Authors: Jevenna Willow
Chapter
Three
Sara took a huge step back, unsure what
his intentions were, exactly. Her jean-clad rear bumped the table and rattled every
bit of glassware upon it. At least eight thousand dollars’ worth of glassware—if
put up for auction.
She’d had enough of men trying to make
her uneasy over the last week. Her mutiny grew.
“Who put you up to this? Mike?”
Sara felt uncomfortable by not only his
nearness, but for the words to his following her home from work. She forced a
smile to state any effort on his part would not work in his favor. It would be
just the thing for Mike to do. Hire a man to follow her every move. Mike Derby
couldn’t take ‘no’ for answer. Moreover, the guy was a real asshole. He’d been
a bit bothersome as of late, and that bothering nature now looked to be more on
a stalking level that might need the involvement of authorities.
She wasn’t much into contacting the
police, even if and when necessary. It was a trust issue more than a careless
issue and one she couldn’t seem to get past.
Sara had single-handedly closed the
local strip club due to a health violation—alas, nothing more. It was as if all
the men in town, who didn’t have large breasts to stare at, had too much time
on their hands to pull childish pranks on those not as well-endowed. It wasn’t
as if she’d killed someone. She put a few hookers out of a job, that’s all. And
of course Mike had been the first to complain and the first to make Sara’s life
miserable.
Assholes
’
shit didn’t stink any more than
Chippendales
’ would, yet they were a horse
apiece in Sara’s book. Both jerks had been born from the Kingdom of Hotness.
“I don’t know anyone named Mike. Should
I?” he asked, as his strong brow cocked to state this as truth.
Regrettably, that raised brow made her equally
uneasy, and if done for what it was meant for, it sure as hell was doing its
job. Sara was squirming.
“Come on? Really?” she said tartly. “You
have nothing better to do than to follow a woman to a yard sale?”
He was too well dressed to be a crazed
stalker. Pressed casual pants, expensive leather jacket, and under the jacket
what looked to be . . .
a tie
? His wavy brown hair looked tailored under
a barber’s care and wasn’t at all just plain brown as first thought. There was
a light dusting of silver in the strands. His clean-shaven face and bright
smile were a dead giveaway to his personal hygiene habits. Not a freckle or
hair out of place.
He wasn’t a slob and he cared about
presentation . . . okay, she could work with that.
Honestly, Sara’s second assessment had
been done much more thoroughly for the potential sketch artist, and certainly
not because she’d needed to check him out.
Perhaps he knew Bill.
Bill Hayer, in accounting, was angry all
the time and for good reason. Nevertheless, a filthy kitchen was a filthy
kitchen. And Sara had warned them to clean up their act. Eight days ago, she
publically closed the club down. That closing looked to be for good, because
once the doors were locked by way of Sheriff’s order, a few other sordid
details started spilling out of the place of which Sara had nothing to do with
by a simple closing of the club’s kitchen.
Bill was leaving Sara nasty notes on her
desk every morning, making sure she knew she was being watched. They hadn’t
transcended into threatening, but she wasn’t taking any chances by calling his
bluff.
“You weren’t at this yard sale, Sara,”
the stranger eased out of the corner of his mouth. “You were on your way home.
And the bright red sale sign caught your eye . . . as I knew it would.”
“As—as you knew it would?” she squeaked out.
At least the words had been audible, first
screamed from inside all the goo within her head, then tempered to simmering in
the back of the throat and released as a croak off the tongue.
“This is Depression ware Heaven,” he
spoke flatly, looking her right in the eyes. “You would have stopped.”
He’d made it seem as though he knew old
stuff pulled her in like metal to magnet. Yet how could that be? She never saw
this man before in all her life, and if she had wouldn’t have forgotten him. He
had a charmingly handsome face.
“And if I hadn’t stopped?” she clipped
rudely.
Another deep, entrapping smile came her
way. This one loaded with dimple and delicious allure.
“I would have followed you home, as I have
been ordered too,” he admitted, checking Sara’s reaction to the admittance by
another raise of his brow.
“Ordered?”
He’d been ordered to follow her? Why?
Sara had to push forth her thoughts
because every word out of her mouth made her tongue feel as if stuffed full of
cotton and set to flame. The more that came out, the sicker she felt, and the
more her gut tightened. She could sense her cheeks reddening. She certainly felt
the sweaty palms. Christ! Even the back of her knees had sweat rolling down
their length . . . and it was late October—harvest time—with a very brisk dip
to the temperature. It was just too damn cold to sweat.
Sara didn’t know what to do, or even how
to react. Men, she could handle. A man who could make her afraid all of a
sudden? Well, that was quite new to her.
She wondered, should she simply grab a
crowbar off the table from behind his back and hit him over the head with it?
Then, make a run for it? There were plenty of weapons to use and within her
reach. A full table of easily accessible articles that could do the deed,
spread out by order of decay. On the other hand, she could always stand her
ground, confront the man on his tiresome jest, and simply be done with it.
All options made her gag. She would
never purposely hurt another. Nor would she avoid confrontation. Avoidance
never suited her needs.
“And who, exactly, ordered this?” she
said crisply. She was trying to be nonchalant about how shaken up she was, but
this was hard to do by how easily spoken it was from his tongue, and the fact her
body was now trembling like a leaf caught up in a windstorm.
The man’s smile grew even more. He
checked it when the old woman on the rocker started moving their way.
Without hesitation, he reached around
Sara’s back, grabbed the salad bowl in hand, and never quite answering a
question obviously made to him while Sara distraught, bought the bowl from the
old woman for seven dollars and fifty cents. He’d made a blatant point to show
the old woman the crack, bringing the price of the bowl down considerably.
