EJ wrapped an arm around Tabitha’s shoulder and leaned close, peeking over her shoulder to smile at Miss Stanford. “She’s just kidding.”
“I thought so. You look like such a cute couple.”
151
Gracie C. McKeever
“Especially one of us. I think she is the most adorable thing.” He gave Tabitha a squeeze and gasped when she elbowed him in the gut right before he reached across the aisle to shake Miss Stanford’s small wrinkled hand. “EJ Vega.”
“I know, the author.” She held up his book and wiggled it back and forth. “I was at your presentation the other evening and rushed right out to get a copy. Finished it last night.”
“Is it signed?”
“Why no.”
EJ took an ever-present pen from his inside jacket pocket and reached for the book. He felt heat on the side of his face as Tabitha glared at him, but ignored it. “What would you like me to say?”
“To Edna, Loved your grand city as much as you loved my book.”
EJ wrote out her message verbatim, then signed his name and handed it back to her.
“Oh, thank you so much. You don’t know what a treat this is.” Edna clutched the book to her chest, then took a deep breath and looked at him. “Well, I’ll leave you two to your discussion now. Be good to each other.”
“We will.” He noticed the tick in Tabitha’s jaw right before she turned on him again.
She muttered just loud enough for EJ to hear, “She leaves us to our discussion, but when I was by myself, she wouldn’t leave me alone for one minute!”
“You probably looked like you needed someone to talk to.”
She huffed, turned the back of her head to him, glanced at Edna Stanford and smiled before staring at the seat in front of her.
“Are you going to be like this for the entire flight?”
“Yep, the entire flight.”
EJ smiled, wanted to tell her she was being childish, or even worse, a bitch, but knew better than to stick his hand any further into the lion’s cage than it was already.
He sat back in his seat and glanced out the window to his right as the pilot’s voice came over the loud speaker and the flight attendants did their spiel about safety and procedures to follow in the event of a rough, crash or water landing.
EJ had loved exploring the city with Tabitha, had loved this trip despite its relative brevity, and most of his pleasure came from the woman sitting beside him. Even if she was acting like an incredibly irritated lion with a thorn in its paw right now.
He smiled, eyes drifting shut as he tuned into her breathing, tentatively reached out and brushed against her mind. Prickly and cold, like her. He concentrated on smoothing and warming the rough boundaries, imagined a soft giving surface, something like a sponge, then pushed further until…EJ gasped in shock when he realized he was in!
152
Beneath the Surface
She’s a little girl, about seven or eight and pouring a fifth of Absolute Vodka
down the kitchen sink, nervously stealing periodic glances over a skinny shoulder. In
seconds it becomes apparent why she is nervous and speed is of the essence when a
woman marches onto the scene and roughly jerks her free arm.
Tabitha drops the bottle and it crashes to the floor in a pungent puddle.
“What do you think you’re doing, you little bitch? Do you know what this stuff
costs?”
She whips out her hand and slaps Tabitha hard across the face.
Tabitha gapes and puts a hand to her quickly reddening cheek but does not cry,
just stares up at her mother, unrepentant and fearless.
Flash to another scene,
she is about the same age, surrounded by crowds coming
and going with head-spinning speed, and she is alone and waiting. She paces, stopping
periodically to glance at passing female faces in the manner of a lost child looking for
her mother
.
Soon a policeman approaches and asks her if she knows where her mommy is and
Tabitha is forced to admit that she doesn’t. She explains her mother left her alone while
she went to purchase bus tickets, but her mommy’s been gone a very long time now and
Tabitha doesn’t know what’s keeping her.
As more time passes and her mother doesn’t show up, it becomes apparent to the
officer that her mother is not coming back. The policeman takes Tabitha away in a squad
car to a precinct where she will wait the rest of the afternoon and evening away before
arrangements are finally made for Tabitha’s placement in a Catholic orphanage.
Flash to next scene, years later.
