AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Don’t take that as a complaint, because I’m not complaining. Yeah, I might be behind on my deliveries now, but that’s nothing a call to my manager won’t fix. He likes me. He knows that I care about my job and doing it well. If I tell him I prevented an armed kidnapping during a stop I took for a break, he’ll give me a pass for the evening and find someone to finish the route tomorrow. As I wait for Kat to gather her things from the store’s back room, I make a mental note to give him a call as soon as I’m back at my truck.
Kat, I muse to myself … The little woman who now has my heart and soul by the balls.
Yeah, definitely not how I pictured my night going.
I mean, what self-respecting man wouldn’t be affected by such a beautiful, precious thing leaning into my every touch? As soon as I have the thought, however, that dark, strange thing in the back of my mind growls. I realize that my statement isn’t quite right and that it doesn’t quite hit upon how I feel. What I really think is this: no man with an ounce of self-respect would ever think of laying their hands on Kat, actually. Not if they value keeping their limbs attached.
That same dark part of my mind is what pushed me to say I’d walk her out to her car. I don’t give a fuck if I’m a practical stranger to her, I don’t trust Kat’s coworker. That Jim guy? Fucking waste of space. He wasn’t there when the gunman first appeared, and from her statement, it sounds like he’d been gone for much longer than he was supposed to be. She said something about his shift meal and how he always takes more time than he’s supposed to, and given what happened to her tonight, I have a hard time calling it a coincidence.
Maybe I’m seeing the worst in a piece of shit like him, but it’s hard not to when his negligence threatened Kat’s life. Not that a scrawny scrub like him would be able to stop someone armed with a pistol, but they’d be less likely to try something like that.
In the end, it doesn’t matter much, because I was there.
I was able to step in and put a stop to whatever the gunman’s plan was.
And more importantly, I was able to be around for Kat as she gave her statement to the police. She did so well, telling them everything she knew and what she remembered about the altercation. I know she was nervous; she was trembling like a leaf until I helped her sit on the counter.
Lust pools deep in my belly at the memory of her body against mine. The memory of how her hands had found my arms immediately as I lifted her makes my skin tingle with heat. Already, I find myself longing for her touch again. Her leaning into mine isn’t enough. I want her to feel like she can touch me too. I know I’ll lean into it just like she leaned into my own touches.
Fuck. This woman is addicting. I can’t afford a distraction, both literally and figuratively, but something tells me that I’m not going to be able to let Kat go after tonight.
I can only hope and pray she feels the same way.
When Kat emerges from the back room, she has a little more color in her cheeks, as if time out of the spotlight of other peoples’ attention did her good. She’s pulled on a thin zip-up hoodie over her uniform shirt, and she’s replaced the non-slip work shoes with more comfortable looking slip-ons. Over her shoulder is a well-loved backpack, which I take from her as soon as she’s close enough. Her eyes widen as she watches me swing it over my own shoulder.
“Ready to go?” I ask her.
She nods up at me shyly as her cheeks flush a mouthwatering shade of pink.
Do other parts of her flush like that?
I push the thought away as she leads me out the front door, past the chatting police officers, her boss, and a put-out looking Jim. He pales and looks away when I glare at him, muttering nothing more than a “Have a good night, Kat” as we walk past him and out the door.
“Good night,” my ass, I think darkly as I follow Kat around the building. Best part of that interaction is that I don’t think she even heard him—he sounded like he may have been too quiet for her to. She didn’t seem to notice him at all.
Good. She’s too good to have to deal with the likes of him.
Honestly, she’s probably too good for me too, which means I’m even more thankful that she’s let me give her so much attention tonight.
As we approach her parked car, a newer model in a make that seems rather luxurious for someone who works in a convenience store, I realize it’s dark. I keep expecting a floodlight or streetlamp to turn on as we move, but there’s nothing.
Suddenly, I’m even more glad that I walked her to her car.
“Is there supposed to be a light out here?” I ask her as she digs through her pockets for her keys.
“Yeah,” she sighs softly. “But it only works half the time.”
Something about that makes me prickle. Maybe I need to stop back inside before going back to my truck to tell that manager of hers that it needs to be fixed. The light from the moon isn’t enough to allow people to look for potential threats. That should be a priority, given what’s happened tonight.
Kat deserves to feel safe wherever she goes.
The lights of her car flash and I hear the door locks click as she unlocks the vehicle. She looks at the car for a long moment before looking up at me.
“Thank you,” she says. “For everything, tonight.”
“Anyone would have done the same.”
The look she gives me tells me she doesn’t think so. As much as it breaks my heart, it also makes me want to assure her that someone would have … Even then, it doesn’t matter because I was there. And I will now always be there for her.
