When he touch
ed her again, Nathan would show her that not all men were schmucks like the guy at the motel and whoever else was in her past. There had to be someone she was running away from.
She hadn’t looked comfortable perched on his
barstool that was for sure. She looked like she was ready to run away at the first sign of trouble. Her big blue eyes had watched his every move, never leaving his hands.
Nathan refused to think about what might have happened if he hadn’t shown up at the motel. That scumbag Skeet had looked at Sarah like he was starving and she was the last morsel at the buffet table.
That wasn’t the first time he’d seen evil at work first hand. Nathan couldn’t guarantee it wouldn’t happen again but if it did it wouldn’t be on his watch.
Nathan dried his hands on a
dishtowel and sighed. The evening sure hadn’t gone as planned.
When he came out of the kitchen
, Nathan found Sarah curled up in the fetal position in the middle of his sofa. The home and garden channel was on low volume and she had drunk every last drop of her juice.
For a minute, Nathan stood and watched her sleep.
She was beautiful and sweet and fragile as hell. A lock of hair had fallen over one eye. His fingers itched to touch her. To smooth her hair or caress her cheek, but he didn’t.
It was difficult to pretend he wasn’t attracted to her. He wasn’t a robot, but a flesh and blood man with probably too many emotions, desires and feelings.
He wished he could say she looked peaceful sleeping there. On the contrary, she looked distressed like she was working out a problem and her eyes just happened to be closed. How anyone could sleep coiled up so tight?
There was no way he could sleep soundly
tonight knowing she was out here on the sofa. Ever so gently, he picked her up. Robbie had given Nathan a lot of practice in the art of the stealth maneuver. Sarah felt weightless in his arms. In fact, she was as light as a feather and a strong breeze could’ve blown her down the hall.
She snuggled into his
neck and made a little noise in her throat. The sweet smell of her hair assaulted his senses.
Nathan bit the inside of his cheek and carried her down the hall to his bedroom.
In the bedroom, Nathan pulled the covers back and laid her on the bed. The king-sized bed dwarfed her already small frame. She shifted, pulling her knees up under her chin but didn’t wake up. Nathan covered her with the comforter and lovingly tucked it around her the same way he would for Robbie.
He turned the light on in the adjoining bathroom and left the door cracked so she wouldn’t wake up in pit
ch darkness and not know where she was.
Nathan
let the image of her tucked into his bed burn into his brain before leaving the room and silently closing the door behind him.
* * *
Sarah was starving. She hadn’t eaten in days or weeks or maybe even months. She couldn’t remember. Her insides ached for sustenance and when she tried to move she could almost feel her bellybutton scrape against her spine.
She picked up her feet and was surprised to hear chains rattle. Dwight had her ankles shackled and she was chained to his recliner. She scooted as far away from him as she could before the chain started to bit into her ankles.
She looked up and blinked, her eyes strained to see in the shadowy room. Dwight sat hunched forward, eating fast food. His chapped lips curled as he chomped on a mouthful of hamburger. When he swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. He took another huge bite of the burger and juices and special sauces dripped down his chin. The sound of his yellow teeth cutting through the beef and toppings was nauseating.
“You hungry, Sarah?”
He opened his mouth and stuck out his tongue. Bits of chewed up bun and lettuce clung to his tongue and she cringed.
“No,” she whispered. Food came with a price too high to pay.
Dwight tossed a French fry just out of reach and Sarah scrambled to get to it before a nearby rat.
The rat won. Its whiskers twitched as it nibbled on the greasy fry.
The chain tugged and Sarah whipped her head around to see Dwight standing over her. “Hungry?” he asked again.
“No!” she shrieked.
He threw the half eaten hamburger at her face and she dodged out of the way.
Dwight yanked on the chain and she screamed.
* * *
Nathan
lay on the living room sofa staring up at the ceiling. Earlier, Kayla had come home from a late shift at work and he’d given her a heads-up about Sarah.
“Do you even know anything about this girl?” she’d asked
, looking skeptical of his decision to bring a stranger into the house.
“Enough to know she could use our help.”
Nathan gave his sister a brief explanation, skimming over the details and it didn’t take much to convince Kayla it was a good idea. As soon as she heard how similar Sarah’s situations was to her own, she gave Nathan her blessing before heading off to bed.
With everyone safe and sound in their bed
s, Nathan allowed himself to drift into a restless sleep.
Ghosts from
Nathan’s past always haunted him at night. When the house was quiet and he was trying to shut his brain off long enough to fall asleep, the torment began.
They weren’t nightmares. There were no images or faces
, just complete silence until the gunshots rang out. Then he’d wake up in a cold sweat, sucking in air like he’d just climbed Mt. Everest.
Tonight was different
because the next thing he knew, a loud shriek woke him up. The scream hadn’t come from Kayla’s room. It had come from his.
Nathan
rushed in and found Sarah twisting in his bed.
“No!
” she screamed, fighting off an invisible attacker. “Get off me! Don’t touch me!”
Nathan
went to her side and put his hands on her shoulders. “Sarah, wake up. You’re dreaming.” He shook her gently until her eyes flew open.
“Don’t touch me!” she yelled, her eyes wild.
“Whoa, whoa,” he said calmly and put his hands up in surrender. “It’s okay. You were having a bad dream.”
Blinking, she
looked around in a daze. “Where am I?” She scooted up until her back was against the headboard. She yanked the sheet up and clutched it to her neck. “Did you…did we…?”
