“Long as it takes you to finish with me.”
Her mouth opened, and she looked like she’d say something but must have changed her mind; the next few seconds passed in silence.
“It’s right here,” she said, and he pulled into a driveway on a pleasant dead-end country street. Her house—what he could see of it—was dark.
“You got no lights on.”
She turned and looked at the house before answering with a shrug. “I don’t like to waste.”
“It’s not safe.”
“In Blackwood?” she asked, brows raised.
“Yeah, Doc,” Clay said, letting the sarcasm seep through and feeling just a bit bad for it. “D’you already forget what just happened in good old Blackwood?”
“Oh. That wasn’t… I think I stepped into a domestic violence situation and…” She sighed, fidgeting with the hem of her dress, and went on. “You’re right. I guess I…I just don’t have much to steal.”
“Steal? You think it’s about stuff? Those little shits tonight, maybe. Maybe they’d go for a purse or the keys to your clinic or something. Maybe meds, you know? But a woman like you, Doc? You’d do well to protect yourself. Not just your stuff. You.”
He got out of the car, walked around to open her door, and purposefully locked the doors behind her before following her up the dark porch stairs and handing her the keys.
“Thank you, Mr. Blane. Would you…?” She swung her hand toward the door to her house and looked back. “Would you like to come in, maybe for a coffee or…?”
Clay hesitated, standing there on the dark front porch of this near-stranger’s house. He wouldn’t mind, actually, going inside and having a cup of something warm. A glance at her face showed nothing but the vague shape of her skull, hollows where her eyes were, a cap of hair gleaming only slightly more than the rest. The night air was hot and loud with celebratory explosions and an underlying buzz he couldn’t seem to identify.
“Gotta get back,” he lied, because really there wasn’t a damn thing to get back to besides an empty room, a full bottle, and the never-ending story running loops through his brain.
“Thank you,” she whispered, lifting her hand and letting it settle on his arm, steady and sure in a way it shouldn’t be after that attack.
“You sure you’ll be okay?” Clay asked, his eyes glued to that hand.
“Yes. Yes, thanks to you.” She went to open her door, pulling that hand away so nonchalantly she couldn’t possibly have any idea how deeply he’d felt it. That touch—like a goddamned anchor on his body.
He watched, blinking when she went inside and turned on the light. He then waited until she’d locked the door behind her—one of those old wooden doors with a goddamned glass panel you could see right the hell through, all the way down a hall to what appeared to be the kitchen, which made him even crazier. Finally, he returned to the street, fighting the urge to camp out in the woods across the way and keep an eye on the house, before taking off at a painful run, unexpected reluctance clogging his throat and the ghost of her touch holding him together.
* * *
Home. Finally. George dropped her purse and keys into the bowl by the front door and hesitated, a shiver running up her spine. No. No, she would not let those kids make her feel unsafe in her own home. She wouldn’t change a thing. To prove it, she went out back to put the chickens to bed and turn off the water. What she found there brought her up short: a gaping hole at the bottom of her garden gate.
Throat tight and palms sweaty, she headed straight for the far corner of the yard, where the hens generally congregated, only to find feathers strewn about. But no chickens.
She’d seen a fox a few days before in the woods across from the house. There were raccoons too, wily enough to bust through that gate. With a hot rush of fear—not for herself, but for her girls this time—she turned to the henhouse and stuck her head inside.
Angry clucking greeted George, and she let out her breath on a wave of liquid relief, every joint aching with the suddenness of it. She counted five, six…seven hens. The only notable losses seemed to be a smattering of tail feathers and a good dose of avian pride. The ladies didn’t enjoy being stalked.
Holy hell. Too much. It was all too much in one night.
After briefly checking her charges, she shut the coop up, leaving them to cluck among themselves—seeing that hole had scared the hell out of her. The chickens held an important place in her life—in her heart, really—and she couldn’t imagine who else would ever fill it.
The sky exploded above her, coloring the tomato and basil plants pink and, for a few seconds, giving her yard an artificial movie-set light. Rather than go immediately back inside, George collapsed heavily onto her wooden porch steps and tilted her head back, staring at the show and listening to the animals’ agitation. Were fireworks even safe right now, with the lack of rain this year?
A wet nose pushed at her elbow, and she raised her arm to let Leonard climb onto her lap. The big black-and-white cat took up more room than he’d probably been allotted at birth, but George just couldn’t stand to put him on a diet. Why deprive him when he had, at most, another few years on this earth?
Tonight was… It had been…
She swallowed.
She was supposed to feel fear right now, she thought, for herself. But she didn’t. Other than a throbbing on her face and pain where she’d landed on her hip, she felt an oddly thrumming excitement that was so wholly inappropriate, she wondered if she shouldn’t consider turning herself in to some kind of ethical committee or getting in touch with her mentor from when she’d been a resident. Or going to see a therapist. How on earth was it possible to come out of an attack like that—one that had left her battered and bruised—and feel nothing but regret that the man who’d saved you hadn’t agreed to come in for a cup of coffee?