Tabitha is a teenager, the beautiful woman that
she will finally become evident in the glowing copper tone of her complexion, the high
proud angle of her cheeks and the defiant tilt of her full lips.
But her long-entrenched bravado is soon put to the ultimate test when she is
assaulted by a man who has forgotten his purpose under the influence, forgotten that he
is in the business to protect and nurture and not abuse and take advantage of the weak
and young in his care.
EJ moaned and shifted in his sleep, but couldn’t yet pull away, other images flying at him, other images that wouldn’t let go.
This time it is not of Tabitha but of
a woman, features cloaked in haze,
unrecognizable, yet he feels a connection, a pull of familiarity right before the car she is
riding in hits a retaining wall and she is flung forward against her seatbelt.
“No!” EJ came awake with a start, confused and queasy, mind half in, half out of Tabitha’s world, the images of Frankie storming into the room and pulling the man off of her and of the bloodied woman in the mangled car blending until they are one.
Shame instantly suffused him at the way he’d treated her back at the hotel. He hadn’t raped her or forced her, but he’d come pretty damn close, rough and mean just to prove a point.
153
Gracie C. McKeever
“Eric?” Tabitha shook his shoulder and he turned to see her almond shaped whiskey colored eyes turned on him in concern. “Are you okay?”
He focused on her face, barely nodded as nausea bubbled and he tried to re-engage his shields, block out all the fear and suffering, protect his sanity.
Since they’d made love it had become easier and easier to get into her mind and harder to protect himself, as if that first act of consummation had opened up the floodgates.
Be careful what you wish for…
God, he had wanted this,
asked
for it, and now that he had gotten it he couldn’t deal…So much pain, so much chaos and misery, inconceivable to him that she was able to stay sane and function without crumbling beneath the weight of it all.
“Eric?” This time she cupped his chin, stared at him. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I must have drifted off,” he muttered.
“And had a nightmare.” She frowned as she handed him a cup with ice and soda.
EJ gulped it down. He hadn’t realized his mouth was so dry until this moment, the cool liquid immediately soothing his parched throat.
“I’m okay,” he lied, the movie in his mind only now winding down, images still lingering, evocative and fresh.
The woman was going to die and it frightened him that he knew this with such certainty.
Telepathy he’d tolerated and accepted in one form or another since he was old enough to reason, so commonplace to him now that he took the resultant cacophony of strange voices and thoughts in stride, but he’d never experienced visions before, clairvoyance something new and alarmingly different.
Something that Tabitha had raised.
154
Beneath the Surface
Tabitha warily stared at him all the way from the plane to baggage claim, watched him closely until they made it out to his Jeep at airport parking.
She looked but she didn’t speak, didn’t know what to say, where to begin to address what had happened on the plane, still dealing with what had happened the day before with the Zip Code Man. Minor as was the incident, it bothered her because it had bothered him.
The silence in the Jeep was heavy enough to feel until it was like another living breathing presence in the vehicle with them stealing the air.
Tabitha felt like she was riding with a total stranger, as if she were a hitchhiker Eric had picked up on the side of the road. Which was so ironic since she thought she knew more about him, what made him tick, than she knew about her blood kin, yet he was stranger, more distant now than when they’d first met.
How they were going to part once they arrived in the city was anyone’s guess, and Tabitha still didn’t know how to approach his proposal.
It doesn’t have to end…
She wanted to believe this was still true, that he still felt the way he had when he’d said it, that he still cared. That she hadn’t totally alienated him.
Fifteen minutes into the drive Eric finally broke the silence.
“We’re going to my house.”
It wasn’t a question, and every natural instinct in her wanted to argue with his high-handed tone, his presumptuous manner, but deep down she knew that there was nowhere else she wanted to be than at his house, with him, the only place she wanted to be right now.
She felt him glancing at her from the corner of an eye as if waiting for her reaction, and didn’t know how she was going to respond herself until she said, “Okay.”
