Page 111 of The Pucking Wrong Man

“Do you want him staring at you like that?” I asked, carefully keeping my voice neutral.

It wouldn’t matter if she did, that was obviously not going to happen. But I thought I’d at least pretend to ask.

Anastasia blinked at me slowly, and I’d never seen her look so haunted.

I was out the door then, bursting into a jog as soon as I left the restaurant.

He’d already started to walk away, though. Disappearing into the crowd before I could reach him.

I searched the sidewalks for a few minutes before worrying that maybe he’d circled around and he was at the restaurant, so I hurried back.

When I got there, though, he was nowhere to be found.

As soon as I stepped into Charlie’s, Anastasia was there, her face drawn and exhausted looking. “I asked if I could leave early. I’m—I’m not feeling well,” she said. “Can you take me home?”

“Of course, baby. Let’s get you out of here,” I said quickly, inwardly rejoicing that she’d used the word “home” to describe my place. She probably wasn’t even aware she’d just done that. We stepped outside into the cool night air, and Anastasia shivered and huddled into my chest.

Leading her to my truck, I helped her into her seat, buckling her in and brushing my lips softly against hers. “I’m not going to forget that we need to have a talk about who that man was,” I murmured sternly.

She sighed, and her eyes grew sad and broken before she nodded.

Which made my anger over that asshole only grow.

“Just not tonight,” she said.

“Not tonight,” I agreed before shutting the door and driving us home.

Anastasia was quiet when we got back to the penthouse, only nibbling at the chicken quesadilla I made her before telling me she was going to go to bed.

As she walked away, I grabbed her hand and pulled her back into my chest. “You’re mine, Anastasia,” I told her, loving the blush that spread across her cheeks. “Whatever you need, I’m going to make it happen.”

Her eyes got wide and glossy again, and she hastily wiped at the tears before giving me a trembling smile. “We’ll see,” she finally said before pulling away and walking down the hall to her room.

I watched her go, wishing I could follow her, or at least make love to her to show her body what her mind couldn’t seem to believe.

One thing was clear, I needed to up my game and save her from herself.

Daddy was going to take care of his baby girl.

CHAPTER 22

ANASTASIA

Icouldn’t sleep. Sometimes it was like this, the energy buzzed beneath my skin for hours when everything felt like too much. Sometimes it was when my body was too hurt to move, but my mind was desperate to continue. I could see the steps in my head, every inch of my soul wishing I could lose myself in them.

And sometimes it was because my sadistic foster brother had decided to torture me further by blackmailing me.

The practice with Dallon had made today a bad day for my leg—not that there were very many good days with my leg anymore. But even after icing it and taking a painkiller, it still felt like someone had jabbed a nail into my bone.

And it was too quiet. I hadn’t gotten used to the lack of...noise in this place. The shelter had been so loud that I’d been able to block out a lot of my dark thoughts. After all, if the girl on the cot next to me had a life so bad that she had to scream in her sleep, what was mine in comparison?

In the quiet of Camden’s penthouse, every depressing, morose thought and memory I’d ever had was free to run rampant in my brain. I flipped over for the hundredth time, finally burying my face in my pillow and huffing in exasperation.

What—

I lifted my head up, searching to see if there was anything on my pillow that I was smelling. But there wasn’t anything there. I’d helped Camden wash these sheets after he’d bought them for me.

I smashed my face into the pillow and inhaled deeply, feeling like a complete idiot as I did so. It’s just that I thought that I had smelled something...something amazing.

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