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“Snap out of it, Sorrel. This guy is playing you,” Josie snarled.
I let go of Eric’s hand, though no part of me wanted to. That was, until my eyes were able to focus on what was on the papers. It was a copy of my father’s coroner’s report. Eric had scribbled on the top, Both her mother’s and father’s deaths are suspicious. Is Sorrel somehow involved?
I lost the ability to breathe. How dare he? I glared at Eric. How could I have ever thought he would protect me? I didn’t even know him. What had happened to my instincts? “How could you?” I was hurt in a way I had never felt before. In a way I didn’t understand. “Get out of here.” I shoved the papers against his chest. “I don’t care what you put in your stupid article, but I never want to see you again.” I shook, on the verge of tears.
Eric trapped the papers and my hand, holding them firmly against his chest. “I have to cover every angle,” he defended himself. “It’s not personal,” he begged me to believe him.
I ripped my hand way from his, making the papers fall to the floor. “That’s where you’re wrong. The deaths of my parents were very personal to me. And when did baking cakes and helping people become a story worthy of digging into my past?”
He had to think for a moment. “I don’t know . . . but I know there’s a story here. There are a lot of questions and holes in your past. A lot of things no one can explain about you.”
There were a lot of things I couldn’t explain, either, but . . . “Sometimes, there’s beauty in not knowing how or why good things happen. But people like you will never understand that, because you live off bringing others down. So, go ahead, Mr. Knight, keep digging. Maybe eventually you’ll find the truth—that you’re just a jerk.”Chapter SixEric
Eric repeatedly punched his pillow, unable to sleep. All he could see every time he closed his eyes was the scathing way Sorrel had looked at him after seeing those damn papers. He had gotten careless, leaving them out for her annoying friend to find. But when Sorrel had beckoned for him to follow her, it’s all he wanted to do. He had a feeling he would have followed her off a cliff if she’d asked. It’s why the moisture he’d seen in her eyes plagued him. A woman’s tears had never affected him so much before, but the way she bravely held them in stung him in a way he’d never known. In a way he couldn’t explain.
All of this had nothing on her touch. When she’d taken his hand, it had surprised him at first. But that had quickly been replaced with a feeling of never wanting to let her go. He could still feel her slender fingers interlocking with his as if that was what they were made to do. What a crazy thought. He sat up and flipped on his bedside lamp, running his fingers through his hair. This woman had overtaken his every thought. This need to protect her swelled within him. But the only person he needed to protect her from was himself. She’d accused him of being a jerk. She had no idea he was that and more.
He picked up his watch to look at the time—one a.m. Apparently sleep would elude him again.
Little did Sorrel know that she had been keeping him up the last several nights. He wasn’t complaining. He’d enjoyed their time spent together in her dreams. He glanced over at the ever-empty side of his bed. What he wouldn’t give to have her there, asleep on his bare chest like she had been last night in her peaceful slumber. He almost hated himself for delving into her dreams. He knew what a violation it was, but he had to know her. To find out if she was truly as good as everyone said she was, as good as he had seen with his own eyes.
He thought about how she treated everyone who came into her bakery like they were family. How her smile lit up a room and how her touch made others happy—even himself, though he’d done a poor job of showing it. He’d forgotten what it felt like to feel that way. It almost frightened him, as he knew it could never last.
He scrubbed a hand over his face. There were too many questions surrounding her. Or were there, really? Was he making something out of nothing because all he had been taught his entire life was to be suspicious of everyone around him? His blood boiled thinking about how much he resented his upbringing, yet he fell right in line with it. Even the career he was forced into required an unhealthy dose of suspicion. It was why, when he was forced to take this assignment, he had assumed there was a scandal involved.
