Seize (St. Martin Family Saga: Emergency Responders) Book 2: Erotic Romance (3 page)

“She’s okay, but she was diagnosed with schizophrenia. It’s horrible. She thinks the entire world is out to get her. As far back as I can remember, she suffered from isolation and loneliness, but the last five years have been especially hard. That’s why my dad left with Evie—he couldn’t take it. I wanted to help her. I enrolled in an online university. Took some core courses and then majored in psychology. I never finished because it’s quite expensive and we sort of ran out of extra money after dad died and the hospital isn’t so cheap. I did learn a lot, though, and I tried to counsel her.” She shrugged.

She expected to see pity in his face, his eyes, but instead she saw something else. Understanding? His eyes simmered, and his mouth was stretched into a slight smile. His gaze was confident on her. Unblinking.

“You’re very strong. Children shouldn’t have to take care of their parents, yet you did. And successfully, apparently.”

“I don’t know.” She inhaled through an open mouth. “She’s in that hospital.”

“She’s getting what she needs. Meanwhile, you sacrificed so much, put your life on hold to see her through the darkness. That’s very selfless of you, Miss Brown.”

She didn’t know what to say. The need was strong in her to break their gaze because he was reading her soul with those penetrating brown eyes. But she couldn’t break away, the connection was too strong. She’d never had anyone recognize her sacrifices before. Her lips did a slow turn upward, and she couldn’t have done anything to stop them.

“What?” His eyebrows lifted.

She shook her head. “I’ve just never spoken about this before. It’s nice to have someone to talk to.”

“Well, it’s also nice to have an actual conversation with you. I prefer it to
I hate you so much
and
I want to slap you in the face so hard.
” They laughed.

“I volunteer at the grief counseling center. I’ll need to make a call to let them know I’m going to miss my shift.”

He shook his head. “No phones.”

“Can I use email?”

“Do you have a computer?”

“I meant on the phone.”

“What part of
no phones
don’t you get?”

At her grimace, his eyes pleaded. “These precautions are for your protection and the protection of your sister.”

“I know. It’s just that if someone in dire straits calls my phone and I’m not there …”

He steepled his fingers over his chest. “We can go to a public library. You can use a computer to access your email so you can make provisions for the grief center.”

“Thank you.” She smiled. He really was kind, and she felt at ease around him now. Truth told, she had before. She wouldn’t have undressed in front of him if she hadn’t. But now she had confirmation with the silly nursery rhyme that he’d taken the time to memorize. She giggled.

“What?”

“I can’t believe you memorized that song for me.”

“I can’t believe I remembered it.”

Their arms met in the middle of the bed, ever so slightly touching, his warmth seeping from him and into her. It wasn’t the most comfortable way to sleep since she preferred to be on her side, but she was content to remain in that position so she could stay connected to him.

*

Mia woke to the sounds of a crunching in her ear.

“I hope you like doughnuts and”—Augie leaned over and produced a steaming paper cup of coffee—“mocha latte. Girls like that, right?”

“Absolutely.” She sat up and smiled, and then she laughed.

“What’s so funny?”

“You have powdered sugar on your nose.” She swiped her finger across the corner of his mouth. “And is that cherry?” She put the finger in her mouth, confirming her suspicions.

“Yeah, kind of messy to eat.”

He was blushing as he wiped his face with a napkin.

“Mmm, I love strudel.” She took a large bite and the warm apple cinnamon filling oozed into her mouth.

“I was wondering something.”

She lifted her chin at his serious manner.

“Evie didn’t mention her mother was in the hospital.”

“I didn’t tell her.”

“I gathered. Why?”

“Evie knows what she knows from my father. Honestly, Dad didn’t believe in mental illness. He thought Mom was being selfish and was lashing out against him because she’d grown to hate him.” She gauged the feedback his body was giving her. He frowned slightly, but she thought it was from curiosity. Or maybe confusion. At least he wasn’t a stone wall like her father with his crossed arms and implacable expressions. Augie seemed open to what she was telling him.

“The illness is biological; there’s a chemical imbalance in the brain that causes the hallucinations and episodes of psychosis. Medication can level it out.”

