That was a financial disaster, but I didn’t have time to freak out about it at the moment. I was a little busy dodging a potential kidnapping. I took the opportunity to dart past Killian and bolt down the hall and through the crowded bar, ignoring Killian’s shouts.
As I ran, the three creepy guys from Miranda’s section stood up as if to go.
For some reason, it felt as if they were all staring at me. Was it a coincidence that the three guys were leaving at the same time that I was? Why was I suddenly a hot commodity?
I wasn’t going to wait around to find out. I barreled through the drunk, sweaty crowd until I made it to the front door, hurried out to the street, and ran over to my parked car.
Seconds later, I was screeching down the block and around the corner. I glanced behind me and saw all three men standing on the sidewalk, hurrying toward a white van.
The same instincts that told me I needed to run also told me that going back to my apartment wouldn’t be safe.
I didn’t know why all of my senses were going crazy. My heart was racing, my palms were sweaty, and suddenly my sense of smell was in overdrive, and I could smell the leaves of trees and a distant rain cloud right through my closed window. My head was whirling. Everything in me was screaming in protest at leaving Killian behind – a man who crackled with danger and wanted to drag me out the back door of the restaurant.
But I knew I couldn’t go home.
Instead, I headed across town to my mother’s house.
That was always a risky proposition. My mother was moody and temperamental. If she was drinking, she could either be the life of the party or a weepy, angry mess. I just didn’t have anywhere else to go.
I dodged down side streets and back roads until I came to my mother’s peak-roofed red brick house and quickly parked my beat-up old Ford Fiesta behind her shiny new Range Rover to hide it.
After I climbed out of my car, I stripped off my waitress apron and tossed it into my seat, shutting the car door. Then I quickly looked around, my heart pounding in my chest. Had I been followed? I craned my neck, listening intently, and didn’t hear any traffic.
What I did hear, oddly, was the howling of wolves off in the distance. Well, we bordered a very rural area. I’d just never heard of wolves being this close to town before.
With a sigh, I trudged up the pathway to the front door of the two-story, peak-roofed red brick house where my mother had been residing for the past six months. It was a nice house, in a generic McMansion kind of way, with every house in the neighborhood a slightly different version of the same style. The yard was hemmed in by neatly trimmed shrubbery, and the front door was faux-stained glass.
My mother didn’t have a job, and this house was way nicer than any of the trailer parks she and I lived in when I was growing up. And how did she afford a vehicle that cost more than all the money she’d ever earned put together? Conclusion: she was somebody’s mistress and she’d finally landed a married guy who gave her money, as opposed to a married guy who borrowed or stole money. The thought of it turned my stomach, but I’d learned to overlook a lot of things she did. If I didn’t, we’d have had no relationship at all.
I pounded on the door and after a minute, she opened it, wearing pink sweatpants, a stained T-shirt, and a mud mask. She held a glass of wine in her hand. Her nails gleamed with a fresh red manicure.
“What are you doing here?” she stared at me in confusion. “Aren’t you working?”
“I need to stay here tonight. I think someone’s following me,” I said.
She frowned at me, sending cracks running through the mud mask. “I’m sure it’s just your imagination. You…you can’t stay here tonight. I was thinking of inviting someone over later.”
Hurt stung me. Shouldn’t she be worried about my safety? And why was she lying to me?
“Looking like that? No you weren’t.”
Her face puckered in indignation. “Well, that’s a nice way to talk to your mother! See if I go to the spa with you tomorrow.”
My stomach twisted into a knot. I’d prepaid for her day at the spa.
Our relationship was always up and down, depending on her mental state at the time, and if there was one thing I’d come to count on in life, it was that I couldn’t count on my mother.
It was why I moved out the day I turned eighteen. I just couldn’t financially and emotionally support her anymore after a lifetime of letting her drag us from one town to the next, one boyfriend to the next.
I couldn’t believe I’d let her talk me into coming back to the hometown which we’d left when I was in kindergarten. Why did she even want me here?
I pushed past her into the house as she yelped in protest, and for some reason, the image of the Viking flashed in front of my eyes. Being apart from him made me feel a strange, intense yearning.
I closed my eyes for a second and tried to draw strength from somewhere. Anywhere. And I found myself drawing it from him – my brief memory of him. He was a tower of strength, and for just the shortest time, he’d somehow made me feel like the center of the universe. Like I had all of his focus.
Unfortunately, he had also just tried to kidnap me.
“I am going to sleep in the guest bedroom tonight, and I will leave first thing in the morning,” I informed her. “Tomorrow is my twenty-fifth birthday and I hope you will come to the spa with me. If you don’t, that’s your choice.”
