Page 3 of Keeping Her Safe

Zachary watched her long, curly red hair sway in concert with her backside as she walked into the house. Leaning back in the chair and closing his eyes, he tried to get the image out of his mind. It was impossible when he was near her—she consumed him.

The harsh words were true, but he couldn’t go back in time and fix his mistakes. It was him that had made her life so horrible that she’d turned inward to the books she wrote. With one sentence at nineteen, he had altered the course of her life, changing her forever.

When he looked back on that day, he used to see some punk kid who wanted to take his place in his father’s heart and life. But with age, he could now see that she was just a scared kid who had nothing but his dad on her side. Everything she had was gone.

Brian had spent months working on the paperwork and legal aspects of adopting the twelve-year-old red-headed girl. She’d lost her mother in a bar fight less than a year before and had nobody in her life. Everything that had been done had been for nothing when Zachary took the stand and told the judge that he didn’t want a sister. It was a week before he was deployed to Afghanistan for the first time, and he’d seen his father moving on to another kid. Where did that leave Zachary, his first kid?

By the time Zachary had returned two years later, Zephyr was gone, thrown in a foster system that had broken her. He remembered her as outgoing and easy to make laugh, but the girl had turned into a quite cautious teenager.

He had been right here at the beach house when Brian had brought her down for the weekend. It seems his dad could talk her foster parents into letting him take the girl a few weekends a year. Brian, of course, would bring her to the ocean. His dad had loved the ocean and loved sharing it with his kids, which was why he owned a beach house when he was only a cop.

When Zachary had first seen her that day, she was sitting at the same table she had been sitting at today. That day she was writing in a notebook. He noticed that when she wrote, she sometimes didn’t even look at the paper. She’d just stare off in space, and the pen would just go in straight, even lines across the page.

That day she had to have been close to fifteen. Her body had filled out since he had last seen her. No longer was she stick-skinny and short. That day he noticed that her breasts had come in, and they were bigger than any fifteen-year-old needed. All weekend she mostly wore a sweatshirt and sometimes a T-shirt, but only when the temperatures soared over ninety-five degrees. He knew she was hiding her body, which was probably something she had learned by living with men who were not afraid to stare.

It wasn’t just her bombshell body that had taken him aback that weekend, but that she was guarded at all times. When he and Brian talked, she rarely joined in. When Brian joked around with her, she didn’t laugh anymore. Her personality had changed, and Zachary knew it was his fault. He knew how bad the foster system was on kids, and it was worse for girls.

Ken, the editor, had told him that she rarely left the house and never went on tour for her books—she didn’t even want people to know she wrote them. Ken was concerned for her about more than just the threats to her life. The editor thought she was hiding in the beach house. Hiding from the world.

When Ken had told him that he was her next of kin and executor of her estate, he wanted to cry. All he could see was the woman she could have been if it hadn’t been for his selfishness. This wasn’t the way she was supposed to be.

Rubbing his hands over his short, curly hair, he thought about her as his sister. What would that picture look like when Brian showed it around? A short and pale red-headed daughter and an African American son. Nobody would believe they were related.

Getting up, he walked into the house and saw she was washing dishes in the sink. Her sweatpants didn’t hide the round curve of her hips. He scolded himself to not look at her that way, but he couldn’t help it.

He first saw her as desirable back when he saw her for the first time in years when his father was dying. He had gotten a text from his father’s phone, telling him he’d father had been shot, and he had gotten there as fast as he could. Now he knew Zephyr had written the text. By the time he had shown up, he was too late. Brian was no longer there, but his body still lay in the bed. After hugging the man who had raised him, he looked up and saw her standing in front of the window. Her back was to them, giving them privacy.

All he saw as he held his father for the last time was an angel standing in streams of sunlight. It bounced off her red curls, making them look like they were on fire. Her shoulders were bare, and he could see pale skin peeking out from the wild strands of fire.

Before he knew what he was doing, he had walked over to her and pulled her into his arms. When he felt her arms go around him, he realized he had stopped breathing. At that moment, he felt alive.

Running a hand up her back, he pulled her closer to him, and he sighed when her head rested against his chest. He felt her sigh in return as he rested his cheek on her hair. Suddenly, he loved how small she was, how well she fit in his arms.

To this day, he didn’t know how long they stayed that way—moments, hours. It felt like mere seconds, and then it was over. A nurse rushed in and started talking to them. Zephyr pulled out of his arms as the nurse spoke, but Zachary didn’t want her to leave. Relenting, he let her go and hadn’t touched her since, but his body craved her touch.

“Zephyr, I’m sorry. I was a young, dumb kid then. I know what I said was wrong. I can’t fix it for you,” Zachary pleaded with her, not for the first time.

“I can’t forgive you, Zachary. That was my only chance out of the system. I never even got close again.” She didn’t turn away from her washings, but her hands had stopped moving in the water. She was standing perfectly still.

“I am sorry, Zephyr,” he said again, knowing it wasn’t enough.

“Just drop it, Zachary. Just forget it,” she replied. “Can we just pretend that we don’t have a history? It isn’t a good one anyway.”

“If that’s what you want. Let’s start again.” He got up and walked halfway to her, then put out his hand and said, “Zachary Wainwright.”

Turning, she saw him standing there, looking at her expectantly. Grabbing a towel, she dried her hands and walked over. The hand she placed in his was slightly damp and warm from the water, and the touch warmed him to his toes. Desire instantly settled in his groin, as she answered, “Zephyr Hart.”

He still held her hand and wanted to let go, but he asked, “What do you do for a living?”

“I am a writer.” Her blue eyes were twinkling at him. “How about you?”

Smiling down at her, he said, “I am a cop, but right now, I am on assignment to keep Zephyr Hart alive.”

Her eyes dropped from his, and she pulled her hand away. She walked away from him and back to the sink but didn’t put her hands in the water. “I am not in danger, Zachary. I think I would know if someone was going to kill me.”

“You’re the writer, Zephyr. I’m the cop. You write your little stories, and I will make sure you are safe. One week—we’ll come back in one week. Can you give me that?”

Turning back to him, she leaned against the sink. “One week only, nothing more.”

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