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She’d thought for a while after the attack that she would be happy if no one ever touched her again, but her therapist had warned her that touch was something the human body craved, much in the same way it needed food to eat and air to breathe. Not necessarily a romantic touch, but any kind of touch. A hug. A hand in hers. A friendly shoulder to cry on. Anything.
No one touched her anymore.
It was one of the saddest realizations she’d had in months.
What in the world was she going to do about that?
Gwen glanced guiltily up at the good-looking man at her side. He would not be helping her with that particular problem.
She started babbling, as she tended to do when she was nervous.
“I saw the cars on my way home…. I live just around the block. My aunt was Charlotte, and when she moved to Florida a few months ago, she offered me the use of her house.” Aunt Charlotte had admitted to being in a terrible rut after her husband died and very, very lonely. Her two sons, their wives and children had settled in Florida four years ago, and she missed them terribly. Now that her husband was gone, there was nothing keeping her here. She’d leased a furnished condo, left all her things behind and gone to Florida to try out living there. If she liked it, she was moving permanently. “She spoke very highly of your mother,” Gwen said. “And…well, when I saw that you had a crowd of people dropping by, I thought someone might be hungry….”
Her voice trailed off at the end. They’d gotten to the kitchen where the counters were already overflowing with culinary offerings.
“I guess everyone else had the same idea,” she said, feeling both foolish and intrusive now.
“No, it’s good.” He took the quiche from her and found a place for it on the counter. “My sisters were in a panic this afternoon, claiming the house would be full and that we didn’t have anything to offer anyone. They were about to call the deli on the corner and beg them for an emergency delivery of some trays of food, when friends and neighbors started arriving, bringing things. People have been very kind.”
Gwen nodded, seeing clearly that no matter how kind anyone had been, this man was still sad and tired. And she’d been having entirely inappropriate thoughts about him at a time like this.
He’d probably been exhausted before he’d set out to run today, maybe intent on exhausting himself even more to forget for a little while what had happened.
“I’m sorry you lost her,” she said. “I know how hard that is.”
He nodded. “Thanks…. Uh. Sorry. I didn’t even ask your name.”
“Gwen,” she said. “Gwen Moss.”
He held out his hand, gripped hers for a moment and said, “Jackson Cassidy. Most people call me Jax.”
“If there’s anything I can do…” she said.
He nodded. “I guess we’ll need flowers. I forgot. I want her to have lots of them. Pretty, colorful ones. Not funeralish stuff. She liked big, bold colors.”
“Whatever you want,” Gwen promised, although she hated doing funeral arrangements.
“I’ll come in. Soon. My sisters and I have about a million things to do, and I think flowers ended up on my list of things to take care of.”
She wanted to tell him they’d make it as quick and painless as possible for him, but doubted anything about this would be painless. Life was so difficult at times.
She’d been completely unprepared for that. Somehow, she’d gotten the idea that life was supposed to be a breeze, that bad things would somehow simply not touch her.
Was that the way it was supposed to be? Or had she just gotten unlucky, been in the wrong place at the wrong time?
That’s what the detective had said to her. Wrong place, wrong time. While she’d sat shivering on a darkened curb near an even darker alley, on a cold, dreary night that still had the power to send her shooting out of bed screaming.
Gwen looked up to find Jack Cassidy staring down at her. She wondered exactly how his mother had died. In a warm, safe bed surrounded by the people who loved her and not feeling any pain? The kind of death a person saw coming from miles away, which gave her all the time she needed to say her goodbyes and tell the people she loved how important they were to her?
Gwen hoped Mrs. Cassidy went just like that, then wondered if it really mattered at all. If anything could lessen the pain of losing someone you loved. The woman was still gone, after all.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
Gwen nodded. “I just…It’s been a tough year. I should go.”
She turned to do just that, and then saw the dog. Romeo, if possible, looked even more solemn than Jackson Cassidy had. His head hung low as he moped into the kitchen and whined pitifully.
“Oh, you poor baby,” Gwen said.
He looked up at her with sad, puppy-dog eyes, and she bent down and fussed over him, taking his snout between her two hands and touching her nose to his wet one. She kissed his face, then released him and stood back up.
Romeo brushed up against her, leaning into her side, and she rubbed the soft fur on his equally soft head.
“He was your mother’s dog?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“I remember my aunt talking about what a gorgeous dog your mother had, but I hadn’t seen him since I came to the neighborhood.”
“My mother hadn’t been out much in the last few months, and Romeo didn’t want to leave her side.”
“Oh.” It made her even sadder for the dog. He was sitting at her feet, and she leaned down and hugged him. He gave a little whine and stuck out his bottom lip, as if to show the depths of his misery.
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, Romeo. Some days, life is rotten.”
Chapter Four
Standing safely in her own driveway, her car locked, house keys in her hand and ready, Gwen glanced back at Mrs. Cassidy’s house. On the back porch, watching her, stood a tall, shadowy figure. She couldn’t see his face, not at that distance and in the dark, but she was certain it was Jax.
Was he worried about her? Or simply wondering if she was capable of getting herself home without falling apart?
Not that it mattered in the least what Jackson Cassidy or any other man thought of her.
But she was caught up in the idea of him waiting and watching to see that she got safely inside, feeling for a moment like it wasn’t all up to her. That if something happened on her way home, he would have helped her.
Gwen turned and unlocked the back door. Inside, she punched her code into the security system she’d had installed and then turned on lights. All of them. Gwen liked lights. Bright ones. Especially at night.
She clicked on the TV, which was usually set to one of the music channels because she didn’t like a completely quiet house any more than she liked a dark one. It was too easy to hear the normal things that went bump in the night and wonder if they were actually normal or something she should be concerned about.
So she let the music drown out the little sounds.
She’d do anything she could to make it easier on herself, and she didn’t care if that made her a coward or weak. She just didn’t care.
She went into the kitchen, automatically checking to see that everything was in its place, just as she’d left it, reassured to see that it was. Then she made herself a plate with chicken salad and some apple slices, which she ate at the breakfast bar in the kitchen while glancing at a magazine.