He must have seen Sara checking out the
crack. He certainly did not look the type to notice small defects as dire
imperfections in Depression Ware.
Sara stayed nearer the table, watching
the unusual display of male arrogance—and dumbfounded by how shameful it had
been. She dealt with jerks of every size imaginable on a daily basis, but this
jerk just out-purchased her by way of cheat.
He returned quickly, handed Sara the
bowl, and gave her another easy smile.
“Here.”
Sara’s eyes became trapped to his. She
grabbed the one hundred ten year old bowl before she could put much thought
into what she was doing. It was either that or she dropped it on the ground.
“Now I will have to follow you home,” he
said recklessly, unsettling Sara even more.
Her brow furrowed. “Oh? And why is
that?” She clamped her hand tighter to the bowl. The only good dropping it
would do her now would be to spite the man. She might have disregarded the bowl
as a purchase, but eventually she would have caved and bought it herself. He
had no need to do this for her.
“You now have something of mine,” he
openly admitted, reconfirming her suspicions.
Yep. Tried and true jerk. Men like this
guy only gave things away if expecting them back—with interest.
His gaze slipped to the bowl. “I will
have to come to you now . . . in order to claim what’s mine.”
A smile and a nod, a half-second later
he walked off toward his car, climbed into the vehicle while having purchased
nothing more, and left Sara holding a bowl she hadn’t bought and of which she’d
been informed was his.
Thank God the bugs weren’t out. She
would have captured a few—her mouth hung that far open.
As her lips closed slowly, her gaze
traveled to the man’s vehicle heading down the drive. Sara then took a deep
breath and held it in her lungs with all her might. Even that didn’t help the
fact a mere stranger she’d met at a yard sale told her something that had her
quacking in her shoes.
At the point where the driveway met the road,
he turned his vehicle toward the direction of town. Oh, Thank God! If he’d
turned toward her place, Sara would have passed out onto the un-mown lawn.
Surely he’d only been teasing her about being
paid to follow her home. But if not?
Sara Ruby did not want to think about
any
if nots
. The
if nots
of life absolutely terrified her.
As she was about to walk back to her
car, a bowl in hand she did not get the opportunity or pleasure to buy, she was
stopped by the sound of the old lady’s voice.
“Miss?”
Sara turned the woman’s way. “Yes.” It
was not as if she was stealing the bowl. She did watch the man pay for it all of
two minutes ago. Alzheimer a real bitch, if this was the case.
“That lovely gentleman told me to give
this to you only after he left.”
She shuffled across the unkempt lawn
toward Sara. Her hand was holding onto a slip of paper.
A hasty smile came with the offering as
she held the slip of paper out for Sara to take, a knowing wink to follow.
“He said I was to wait until he left
before I could tell you about it.”
Sara shifted the bowl under her arm to
be able to grab the paper out of the old woman’s hand. It was folded in half.
She was almost too afraid to read it, yet another reassuring smile came her way
to aid the effort of opening the fold. It was probably his phone number.
Conceited bastard.
It read . . .
Your place.
Eight o’clock.
Sara’s heart skipped a beat as her gaze edged
toward an old woman’s sympathetic eyes; years of hardship and dedication to the
cause etched into the tiny lines and sorrowful life on another’s face. Before she
could even ask when the man had the time to write a note, let alone had given
any such note over to her, the old woman told her, “Christian is such a good
lad. He must have liked what he saw, to be willing to come right out and talk
to you.”
“Christian?”
Her head nodded in agreement. “Oh, yes.
Christian Mohr,” she told Sara. “From church.”
“Ch—church?” Sara sputtered, simply
allowing her thoughts a voice of their own.
She must have spoken the word too loud because
the old woman looked at her quite strange; a chastising gaze that drew the
breath from her lungs.
“Why, yes, dear. From the only church
worth going to.” She moved closer to Sara as if to share a deep, dark secret
between kindred spirits. “Christian is the new minister they sent us, and he is
such a wonderful man. Isn’t he?”
Sara’s eyes widened to beyond huge. “Minister?”
came out of her mouth, unchecked. She firmly skipped over the dreamboat aspect.
Or was it wonderful? Yes. The word wonderful had been said, not dreamboat . . .
although Sara wasn’t at all convinced of this characterization.
Christ! She needed to learn when to keep
her big mouth shut. She might as well have called him a psychopathic stalker
for all the good it would have done her. The old woman was looking at her as
though she was talking to a two-year-old, all of a sudden, and not an
abnormally brilliant woman, with Masters’ degree in Criminal Biology—and no
corresponding job to prove she’d even earned it.
“Yes, my dear. Minister, as in . . . Man
of the Cloth.”
Sara knew exactly what
Man of the
Cloth
meant. Trouble. And not the good kind, but the kind that would set a
firm hand at her back to guide her through the gates of Hell.
She turned toward the vacant space where
the man’s—well, Christian’s car—had been. She had to think this through, very
carefully. A minister was following her? Good grief! Why?
Sara wasn’t a church-going woman. In
fact, she’d never stepped foot inside a church in all her life. Moreover, that
time included twenty-five full years of missed Sundays seated on a pew and
twenty-five full years that had been turning into a lot of mad at God.
Of course, she wouldn’t have been mad at
anyone if
He
hadn’t taken her parents away just hours after her birth—a
car crash and Sara orphaned within minutes—the rest of her life to end up in
foster care for sixteen of those twenty-five years. Sara then shuffled from one
home to the next, never really knowing where she belonged or if anyone really
wanted her to begin with. She was actually pissed at God for making her an
orphan. Yet that was between her and God, not Christian Mohr and an old woman having
a yard sale.