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IT TAKES EVERY OUNCE of strength I can muster to walk away from Emi again. Pausing with my hand against the diner door, I look over my shoulder and see her standing by the table with the fifty-dollar bill clutched in her tiny fist. Her brows are furrowed as she watches me and as much as I want to march back over to her and wipe away the wrinkle between her brows with the pad of my thumb, I toss her a wink before pushing my way out the door.
Images play through my mind like images on a reel as I drive through town. The way she closed her eyes as she took the first bite of her sandwich. The sounds that escaped her throat as she moaned around each bite like it was the absolute best thing she’d ever eaten. I can’t understand how that’s even possible – it was just a turkey sandwich. It was nothing special, certainly not something that she could have had at one of the Michelin restaurants in the city. I wonder how she would react to something she eats there. I wonder what I’ll have to do to find out.
Pulling into the driveway at my grandmother’s house, I’m immediately greeted by the moving crew. They are just stepping out of the truck when I arrive so thankfully, they haven’t been waiting for me long. Not that I’d care if they were, having lunch with Emi was more important than anything I have to do at this house today.
Thankfully, my grandmother was meticulous about cleaning her house. There isn’t much to do after the furniture is all moved out besides run a vacuum over the floor to remove the impressions in the carpet. Still, it takes several hours to get everything moved out and loaded into the back of the truck.
I lock the house up after they leave and go back to my apartment in the city for the night. I don’t have any meetings tomorrow that I need to attend so I’ll be able to go straight to the diner for lunch with Emi again before meeting with the realtor.
I’m anxious to see her again. I don’t like the way she flinched away from me when I tried to touch her chin. I wasn’t going to hurt her – I just wanted her to look at me. There’s no reason for her to act so shy around me. But still, that flinch just about broke my soul. She’s obviously been hurt. Her demons started to show and now I want more than anything to get to know her better. I need to fight those demons. A woman as beautiful as her has no reason to flinch like that.
She should never be made to feel afraid of a gentle touch.
I’ve never had the reaction to any woman that I’m having for Emi. I feel overwhelmingly protective of her. I want to wrap her in my arms and make sure nothing and no one can ever hurt her again.
I rush through a shower after a quick dinner and my thoughts still go back to the way Emi flinched away from me. Fuck, I can’t stop thinking about her. About the haunted look in her beautiful blue eyes. What is she doing right now? Is she at home having dinner with an abusive boyfriend? Is she stuck in a dead-end relationship that she doesn’t know how to escape from?
My sleep is fitful, and I wake to the incessant ringing of my cell phone. Without opening my eyes, I reach to the nightstand and grab it, pressing the answer icon on the screen without even looking to see who it is. “Yeah?”
“Mr. Strong,” my assistant Melodee says, her voice shaking with nerves. “I’m sorry to bother you so early and I know you said you weren’t coming into the office today.”
“What is it, Melodee?” I rub my free hand over my forehead while swinging my legs over the side of the bed.
“It’s the foreman sir.” I listen as she takes a deep breath, obviously trying to calm her nerves before she continues. “He’s having an issue with the crew. Something about a disagreement on the blueprints.”
I groan and squeeze my eyes shut. We went over those blueprints meticulously before scheduling the build. There shouldn’t be any issues with any of it. “Tell him to figure it out.”
“He says he needs you to come help...”
“He can figure it out,” I interrupt her. “He’s the foreman. He’s paid to control his crew. He can either figure it out or I’ll give the job to someone else.”
“Yes sir. I’ll let him know.”
I disconnect the call before she can respond again. It isn’t her fault, she’s basically the middleman. But I shouldn’t have to babysit the foreman just to make sure that he can handle the responsibilities of his job. I have lived and breathed my company since I started it four years ago and the one day I decide not to come into the office, this is the shit I wake up to. I’m not dealing with it today. There are plenty of other candidates out there that can do a better job at managing a construction crew. If my foreman can’t figure it out, I’ll just let him go. But not until I get back to the office tomorrow.
After a quick breakfast, I kill time moving the boxes that came from grandma’s house into my bedroom closet. I’ll deal with them another day. There’s someplace else drawing my attention today and it’s a forty-five-minute drive to get there.
The drive there is uneventful. Thankfully, even the traffic is cooperating with me today. It helps that the sky is full of pregnant clouds, the threat of rain keeping most people indoors.
Looking through the diner window I can see Emi wiping a cloth over the counter, a faraway gaze in her eyes. I sit in my car for several minutes just watching her and wishing I could read her thoughts. Her hair is pulled back in the same high ponytail I’ve seen her in the last few days I’ve come by. Today, however, there are several strands loose and hanging around her face giving it more of a disheveled appearance. She’s wearing the same sweater I saw her wearing yesterday, the sleeves long enough to hang over the backs of her hands as she works. Her long fingers curl tightly around the cloth as she drags it over the spotless countertop.
I watch as the other waitress walks up beside her, her lips moving silently in a conversation that I can’t hear. She obviously doesn’t get the response she hopes for as she stops moving and lifts a hand to Emi’s shoulder. My heart skips erratically in my chest as I watch Emi jump in surprise away from her friendly co-worker. Obviously, I’m not the only one she flinches from.
Enough.
I’m getting to the bottom of this today.
