Someone To Watch Over Me

“I think Romeo needs to go out, anyway,” he said. “We’ll walk you.”

“Oh, no.” She panicked a little, in spite of herself, trying to save herself by adding in a much friendlier tone, “You don’t have to do that.”

He stopped right there in the middle of the kitchen, his gaze narrowing on her face. She wondered exactly what he saw in her expression. For the most part, she thought she managed to keep the worst of it fairly well hidden. She’d just been surprised, and it was dark out and she really didn’t know him. She didn’t want to be in a dark alley with anyone, let alone a big, powerful man she really didn’t know.

“It’s all right,” he said, still watching her more closely than she would have liked. “You’re in good hands. I’m a cop and Romeo’s a K-9-school dropout. Between the two of us, I think we can handle any trouble that could possibly come along in the alley. Although, I have to tell you, I’ve been traveling it since I was five, and the only trouble I’ve ever met with there was skinned knees from bicycle wrecks and a bloody lip here and there, if we really crashed or another kid threw a punch at me.”

Gwen was afraid she was trapped. That she’d have to go with him or look foolish for not going. She stalled instead. “You…uh. You get into fights in the alley?”

He grinned. “Not since I was nine. But I think I could handle myself if someone happened to jump us tonight.”

Gwen could feel the blood draining from her face. It was as if her whole being sagged, all the strength going out of her, a paralyzing fear moving in, in its wake.

He saw it all, too. She could imagine exactly what she must look like to him as he watched her turn into a pathetically fearful creature, a grown woman afraid of the dark.

She thought she might actually have swayed on her feet. His hands shot out to steady her. “It’s all right.”

But it wasn’t, and maybe it never would be, and she really hated it when people saw that. How much she truly was not “all right.”

“I have to go,” she said in a shaky voice she despised, as well.

“Okay.”

“That way.” She pointed toward what she thought was the direction of the front door, then added, “By myself.”

“Okay,” he said quietly, using a tone she imagined he might on a spooked child. “Did you drive?”

She nodded, not caring how foolish that seemed. She didn’t walk down dark streets at night.

“Can I watch from the front porch, until you get to your car?”

She nodded again, so very foolish. He was either afraid she’d fall apart before she even made it to her car or afraid she’d freak out if he followed her to the door, because she thought he meant to follow her out onto the street. And she might have. She fought not to cry. It would have been the final humiliation.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“It’s all right. Whatever you need to do to feel safe, you do it.”

He made it not sound so foolish after all, and she was grateful enough for the understanding that it alone might make her cry.

Maybe it was one of those nights when tears were inevitable.

Just not here, she begged. Please, not here.

She put a hand in her pocket and came up with her keys. She knew to have them in her hand, her thumb on the panic button that had come along with the alarm system on the new car she’d bought just for that safety feature. And so she could be reasonably assured that she wouldn’t be breaking down anytime soon on any dark roads alone at night, and that if she did and someone tried to get close to her, the alarm would shriek and, hopefully, scare them away.

So many things she did differently these days.

She put her head down, forgetting all about not looking like a victim, and made it down the hall and past all those people in the living room without speaking to anyone. Jackson Cassidy followed her, keeping his distance so he wouldn’t scare her.

He opened the door for her and stood back to let her pass through alone. Romeo waited there by his side, looking concerned for her, as well.

“Sorry,” she said again.

“No problem,” he claimed. Maybe he was used to paranoid, frightened women from his job.

She made it down the stairs and up the sidewalk. Her car was halfway down the block, probably farther away than the walk in the alley would have been. But here she was on a brightly lit street and not alone with a man she really didn’t know. She felt foolish but safer.

As he’d said, seeing so clearly, whatever she had to do to feel safe….

That was a problem she wasn’t about to explain to him.

She wasn’t sure if she’d ever feel safe again.

Jax watched her all the way, Romeo by his side. She sat in the car for a few minutes before turning on the lights and pulling onto the street.

“Let’s go to the backyard,” Jax told the dog.

He headed around the house and climbed the steps to the back porch. He could see old Mrs. Moss’s house from there, waited and watched as the car turned into the driveway, as Gwen got out, opened the door and started flicking on lights in the house. Until she was inside, safe and sound.

Romeo stood beside him, watching every bit as intently.

“Wonder what the story is there,” Jax said.

One thing was certain, it wasn’t the normal reticence a woman would show at the idea of walking down a dark alley in a small town with a man she barely knew. It was fear, pure and simple, the kind that came not in imagining what bad things might happen, but in knowing, firsthand.

Someone, at some point, had attacked Gwen Moss.

“You know, Romeo. Some days, life is rotten.”

Chapter Four

Standing safely in her own driveway, her car locked, house keys in her hand and ready, Gwen glanced back at Mrs. Cassidy’s house. On the back porch, watching her, stood a tall, shadowy figure. She couldn’t see his face, not at that distance and in the dark, but she was certain it was Jax.

Was he worried about her? Or simply wondering if she was capable of getting herself home without falling apart?

Not that it mattered in the least what Jackson Cassidy or any other man thought of her.

But she was caught up in the idea of him waiting and watching to see that she got safely inside, feeling for a moment like it wasn’t all up to her. That if something happened on her way home, he would have helped her.

Gwen turned and unlocked the back door. Inside, she punched her code into the security system she’d had installed and then turned on lights. All of them. Gwen liked lights. Bright ones. Especially at night.

She clicked on the TV, which was usually set to one of the music channels because she didn’t like a completely quiet house any more than she liked a dark one. It was too easy to hear the normal things that went bump in the night and wonder if they were actually normal or something she should be concerned about.

So she let the music drown out the little sounds.

She’d do anything she could to make it easier on herself, and she didn’t care if that made her a coward or weak. She just didn’t care.

She went into the kitchen, automatically checking to see that everything was in its place, just as she’d left it, reassured to see that it was. Then she made herself a plate with chicken salad and some apple slices, which she ate at the breakfast bar in the kitchen while glancing at a magazine.