His lips pulled into a pained expression as if he knew he would come to regret what he was about to confess. “Madison’s been struggling for a while with… I guess it would be depression. She had an episode earlier this week and her parents called on me to help. Sometimes, she just needs a little reassurance that she’s safe and then she’s all right again. That’s all.”
She couldn’t blame Madison for feeling instantly safe around Dominic. Erica began to see a more complete picture of Madison. Depression? So young? It was one of her suspicions when she and Gwen spoke in the antique shop about her daughter needing help, but how could a simple reassurance make depression go away in the blink of an eye? And why call on Dominic? Did it have anything to do with what happened to his mom?
“They called on you to help with something like that?”
A spark of something like indecision crossed his face. “Our families are pretty close. Our fathers went fishing together at Jade Lake a lot and our mothers were friends in school. I was about ten when she was born and babysat a few times when her parents were busy with the restaurant.”
“You were…” Her voice trailed off as she did the math. “So, she’s just in high school?” Erica questioned with a tiny squeak of surprise. “She looks like she belongs in college.”
Dominic made a face as if he hadn’t seemed to notice.
Erica recentered herself. “For a minute, I thought you were going to say that you’re like an on-call therapist or something.”
A knowing smile curled across his handsome face. “Pretty close.”
She blinked. “You make a habit of going to help people whenever they call you?”
Dominic leaned across the table so their conversation would be more private. “Remember when I told you I’m part of the founding family of Tolstone? Well, because of that, I know practically everyone, and everyone knows me. If they need something, they come to me. I have certain… connections that make me pretty valuable in a tight jam.” He grimaced. “It’s not as much helping as it is babysitting.”
Erica tilted her head. “So, you’re kind of like the Godfather or something? That’s not weird at all.” Her words dripped with sarcasm.
Did people actually do that? Were there people out there who were something like a town arbitrator? Was that why Officer Spradley needed to talk with Dominic that day? How could one person be that important to a whole town? Some of his behavior now made a little more sense, but that didn’t make it any less strange.
Dominic brought his mouth close to her ear until his breath tickled her skin and electrified something deep within her core. “Don’t tell anyone I said this, but, recently, I’ve come to hate it.” He paused, as if waiting for her reaction, but he should have known that being so close would stun her into immobility. “So many people come to me when they could fix the problem themselves… They’re not like you. You don’t need anyone to rescue you.”
Erica grinned and she wondered if he could see the flush crawl up her face. “And yet,” she whispered back, “you come and help me without ever being asked. Why?”
Had he finally loosened the mortar on that brick perimeter around her heart? What was she thinking? Whatever it was, the threads frayed, the ones that kept her from completely fallinginto the abyss of this foreign emotion she had kept at bay since the moment she laid eyes on him.
He sucked in a breath as his lips parted just enough for him to reply, but nothing came. He pulled away to the other side of the table, leaving Erica with the dizzying sensation of falling. The urge to let out a cry of protest when she felt his warmth completely withdraw was strong.
She caught herself and looked to see that Dominic’s focus was no longer on her, but on something in the crowd. A man emerged from the masses, slipping his way between two families in the middle of the street to make his way to her table.
Erica went cold at the approach of this mountain of a man with the stern, fixed look in his dark eyes. She thought for sure he had come to pick a fight with Dominic. Why else would they glare at one another so intensely? The crazy thought entered her mind that if he did, she’d have to step up and stop them. Or at least try.
So lost in thought and the residual tingling sensations that Dominic had left in his wake, she totally missed the first part of the mumbled, less-than-civil conversation.
“Why can’t you take care of it?” Dominic growled in a tone that vibrated in her bones.
The man shot a glance toward Erica before he lowered his own voice so she could barely discern his reply over the noise of the crowd. Bewildered, she watched their lips moving as hardly any sound seemed to come out, though she was less than four feet away.
Suddenly, Dominic turned and gave Erica an apologetic look. “I’ll catch up with you later, okay?”
All she could do was nod. This had to be one of those times when Dominic was called on to help someone in Tolstone. She looked through the crowd, as if the person in distress would have been close by, but she saw only happy faces.
The two men weaved their way through the festivalgoers without another word. Erica braced herself against the table and tried to reason through all she had just heard, seen, and felt. This otherworldly awareness of drifting and sinking, flying and yet falling, scared and yet giddy out of her mind. How could one man affect her this way?
Erica watched Dominic walk away and stand at the mouth of one of the narrow one-way roads that led east toward Jade Lake. Desperate to ease the pain of his departure, Erica grabbed her camera and brought it up to her face so she could zoom and get a better look at what was going on. She couldn’t see who Dominic was talking to, but she knew they were not in a friendly discussion by the way his mouth formed harshly spoken words.
She zoomed further and watched as Dominic continued to rage at someone out of sight, though she couldn’t hear anything they said. Other faces and blurry bodies moved in and out of her view, but those few glimpses of Dominic troubled her. Whatever was going on, it couldn’t be good, and she wondered if Officer Spradley was anywhere close by in case of trouble.
In a split second, her finger developed a mind of its own and began snapping pictures whenever Dominic came into focus. She had captured him when he was calm, and now she saw him at his worst, when he was furious. It was kind of hot, in a weird sort of way. He wasn’t just a mediator. He held some kind of authority in this town.
She still couldn’t understand how or why he should be called on to solve other people’s problems. If they were so helpless, then why was everyone so helpful toward her? It didn’t make any sense how a network of people could be so dependent on one another, and yet still so generous. But why should so much fall on Dominic’s shoulders? He certainly didn’t deserve the stress, and if he didn’t like the job, then why didn’t he just tell everyone to fuck off?
Dominic’s face turned, and she captured something in two shutter flashes that made her almost drop the camera. The zoom feature was so detailed that she could make out the fine hairs on his cheek and chin from across the square, but it caught something else. His eyes. The ones that should have been a bright, vivid blue, had become golden and glowing, luminescent through the lens of her camera.
He didn’t see her, or at least, she didn’t think he did. Erica slowly eased herself into her folding chair and lowered her camera into her lap. Hitting a few buttons, she navigated back to the gallery menu to make sure that she wasn’t going crazy. There, two bright yellow eyes glared up at her. They made him look deadly, feral, wolfish even.
