Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 71625 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 358(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71625 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 358(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)
I shivered as I made my way back to the parking lot.
I’d just decided that I would need to wear some better socks in the morning with the boots I was wearing—wondering if Steel had any that he’d let me borrow—when I heard water sloshing behind me.
My stomach started to roil.
I hastened my steps, coming to the conclusion that I shouldn’t have come all the way over here in the dark, alone, without an escort. That was rather stupid, and I knew better.
When I was younger, a few weeks shy of nineteen, and walking home from school with Conleigh, I’d had a similar experience.
I’d gotten off shift and had immediately walked over to pick my daughter up from the campus daycare. It was nearly six in the evening, and it being the first or second day after daylight savings time ended, I’d forgotten how dark it got so early.
I’d walked with Conleigh as fast as I could, and had managed to make it three quarters of the way home before realizing that we were being followed.
The man doing the following had been slick. I hadn’t even heard or seen him until we were turning the street to our apartment complex.
Instead of going inside my own apartment and leading him to the front door of where I stayed alone with my young child, I went into the laundry mat where quite a few of the young residents had been doing their clothes at the time.
I’d swallowed my heart when I’d arrived inside to find the man standing there watching me.
Two days after the incident, I’d found out that the same man had raped another young mom on a walk home much the same as I had been. I’d been crucial in identifying him during the investigation, and he’d gone to jail for ten years.
Shivering at the thought of him getting out soon, I chanced a look behind me to see that no one was there any longer.
Then I looked forward and stopped.
The reason he wasn’t behind me any longer was because he was now in front of me.
What the fuck?
I froze a few inches away from a useless light pole that was about eighty yards away from the command tent and stared, heart in my throat.
“I’m sure you don’t remember me…”
I shook my head. “No.”
He laughed then. “Funny, because you’re all I’ve been able to think about for a very long time.”
I didn’t know what to say to that.
I didn’t know the man standing in front of me. But then again, the only part of him that I could see was a silhouette from the lights around the command tent at his back.
My stomach was churning.
When I’d gone through that incident with that rapist all those years ago, I’d made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t ever put myself into a situation similar to that ever again.
Yet, I’d done it.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
“I don’t know who you are,” I admitted. “I’m sorry.”
He may seem vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place him at all.
“I guess you wouldn’t know this face,” the man continued. “Not since it’s been put through the ringer these last few years.”
I opened my mouth to say something but couldn’t find the words.
The more he spoke, the more he became familiar to me, yet I couldn’t quite place why.
“Well, I have to be getting back to work,” I gestured, moving slightly to the side to try to avoid him.
He stepped with me.
Fear shot down my throat as I tried to calm my breathing.
“I’m not done…”
“Yes,” a cruel voice replied behind the man. “You are.”
Steel.
Everything inside of me loosened.
I was okay. I was going to be okay.
I looked over the man’s shoulder to see not just Steel standing there, but the man with the cowboy hat, too. The Texas Ranger.
While the Texas Ranger wasn’t paying attention to me, but instead the man, I hurried around him and bee-lined straight for Steel.
Steel caught my wrist the moment I made it to him and practically shoved me behind him.
The move jostled the food in my hands, and I suddenly realized that throughout the encounter I’d managed to hang onto it and not drop it.
And that, right there, was the telltale sign of just how comfortable I was with Steel. I knew, from the bottom of my heart, that he would protect me. If he was there, nothing, and I do mean absolutely nothing, would happen to me.
He’d protect me to his last dying breath if he had to.
I chanced a look up at the man at Steel’s side, and my belly tightened. He didn’t look too happy, either.
“Who are you?” Steel rumbled.
I pressed against Steel’s back almost automatically. Then thought better of it.
Before I could pull away from him, though, he reached around and placed his hand on my thigh, right under my butt, and stilled me.