He nodded. “I get it. My mother suffers from anxiety, takes medication for it. We call them her happy pills because she’s so nice after she’s taken one. It’s the only time I ever see her let go of all that she worries about.”

“Exactly. With schizophrenia, patients are put in a hospital to determine a course of treatment. Certain medications can make the delusions worse, and others can make them go away altogether; it depends on the chemical that needs adjusting. Only way to find out is to try the medications and monitor the patient.”

“So is your mom in the hospital for that?”

“No, she already found a drug that helps her.” She inhaled and sighed. “She’s in there because she started drinking, and alcohol doesn’t mix well with Thorazine.”

“Oh.” His brows rose. “My mom’s medication doesn’t do well with her amaretto sours either.” He shrugged. “Doesn’t stop her from swallowing down her pills with it.”

She enjoyed talking with him. It was easy, and he seemed to enjoy the give and take as much as she did. “What happens when she does that?”

“She passes out.” He shook his head. “We had to take her to the emergency room twice. Combination of the pills with the alcohol slowed her heart rate. But even after all that, she still combines the two.”

“That’s hard.”

“Yeah.” He scratched his head with the car key. “Shall we go to the library? And we need to ditch the car.”

“Oh.” Her eyebrows rose. “Why?”

“A precaution. It may have been identified by the thugs. Doesn’t seem likely they’d give up on their mission. I wouldn’t.”

His words made Mia uneasy, and she was doubly thankful he was with her.

Chapter 3

They went to
the library so Mia could send her email. While there, she purchased a couple of used books, excited about her finds. Augie enjoyed how something so simple delighted her.

As they exited the library, he pointed to a super-center store. “Would you like to get a few things: toothbrush, hair brush? Anything?”

“That’d be great.”

“Come on.”

When they left the store with their purchases, they watched a man attempt to tie a cast-iron mixer to a motorized scooter using one bungee cord. Mia’s hand landed on Augie’s forearm.

“Augie, look. He’s going to lose that load.” She clicked her tongue. “Oh, and there’s a white bow on top of the box. It’s probably for his girlfriend or wife. Let’s help him.”

“What kind of idiot drives a scooter to do his birthday shopping?”

“Maybe that’s all he has.”

Before he could answer, she took off.

She tried to reason with the man, but he was agitated.

“Sir, please let us help you. We can follow in the car with the mixer.”

His hand held stiffly between them indicated she should keep her distance.

“Just go away. I don’t need your help.”

“But the mixer is too heavy for this small fender. It’s going to hit the ground.”

“I said go away.”

Augie looped his arm in hers. “Come on, Mia, he said he’s got it.”

“That’s right, go on,” he yelled over his shoulder.

He sat on the scooter and started the engine. They stopped behind him. As soon as he put the scooter in drive, the mixer wobbled and Augie was there to catch it as it fell.

The man slammed the scooter onto the kickstand and jumped off, ready to strike, but Mia tried talking to soothe his agitation.

“Sir, your mixer was about to fall to the ground. It would have broken if not for this man. Please, can we offer you some help?”

The man was speaking gibberish under his breath and was clearly flustered about something.

Augie set the mixer on the ground. “Mia, forget it. Let’s get out of here.”

Mia’s eyes pleaded with him as she held up her index finger to ask him to wait. “Sir, it’s okay, where do you need to go?”

“For my mother.” The man rocked on his feet, but wouldn’t make eye contact with her.

“Okay. Is she close by?”

“Oakridge.”

“I know where that is. Shall we follow you with the mixer in our car?”

“No!”

“Mia, I don’t think this—”

“Augie, please. He needs our help.”

They ended up driving beside him so he could see Mia, in the passenger side of the car, holding the mixer. At every intersection she waved and smiled to the crazy bastard. When they arrived at his mother’s apartment in an assisted living facility, Mia suggested he wrap the gift, but he didn’t have any paper. Augie watched as she helped him wrap it in old comics from the stack of papers in the apartment.

“She’s going to love it!”

Mia smiled and so did the man. When they were leaving, he lunged at Mia, and Augie almost pounced on him, but the man only hugged and then released her.

