The Davonshire Series 2: Loving Words (22 page)

Elsie sat behind her desk, staring at the cactus.
Prickly little bugger
.  Her mind darted back and forth over so many details that Wilfred had shared in the past few days.  Although she had spent three nights in his bed, he slept on one side and she the other.  His moments of cuddling were short lived and when he was ready for sleep, he literally rolled away and slept.
I guess romance has a limit
.

Her heart ached for him because she wanted to hold him, but she knew doing so could get her shot.  She shuddered when she thought of the number of times she awoke to find Roscoe standing over her bed.  She changed the locks on the apartment three times and he still managed to get in.

The sleeping apart thing didn’t bother her too much.  Roscoe was the only man who had ever spent the night at her place and she often would awaken to either find him on her or in her.  The cactus was symbolic of her life.  Prickly.  Cute to look at, but don’t touch it.

Maybe we both are too broken to be good for anyone else but each other.

“Penny for your thoughts?” she heard him ask.

She smiled at him.  “I was just wondering…” she saw him tense up, but she pointed to the chair in front of her desk.  “After the photo shoot, you took several pictures, one in a kilt, the other with your sister’s assistant, and the last in jeans, a tee and your gun.”

 She sat and waited.  Wilfred rolled a pencil in his hands.  “My sister’s assistant is the woman on a couple of the book covers.  One or two are Rita and two others are Jaelon.
”

Her eyebrows shot up.  “Rita?  Really?”

He laughed.  “Made for an interesting photo shoot. Which is why on her, covers her face looks strained.” He stood and grabbed a few of the books from the shelf.  “Rita is the cover model for
The Daring Duchess
.”  The expression on Elsie’s face made him throw his head back in laughter.  She was frowning like she had just tasted something foul.

“Jaelon is the model for April in
An April Morning
,” he told her with a coy expression on his face.  Elsie could tell he had another surprise for her.

He started to laugh, “Sheila, in
The Cowgirls’ Destiny
,” He paused.  “… The model is Maria.”

Elsie gasped.  “You almost made me curse! Get out of here!  As in Rod’s assistant Maria? Will I kid you not, when I first saw her, I thought she looked like one of those little things off
Fraggle Rock
.”

Wilfred leaned forward and placed his arms on her desk, lowering his voice. He ignored most of what she said. “After what I have done to you for three nights in bed,
that
is what almost made you curse?”

“I guess you are going to have to work a bit harder there, boss man!” she told him with her eyes squinted like a gunfighter at the poker table issuing a challenge.

“I will work as hard as I need to make you happy, Elsie.”  It was said so softly and with such tenderness, she wanted to round the desk and fling herself into his arms.

Instead, she took a different tack.  “We shall see. You have just ruined your books for me and I will never read any of those again.”  They both laughed.

She went back to her initial questions, “Will, the last photo with the gun?”

He rubbed his hands together, pensively, searching for the right words.  “I have an idea that I have been toying with for some time, but I wouldn’t want to do it as Devons, though.”

Elsie grabbed a piece of paper.  “Go ahead, shoot.”

“He’s a detective who advocates for children, runaway teens, and women who’ve been victimized.  His main thing is to help them start a new life, safe and able to dream about a different kind of future.”

“That would be a hard life for him and anyone he is involved with,” she said as she stared at him.  “His name?”

“Devin Larkin or Gordon Thomas, a jaded cop on the Seattle Police Force who moves to Phoenix for year-round sun.  But, he finds that Phoenix and Tempe have more runaway kids than Seattle.”

“What would be a driving force for the detective to take on such a role as Protector and Savior for the lost?”

The words were so flat.  So powerful.  So strong that she actually cursed.  “He came home and found his young cousin in the floor, brutalized by a stalker who decided he didn’t want anyone else to enjoy her beauty, so he sliced her face open where you could see her jawbone.”

The words hit Elsie in the chest like a cannonball. The tears started to roll down her cheeks.  She wiped them away. Poor Jaelon.  Now she knew what happened to the young woman’s face and why she lived here and never left the ranch.  “And Rita?”

