Page 40 of Take Me Tender

She leaped to reach the couple in one bound. “Stop!” With both hands, she grasped the boy’s arm, and with all her strength wrenched, pushing down on his elbow while pulling up on his wrist to break his grasp.

It worked. Fern stumbled back as she was freed and Jenner rounded on Nikki. “Bitch,” he spit out.

Fern ran backward toward the house, her movements clumsy but quick.

Nikki wasn’t running anywhere. “That’s right,” she told the boy, adrenaline pumping into her system until she felt seven feet tall and Superwoman invincible. “I’m the biggest bitch from your baddest bad dream. And it’s only getting worse. I’m going inside and I’m going to call the police and then I’m going to call your parents. And if I ever see you around this house, if I ever see you around Fern, if I ever hear that you’ve touched her, well, I’m a chef, which means I’m trained with knives and perfectly willing to try an adaptation to my recipe for buffalo balls in béarnaise sauce.”

The stupid jerk sneered, but he was moving off. “You’re crazy, you know that? Crazy.”

Nikki caught sight of Fern, halted on her path back to the house. Suddenly getting to her was much more important than preventing Jenner from getting the last word. Ignoring the shrieks from her knee as well as the curses from the retreating boy, she hurried to the girl and grabbed her hand to hustle her inside.

Behind the locked back door, Nikki sank into a chair at the kitchen table and watched Fern do the same. Adrenaline still flooded her bloodstream, and she felt good, hella-good as a matter of fact, that she’d stood up to that bully. As she’d told Jay, she could handle whatever came up. All by herself.

But there was still more to be confronted. She sucked in a breath and kept her voice calm. “Fern, did Jenner hurt you?”

The girl’s head shot up, then she pulled her sleeve off her shoulder and inspected the faint red marks on her upper arm. “No,” she said, covering herself back up. “I just bruise easily.”

“I mean other times.” Nikki forced herself onward. She could do this. She’d faced Jenner, right? And she would do whatever else she must. “Other times did he make you do things you…you didn’t want to do?”

The girl’s face flushed and she trained her gaze on the tabletop in front of her. “Other times he did things that made me want him. But he’s mad because I broke up with him instead of—” Her hand lifted. “You know.”

Nikki silently released the breath she’d been holding. “Instead of having sex.”

“Yeah.” Fern’s mouth barely moved.

“Well, he won’t be bothering you anymore.” She’d make sure of it.

A smile flickered over the teenager’s face and she glanced up again. “Buffalo balls in béarnaise sauce?”

“A guy who treats a girl like that deserves nothing less.”

Fern went silent again, and her fingers reached for the zipper pull of her hoodie. She toyed with it, running it up and down in short, nervous bursts.

Nikki started to push herself to a stand, thinking to make tea or hot chocolate. Thinking she’d weathered the event and done more than okay. That hella-good feeling resurged.

“My best friend, Emily, was raped last May.”

Sinking back to her seat, hella-good transforming into horror, Nikki stared at Fern. “Oh.” Oh, God.

“She was visiting her brother at college and he took her to a party at one of the frats. They went different ways and she…well…”

“Oh, Fern.” The last of Nikki’s adrenaline leached away in a whoosh.

More words tumbled out of the girl’s mouth. “I didn’t want what happened to make me afraid like she is now. I wanted to prove I could take the most dangerous boy I know and handle him. That way…that way I could prove to myself I wasn’t vulnerable like Em.”

Nikki slumped against the back of her chair. What should she say? She was out of her element all over again. Her mother hadn’t lived long enough to set an example for this kind of discussion. Nikki didn’t have girlfriends either, who might have provided practical experience she could draw upon. Should she tell Fern that all women were vulnerable?

Should she say some women—Shanna came to mind—gave too much of themselves in order to have a man? Should she say that it was better—safer—to give little to them and expect nothing in return? Is that what she was doing with Jay?

She hoped that’s what she was doing with Jay.

Before she could formulate an answer, Fern was talking again. “I don’t want to give up on guys altogether, though.”

Two weeks ago, giving up on males altogether pretty much summed up Nikki’s own strategy.

