One of these sad, lost males was going to make her cry tonight if she didn’t watch out.
She stood up one more time, determined to go. “I’d be happy to help with the dog. Or with anything. Honestly. Just give me a call. I’m at—”
“I know the house,” he said. “I grew up here, and Mrs. Moss has been there ever since I can remember. I’ll come see you about the flowers tomorrow…. Wait. That’s Sunday, isn’t it? I guess Monday morning.”
“We can do them tomorrow afternoon, if you’re having visitation on Monday.”
“We will. I guess.” He frowned. “Sorry, it’s just—”
“I know. All a jumble.”
“I hate to ask someone to come in on a Sunday,” he began.
“We deal with this sort of thing all the time at the shop.” People just kept dying. She hadn’t expected to be in the middle of it, in a flower shop, although she supposed she would have known, if she’d just given it some thought. Flowers didn’t only mark happy times. “It’s no problem.”
Gwen would go to Sunday-morning services at church and to the shop afterward.
“Thanks,” Jax said.
She nodded. “I should go now. The front door is this way?”
“Yes, but your house is just three houses down, if you use the back alley.” His hand was back, resting in the small of her back. He must be used to leading women around, because he did it with a certain amount of grace and effortlessness she couldn’t help but admire.
He probably did everything that way. Some people were just born with an incredible sense of confidence.
“I think Romeo needs to go out, anyway,” he said. “We’ll walk you.”
“Oh, no.” She panicked a little, in spite of herself, trying to save herself by adding in a much friendlier tone, “You don’t have to do that.”
He stopped right there in the middle of the kitchen, his gaze narrowing on her face. She wondered exactly what he saw in her expression. For the most part, she thought she managed to keep the worst of it fairly well hidden. She’d just been surprised, and it was dark out and she really didn’t know him. She didn’t want to be in a dark alley with anyone, let alone a big, powerful man she really didn’t know.
“It’s all right,” he said, still watching her more closely than she would have liked. “You’re in good hands. I’m a cop and Romeo’s a K-9-school dropout. Between the two of us, I think we can handle any trouble that could possibly come along in the alley. Although, I have to tell you, I’ve been traveling it since I was five, and the only trouble I’ve ever met with there was skinned knees from bicycle wrecks and a bloody lip here and there, if we really crashed or another kid threw a punch at me.”
Gwen was afraid she was trapped. That she’d have to go with him or look foolish for not going. She stalled instead. “You…uh. You get into fights in the alley?”
He grinned. “Not since I was nine. But I think I could handle myself if someone happened to jump us tonight.”
Gwen could feel the blood draining from her face. It was as if her whole being sagged, all the strength going out of her, a paralyzing fear moving in, in its wake.
He saw it all, too. She could imagine exactly what she must look like to him as he watched her turn into a pathetically fearful creature, a grown woman afraid of the dark.
She thought she might actually have swayed on her feet. His hands shot out to steady her. “It’s all right.”
But it wasn’t, and maybe it never would be, and she really hated it when people saw that. How much she truly was not “all right.”
“I have to go,” she said in a shaky voice she despised, as well.
“Okay.”
“That way.” She pointed toward what she thought was the direction of the front door, then added, “By myself.”
“Okay,” he said quietly, using a tone she imagined he might on a spooked child. “Did you drive?”
She nodded, not caring how foolish that seemed. She didn’t walk down dark streets at night.
“Can I watch from the front porch, until you get to your car?”
She nodded again, so very foolish. He was either afraid she’d fall apart before she even made it to her car or afraid she’d freak out if he followed her to the door, because she thought he meant to follow her out onto the street. And she might have. She fought not to cry. It would have been the final humiliation.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“It’s all right. Whatever you need to do to feel safe, you do it.”
He made it not sound so foolish after all, and she was grateful enough for the understanding that it alone might make her cry.
Maybe it was one of those nights when tears were inevitable.
Just not here, she begged. Please, not here.
She put a hand in her pocket and came up with her keys. She knew to have them in her hand, her thumb on the panic button that had come along with the alarm system on the new car she’d bought just for that safety feature. And so she could be reasonably assured that she wouldn’t be breaking down anytime soon on any dark roads alone at night, and that if she did and someone tried to get close to her, the alarm would shriek and, hopefully, scare them away.
So many things she did differently these days.
She put her head down, forgetting all about not looking like a victim, and made it down the hall and past all those people in the living room without speaking to anyone. Jackson Cassidy followed her, keeping his distance so he wouldn’t scare her.
He opened the door for her and stood back to let her pass through alone. Romeo waited there by his side, looking concerned for her, as well.
“Sorry,” she said again.
“No problem,” he claimed. Maybe he was used to paranoid, frightened women from his job.
She made it down the stairs and up the sidewalk. Her car was halfway down the block, probably farther away than the walk in the alley would have been. But here she was on a brightly lit street and not alone with a man she really didn’t know. She felt foolish but safer.
As he’d said, seeing so clearly, whatever she had to do to feel safe….
That was a problem she wasn’t about to explain to him.
She wasn’t sure if she’d ever feel safe again.
Jax watched her all the way, Romeo by his side. She sat in the car for a few minutes before turning on the lights and pulling onto the street.
“Let’s go to the backyard,” Jax told the dog.
He headed around the house and climbed the steps to the back porch. He could see old Mrs. Moss’s house from there, waited and watched as the car turned into the driveway, as Gwen got out, opened the door and started flicking on lights in the house. Until she was inside, safe and sound.
Romeo stood beside him, watching every bit as intently.
“Wonder what the story is there,” Jax said.
One thing was certain, it wasn’t the normal reticence a woman would show at the idea of walking down a dark alley in a small town with a man she barely knew. It was fear, pure and simple, the kind that came not in imagining what bad things might happen, but in knowing, firsthand.
Someone, at some point, had attacked Gwen Moss.
“You know,