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I throw my arm up to shield my eyes, but as I do, there’s a thud from the front of the vehicle and the front bumper warning sensors go off.
I slam on the brakes as another flash lights up the night. “Fuck!” I bring the huge SUV to a dead stop, peering out my driver’s window into the wet street, straining in the dark and rain to see what I’ve hit. I see a red dress soaked and clinging around a motionless body lying in the street.
I throw open my door, my heart pounding, and a flood of relief rushes through me as she moans, trying to sit up.
“Easy.” I cradle the back of her head and see blood mixing with the rain and making a red rivulet in her blonde hair.
Her red lips open as she tries to breathe through the downpour, eyelids fluttering as she looks up at me.
And suddenly I feel like I’m falling.
Tumbling into the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen. Her bright red lipstick matches her soaking silk dress, which clings to her every curve and shows off hardened nipples under the thin fabric.
“You hit me!” she snaps, blinking away the rain that clings to her dark lashes.
“I didn’t see you.”
She winces and brings her hand to the side of her head, pushing herself up on the pavement with her other arm.
“I’m wearing a red dress,” she hisses, motioning with her hands to her midsection. “How could you not see me?” She smacks my hand from the back of her head. “Stop touching me!”
I feel a loss as she shoves my hand away, and I want to scoop her up to draw her in closer. “I’m sorry. It’s not the greatest weather for seeing things,” I mutter, unused to making excuses or apologizing. “Even beautiful, red things.”
2
Esme
THERE ARE BAD DAYS.
Then there are bad days.
After everything else going on in my life, I’m now laying in the street, soaking wet, looking up at a man that looks like he could kill me with his pinkie.
Or break my heart with his eyes.
“What are you doing running around out here in the rain, anyway?” he asks, reaching down to slide his hand under my back even after I slapped him away a second ago.
I let it go because...ugh...I kind of want his hands on me.
“That’s on a need-to-know basis,” I snip, the pressure from the day and the horrific outcome of what I thought could be a saving-grace job bringing out more bitchiness than is my usual. “And you don’t need to know.”
“Okay, then.” His voice is as deep as the thunder rumbling above, and another crash and flash of lightning make me startle and yelp. “I don’t need to know, but I do know we both need to get off this street. Let me get you in the car before we become lightning rods—or we both get run over. You okay to stand?”
He runs his hand down one leg, then the other, making my heart pound. It’s not sexual—his touch feels protective—but it’s having a crazy effect on me nonetheless.
The headlights from his SUV show a face that looks like it’s seen its share of fights, but the ruggedness gives him an edge that is wildly sexy. He’s older, like a lot older, but that, too, is only adding to whatever voodoo he seems to have cast over me. Rain is dripping from thick black hair plastered onto a jutting forehead and running down over lips that were made for kissing.
Even crouched down next to me, he’s enormous. Like, otherworldly enormous. And I wonder if he has to have all his clothes custom made.
I squeeze my eyes shut for a moment, realizing it must just be the bump on my head making me feel weird.
“Yes, I can stand,” I answer, shifting my legs under me and smoothing the wet fabric of my dress down around them, trying to shake away the vulgar porno playing with him as the lead in my head. “They don’t hurt, just scratches.”
That’s a lie because my head is pounding, and my knees are burning from smacking the pavement. Water is running into my eyes and down my face, soaking through the dress and sticking it to my skin. My nipples tingle and harden, and I’m not entirely sure if it’s from the freezing rain or something else.
There’s something about this guy that feels both dangerous and safe at the same time. He looks like he belongs in a boardroom, but the energy around him feels more like The Godfather.
He helps me up, leads me around to the passenger door and lifts me up and inside before jogging around the front of the SUV and hopping in the driver’s side while I fight back more tears.
When I showed up for work yesterday morning at the courthouse, bringing everyone who’s anyone their morning coffee, as usual, I did the best I could to hide my swollen, red eyes. I had spent the night before at the dining room table with my mother at the home where I grew up, two hours away in Greenbriar, going over the mountainous stack of medical bills and other past-due expenses for my father’s now full-time nursing home care.