“Thank you for letting us help you, Russell. Your mom is going to be thrilled with the mixer.” He said something under his breath and then waved goodbye like a small boy.

As they drove, Augie marveled at her patience with the aggressive man. “You’re really good with people.”

“Not all people. I work well with the afflicted.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I’ve just never been good at making friends. Normal people don’t typically gravitate to me; most think I’m strange.”

Still, he assumed that her being from a small town meant she’d have some long-lasting friendships.

“Don’t you have friends from high school?”

“There were roughly four hundred students at my high school. If anything, the small number just made me stand out more. I wasn’t very popular.”

He nodded as he pictured her during her awkward years. “Were you in sports or anything?”

“No, I had to get home to Mom.”

“Prom? Homecoming?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“You really mean no friends.”

“I know it seems weird, but the school really was small, and I worked hard to keep our private family business from being spread all over town.” She shrugged and looked at him. “I bet you were popular.”

“I did all right.”

“Did you play sports?”

“I did.”

“Which?”

“All of them, I think.”

“That doesn’t surprise me.”

“I wasn’t very good at any of them, so that’s why I played them all.”

“Is that how they do it in Louisiana?”

“Yeah, everything’s backwards there.”

She laughed, and Augie was rewarded with a beautiful pearly white angelic smile. It was breathtaking. He needed to make her laugh more often. He was going to make it his new mission.

*

He drove the car to a junkyard. “Ready?” He grabbed the sack of toiletries from the back seat.

“What are we doing here?”

“I’m having the car destroyed.”

“Isn’t that excessive?”

“Not at all.”

“Couldn’t we give the car to someone in need? Like Russell.”

“Car has to be destroyed. We must erase all traces of me ever being here.”

She frowned.

“Please trust me.”

When she looked into his pleading brown eyes, she saw warmth and honesty.

“Okay.”

She opened her door and followed after him. A man stepped out from a metal building and shared a funny-looking handshake with Augie. He was American, tall and wide, with a deep scar across his left cheek. After a few exchanges, she learned they’d fought together in Afghanistan. Augie and Scott discussed the car. He said he’d drain the tank and then the car would be destroyed within the hour.

“Let me give you a lift.”

“That’d be great. To the train station.”

Train station?

Mia wondered if she should introduce herself—since Augie hadn’t—but once they started driving, she just sat back and listened.

“How are the nightmares?” Augie asked.

“Every night. Sleeping pills they give me make ’em worse. It’s always the same thing—what would have happened if you hadn’t come when you did.” He shook his head vigorously. “And then I see their faces.”

Augie squeezed Scott’s forearm. “Hey, I was there and that wasn’t our fault; we were sent for the civilians, and we got to all of them.”

“We did, but their faces—those sweet faces—haunt my dreams.”

His voice was shrill and so highly pitched, it sounded painful. Was he referring to children? What had he and Augie been involved with?

“Do you keep up with Gloria?” Scott asked.

Who’s Gloria?

“Not really.”

“You guys were great together.”

And when were they together?

“Not great enough.”

Looking out the window, Mia realized they’d reached their extremely odd destination.

“Good seeing you, Scott.”

They did their handshake again and Scott backed the car out. Augie watched as the car drove off.

“Augie? Everything okay?”

Their eyes met and his pained, saddened eyes blinked at her.

She squeezed his arm. “You okay?”

He nodded. “Let’s go.”

“What are we doing at the train station?”

“No trails.”

“Trails?”

“The less Scott knows the better so I had him drop us here. It’s close enough that we can walk back to a hotel, and if anybody comes sniffing around it won’t put him in a compromising position.”

“Are we switching hotels too?”

“Yes.”

“Was Scott referring to children?”

He froze.

“He said
sweet faces
. I was wondering if he meant children.”

He walked slowly, hands locked behind his back. “Yes, children.”

“Did some die?”

“Yes.”

“He … he was trying to save them?”

Augie stopped walking and pointed. “Do you want a soft pretzel?” They each got one and took a seat on a nearby bench. She sensed the moment was over and though she wanted information, she didn’t want to pry. The overwhelming compassion she felt for him and his friend at what she imagined they’d endured twisted in her gut. If he didn’t discuss it with her, she hoped he’d find someone he could confide in. She understood how the negative festered, bringing sickness and weakness to all parts of the body and mind.

