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Above her head, Jay cooed and spoke softly. All the while, his hand continued stroking her tenderly. “It’s all right, sweetheart. Everything will be okay. Your grandfather loves you. Give him time.”
She blinked and felt the beginning of her tears subside. Jay must have felt it as well, for he gently pulled her out of his arms to peer down into her face. “Feel any better?”
Nodding, she offered a weak smile and brushed her eyes with the back of her hand. Jay reached down and offered her the hem of his shirt, which he hadn’t bothered to tuck in. She took it gratefully and wiped the moisture from her eyes before blowing her nose.
Jay chuckled.
Making a face, she wiped at the shirt apologetically. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right. I’ve got others.”
This brought a reminder. “Your clothes are still in my bedroom.”
His brows shot up and Erika could have groaned at her stupidly chosen words.
“I-I put them there in fear of grandfather finding them.”
He nodded in understanding.
Lifting her chin, she eyed him curiously. “You called me sweetheart.”
One brow arched, but otherwise he simply shrugged. “Did I? I hadn’t noticed.”
This didn’t sit well with Erika. “You did. When you were stroking my hair. You called me sweetheart.”
“All right.” He smiled. “If you say so.”
Aggravation had her pulling out of his embrace and glaring up at him. “I’m not lying. You did. I heard you.”
“Okay,” he chuckled and dropped his arms. “I believe you. I promise I won’t do it again.”
Her face fell. That wasn’t what she was after. Question was, what had she hoped he would say? Before she could give it another thought, something caught her attention just off to the right of his shoulder. At first she didn’t know what it was, but when recognition hit she felt all the blood in her body drain to the bottom of her feet. “J-Jay.”
He noticed her suddenly ashen face, so turned to look over his shoulder. His relaxed stance went rigid as he released a loud curse when he spotted the smoke from the train’s steam engine billowing over the treetops approaching the bridge.
“Run, Erika!”
She didn’t need to be told twice. Already having spun around on her heel, she was horrified to discover her beautiful satin boots were creating a nuisance with the wooden ties as she tried to maneuver them without getting the heel caught. This made her efforts far slower than she would have liked.
Jay too, apparently, as he grabbed her waist and tried to move her faster, but this only caused her movements to become stilted. In the end, her heel slid between two planks and refused to budge.
Erika’s heart raced at speeds equal to the approaching train. It rang its warning bell fiercely as it approached the couple on the bridge.
“Jay, my boot is stuck!” she screamed.
He tried yanking her free, but only resulted in having Erika scream out in pain as her ankle twisted in ghastly directions. She heard him curse again as he swiftly dropped down in front of her, threw up the skirts of her dress, and quickly began untying the laces that held the boot securely to her foot. Over his head, the train was coming far too quickly and Erika promptly resumed screaming. Not from pain this time, but from sheer fear.
Then the next thing she knew Jay had swung her up into his arms and raced at lethal speeds the remaining distance across the bridge where he threw them non-to-carefully into a roll down the dirt covered embankment.
Her boot? Firmly lodged between the railroad ties where the bridge had claimed it.
When they stopped rolling, the first thing to flash across Erika’s vision was the train overhead as it whizzed by, car after car. Then when it had gone and its deafening roar began to fade, she finally blinked and was able to focus on the man sprawled above her. He was breathing hard and she could feel every time he exhaled as his chest laid flattened against her breasts. Though he could easily have weighed several couple hundred pounds, she barely felt his weight.
“You okay?”
She nodded. The horror of what nearly happened could have easily left her speechless. However, Erika knew it had less to do with the train than it did with the man whose body pressed so intimately against her own.
Jay moved, shifting his weight to take some of the pressure off Erika. But he did not get up. She knew she ought to tell him to remove himself at once, but instead, she found herself gazing up into his face waiting breathlessly. For what, she wasn’t entirely sure.
