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All too soon he slipped from the house, and taking his time, making certain he wasn’t seen, he made his way to his back door and into the house.
Locking the door behind him, he slid the added security of a metal bar across it and made a mental note to bring up the subject of security with Poppy at some point. Getting into her home had been far too easy, and he knew by the locks she used, and the fact that she had a lock on her bedroom door, that she took her security seriously.
Because she was afraid.
Because she didn’t feel safe, even eight years after her attack. She’d been grabbed by Trencher in the dark and dragged into that dirty shack where he’d assaulted her. Now, the darkness was something she no longer trusted.
She did get horny, though…
Damn, he was not going to let himself become distracted by that thought again.
Pulling the secured mobile phone he carried from a side pocket of his black cargo pants, he quickly activated Ian’s number.
He made his report noting Ian’s obvious disappointment that there was nothing to be found. How anyone could imagine Poppy was involved in whatever was going on astounded him.
After finishing the call, he sighed and headed to the bedroom. He’d been looking forward to a good night’s sleep, but he doubted the hard-on torturing him would allow for much of that.
Nor would the thoughts of Poppy and that damned vibrator.
He wanted to watch her use it, he thought. Wanted to watch her work it inside herself, see what it did to her, and show her just how much better he could make it.
Fuck!
He’d never get any sleep…
CHAPTER FIVE
Three days later, and Poppy still couldn’t make sense of the information her brother had given her or make it fit with the man she’d always believed Jack to be. It tormented her, filled her thoughts and left her chest tight deep into the night.
For some reason, all these years she’d thought she knew Jack inside and out. It had taken her brother to make her realize that there was really no way that was possible.
Until he was fourteen, she’d known who he was, but hadn’t had any interaction with him. Mac and John David knew him, often mentioned that he’d come to school in dirty clothes, his face bruised. He was always angry, they said, and always confrontational. Mac had always spoken of Jack as though he felt sorry for him. John David had been critical sometimes.
When Poppy had found him hiding in their garbage, shivering, white but for the bruises that marred his exposed skin, her heart had instantly melted for the young boy. He’d been so determined to make her leave, but obviously desperate to hide from the father everyone knew to be a bully and drug user.
Once she’d gotten him into the house and her mother had given him clothes her brothers no longer wore, shoes, and a hot meal, Poppy had seen a gleam of fragile hope and thankfulness in him.
After her father had left the house with him to take him to his uncle’s, she hadn’t seen him for another four years. When he was eighteen, he showed up on their doorstep with flowers for her mother and a gift card to a building supply store for her father to thank them. Her mother for the food and clothes, her father for finding a cousin of her mother’s willing to take him in.
The cousin—a retired Navy SEAL—and his wife were childless, and had no knowledge of Jack before Cole Porter contacted them, but they’d immediately taken custody of the nearly broken Jack.
After that, for the next eight years, he came back to Barboursville for a few weeks every summer, sometimes a few months. He’d stay in the old house his parents had died in, working on it, keeping it repaired, and he always made a point to send her mother flowers and to find a chance to say hello to Poppy.
Just a few weeks out of the year. They didn’t talk much until she’d turned fifteen and began sneaking out with her friends to the summer parties. And he was always there. He’d talk to her awhile, let her flirt with him a little, and make certain no one bothered her or her friends. And she suspected he was the one who called her brother Mac each time to let him know she needed a ride home. Because it was always Mac who showed up to collect her and her friends.
For a few weeks out of the year, those years between fifteen and eighteen, Poppy found herself watching for him, waiting for him. Certain she loved him.
Then Wayne Trencher had struck and thrown her entire life off-kilter After that horrifying night, see’d rarely seen him. Other than a wave here and there, once or twice a hello, they hadn’t spoken.
Her mother still received flowers with a thank-you card, her father and Mac talked to him whenever he was in, but he’d avoided Poppy.
And still, she would have sworn she knew him to the depths of his soul if John David hadn’t made her realize that just wasn’t possible. The painful realization was like a dagger to a heart that just refused to accept that it could be true.
Standing in the wide window of her third-story office, Poppy watched the traffic below. The building sat close to the middle of town, the third floor dedicated to Crossfield-Dawson, though the two men owned the whole building and leased the two floors below to various other businesses.
She watched the pedestrians going to and fro, small groups gathering across the street in a tree-shaded, grassy area with half a dozen picnic tables. Across from the postage-stamp-sized picnic area were several restaurants and some of the smaller shopping establishments that led into the Barboursville mall. Trees lined the street, and the scene was peaceful. Tranquil.
It was a busy area, drawing shoppers and business professionals from Kentucky, West Virginia, and Ohio.