155
Gracie C. McKeever
She almost choked on the timidity she heard in her voice but finally gave in to her desires rather than allowing her stubborn will any credibility.
She settled back into her seat and glanced out at the road ahead, other cars surrounding them and rushing by on either side in the dark, street- and traffic-lit night, and wanted to stop time, stop traffic, felt like her life was rushing by with their time together.
Tabitha drifted back to that scene on the plane and stopped herself from shivering.
She’d fallen asleep, too, almost as soon as Eric had, eerily connected to him in that moment, connected in a way that defied explanation.
She’d never felt so close to another human being than right then and when they’d made love, had always wanted to know what having a deep attachment to someone was like.
Even with Frankie, whom she loved dearly, she found her relationship wanting with him dropping out of her life more frequently than in. There was no opportunity to build meaningful ties beyond what they’d forged as teens.
She had no “real” brothers or sisters, no cousins or friends in whom to confide, had never felt the deficiency so desperately until now.
Tabitha cut her eyes at Eric, studying his profile as her heart lurched in her chest.
He did things to her that no other man had ever done, even watching him drive—his powerful hands on the steering wheel, every small motion exuding silent confidence—
turned her on, made her feel safe.
That’s something else she’d never really felt with anyone before: safe.
God! Could trusting him be on the horizon?
Tabitha almost laughed at the absurdity, then noticed the figure waiting outside Eric’s building and knew why trust was a long way off and security a memory.
Ms. Secret.
* * * *
She sat ramrod straight in her seat, gaze aimed directly ahead, at Jade on the sidewalk.
He wanted to reach out and hold her, comfort her for all the injuries and injustices she’d suffered as a child—for what he suspected was about to go down—but how could he do that without revealing what he knew? Without revealing
how
he knew?
“Can’t keep her waiting forever now, can we?” Tabitha whispered.
He started when he heard the challenge in her voice, just then realizing how long he had been parked at the sidewalk thinking.
Damn, there was no way this was going to be a good situation!
156
Beneath the Surface
This was the first time these women would be seeing each other since he and Tabitha had consummated their relationship. She was no longer just his personal shopper he was trying to bone, and with whom he was flirting. She was so much more.
EJ unlatched his seatbelt, squeezed Tabitha’s closest thigh and bent his head to say, “Stay here.” He should have known better.
“The hell I will.”
“Tabi—”
She undid her own seatbelt and got out of the Jeep before he could stop her, waited for him on the sidewalk.
“Hello Tabitha. Funny meeting you here.”
“Not so funny.”
“Jade, what are you doing here?” EJ asked as he joined them on the sidewalk, positioning himself in front of Tabitha, halfway between the women for good measure.
“I thought I’d drop by and surprise you, help you celebrate your best-selling status,” she held up an expensive bottle of champagne, “but it seems someone beat me to the punch.”
EJ felt the scathing look she raked over Tabitha as if Jade had sliced through
him
, and he could only imagine the damage her look did to Tabitha, though he knew she’d never show it.
“So you’ve resorted to slumming, EJ?”
“Slumming! I’ll show you slumming.”
EJ moved solidly between them now, blocking Jade from Tabitha’s view as he confronted Jade. “I don’t know what your game is,” he lied. He knew exactly what her game was. She was trying to make Tabitha jealous, and that was not a game he wanted to play. “You shouldn’t have come here, Jade.”
“That’s not what you said the last time we saw each other. In fact, you were rather happy to see me, especially when you were sliding your dick into me.”
EJ caught her by her free arm. “What the hell is the matter with you, anyway?
You know nothing happened between us the last time we saw each other, and what’s more, you don’t have any papers on me.”
“Does she?” Jade jerked her chin in Tabitha’s direction.
“I’ll show you what I have on him.”
EJ turned just in time to plant a palm in Tabitha’s chest, tried to be as gentle as possible as he stopped her from charging ahead.