“So I guess I’ll just keep my eyes open,” Fern continued. “Be open, but wait for one I can trust with…with me. What do you think?” Her gaze met Nikki’s.

She didn’t know how to respond to Fern’s question or even the ones in her own mind. But she’d promised Jay she could handle anything that came up. Her fingers itched to call him, but wasn’t she independent? Capable all on her own? And anyway, she doubted he’d be any better at honest romantic advice than she.

“I think…I think…” Cassandra. Her image leaped into Nikki’s mind. It was Tuesday, wasn’t it? Knitters’ Night—make a connection, make a friend! For the first time in her memory, being surrounded by other women sounded comforting, not uncomfortable. Much better than being alone.

She stood up, putting all her weight on her good leg. “I think we should go to Malibu & Ewe.”

At her first step, her right leg buckled. Nikki grabbed the table, pain slicing through her knee as if the ligament was being severed all over again. Oh, God, oh, God. Oh, no.

“Nikki?”

The concern in Fern’s voice helped her push back against the pain. She breathed slowly, then took another experimental step, limping to make it easy on her now-throbbing knee. Her purse and an elastic bandage were only a few feet away.

“We’ll take your car, okay?” she told the girl.

She couldn’t drive. She could only hope she was correct, that there’d be comfort available at Cassandra’s shop. Because right now being by herself wouldn’t cut it. It would only make her panic more about the extent of the new damage to her already injured knee.

Eighteen

A bachelor never quite gets over the idea that he is a thing of beauty and a boy forever.

—HELEN ROWLAND, WRITER

Jay drove too fast along PCH. He told himself it was because he’d found the house empty and he was worried about Fern. The call he’d managed to make to her before the lousy Malibu cell reception broke up should have been reassuring. She and Nikki were fine. Together.

At Malibu & Ewe.

Cassandra had made him promise not to tell Nikki about their sibling status, and he’d taken the easy route, as ever, and agreed. It was simpler for the yarn shop owner to find her own way through that thorny patch. He had no idea how Nikki would react and he had enough trouble dealing with her himself.

Dealing with how he felt about her.

Which was another reason he was in a hurry to get to the yarn store. A couple of drinks, a rare steak, and a bull session with one of his oldest friends, now headquartered in NYC, had gone a long way to putting this…thing with Nikki in perspective.

Love. Shit. What the hell did he know about that? The fact was, her long legs turned him on, her bruja eyes bewitched him, her hot, melting center was just the perfect, snug little pocket he’d called it. Combined together with the absolute glee he felt at her surprised reaction each time she achieved another big O—well, those were the ingredients of a recipe for powerful lust.

Nothing more.

When he saw her tonight, he’d have his perspective in place and be able to view her as the summer fling she was—as clean and sweet as vanilla and mango, as spicy and satisfying as her jalapeño-laced homemade guacamole.

But a summer fling all the same.

The parking lot shared by the café and Malibu & Ewe was more than half-full, even though Gabe’s place closed at eight. That meant a roomful of knitting women, but he didn’t let the prospect hitch his stride. The sooner he saw Nikki, the sooner he’d have his world ordered the old, comfortable way. In the number-one position, a solo Jay, free of cumbersome emotions that threatened his happy male autonomy.

He rolled his shoulders and twisted his neck, palming his jaw to give the adjustment an extra oomph. Screwing his head on straight would come just that easily, he promised himself. One look at Nikki and he’d realize he was back to the good ol’ days of sex sans emotion.

A figure flitted through the door ahead of him, and he recognized the thin figure of Oomfaa. At first she’d objected to the nickname, but in the way of small towns everywhere, there’d been no escaping it.

He was on her heels as the door swung shut behind her. He caught it in his hand so it didn’t make a sound as he entered the shop. None of the women looked up from their projects.

It was larger than the groups he’d seen gathered there other times. Women filled the couches, a couple of ottomans, as well as a dozen folding chairs that Cassandra had produced from somewhere. He didn’t see Nikki right away, but Fern was at the back of the shop, her fingers running over the colored yarns in the built-in bins.

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