It took him a second to realize what she was talking about.
“No,
no
. We didn’t do anything. We had dinner and you fell asleep on the couch.”
“
This is
your
bedroom?”
“Ye
s.”
“
And why am I in your bed?”
“
I brought you in here so you’d be more comfortable. I was asleep in the living room when I heard you screaming, so I came in to check on you,” he explained.
“Oh.” She relaxed a little but
still held tightly to the sheet. “Why didn’t you wake me? I could’ve gotten a motel room.”
“It’s no big deal,” he said with a shrug. “There’s plenty of room here. I just
didn’t want Robbie to come in and find you on the couch and wake you up. Two-year-olds don’t have much consideration,” he said with an easy smile.
“You have…you have a son.” It was a statement, not a question. Of course
Nathan had a son. He probably had a wife and a family and a Golden Retriever in the backyard. Guys like Nathan Connors weren’t single. And when they were it wasn’t for long. Smart, savvy women snatched them up like clearance items on a sale rack.
Something unfamiliar twisted in Sarah’s stomach.
Jealousy?
Oh, wow. He had a
son
. There was so much she didn’t know about him. And so much he didn’t know about her.
But wait…
In all the time they’d spent together Nathan had never indicated he was in a relationship much less the father of a child.
Nathan
laughed. “No, I don’t have any kids. Robbie is my nephew.”
“Oh
.” She started to get up. “Look, I’ll go now so you can have your bed back.”
“Sarah, please.” He glanced at the clock on the nightstand and the neon green
numbers read two a.m. “Go back to sleep and we’ll talk in the morning.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I don’t sleep very much anyway.”
“
Well…Okay.”
He shifted his weight from one foot to the other.
“Would you like some water or something?”
“No, thank you. I’m okay now.”
“Okay. Well, get some sleep.”
“Thank you
, Nathan.”
Nathan went to the door and Sarah
scooted back down under the covers. He looked back at her and smiled before turning off the light and shutting the door.
Sarah imagined she was lying on a fluffy cloud and sleep
came easily.
* * *
The next morning, Nathan found himself at the batting cage on the outskirts of town. It was a good place to work off some agitation. Earlier, he had found Sarah’s broken necklace in his pocket and was reminded of the scene from the day before. His emotions were still fresh and he couldn’t stick around the house until he dealt with his anger. He’d drop the necklace off at a jewelry repair shop later.
Besides, h
e had yoga at eight and needed to blow off some steam before he was expected to pull off Downward-Facing Dog.
The way that scumbag had been leering at Sarah made him want to rip the guy
’s filthy guts out. This bothered Nathan. He wasn’t a violent guy and he’d only had a problem with his temper once before. Two years ago to be exact. And he’d had a handle on his anger ever since. Well, at least until Sarah Hammond came into the picture. She was so damn pretty and sweet and…fragile. That pale, creamy skin had been so soft when he’d taken her wrist on the stairs at the motel. The thought of some crackhead laying a hand on that soft skin of hers had Nathan gripping the bat until his knuckles were white.
And how scared she’d been when she woke up from that damn nightmare. Had she been dreaming of that Skeet character or was it someone else frightening her subconscious?
Or someone else from her past maybe?
Nathan dr
opped the bat and smacked the ball with a loud
thwack
. When the next ball came toward him, he swung again without missing a beat.
Crack
!
The ball
flew unsatisfactorily into the chain link fence and bounced onto the ground.
TJ
strolled up to the cage, took a sip of his Grande latte and leaned against the chain-link fence. “This better be good, Con. You realize I dragged my ass out of bed before ten a.m. for this, don’t you?”
Nathan felt like a
total shit for bothering TJ, but sixteen sessions of court mandated anger management told him it wasn’t a good idea to be alone right now.
“Yeah, I know.” Nathan swung and the ball connected
with the sweet spot on the bat.
Crack!
“I brought you a coffee. By the looks of you, I should’ve made yours a decaf.” TJ set the second coffee on a nearby picnic bench and shaded the rising sun with his hand. “So, what’s goin’ on to get you so riled up this early in the morning?”
Nathan sighed and
took another swing.
Crack!
TJ winced and sat down on the bench. “You’re gonna hit the laces right off that ball.”
“Life’s a bitch,” Nat
han said through gritted teeth.
“Yeah, sometimes it is
,” TJ agreed.
TJ s
at for a minute and listened to the steady sound of the pitching machine and Nathan’s bat connecting with the ball. Finally, he ventured to say out loud what he knew they both were thinking. “This wouldn’t have anything to do with the new blonde at my Mom’s salon would it?”
“Jesus
,” Nathan said on a heavy sigh. “You got a crystal ball or somethin’, Pomatto?”
TJ shrugged.
“Just a hunch.” He took a sip from his coffee and swallowed. “So, I’m right?”
Nathan hit three more balls before answering.
“I went over to her place yesterday to ask her out and I showed up just in time to catch her landlord roughing her up.”
TJ whistled through his teeth.
“Jeez, Con.”
“Yeah.
I just about lost my shit, man.”
“What happened?”
Nathan lowered the bat and dragged his hand through his hair. “I punched him.”
“Shit,” TJ said under his breath.
“He totally deserved it and I won’t apologize for it. This guy was a scumbag who took money from a defenseless woman. You would have done the same thing. The thing is, though…I stopped. I hit him and knocked him out and I stopped. I could have kept pounding on him until his face was a bloody pulp, but I didn’t. That’s gotta count for something.”