At exactly midnight, I threw off the covers and padded barefoot down the hallway. My heart was pounding so hard I could hear it in my ears as I stopped outside his door.
I raised my hand and knocked.
Would he still be awake?
Chapter 10
Clayton
The knock was soft, almost hesitant, but I’d been lying awake hoping to hear it since the moment I’d left her standing in my kitchen. My heart slammed against my chest as I sat up in bed.
“It’s unlocked,” I rumbled.
The door swung open and Rachel stood silhouetted in the hallway light, her hair loose and tumbling over her shoulders in dark waves.
It was no longer pinned up, controlled and professional.
Now it fell soft and wild around her face, and she looked younger somehow, more vulnerable. Her eyes were red-rimmed and glassy, like she’d been crying, and the sight made something twist painfully in my chest.
“Rachel,”her name contained all the emotion inside me. “I wasn’t sure you’d come.”
Nuts and Bolts lifted their heads where they rested at the foot of the bed, tails thumping hopefully.
“Off,” I commanded, and they scrambled down with matching looks of betrayal before padding over to their dog beds in thecorner. I pulled back the covers on her side of the bed and patted the mattress.
She crossed the room, her bare feet silent on the worn hardwood, and climbed in beside me.
Rachel sat with her back against the headboard, knees drawn up, arms wrapped around herself as if she were trying to hold herself together.
“I’m scared,” she whispered into the darkness.
“Of me?”
Rachel’s hand found mine in the darkness, her fingers cool and soft against my calloused palm.
“Of making another mistake.” She turned to look at me, and in the dim light filtering through the curtains, I could see more tears threatening to spill over. “When I first started this job, I was different. I actually believed I could help people. I made decisions based on what felt right instead of what the policy manual said.”
“Yeah?”
“There was this man in Oklahoma. He was disabled. He lived alone, and a tornado took half his roof.” Her voice cracked.
“That sounds… tough,” I told her, but in reality, it sounded similar to half the claims here on Red Oak Mountain.
She wiped a tear off her face. “I approved an emergency payout because he was so desperate, and… I thought I was doing the right thing.”
“Oh, honey, it sounds like you did the right thing. You helped that man out.”
When she knocked on my door, my cock thought it was finally getting what it wanted. And it was still throbbing hard, but I almost preferred this.
Rachel was really letting mein.
A tiny sob hiccupped out of her. “But it turned out his nephew had staged most of the damage to scam the claim. The payoutcost my company thousands of dollars based on my word, and I almost lost my job. They put me on probation for ‘emotional decision-making.’”
Squeezing her hand, I said, “That wasn’t your fault. You were trying to help someone.”
“It doesn’t matter whose fault it was. What matters is that I learned my lesson.” She laughed bitterly. “For years now, I’ve documented everything and denied borderline claims out of an abundance of caution. I’ve even refused to bend the rules when I wanted to, because the one time I trusted my instincts, it nearly destroyed my career.”
I understood that kind of fear better than she knew. The fear of caring too much and getting burned for it.
