Page 11 of Secrets Within Us

I propped my elbow on the pillow and put my head on my hand as I looked down at her, waiting for her to answer. She wouldn’t meet my eyes but nodded her head.

“Vocalize what you need from me so I can fix it for you,” I stated plainly, but she looked back up at me like I’d just spoken Greek to her. Like me, fixing her problems was so absurd. Looking back on my observations and conversations with her, I realized she probably wasn’t familiar with people extending a helping hand. She didn’t have anyone to lean on, no one to sleep next to, no one to care that she was alive or dead, as she’d said earlier.

She was all alone.

Except for me, now.

“Roll over,” I said gruffly, to which she responded with a pensive questioning glare. “I’m just claiming my share of the mattress now, so hopefully you’ll stay on your side.” Placing my hand on her hip, I nudged her, encouraging her to roll on her side, facing away from me. “I’ll get you warm in no time, then we can both go to sleep.”

Slipping my arm under her pillow and positioning it in the crook of her neck, I pressed my large body against hers, bending my legs to make sure that mine embraced every inch of her skin.

When I felt her soft curves perfectly molding against my hard body, I couldn’t help but curse myself. At first, she stiffened against my hold, but within a few moments, she took a deep breath and relaxed. I slid my hand under the blankets to rest on her hip, knowing her ribs were in too much pain to lay my beefy arm across them. The shirt she was wearing had ridden up and my fingers skimmed the bare skin of her hip. They quickly, of their own accord, slid higher, taking the shirt with them and finding the crease where her hip met her thigh and into the soft skin there before settling.

We both lay silent, our breathing more labored than probably necessary. Her presence in my bed brought a newfound sense of comfort and contentment as our bodies intertwined in a tender embrace. Even though everything inside of me told me how wrong it was.

“What does that word mean?” She asked softly after a minute.

“What word?”

“Bambina.”

I lay silently for a second, trying to think of an appropriate answer, “It means nothing.”

She huffed lightly, clearly annoyed by my dismissive response to her question.

“You’re lying.” I could hear the indignation in her voice as she accused me softly in the dark. She didn’t raise her voice though, in fact, every time she spoke to me it was soft and melodic, almost like a kid’s fairy tale character. Almost like the fairy tale princesses in the kids’ movies, I used to get sucked into watching. The ones where the fair maidens had birds and woodland creatures following them around everywhere they went, singing. But she wasn’t some innocent beauty frolicking through my forest, she had darkness surrounding her and it had kissed her skin over and over again, leaving her marked.

“You would know all about lying to someone’s questions now, wouldn’t you?” I replied because, well, I was a bastard, and I just couldn’t leave well enough alone.

I felt her sharp intake of breath and knew that was an asshole thing to say, but I couldn’t take it back because not knowing exactly what happened to her still didn’t sit well with me. It went against everything I’d ever trained for and prided myself on being about.

She said nothing else and after a while; I felt her fall asleep, and I drifted off to the rhythmic pattern of her slow breathing.

When I woke up again, I was disoriented and confused. Bright mid-morning sun shone through the windows across from the loft and it hurt my eyes as I tried to acclimate to my surroundings. Not in years had I ever woken up after the sun was fully up.

My body and head were working at two different speeds, the way it does after an extremely deep hard sleep. When I finally remembered myself, I looked to my left to check for Hadley but found the bed empty and cold.

“Hadley!” I yelled as I swung my feet to the floor and took off to the stairs.

What if she robbed me blind and took off with my dog and truck?

Okay, that sounded like a country song.

But I knew nothing about her and her mysterious appearance on my property left more questions than answers.

I made it downstairs without falling on my face in my haste, hitting the hardwood with a loud thud as I looked around the living space for her. The heavenly scent coming from the kitchen should have knocked me on my ass if gravity didn’t, but I’d been too frantic to pick up on it at first. She stood there, with her hair up in a messy bun, still wearing only my long-sleeved shirt, rolled up her arms a dozen times to clear her wrists, and my slippers from by the front door that I hardly ever wore.

“Good Morning.” She said shyly from behind the stovetop on the island as she flipped through a couple of pieces of sausage.

“Morning,” I answered curtly, trying to figure out why finding her standing in my kitchen wearing my shirt left me feeling relieved and incredibly aroused.

“I hope you don’t mind; I was starving and didn’t want to wake you.” She said as she gestured to the sausage in the pan and the fresh biscuits warming on the plate next to the gravy.

“You made biscuits and gravy?” I tried to hold back any harshness in my tone. She nodded shyly again, making eye contact only for a brief second at a time. “From scratch?”

“Yeah, you had everything for the biscuits in your pantry and the sausage was in the freezer.” She shrugged. “I whipped the gravy up from the two of them. I figured I should at least cook and clean for you while I’m here. Try to earn my keep, even if it’s still short by a long shot from what I owe you.”

“You don’t owe me anything, Hadley,” the harshness was back in my voice, and she dropped her gaze again to the pan. I wasn’t mad because she was cooking, I was mad because she thought she needed to cook to stay. “But I won’t turn away good home cooking.” I tried to soften my obvious lack of tact and good manners by accepting her offer.

---