“Can I take it with that we’re done?” Deke asked.
Bubba nodded. “We’re done.”
“Then let’s get to work,” Deke muttered.
Bubba gave him a long look but thank fuck, after giving it, he turned away.
Deke turned his thoughts from all Bubba had to say.
It’s good to finally know why you stood me up.
Shit.
She sang right to you.
Right to you.
Fuck.
He turned his thoughts from Jussy too.
And he turned them to giving her the only thing he’d be able to give her that she couldn’t give herself.
Something she actually could give herself since she was paying for it.
That being progress on the house she bought that she needed done and made safe so she could find her peace.
* * * * *
Justice
Sunday night, I stood in the great room where I’d come home to all three lamps lit because Deke had left them that way.
I put that thoughtfulness out of my mind and looked up.
I had a quarter of a fabulously stunning, wood ceiling laid in a herringbone pattern, the theme from the deck flowing through that space.
Symmetry.
I was finally getting it.
Right in time not to want it.
Zigs and zags were a lot better, I realized. You could cut and run on a zig, leave it all behind on a zag.
Now I was stuck.
I also saw the drywall upstairs ready for Deke to get started on giving me rooms the next day. And with the way he was going, it’d all be done, taped and primed by next week.
So it was good that that weekend I’d decided what color every room would be painted.
A flatbed truck was not the best vehicle to go crazy shopping in when you were shopping in a city a couple of hours away so you couldn’t safely put much in the bed, but I’d bought myself so much stuff, on the way home the cab was stuffed full of it as well as my overnight bag.
In that stuff was kitchen towels and Deke would just have to deal.
He also wouldn’t because he’d never be using them.
I sighed and moved to the front door to go out and haul in my stash.
I brought it in and made sure the front door was locked behind me.
I then moved to the other doors to make sure of the same.
I only kept one light on when I went to my bedroom.
Tuesday, Joe Callahan would be there to start work on my security system. On Saturday, Bubba would be there. And on Sunday, Lacey was showing.
Which meant, with Cal saying it would take a few days to do his gig, my hope was I’d only have one day alone with Deke next week.
But that day was the next day.
I had to find a way to get through it. Show him I could go back to sandwiches and banter.
I was going to do that but he’d have to deal with me pulling back.
He got why I’d been guarded before.
This time, I knew for sure he’d get me.
* * * * *
I heard glass breaking and my eyes shot open.
I lay still in the dark in my bed, listening.
Silence.
But the skin all over my body was tingling like it did when you had a bad dream, woke up and for those first seconds you were sure it was real.
I didn’t remember dreaming but it could be a dream.
And anyway, I might not have a security system but I did kind of have one because the roads were a maze to get up there. They were well-tended but the closer you got to my house, the deeper in the mountains you were, there was not a single streetlight. Not to mention, my house was way off the beaten path, down a long lane so you couldn’t even see it from Ponderosa Road. In the dark, you might not be able to see the lane. My mailbox was outside my house, the postman came all the way down the lane, so there wasn’t even a postbox or number to share that up my narrow lane there was anything.
Not that anyone would know I owned that property. Mr. T made it so my LLC owned it and you’d have to dig deep even to find I owned the LLC.
So no one there.
But Deke would be there within hours and Cal would be there to set me up the next day.
I relaxed, rolled and started to reach for my phone to check what time it was when I heard my bedroom door opening.
Now moving automatically, adrenaline spiking through me, I didn’t nab my phone.
I rolled the other way, jumped off the bed and ran like hell toward the French doors.
I was caught by my hair in a vicious grip and thrown back savagely, hitting the floor on my back with not even an elbow to cushion the fall, this knocking the wind right out of me.
Which meant he could get on top of me, straddling me.
I stared into his shadowed face, the ski mask hiding his features and I sucked in breath, twisted my hips and started to try to escape him when he hit me.
Shot to the left cheekbone first. Another direct hit nearly at the same place. A third one and I hadn’t even turned my head to shake the second one off or had the chance to get my hands up to deflect the blows.
Stars exploded in my eyes the first and second but scary black started encroaching on the third before he took my hair in a brutal grip at the crown, slammed my head into the hardwood floors (fuck, I needed a rug in there) and then I felt the cold at my neck.
I quit breathing.
His ski mask got right in my face.
“Don’t be any more stupid,” he bit out.
A guy. From what I could see, white. No way to tell the color of his eyes.
All this I took in because I had the ability of sight. I wasn’t being smart or thinking ahead.
I was barely breathing.
And all of my concentration was on the cold at my throat, cold I knew was a blade.