LITMIR.BIZ

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of the children came up behind me suddenly. I barely slept, and when I did I had terrible dreams.

      “I started to question my sanity. I wondered if I was overreacting. I wondered if I was making things worse than they were. I wondered what I had done to lead him on. I pondered, constantly, what I should be doing differently.

      “On the last day of school before summer break, I went home to my new apartment. The door was locked. Nothing seemed amiss or out of place. I went into my bedroom. The first thing I noticed was that my dresser drawers had been opened.

      “And the second thing I noticed was that there was a stuffed bear on my bed. A huge stuffed bear, a panda, almost as big as I was. It had a red ribbon around its neck that made it look as though its neck had been slashed.”

      She shuddered at the memory, and Jefferson tried to contain the pure fury that was coursing through his veins.

      “I called the police, and they said they would arrest him...if they could find him. I have never felt such terror or felt so unprotected. I tossed a few things in a bag, and got in my car. I let a few friends know I was going away, and why I was going away, but that I couldn’t tell them where.

      “Because I didn’t even know where I was going. It seemed it didn’t matter how far I drove, it wasn’t far enough. I was so paranoid I would not use my phone or my bank card. I checked in with the police on pay phones—do you know how hard it is to find a pay phone these days—but there was no sign of him. I began to feel as if he was hot on my heels. I was running out of money and hope. And then I saw your ad.”

      She was silent for a long time. “And that’s why,” she finished softly, “in a boat in the middle of a lake, right now, I feel exhilarated. Because finally, I am in a place where he can’t get at me.”

      Jefferson knew he should be relieved that it was not their togetherness filling her with exhilaration. He told himself he wasn’t relieved—or disappointed—because the emotion he was feeling drowned out every other one.

      He had never felt such a killing fury as he felt now at the two men who had brought Angie to this point. But he controlled himself. He could see she had had enough of men who could not put her first, whose self-centeredness was so complete they could not control their own impulses in the interest of someone else.

      “You can stay,” he said gruffly.

      “What?”

      “You can stay at the Stone House. As long as you need to.”

      “Oh, Jefferson.” Her eyes clouded with tears. “I don’t know what to say.”

      And just like before, when she had not known what to say, she leaned into him. He knew what was coming. He had plenty of chance to back away from it.

      “You knew,” she whispered. “You knew I wasn’t really a housekeeper. You knew I was a damsel in distress.”

      That was plenty of warning. What was a damsel in distress looking for, after all? She was looking for a knight in shining armor.

      And he knew he was not that, even as he could feel the storm quieting all around them. The roar of the wind dropped, and the waters of the lake quieted. He knew it was time to break away from this, but he could not.

      He was caught in a moment: the intensity of the storm, the sweetness of the ice cream, the warmth of her trust, his need to protect her, his sudden aching awareness of his own loneliness. All of those things were swirling around in him, making it impossible not to take what she offered.

      Her lips.

      She offered him her lips.

      And he leaned in close and took them.

      They tasted as he had known they would. Of chocolate and salted caramel, and of something sweetly feminine and trusting.

      Her lips tasted of ambrosia, food of the gods. And he, a mere mortal, could not resist it. And so he tasted her, and he put his hands in her wet curls and drew her more deeply to him and tasted her more completely.

      And remembered that another woman had trusted him to protect her and keep her safe and he had failed completely.

      It took all the strength he had to draw away from Angie. He staggered to his feet. He knew it was not the motion of the boat making him feel so unstable. He’d offered her the sanctuary of his house for as long as she needed it.

      It was up to him to make sure she was not more damaged when she left. And that meant he had to be better at controlling his needs than the other men in her life had been. He had to be better at putting what she needed ahead of what he wanted.

      Because what he wanted was to explore every road that kiss could take them down, to climb every mountain it promised, to discover every valley, to let it open the possibility of new worlds.

      His voice was too harsh.

      “I am not your knight in shining armor. I am not anyone’s knight in shining armor. Do you get that?”

      She nodded, but she looked as if she was going to cry again. He left her sitting there, wrapped in the blanket, and he pulled the anchor and turned on his nighttime running lights. He prepared to go.

      The water had calmed, and the stars were like jewels shining in a black velvet sky. The light could not even hope to pierce the darkness of his own self-awareness.

      When they got to the dock, he moored the boat. In stilted silence she went below and brought up all the groceries she had bought. She passed him up bag after bag of groceries and, finally, two ruined buckets of ice cream. When he offered her his hand to get out of the boat, she refused it and scrambled up on the dock by herself.

      Loaded with groceries, he went up the steep steps to the house. She followed him. In the kitchen he set them down.

      “I’ll look after them,” she said tightly.

      “I think you should check in with the police again,” he said. “Maybe your stalker has been apprehended.”

      “I’ll do that,” she said, that same tight note in her voice. But then her forehead wrinkled. “Do you suppose it’s safe to call them from your line?”

      Jefferson could not even imagine being this afraid. For a moment, his every defense was undermined. He just wanted to take her into his arms and soothe her, kiss away that furrow from her brow.

      Instead, he managed to strip all the emotion from his voice. “I have no doubt your stalker is insanely clever, but I somehow doubt he has managed to tap a police line.”

      She nodded. “Yes, of course you are right. I will call them in the morning. If they’ve apprehended him I can go right away.”

      He barely knew her! How could he possibly be aching at the emptiness she would leave behind?

      “And, regardless, I won’t stay beyond our original agreement, despite your kind offer,” she said, reading between the lines. He would shelter her as long as he had to. “I will get the house ready for the magazine, and then I’ll go. I can’t let this thing go on indefinitely.”

      He wanted, again, to sweep her up in his arms, to not let her feel she had to deal with this thing by herself. But what thing couldn’t she let go on indefinitely? Her thing with the stalker or her thing with him? He wanted to finish what they had started.

      But wouldn’t that be all about what was good for him? Filling some gaping hole inside him? It wouldn’t be about what was good for her. He was thankful she was putting a time limit on her stay, even though he had foolishly told her she could stay forever.

       Forever.

      He could imagine forever with a woman like her. He could imagine starlit boat rides and facing storms. He could, all too easily, imagine campfires on the beach. And decorating a nursery.

      But again, that was about some need in him that he had managed to outrun for a long time. He did not deserve that life. He had had his chance

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