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Then he saw her. Danni was heading in his direction. She wasn’t wearing much, just a short, cotton nightgown and her feet were bare. The reaction he felt was in his jeans. She walked right up to him and looked at him with sleepy eyes.
“Was that Jesse?” She asked.
He nodded.
She was afraid. He could see it in her eyes, but her fear wasn’t for herself. It was for him. “What did he want?” Danni asked.
“A favor.”
“Did you tell him to go to hell?” She snapped. Danni still believed that Jesse was the root of his troubles eight years ago. She still believed in him. He reached out and caressed her cheek. The softness of her skin surprised him. The sound that escaped through her pretty, lips shocked him to his core. He dropped his hand and took a step back, easier to put distance between them than to do something stupid like kiss her which is what he wanted to do.
“Go back inside,” Walker told her.
“I want you to come inside right now. You can sleep on the sofa.”
“No,” he said with more force than he had intended. Her sofa was too close to her bed wher
e he wanted to be. Danni was sweet and vulnerable, and he wouldn’t take advantage of her.
She took his hand and tugged on him. “Yes Walker, please. I won’t sleep if you’re out here where Jesse could surprise you.”
She didn’t understand. In prison, you slept with one eye open all the time. No one would surprise him. She wouldn’t give up. She tugged on him again. Danni wanted him in her house with her where she would feel secure.
“All right, dammit. Let me get my things.”
She released him and let Walker grab his shoes, socks and shirt. In the grass that tickled his feet with dampness, he walked across the lawn to the cabin’s back door. “What are you doing up?” He asked her.
“You aren’t the only one who sleeps light,” she informed him.
“I guess so.” Walker followed along behind Danni carrying his things, watching every movement of her body. The way her hips swayed. The swing of her hands by her side. The small steps she took even though her shapely legs were long. She was delicate and appeared fragile, but Walker knew that there was nothing about this woman that was breakable.
Danni was strong. She had grown up with six brothers and they had taught her well how to take care of herself. Jackson had come close to breaking her. The one thing they didn’t know that he did was how close he had come.
She had written him letters in prison. Maybe because he didn’t or wouldn’t write back. It gave her comfort to spill her heart out in words that only his eyes would see. He had kept every one of them. The words broke his heart because Jackson had shredded her, and he wasn’t there to pick up the pieces of her. Walker wasn’t sure that her brothers could see just how bad she really was. He had hoped that writing to him was giving her peace because it was tearing him apart.
When he got out three years ago, he was on probation. Things could have been awkward. Walker could have brought up the letters she had written to him. The letters that were stored in his duffel bag, that he kept at Matt’s house. The bag that stored all his possessions that meant anything to him. His grandmother’s ring that his grandfather gave to him when she died. He wanted Walker to give it to his wife. He laughed at that notion. He would never have that in his life. He was an ex-con. He wouldn’t attach that stigma to a wife or children.
Everything else in his life was expendable, including him. Danni didn’t think so. Walker knew that Danni cared for him but love? She didn’t love him. She thought the moon and the sun set on him like she did when she was just a little girl with freckles on her nose and pigtails in her hair. She gazed at him, now like she did at eight-years-old, staring up at his seventeen-year-old self. Matt would always tease him about Danni’s crush on him.
Now, she wasn’t eight. Now, Danni had curves like a woman. Curves that made him want things he shouldn’t. He cleared his throat. She turned and looked at him. She was bent over the sofa, giving him a perfect view of her beautiful ass. She was tucking a sheet into the sofa. “Let me do that,” he croaked.
She looked at him with a strange expression. “I’m almost done. I can finish.” She bent over the sofa once again, the nightgown barely covering her shapely bottom. She wasn’t wearing underwear, he was sure of it. He almost groaned out loud. He scrubbed his hands over his face and waited for her to make up his bed on the couch.
Danni straightened, and Walker looked towards the ceiling. Thank you, Jesus, he muttered to himself. She fluffed his pillow and threw down a blanket for him too. “There you go,” she said.
“Thank you,” he replied.
She tugged him down and kissed his cheek. “Sleep tight,” she told him then headed towards her bedroom.
“Like that is going to happen now,” he mumbled.
“What?” Danni turned at the bedroom door.
“Nothing,” he said. “Go to bed.”
She went to her room, leaving the door open. He laid on the sofa and could see her outline on the bed. He turned and put the pillow at the other end, so he didn’t have to look at her all night.
“Walker,” she called to him.