“I was in Bisbee looking at a property for stuff for the ranch, you know, items for the tack room, good wood, and when I went in the old barn on the property, I found her. She had run away from home and had been gone about a week when I discovered her.  She was dirty, malnourished and scared out of her mind.  Her stepfather had thought it would also be cool to share her with a few of his friends. This was, of course, after he was done with her.”  The tears were pouring down Elsie’s face.

He knew she was going to ask about the others, so he filled it the blanks. “As for Maria, Stefano and I found in Hermosillo on the side of the road.  They kept her in a cage that was too small, which is why her face looks like that.”

He stared at Elsie.  “I have my own island of misfit toys I guess.  I built the apartment building for them to have somewhere safe to live.  I gave them each a job so they could have some form of a normal life.  A job that means something to them and a boss who counts on them.”

Elsie asked, “And the guys in the warehouse?”

“People use children and young adults in all sorts of ways, Elsie, and recovering from it is not easy.  The climb out of that type of darkness towards something normal is long, arduous and painful. Sometimes, you need someone there to extend a hand and say,
come on, together, we can make it be okay
.”

He rose and looked back at her.  “It’s not perfect.  There is no such thing as perfect.  We are all flawed, damaged and broken.  But if we rely on each other, we can rewrite the way the story ends and be okay.”

It was said to mean so much more.  “Are we going to be okay, Will?”

“Elsie, no one should ever go to bed at night afraid to sleep because of fear of waking up and finding someone standing over their bed.  No child should be forced to pleasure adults because they are helpless and can’t fight for themselves.  And I…” he wiped at the hairs in his beard.  “… Am never going to be anyone’s victim again.”

Elsie sat at her desk and didn’t bother to eat lunch.  W.E. Devons had written each of their stories.  Willie’s words now made sense.  Will was rewriting their endings with hopes that each of his lost souls would find love and a happy ending.  He had spotted her in the lobby and zoomed in on her and brought her home as well.  Wilfred knew she too was broken and needed a fresh start. She was a misfit toy as well. Elsie’s thoughts then went to a six-year-old Gianni.

Gianni was one of the lucky ones. He found someone to love him and make sure he grew into a good man. Roscoe Cleophus Jenkins was just the opposite. 

Roscoe was a bitter man.  He grew up with a crack-addicted mother who often used him as a pawn to help her score drugs to feed her habit.  When she wasn’t selling herself to score drugs, she often would allow dealers to use the boy as they saw fit.  At the age of sixteen, Roscoe was a smooth talker and a sociopath. 

He had only two emotions: rage and extreme rage.

He met Elsie at the public library and spoke soft words to her as she helped him study for his GED.  He hung around the library too much and got her fired, but he made it all better by calling in a favor at Hughes Publishing to get Elsie a sweet job.  Later, Elsie discovered that his contact at the publishing company had a cute young daughter with a nasty habit.  A habit that Roscoe liked to feed and use to his advantage. But he was extremely good at that-taking advantage.

Roscoe was her first. However, the way she was raised, she never allowed him to stay over or have a house key.  It didn’t matter though, he always managed to get inside anyway.  It was a good six months into the relationships when she noticed him changing.  His behavior became erratic and he was using.  It was the drug abuse that freed his tongue, and, in the library, he chose to share details of their intimate life.

The initial attempts at sex were hurried, quick and abrupt.  Roscoe found that he was more turned on if he could hit Elsie or even choke her.  The more violent he was, the more turned on he became.  Elsie had become afraid of him and put a restraining order on him.  When he discovered what she had done, he hid at the grocers where she shopped and kidnapped her. 

He kept her locked away in a crack house for three days.

He brutalized her body, broke her ribs, and tossed her on the side of I-20 to leave her for dead.  Roscoe was a bad man whose lust for vengeance was only outweighed by his lust for hate and punishment.  Elsie prayed he would never find her.  If he did, she knew one of them would end up dead. It would be either her or Roscoe.  Like will, she was never going to be anyone’s victim again.