Augie was a good man. She didn’t want him weighed down with unchecked and heavy emotional burdens.

*

They ate in silence and luckily Mia didn’t press him anymore about Scott’s admissions in the car. He didn’t want to talk about that mission or those days.

When they finished they walked, fingers laced, to their motel two blocks away. He couldn’t explain it, but he didn’t want to break their connection, so he kept hold of her hand. She didn’t seem to think anything of it, but her touch meant everything to him—she was a mountain guide in a blinding blizzard. A Sherpa. Seeing Scott again had Augie back where he never wanted to be—forever lost in an arid desert. But her warm hand in his anchored him to the present.

She pulled him through the station. He still hadn’t said anything, but she was undemanding. She stopped at a candy shop and only dropped his hand to fill a bag with …
Runts
. No wonder she smelled fruity and sweet; she still ate this candy he’d given up as an adult. A cool refreshing, like an internal breeze, rushed through him, linking the good memories from his past to the very real present. And there
had
been good memories. Lots of them before the war and before death and loss. Hell, he even had good memories of his buddies from the combat zone.

He shook his head, but couldn’t hold back a smile. This slight girl and her sugar craving had saved him from floundering into an abyss after the meet with Scott. He scratched his head. Clay had saved him when he’d returned from the Middle East, but that had been a different, rougher, kind of therapy. He’d needed that demanding presence of a buddy kicking his butt then, but now he needed her sincere compassion. Or maybe he just wanted it. Or shit, maybe because he’d been denying himself the gentle concern of a woman for far too long he now craved it. She was gentle yet concerned and seemed to know his innate needs, needs he wasn’t aware he had, such as talking about the darkness and devouring sugary, enamel-damaging junk.

She popped a handful of fruit shapes into her mouth and laced her fingers through his.

“Sherpa,” he whispered as he smiled down at their linked hands.

She blinked her eyes at him. “Did you just call me a Sherpa?”

“You led me away from the darkness.”

She smiled and squeezed his fingers.

“It’s true—the damning thoughts didn’t overtake me. It’s gotta be the first time I’ve ever thought about what happened and didn’t vomit and feel the walls closing in on me, cutting off my oxygen.”

Her jaw dropped and her intake of air was sharp. She held the bag of candy up in the space between them.

“Runts?”

People swirled around them, and he laughed. Cleansing, all-consuming laughter until tears dripped from his eyes. She did the same, and he scooped up a handful of the fruity candy.

As they walked to the hotel he thought about the effect she had on him: she kept his demons at bay. There was a lot of downtime in the desert and he’d filled it by memorizing poems and literary passages. She reminded him of one particular Will Fitzgerald haiku:

I needed her

not because

her kiss

lit up my days

but because

the scent of

her skin

guided me through

the dark

At the motel he stood in line to register for a room. Pointing to a beverage stand, she whispered in his ear, “I’m going to grab a hot tea. You want one?”

“I’ll take a coffee. Lots of cream, no sugar.”

He waited in line for several minutes while the elderly couple ahead of him tried to hurry, but failed miserably. The woman had misplaced her wallet. They searched the luggage and her purse, twice. She smiled at him.

“It’s hell to get old and senile. I apologize for the delay.”

When she turned, he saw a strip of red leather poking out from her jacket pocket. “I think what you’re looking for may be in your pocket.”

He gestured and she pulled it out with a giggle while her husband rolled his eyes.

Finally he paid for their room and then searched the lobby for Mia. He observed her as she watched a couple with a child swipe crackers and condiments from a shelf outside the hotel restaurant. A man in an apron approached, gesturing wildly and pointing to a stack of menus. The father shook his head. Mia stepped in and had an exchange with the efficient employee, and not a very nice one by the look of it. The couple put the items back, and Augie watched as Mia pointed to the restaurant and placed cash in the woman’s hand. Mia shook her head, holding her hands in the air, obviously refusing to take back the money, and then placed a hand on the mother’s back and prodded her into the restaurant.