The door opened behind her and she jumped. Rob frowned at her. He was only slightly taller than her, with a little extra weight around the middle of his tucked in striped shirt. “Hey, you okay? Need a ride home?”
She quickly retracted the blade. Home? She couldn’t bear to admit she didn’t have one right now. “No. No thanks.”
He eyed her curiously, then nodded. “Stay safe; I’ll see you tomorrow, same time, okay?”
“Yeah, I’ll be here. ’Bye, Rob!” She put on a false smile, then forced her body to turn and walk down the street.
The idea of half-sleeping in the bathroom at Walmart again twisted her gut into a queasy nasty mess. Every time the door opened, she’d jump and flush the toilet she’d been sleeping on. Sometimes she’d have to leave when the cleaning crew came, but so far, no one suspected that she was actually using the place as a slum. That wouldn’t last much longer. It didn’t help that she’d made barely a hundred bucks in the week she’d been working at Rob’s coffee shop.
The storm loomed overhead still. Streaks of puffy clouds growled and rumbled. The scent of unfallen rain teased her nose. Before long, she’d be walking in the rain. She quickened her pace. She still had a good fifteen blocks to go to get to Walmart. At the next intersection, she stopped and waited to get her signal to cross when a black SUV pulled up in front of her. Panic flared fast. She pressed the button on her switchblade as every muscle in her body tightened, readied. I’ll be ready this time. The darkly tinted windows didn’t allow her to see inside. Even the pale yellow streetlight offered no help. The hairs on the back of her neck shot straight up, then the window lowered with a whirr of the mechanism working.
Her muscles relaxed in an instant. A wobbly laugh escaped and she retracted the blade deftly before pocketing it again. “I guess you found me.” Why did she feel so happy at seeing Brayden? It had to be the idea of safety he gave her. Whether imagined, real or not, she felt it around him.
“Of course, I did. I’m a great tracker. Or did you forget?” A bolt of lightning pierced the sky followed by a cracking explosion of thunder that made her jump. “Get in the car.”
She was about to turn down the offer when the sky split open and wet fat droplets pelted down on her. “Yeah, okay.” She hopped into the big SUV and grimaced. It was the same one he’d dragged her into after she’d tried to run away from her Kategan cousins pack. She’d realized that no matter how much Vane wanted to help her, he was still going to turn her over to her father. So she’d tried to flee. Yeah, that hadn’t turned out quite as she’d planned. Dmetri and Brayden had been there as if they knew her plan in intimate detail. The bastards.
He pulled away from the curb and took off down the rain-slicked street. “Where are you staying?”
Yeah, she so wasn’t going there with him. “How’d you find me?” she countered.
She watched him drive from the corner of her eye. He took the turns easily, pressing the accelerator and brakes smoothly when needed, never once jarring her in her seat. He kept both hands on the wheel in the perfect ten and two positions—textbook driving. Hell, everything about him was textbook. It was ingrained in everything he did—controlled, by the book. Or, rather, by the law with him.
She wondered what it would take, what he would be like if she broke that control, snapped it like a piece of thread. A pulse throbbed deep inside her, a lick of heat. She stilled at the sensual feeling and looked away so he wouldn’t see the shock on her face. A tumultuous smile trembled on her lips and she fingered it idly. She hadn’t had a thought like that...a thought like she used to have in a long time. She wanted to laugh; wanted to throw her arms around someone and dance. For the first time since she left Joseph, she knew that she wasn’t broken.
“You should know I’m a great tracker. Your scent is easy to find.”
That got her attention. She smiled big but didn’t care, because it felt so good. “Oh, do you like it?” She hadn’t meant to ask it, but her happiness in the moment had swept her up, lowered her inhibitions.
He hit the brakes at a red light and she went diving forward in her seat, only the seatbelt keeping her from hitting the dashboard face first. She glared at him, but he kept his face forward, head half hidden in the shadows of the car. “What are you doing in Chicago?”
She sighed and squeezed her eyes shut as a sharp pain began throbbing in her temple and somewhere in the back of her eyes. “Working.”
“At a coffee shop?” His obvious disbelief made her laugh. She’d forgotten how deep his voice was, how poignant.
“Yes, at a coffee shop.” God, it felt so good to talk to someone she knew. Well, in this case, ‘knew’ was a relative term, but still. Someone who wouldn’t hurt her. Plus, he was easy on the eyes. Not every man was built like that, with an athletic grace that showed in the simplest movements, like walking. It gave a girl ideas.
He pulled onto the highway and rain pelted the window like little firecrackers. “Vanessa, no one leaves their home, their state, to work at a college coffee shop in mid-Chicago. Tell me what’s really going on.”
His words cut through her like a silken blade. “I can’t do that.” Her smile died.
“If you don’t, then I’m calling Vane. I have a good feeling he doesn’t know you’re here.”
She turned to him in her seat, her mouth threatening to drop open. “Excuse me? I’m not a kid anymore. He’s not my father and this doesn’t concern him. Hell, it doesn’t even concern you.”
“It does now,” he said with such authority she clenched her hands into fists until her biceps started to burn with sweet pain.
“You do not control me,” she said in a soft voice.
The car slowed as they pulled onto a dirt path. He shot her a look, his lips pulled down into a frown. “I know that, and I’m not trying to. What’s going on?”
Vanessa crossed her arms and stared at the dirt path sweeping by them, at the rows of trees encasing either side of the rode. She debated her options and still had no clue which choice was the right one. A thought struck her. “What do I get if I tell you?”
A sound, almost like a laugh, escaped him. “How about a safe place to sleep?”
She almost moaned at the thought of sleeping on a bed in a house. Safe, without any worries. She didn’t think on it long. “Deal.”
He pulled off the main dirt road to a paved street that circled around. A large white house stood at the opposite end; the fancy circular driveway looked like it’d be easy to come and go. She didn’t know why his house surprised her, but it did. It wasn’t anything she’d ever contemplated before. But now, she couldn’t help but feel surprised. The house was two stories and very square and very white. Staring at it, the words simple and clean came to mind. That and windows were everywhere. Very tall, imposing windows that lined the front of the house and even up on the second floor. It looked like the kind of house that belonged on a beachfront property, not hidden back in the woods on the outskirts of Chicago.
“Is this your place?”
He pulled the SUV into a garage port on the right side of the house and cut the engine. “Yes.”
The stream of rain pinged off the roof of the garage like rubber balls bouncing up and down. A skitter of awareness flashed through her. She was sitting next to a powerful, strong man in the dark. His eyes stayed forward, hers locked wide, alert on his face. She could see the deft angle of his chin, the hard line of his jaw which held the beginning growth of a beard. The hair on his chin and jaw held a reddish tint, or maybe it was just the moonlight reflecting off something in the garage that played games with her eyes. He looked the same from when she last saw him, yet now when she looked at him, she had different thoughts. Like how she wanted to crawl into his lap and press her lips against the hard line of his jaw.