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Daddy limited my sweets consumption growing up. He liked healthier eating habits. Organic choices all the way. Even our meat had to come from farmers he got to know and checked out. A lump formed in my throat.
"Are you hungry?"
I blinked once, then cut a look at my companion. The man leap frogged from subject to subject. "Why would you ask?" Distance. Deflect. Distract. Determine.
Four of the five Ds. The fifth wouldn't apply here.
"Because you looked a little distressed," Merrick said in a tone that suggested he might be humoring me. I started the vehicle and cut a look at him. Who was he?
"You said you were in a program?" No one was around, but I eased down the street with no lights on. There weren't a lot of street lamps in this neighborhood and even fewer cameras. What cameras there were, none were aimed at this road.
"Yep," he said with an ease of those completely comfortable in their skin. He was so relaxed and calm. Had I not been in that alley, had I not seen him beat John Joseph Randolph III to death with his hands, I wasn't entirely certain I'd believe him capable of it. "Is that what has you worried?"
"Hmm?" We'd made it a little over a mile down the road and I eased the lights on as I drove across a parking lot and into the brighter area around the grocery store and then merged onto traffic.
"That I was in a program?" He rubbed a hand against his jaw, almost thoughtful. "I can see how that might worry you. I mean, you're gorgeous, not that being gorgeous is worrisome. But you're a gorgeous, single woman, who was just accosted in a dark alley and now you've got me, a perfect stranger, who just got out of a 'program' in your car."
He frowned.
Practice kept my expression in check. It probably occurred to him he wasn't doing himself any favors.
"I may have worded that badly," Merrick admitted.
"No, I think you summed it up beautifully." I kept scanning the area, out of habit. Shift change would be over in the next fifteen minutes and fresh patrols would hit the road. I turned onto the highway and accelerated up the on ramp.
He chuckled, the rich timbre of it almost decadent. There was a kind of freedom in his laugh that I hadn't heard in a long time. Daddy had that kind of laugh when something genuinely tickled him. It happened rarely enough that each time had been something remarkable.
Still, something he said earlier tickled at the back of my brain. Details. It was always about the details. "You mentioned moving here for your family, I'm surprised they didn't pick you up. You know, after your program."
"They absolutely would have," he answered me easily even if some of his humor faded away. "But they died in a car accident about a year after we moved here. Drunk driver. All very—tragic and sad. He walked away without a scratch, they were all dead."
An unfamiliar sadness twinged inside my heart, right next to the righteous fury of how the monster walked away when his victims didn’t. “What happened to the man?”
“He was convicted for manslaughter with a vehicle. Serving time at the corrections facility.”
Good. I hadn’t added anyone to Daddy’s list, but in this case, I wouldn’t have been above it. “You don’t have any other family? Friends?”
He shook his head once in a hard clip. “No, no family. And no good friends either. None that have stuck over the years.” There was something in his voice that sounded one part dejected and two parts resigned. Then, he brightened and tossed a smile my way as he propped an arm along the window. “So, you have me all to yourself.”
“Lucky me,” I murmured, but couldn’t quite keep an answering smile from slipping over my face. This guy was deranged, in a sweet kind of way, that was irresistible.
Merrick grinned as if he were the lucky one. And really, he was. I’d saved his ass. Although it could arguably be said that he “saved” mine first. At least in his mind.
“You never did say where we were going.” It was more of a statement instead of a question.
“Oh, I didn’t?” That was because I was trying to figure out the best possible way to drop him off safely, while constantly monitoring my surroundings for any minute detail that seemed out of place. “Do you own your parent’s place? Is that where you want me to take you?”
It was dark now. I could drop him off quickly, without anyone the wiser, depending on where they lived.
“I sold that house when I went into rehab. I was doing my part to get rid of unhealthy attachments,” he said casually as if I wouldn’t question everything about that.
“You had an unhealthy attachment to your parents’ house?” I asked as my eyebrows climbed. Was this man abused at some point? That evoked more emotion than I found comfortable.
“Not to the house, no. It was part of my self-induced therapy. Then, one of my therapists kindly pointed out I might have jumped the gun, since I didn’t secure another residence first.” He gave a shrug. “I form attachments too easily and that’s a problem for some people. Apparently going the other way and cutting off attachments to things wasn’t the way to go either.”
I sighed. I wanted to help this man, but I couldn’t take him home with me. That was throwing out everything my father had drilled into me from childhood.
Slanting a quick glance at Merrick, I sighed, my resolve softening for this man with every passing second. The streetlights briefly illuminated his strong features from the straight line of his nose, his proud chin, and an overabundance of dark lashes framing painfully honest eyes.
