Alicia remembered. She didn’t say this, however, because she had no idea who it was.
She was relatively uninjured. Some bumps. A couple of scrapes. Her hand hurt from where she braced herself, but it would only bruise. She hoped, anyway. None of it was enough to make her go back to the hospital again. Instead, when she came to under Dee’s watchful gaze, the first thing out of Alicia’s mouth was, “Take me home!”
They couldn’t hide what happened from Danica, though. Alicia let Dee deal with that.
“Why the fuck were you not with her? The fuck am I paying you for?”
“I got a call from my boss saying he got a call from you!”
“I never called anyone tonight!”
“Well, that’s what happened! My boss made it sound like a damn emergency, so I took the call, and Mrs. Moreau went ahead of me, anyway. You want me to chain her up when I’m not around?” Dee didn’t know when the hell to stop talking. “Or is that your job?”
Alicia sucked in her breath.
“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that.” Danica jerked her thumb toward the bedroom doorway. “Get out of here. You’re lucky I’m not firing you.”
Dee sent Alicia a hot look before leaving. Danica slammed the door behind her.
“You fire her and I’m firing you,” Alicia muttered. “You may be paying her, but I’m the one who gets to make that decision.” Why wouldn’t the tears stop falling? “You don’t get to control everything around here.”
Her mouth opened to spout something else. Yet Danica caught herself the moment she also caught the aura of fear emanating from her wife.No, love, I’m not afraid of you.That was probably what Danica feared. After finding out what happened to her mother? Danica spent many words assuring her wife that she would never treat her like that.“I don’t want you to fear me like my mother feared my father. Do you understand me? I’m your wife, not your nightmare.”
Now she reminded herself of that before coming over to Alicia’s side of the bed. She knelt, taking her hand and holding it to her face. “If anything ever happened to you, my love, I would die. Do you understand?” Was she crying too? No, she wasn’t, but that wasn’t anger in her ambers anymore. That was fear. Fear that Alicia would be hurt, and there was nothing she could do about it.Don’t tell me our quick and dirty romance would end so soon and with so much hurt.Alicia didn’t want it to. Outside forces, though…
She really couldn’t tell her that someone had pushed her, could she? That would only make things worse.Not until I can remember who it was.Alicia put her hand on her stomach. Danica glanced at this motion.
“You okay?” Was she asking her or their potential baby?
“I think I’m fine. Just a little sore. Let me stick it out tonight. If I think something is really wrong tomorrow, I’ll go to the doctor.As it is, I only fell down a few stairs. Please, Danica, don’t worry too much about it. I was tired and hungry. I slipped.”
Danica kissed her hand and forehead. “If you need anything, let me know. I have to take a shower and wash off all this cigar smoke.”
That made Alicia giggle. She had been smelling that foul stench on her wife ever since Danica came home. “You do.”
Danica let their fingers entwine. “Everything will be fine. Before you know it, we’ll be the rulers of the universe.”
She released her hand before heading to the bathroom, shirt already off her body. “You’ll be the hottest empress ever,” Alicia said.
Her compliment earned her a wink. That tiny gesture alone was good enough to calm her for the rest of the evening.Now, to do something about this hand. A nice bruise had formed near her wrist. Here was hoping she didn’t have a ton of documents to sign over the next few days.
Oh, who was she kidding? When a woman was spending millions of dollars a day for her business, there was always something to sign!
Chapter 16
Alicia and her wife were up early the next morning since neither could sleep. She was having nightmares again.At first, Alicia woke up to mild thrashing and the pathetic groans of a girl begging her father to stop being an abusive shitstain on humanity. Then she woke up to the covers yanked off her body and thrown to the floor, Danica’s head rolling back and forth on her pillow. Alicia had sleepily gotten up and gone to the bathroom without turning on any lights. By the time she went back to bed, Danica had stilled, snoring.
Alicia never returned to sleep. The sun came up, and so did she. With a robe wrapped around her sore body, Alicia laid out her wife’s clothes.So much for trying to be quiet.Danica was up fifteen minutes later, grumbling about coffee. Alicia went into the kitchen and started a pot since Lissa was still in bed.
Danica ate only a banana before meeting up with the morning shift bodyguard and going outside in a sweatshirt and basketball shorts. Alicia went to the living room window overlooking theriver and watched Danica and her bodyguard take off for a morning run along the riverbank.
It was not unusual for her to go out on morning runs. If the weather was good, if her morning schedule was relatively light, if she had trouble sleeping, if she had something heavy on her mind… they had only been living together a few weeks, but Alicia was already used to the routine her wife followed.
What made this different was the look on her face before she left.
Something’s troubling her. Something worse than usual.Probably had to do with Alicia’s tumble down a flight of stairs the night before. She did some stretches against the back of a couch, determining the elasticity of her muscles and whether anything was badly injured enough to go to the doctor for.
Nothing in particular stood out. Aside from a wallop of a cramp in her stomach, anyway.
