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“But . . . how?” she sobs, her lips quivering like she’s coming apart, like the realization that we’re together is hitting her and breaking her into little pieces because it’s so far from her world of sweet innocence and warm cookies. “Xavier, I’m . . .”
“You’re mine, and that’s all you need to know right now.” I stroke her hair, wipe the tears from her smooth cheeks, smile warmly into her blinking blue eyes. “Everything else will fall into place. You’ll see, baby. I promise.”
Now her eyes widen. “No, don’t promise something you can’t control!” she says frantically, sitting up and looking around wildly, like she’d been in a trance and is just coming out of it and realizing she’s half-naked in her truck with the engine running, waiting for the Bloom Foods loading dock to free up so she can make her morning delivery. “Oh, shit, I need to pull into the loading dock. Where are my panties? Oh, fuck it.”
Connie shoves me away, pulls her track-pants up without bothering to look for her panties.
Which is good, because she won’t find those panties.
They’re mine now.
I sit up in my seat, sliding my thieving hands into the kangaroo-pouch sweatshirt pocket where I’ve hidden my sticky-sweet prize of damp pink satin. It’s filthy and perverted, but I can’t help myself, can’t stop the dirty grin from breaking as I stroke the wet underwear, then bring my fingers to my nose and sniff like a sex-crazed psycho.
“Stop staring at me like a psycho,” Connie says, furrowing her brow as she checks her side-mirrors to reverse into the loading dock. “Pull your hood back on and slump down in the seat, for heaven’s sake. You’re supposed to be a fugitive, so act like it instead of grinning like everything is perfect.”
“Everythingisperfect, baby,” I say smoothly, sliding my palm over her thigh, chuckling when she smacks it away while showing an excited smile that tells me she’s mine, that she’s starting to trust my confidence in our fate, beginning to believe my bullshit, allowing herself to accept that maybe we do control how the damn cookie crumbles.
But then my grin fades when Connie flinches.
“What is it?” I follow her gaze to the Bloom Foods parking lot, which is only about a quarter full this early in the morning. Mostly employee cars, I figure. Definitely no police cars or trooper vehicles. “What are you looking at, baby?”
“Nothing,” Connie mutters, her grip on the steering wheel tightening. She finishes reversing the truck into the loading-dock slot, then turns off the engine and crawls through the open hatch into the back to start unloading the cookie-cartons.
I stay in my seat, sweep my gaze over the parking lot, searching for anything out of the ordinary. At first, I don’t seeanything that would have made Connie flinch like that, made her body tense up like she was scared.
But then I notice that one of the parked cars has a man sitting behind the wheel.
Immediately my body tightens. Turning to Connie in the back, I’m about to say something but stop when she pulls up the rear shutter. There’s a Bloom Foods employee standing there with an empty dolly. Connie greets him warmly, helps him stack the cookie-cartons on the dolly, then thanks him when he counts the boxes and signs off on her invoice. I stay silent and hidden until Connie closes the shutter and gets back to her seat behind the wheel. She’s about to start the engine, but I reach out, pull the key from the ignition, and shake my head.
“Um, what are you doing?” she asks with an impatient frown that comes after she shoots another furtive glance at that shadowy figure watching us from the parked car across the lot. “Xavier, don’t play around. I’m not in the mood right now.”
“Yeah, I see that.” Keeping the keys away from her reach, I gesture subtly with my head towards that parked car which Connie clearly recognizes. “That’s him, isn’t it. Patrick. He’s stalking you. He’s been stalking you for five fucking years!”
Connie stops like she’s been slapped. She gives up trying to snatch the keys back, stares at me for a long moment, then slumps into her seat, covers her face with both hands, lets out a shuddering sigh. Then she looks at me and shakes her head.
“No,” she says softly. “I mean, yes, it is Patrick. But he hasn’t been stalking me for five years, Xavier. He did for a few weeks after I turned down his marriage proposal. Would show up at the bakery where I worked at the time. He was always drunk and stinking of whiskey. He started off begging me to marry him, then escalated to getting really nasty, calling me a fat bitch who should be grateful that someone like Patrick Kieran the Thirdwanted to even fuck her, let alone marry her.” Connie’s face hardens at the memory, and my face tightens at the name.
“Kieran?” It’s difficult for me to speak, I’m squinting so hard to get a look at this motherfucker Patrick. But he’s too far away, and my throat is constricting too tight for me to say anything else so I just sit in stunned silence and listen.
“Yes, Kieran,” Connie says. “Anyway, that was really upsetting, even scary. But then suddenly it stopped after a few weeks. Not sure what happened, but Patrick never showed up at the bakery or my house again. No phone calls either. Just disappeared. It was a huge relief.” She sighs, then shrugs. “Didn’t think too much about it after that. Mama got really sick around that time. The cancer was back, and she passed away a couple of months later.”
“I’m sorry,” I manage to mutter through gritted teeth as the name Patrick swirls around inside my head, transforming to Padraig as it burns through the synapses of my roiling brain. “I’m sorry, babe.”
“Thanks.” Connie shrugs, offers a glum smile, then continues. “Anyway, I was obviously distracted with Mama getting sick and all the arrangements after she passed. Then I sold the old house and started my business, and it was almost a year before I even remembered that Patrick had thankfully disappeared from my life.”
“But now he’s back,” I snarl as the pieces start to fit even though there’s no logical connection, no connection that makes sense in the world of common sense and reason. “He disappeared for five years, but now he’s back. Let me guess, Patrick showed up again sometime last week.”
Connie cocks her head, screws her face into a quizzical frown. “Yes. He showed up at my store randomly last week. It freaked me out, but thankfully the store was crowded and so he left. But how . . . how do you know he showed up starting last week?”
My head throbs. I rub my eyes, swallow thickly, shake my head. “Take out your phone,” I say softly. “Go to the camera app. Use the zoom-in feature so I can get a look at Patrick Kieran the Third’s ugly fucking face. I want to be sure.”
“Sure of . . . what?” Connie’s voice wavers as she does what I ask. She holds up the phone so I can see the grainy zoomed-in image of the guy behind the wheel of that faraway car. “Xavier, what is it? You’re scaring me. Sure of what?”
My mind is splintering into a thousand pieces. It takes a moment to gather myself enough to speak coherently.
“Patrick and Padraig,” I say stiffly. “They’re the same name, right? A guy might switch to make himself sound more traditionally Irish, to fit in better with the hardcore Irish thugs, something like that?”
Connie shrugs, then nods. “Padraig is the Irish Gaelic pronunciation. Patrick is the English version. So yeah, I guess they’re the same name. Why?”
