Page 13 of A Guardian for Christmas

The voice is a quiet rasp but echoes over the bleak plain of my soul.

Chapter Seven

Esme

Sagan works the detangling serum through my hair, delicately brushing out my hair a section at a time. He knows what he’s doing. He’s done this before, but I never would’ve suspected it.

What do I know of Sagan? Nothing, except he’s a tattoo artist with a gruff exterior.

He seemed amused by me a year ago at the fall festival. He entertained my whims. For that short time together, he was a partner in crime when we stole Briar’s car and sneaked off to his tattoo parlor.

I didn’t go there expecting to find someone so intriguing to me. On the outside, he’s a big brute who looks like a one-man weapon of mass destruction. I would have pegged him as being in a biker gang, or as a hitman. But really, he was a philosopher.

Sagan had a certain zen quality about him that set him apart from everyone else I met that day, and maybe that’s why I was drawn to him.

A very zen trespasser and a liar, but still.

As I sit here, letting a man—inked with snakes, skulls, daggers, and blood from his neck to his navel and down both arms—brush my hair and fuss over me, I feel at peace.

“Shit, it’s cold in here. Be right back.”

Sagan goes to the bathroom and fetches his clothes. I hear him pulling his jeans back on.

When he comes back to the vanity where I sit, his jeans are on along with his flannel, which he leaves unbuttoned.

I catch my expression in the mirror as Sagan resumes brushing, and I don’t like what I see.

My face is pale, and my mouth is downturned. My eyes are blank and a little sad. My skin is dull. My overall countenance lacks the radiance that was once there.

I wince at the person I see looking back at me.

The brushing stops. “You OK, Esme?”

No. Clearly, I’m not OK. But that’s not what he means. He’s asking about the brushing.

I nod and say, “You didn’t hurt me.”

Tension drains from his face, and his tight shoulders drop an inch. He exhales. “Good. It’s been a while since I brushed someone’s hair for them.”

I quirk an eyebrow.

“I used to be a nurse,” he quickly says, his gaze in the mirror darting away.

He doesn’t want to talk about being a nurse. Well, it couldn’t have been that long ago, because he’s phenomenal at this job.

My heart drops a little. This is what he sees me as. Maybe a friend, but most definitely a patient. Of course he does. I’m a patient and a client to so many.

Maybe the whole chimney repair thing was somehow a conspiracy between Sagan and Frye. Maybe Frye knew someone like Sagan could compel me out of bed. But I immediately reject this theory because there’s no way Frye would know about my history with Sagan, and the idea that they might have met on the street and Frye hired him on the spot to be my caretaker is preposterous.

After he finishes with my hair, he turns my chair and kneels down in front of me. I’m about to come apart with horror and fascination and lust all wrapped up together when he takes my feet in his hands.

For half a second, I think, it’s a fetish. This whole thing must be a fetish, and…oh my god, that feels good.

Sagan runs the edge of his rough thumbs over the tops of my feet, which look so pale and small in his big hands.

“When was the last time you had a pedicure?” Sagan asks.

I muster the energy to say more than two syllables.

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