You nicknamed me after a trash panda?”
He winced. “Yeah, Rosey-Posey.” He munched on his sandwich. “She was lethal if you had any food left out and raided the pantry like she’d never been fed. It drove our folks nuts. But it’s the look in your eye that reminds me of her.”
“What look in my eye?”
Maybe he was right about me chucking food at him.
“The wariness. A wildness that never quite left. Don’t get me wrong, she was tame for us. Well, for Kace,” he amended. “Maybe Rosey-Posey isn’t a good name for you after all.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
Is anyone else confused?
She silently asked in her head as if someone who didn’t exist would answer her.
Because I’m confused. Totally confused.
There should be a manual for figuring out and troubleshooting men, especially for this model; the Caleb Hunt version of men was different, rare, and oh-so confusing. “Hmm.” She made a non-committal sound and waited for him to continue.
“I don’t want you to prefer my brother to me like the raccoon did when we were kids.”
Darn it, he freaking blushed when he said that. It was almost enough to make her rethink her stance on men. Not quite—but almost. “Umm.”
“I’ve embarrassed you. I’m sorry. That wasn’t my intention.” The heat rising up her face told her he wasn’t the only one blushing. She lowered her head to focus on her food. If she ignored the elephant in the room, maybe it would stomp on out, and they could move on. “I met Janek during my last year at community college.”
What are you doing?
She yelped in her head. She wasn’t supposed to say anything, but now she’d started, she found she wasn’t able to stop, and the words poured out of her. “He was every girl’s dream man. Attentive, possessive, charming, money to burn.” She’d been an idiot not to have seen beyond the mask that Janek wore like a second skin.
“Some men are good at reeling you in.”
“Reeling suckers in, you mean.”
He shook his head. “No. Narcissists see people, especially strong women, as challenges. They live to break them.”
“Oh, he tried.” No longer hungry, she pushed the plate away and reached for the water. “I didn’t see it for so long. A ‘the blue dress looked better’ or ‘why don’t you wear the green, it matches your eyes,’ type of thing.” She took a sip of her water.
“That’s how it usually starts.”
Logically, she’d known that, but having someone else, a man at that, confirm what she already knew… that helped. She wasn’t sure how it helped, but it did. The more she talked, the easier it got to tell him everything. “Before I knew it, he was telling me what to eat, who to see…” She lifted one shoulder. “You know, the usual shit.”
“Baby girl, let me tell you,” his focus was entirely on her, “a real man, fuck, never mind man, a real person, doesn’t treat someone they are supposed to care about like that.”
She knew that, or at least she had known it, before chip by chip, piece by piece, and day by day, Janek had picked away at her self-confidence and everything which made her, her.
“How did you get away?”
“I always swore I’d never stay if a man hit me. You know?” Caleb nodded, and she stuttered when his jaw clenched, but she kept going. “But the first time he did it, he was so sorry. He begged me to forgive him. I thought I had, and I stayed. I was stupid, huh?”
“No,” he answered softly. “You aren’t stupid. I’m guessing you were stunned, blindsided, in shock… most likely all three, and a whole host of other shit.”
He wasn’t supposed to be so kind, damn it. He was supposed to agree she’d been stupid to stay.
“What happened to make you leave?”
“I became his punch bag.” She hated herself for allowing that to happen almost as much as she hated Janek for doing it to her. “I thought if it was just me, then everyone else was safe.”
“You were wrong?”
“Oh yeah. So wrong.” She picked at the label on the water bottle to give her nervous fingers something to do. “I came home from the grocery store early. I’d forgotten to bring my purse and walked in just as he strangled the butler.”
“Butler?”
That’s what he got from that? Not that Janek had murdered a man with his bare hands, but that the man was the butler? “Um, yes, butler. Janek’s family has money. He’s a dick, but he’s a loaded dick.” God, she hoped he didn’t think she was a gold digger after that remark.
“What happened?” Caleb asked. “Did he see you?”
“Yeah, he saw me.” She shuddered. The echoes of the fear and confusion of that day almost stole her voice. “I grabbed my purse off the table and ran.”
“I’m assuming he went after you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, he sent his goons. But chasing a woman down the middle of Manhattan is not a good look for anyone. I went to the cops.” They’d been only too delighted to listen to her. “What I hadn’t known was Janek was on their radar. They had enough of a hard-on for him to call in the FBI, and they offered me a place in witness protection. I took it for all the good it did.”
“I’m guessing that didn’t last?”
Her instincts told her he’d paid someone off to be able to find that information, but she couldn’t prove it. “Not because of anything the cops did. Or maybe it was, I don’t know.”
“He found you?”
Damn, he is good at reading between the lines.
She nodded. “Yes, and they killed the agents who’d been assigned to protect me, and I was running again. I found a library and looked up how to live off-grid so nobody can find you.”
“Tell me.”
“I use cash for everything. I take the bus and not the train. Or I walk if possible. I work cash in hand...” She trailed off. She probably shouldn’t tell him that. Although it probably didn’t matter now that she had to leave again. She wouldn’t be going back to Aces again. She refused to bring trouble to their door. “I don’t use a phone. I also have no internet and never go online anymore. I printed out the list of what I needed to do from that library, and that’s the last time I was on the internet.”
“How did he find you this time?”
“I don’t know.” She’d been trying to figure it out and had come up blank. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“What changed in the last week or so?”
“I agreed to take photos for the wedding when Indy and Draven’s photographer canceled on them at the last minute.” For a second, panic engulfed her as she tried to figure out if someone close to the couple knew Janek.
Caleb covered her closed fists with his hand, his thumb stroking along her wrist. “I’ve known Draven Kilkenny and most of the people involved or who were at the wedding for years. They aren’t involved. I’d stake my trident pin on it.”
“Then I don’t know how he found me. There has to be a connection.”
“Can I send all this information to Tex? If there’s a connection, he’ll find it.”
She wanted so badly to hand it over to him. For once, she just wanted what every woman on the planet craved. Safety. Protection—love. “Will…”
“Aside from my team and maybe Wolf, Tex won’t tell a soul,” Caleb promised as if he knew what she was going to ask.
She was rapidly running out of options, and she hated it. She made a snap decision. “Do it.” Instant relief sent exhaustion through her, and she slumped forward. “I’m just so tired of everything.”
“Come on.” Caleb got to his feet. “Let me show you the spare room. I changed the sheets while you were in the shower. You get a head start on sleeping, and I’ll call Tex.”
“Okay.” He steadied her when she stumbled as her klutzy self climbed off the stool and followed him to the room. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, baby girl. We’ll figure out how to make everything safe for you.” He reached above the door jam with his fingers. “Here.” He pressed something into her hand. “The key for the door. Lock it if it makes you feel safer.”
She offered him a small smile, then shut and locked herself into the bedroom. The four steps to the bed looked like a million miles, but she made it and flopped onto it. Curling onto her side, she drew her knees up. Tomorrow, or rather today, had to be a better day, because while yesterday had started out awesome, it had ended in a craptastic storm of yuckiness that ate at her soul.