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I slowly took the stairs, stopping just outside the closed door of the bedroom. After opening it, I remained in the doorway, doing nothing more than enjoying watching her even breathing. She was beautiful when she slept. Hell, when wasn’t she beautiful? As I started to back away, she shifted, easing into a sitting position.
“Is Daniel okay?”
The fact she was concerned about my family was testament to her resolve, as well as her goodness. I wanted answers. I needed them in order to proceed, but I wasn’t about to disturb her at this point. “He’s fine. A broken arm, cuts and bruises, but he’s strong.”
“That’s terrible. I hope you catch the son of a bitch.”
I had to laugh. “You’re getting more like me every day.”
“Ordinarily, I would say that’s terrible, but I’ll take it as a compliment. Aren’t you going to get some sleep?”
“I’ll try, but I have a lot on my mind.”
She scooted over, patting the bed and pulling back the covers. There was an imploring look in her eyes as well as one of continued confusion. I should turn the light off and leave her alone, but I couldn’t. As I walked closer, she never took her eyes off me, propping up the pillows as she smiled.
As I stared down at her, the draw was even more magnetic than it had been hours before. She had that kind of effect on me.
“I don’t bite,” she purred.
“But I do.” I placed the weapon on the nightstand, noticing her gaze didn’t follow my action. Then I eased onto the side of the bed, leaning over and folding my hands.
“Tough day?” she asked, rubbing my shoulders. As she massaged my aching muscles, I took several deep breaths.
How could one woman who’d lost everything she’d known offer me comfort? “Not as tough as some.”
“You need rest.”
“Yeah, but there’s too much going on.”
“You can’t solve all the problems of the world tonight. Start fresh when the sun rises and the birds start to sing.”
I threw her a look over my shoulder. “Were you always this chipper?”
Jade tugged on my arm, and I allowed her to pull me against the pillows. When she crawled closer, dragging my legs onto the bed, she exhaled as if prepared to tell me a story.
“My mother had it rough most of her life, including after we left Kansas City. She didn’t like Miami, not even a little bit. While we were still in Missouri, we had a crappy apartment in a really bad part of town. But she always had a smile on her face. She worked as a waitress at night, a secretary for a mean asshole in the day, but there wasn’t a time I could remember when she didn’t tuck me in.”
“Why Missouri?”
“She had a sister there, but my aunt died not long after we moved.”
As she yanked off one of my shoes then the other, I marveled at the way she’d handled me from the beginning.
“And,” she continued, “she’d always tell me something positive to go to sleep by. She said it was to keep the nightmares away. When I was a kid, it always worked. After the… trial, she doubled up on her sayings, trying to break through the layer of protection I’d placed around myself.”
“What happened when you got to Miami?”
“We had a better place, and she never told me how, but I’d realized my father had paid for it. Don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t fancy, but it was much larger with big windows and in a secure building.” She yanked the covers up, snuggling against me, but I sensed tension in her. “I did lie to you about him.”
“How so?”
“On his last visit, which was a little over a month before Mama died, he said he’d left some money for us in a bank account and that if anything happened, he’d make certain we had access. I had a number I could call and when Mama got so bad and I could barely make ends meet because I had to take care of her, I did call him.”
“And?”
She lifted her head. “No answer. Nothing. No voicemail. I didn’t know what to do. I kept calling until the day she died. Then I stopped bothering.”
“Have you heard from him since?” I was shocked at her admittance. I also needed the damn number, although I suspected it was nothing more than a burner phone he’d tossed long ago.