On Will’s self-sustaining island of misfit toys, big guns, and hardened hearts, this was the last place Roscoe Jenkins needed to be.  If Will didn’t kill him, one of the misfit toys would.  But Elsie knew in her heart that it was really only a matter of time.  She couldn’t just hide out from a man like Roscoe. A man like that always had a score to settle and was probably going to figure out how to find her.

     Roscoe sat at the gates of the Green Gables Ranch, ready to make the bitch pay for sending him to prison. This time, he planned to make sure she didn’t live to tell anyone about it.

Wilfred heard the buzz at the main gate and watched from the security camera feed as the man in the blue blazer pick the front locks.  He went to his office and picked up his Sig Sauer, alerting Raul and White Bear that an intruder was on the property.  He called the office and told his staff.  He recognized the man immediately as Roscoe Jenkins.  He put in a call to the local sheriff, but it was a bit off-putting when Roscoe drove his car to the front door and rang the doorbell.

Wilfred knew this type of man.  All anger and bluster under a cool façade of craziness.  Wilfred, still in his cowboy hat from the morning ride, had already opened the door and was leaning against the jamb when Roscoe stepped out of the car.

Roscoe eyed the pretty wannabe cowboy and took him for some kind of a punk.  “Good morning, partner.  I think you have something that belongs to me.”

He had a set on him as big as Texas. Wilfred had to give him that, but he must be mad to think he could ride up to his front door and have him hand over Elsie.

Wilfred played along. 

“Considering this is my ranch, I can’t see how anything here can possibly belong to you. 
Partner
.”  Wilfred still hadn’t budged from the doorway. White Bear had come around the side of the house and was standing behind the overdressed black man who looked as if he had just left the Pimp Ball in Vegas.

“You seem to be keeping my woman here, and I came to take her back home.”

Wilfred only smirked at the rude little man, knowing his next words were going to send the stupid man over the edge, but all he needed was an act of aggression and he could shoot the bastard.  “It doesn’t seem like she’s interested in being your woman any longer,
partner
, especially since last night she was calling my name.”

  He saw White Bear flinch, and as expected, Roscoe made a charge at Wilfred who, in one motion, had his Sig seated comfortably between the man’s beady eyes.

“Considering you are on parole, Mr. Jenkins, plus trespassing, and breaking and entering on private property,” Wilfred said as he flipped off the safety, “it seems stupid of you to travel completely across the country to chase a woman who not only doesn’t want you, but had you incarcerated to be rid of you.”

He grabbed him by the tie and pulled him closer, whispering in his ear all of the things Elsie liked him to do in bed.  Wilfred even went one step further to incite his rage, so that he would have the pleasure of putting a bullet in him for what he did to his sweet Elsie.

The last words he whispered out of White Bear’s earshot.  “She told me that she had never had an orgasm before me, Roscoe.  I make sure she has at least two, maybe three, each time I touch that luscious body.” He used his hand and pushed the man off the porch and into the dirt drive.

“If I see you on my property again, I am going to shoot first, watch you bleed out, then ask where to ship your sorry carcass.  You understand me,
Partner
?”

Roscoe must have seen Elsie standing behind Wilfred because he licked his lips lasciviously.  “So you have lost some weight riding this bucking bull!  It don’t matter any, I’ll be back to finish off what I started, bitch.”

Wilfred fired the weapon at his feet.  He kept firing until Roscoe had gotten back into his car and had driven off.  Wilfred was acting on emotion and should have detained the man until the sheriff arrived.  Elsie was still standing there, frozen in place.  He ran to her and wrapped his arms around her.  She was in tears.  “He’s never going to leave me alone!”

She pulled away from him and ran up to her room. Gianni ran after her.  White Bear only stood there shaking his head.  “Do you think that was wise,
Thunder Words
?”

The only time White Bear used the Indian name he had given Wilfred was to chastise him or to point out the error in his judgment.  Wilfred had made a bad call, inciting the man’s anger, but also failing to detain him.  He would soon find out how far Roscoe was planning to take his threat.