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“I’M SORRY EMI,” Amber pulls her hand back into her chest as I flinch away from her. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
Closing my eyes, I chastise myself internally while attempting to steady my breathing. “You didn’t. I just wasn’t paying attention. I didn’t hear you walk up to me.” She doesn’t understand the reason that I flinch every time she sneaks up on me, I don’t expect her to.
“I was talking to you the entire time.” I open my eyes and watch her shake her head slowly side to side. “You didn’t hear anything I was saying? Where are you today?”
“I didn’t get much sleep last night. I’m just tired today.” Pulling my hand away from the counter, I toss the cleaning cloth into the bucket of soapy water beneath the counter. Grimacing at the ache in my hand, I flex my fingers in an attempt to relieve the cramping in my joints from having clutched the cleaning cloth so tightly.
I need to get a hold of myself. I’ve spent far too much time daydreaming these last few days. It all comes back to a certain suit wearing man that I can’t seem to get out of my head. Landon, he said his name was.
My daydreaming is causing me too many issues and I need to get my head together. Last night, I was so caught up in my thoughts that I burned Charlie’s dinner. I tried to cover it up by adding more sauce to his steak, but it only resulted in the entire plate being thrown against the wall. He screamed at me, which was nothing new, but he grabbed me when I tried to clean up the mess he created on the wall and the floor. He threw me against the counter, the edge biting into my back with a sharp pain, before wrapping his hands around my biceps and squeezing hard.
The resulting bruises on my arms are nothing new, they blend in with the already discolored patches lining both of my arms. However, he escalated from slaps and bruising grabs when his eye caught the steak knife that I’d already tossed into the sink. My life literally flashed before my eyes as I watched him reach for the knife, knowing I’d never be able to get away from him before he inflicted the pain I knew was coming. The evil glimmer in his drunken gaze as he dragged the knife along the flesh of my inner forearm will haunt me for days if not years. My screams as the blood trickled to my fingertips only further fed the hatred in his laughter.
In all the time that I have been forced to be the victim of his abuse, I’ve never seen that aura of hatred surrounding him that he had last night. This was something new, he’d never escalated to the point of purposely drawing blood before. Oh, I’ve bled plenty of times because of his actions against me, but it was mostly from being cut by flying shards of glass. My only fear is that he will appreciate his appetite for blood, now that he’s had a taste of it, and become more of a pit bull than ever before. I don’t know how I’ll be able to escape his wrath in the coming days now that he’s escalated to this point.
“There you go again,” Amber drawls next to me. “Really, Emi. It’s like you’re up on cloud nine today. Where is your head at?”
Shaking my head, I make a sound that I had hoped was a giggle but sounds more like a gag to my own ears. Looking at Amber, I’m relieved to see that she didn’t notice the sound. She isn’t even looking at me anymore but toward the door. Following her gaze, I see Landon walk in wearing a t-shirt and dark blue jeans – much different than the broken suits I’ve seen him in the last two times he’s been here. A tingle races down my spine and I realize that I like this look on him much more than the suits. A casual Landon is a sexy Landon.
“Wow,” Amber whispers as her eyes grow impossibly wider. “He’s definitely not from here.”
I take a deep breath, my eyes trailing Landon from his tennis shoes up to the messy locks of his dark hair. It looks like he’s been running his fingers through it, maybe pulling at it in his own fists, and I wish I could do the same. “No,” I whisper back as I my eyes lock on his. “He isn’t.”
Landon smiles a crooked smile as his eyes lock on mine. My heart practically skips in my chest as he begins to walk closer to the counter, directly toward where Amber and I are currently standing.
“Hey, handsome.” A stab of jealousy punches me in the gut at Amber’s words. I’m honestly envious of her ability to talk to people and the way she speaks her mind regardless of the consequences. But still, I’ve never felt such pain as I do at her words toward Landon. Yes, he’s obviously handsome. But I don’t like the fact that she’s noticed.
The one thing that I wanted to be able to keep for myself was the attention that Landon has been paying me the last two times he’s been here. I want to take the feelings that I have for this man and lock them in a box. Somewhere that they can’t be taken from me like everything else in my life tends to be.
He's the only thing that I have to look forward to from one day to another. Honestly, I think the only reason that I was even able to drag myself to work today was the hope of seeing him again.
His eyes still locked with mine, I see the slightest flinch at Amber’s words. He doesn’t respond to her greeting and a calmness washes over me at the realization that he only has eyes for me.
“Okay,” Amber breathes out before turning her attention back to me. “I see you have it handled here. I’ll leave you to it.”
I watch from the corner of my eye as she grabs the bin of washed silverware and carries it to the other end of the counter to begin wrapping. The pain in my stomach dissipates as I continue to stare back at Landon. “Hi,” I whisper in an attempt at a greeting. “You came back.”
“I did.” He takes another step toward the counter, and I stand frozen in his path. Honestly, it’s almost comical how I continue to stand in one place, barely even breathing, as he approaches me. I guess this is what a deer feels like when it’s greeted by the headlights of an oncoming car. My feet feel as if they’re filled with lead and I’m not able to move from this spot.
“Would you like something for lunch?”
“You.” Just one word, and I can feel the blood rushing through my veins lighting up all my nerve endings like a lightning strike. Dangerous. That’s what he is. But oh, so tempting. But then what is life if not a series of risks and what-ifs? This is a risk that I’m willing to take. It can’t be any worse than what I have already waiting for me at the end of my shift.