Overcoming Fear (Growing Pains #2) (47 page)

“Uh huh. Well.” The police man put his notes
away and looked around, ending with looking at Jim in the back seat
of the cop car. Jim was looking out at Krista with hatred.

“Assuming everything we have against him
sticks, he will be going back to prison.” The cop looked at Krista
pointedly. “He will have a set bail, though. He would be on his
second strike, not third. He’ll probably go back, but not for as
long as you would hope. Restraining orders are only good if the
perpetrator is caught. I have seen cases like this before. I have
every reason to believe he’ll go after you again.”

Krista’s heart sank. It was obvious when he
pointed it out, but she had chosen not to think about it. Now,
though, she had no choice.

“I can’t really afford a bodyguard, so what
can I do?” Tears came to her eyes.

The cop’s face softened.
Even severe men, maybe
especially
severe men, hated seeing a girl cry. “First
thing, make sure you’re not listed with an address anywhere online.
Make sure your number is unlisted. Make sure your Facebook page can
only be viewed by friends, and none of those friends share an
acquaintance with that man.”

Krista nodded. She doubted that would stop
Jim. It looked like the cop shared her view. He continued with,
“The best thing you could do, and it isn’t ideal for you probably,
is to move and change your name. It is the only way to be
absolutely safe.”

Krista sighed again and looked at Sean, who
was still lying on the sidewalk with his face against the cold
concrete. “I did move. He still found me.”

The cop nodded, but she could hear his
unsaid comment. She needed to move again, and this time follow
through with everything else he’d said, including changing her
name. Still looking at Sean, lying on the cold cement peacefully,
she nodded with tears starting to obscure her view. It would mean
she’d be moving away from the guy she loved. She had only just
reconciled with him, and now she would have to move away.

She knew her luck was too good to be
true.

“That bitch!” she said to herself.

“Who, ma’am?” the cop asked, half reaching
for his notepad again.

“Oh, nothing.”

The cop just looked at her, but it was
enough for her to continue with, “Lady Luck. She’s a bitch.”

The severe-looking ex-Marine smirked and
snorted, but didn’t comment. He probably agreed. Most people
did.

The police finally got around to deciding
they had enough paperwork to do with Jim, and would let Sean go
with a warning. Being that he was protecting his girlfriend, the
warning wasn’t all that harsh.

“Sean, we need to look at you,” Ben said
when they walked into the house. “Maybe take you to the
hospital.”

“He didn’t break anything. Just bruises.
I’ll be fine,” Sean said, grabbing for Krista.

“We need to look at her, too,” Ben replied,
eyeing her throat.

She hugged Sean, who winced. With Krista now
subject to the same scrutiny, Sean relented.

“I have a salve that might help.” Ben took
off down the hall. He was back in a flash with a complete first aid
kit that had been taking up room in the cabinet that held Krista’s
makeup. He opened it up and dug around, coming out with a small
brown bottle.

“Sean, take off your shirt, please,” Ben
said, looking closely at Krista. He shook the bottle and took the
lid off. He veered in toward Krista’s throat. “This will reduce the
appearance of the bruising. It doesn’t smell great, but it works
pretty well. It works better on darker skin, but it’ll still help.
I use it from time to time when I bang my arm or leg or
something.”

Krista let Ben rub the weird-smelling liquid
on her throat, then her arm, then hand it to Sean for the upper
thigh. Sean, shirtless and looking like a cast aside piñata after
the kids had been through, finished up.

“Wow,” Ben said, eyeing Sean’s lateral
muscles. “It’s a good thing you’re so heavily muscled. Some of
those bruises look deep. If it was me he would have broken a rib on
each side.”

“If it was you we would have run together,”
Krista stated.

Ben administered the salve to Sean, then
gave him some ice. Sean took it, argued when they made him sit on
the couch with the ice for a while, and finally begged to head to
bed—Krista’s bed.

Once there, he picked her up like a baby and
laid her down. He got in beside her immediately. They cuddled for a
quiet second before he whispered, “Foolish girl! What were you
doing with a man like that?”

“I don’t know. I
was
a foolish girl. A
stupid one, actually. He was tall, dark and handsome, like all the
story books say. When I met him he was extremely
charming.”

“He is extremely dangerous.”

“That was another attraction. Dangerous to a
young girl means exciting.”

“Then young girls are stupid,” Sean said in
a whisper with a kiss.

“Oh really? And where did you learn to fight
like that?”

“Touché.”

“But really, where did you learn to fight
like that? Not many people can hold their own with Jim.”

“Yeah. That guy is huge. Trust you to have
giant ex-boyfriends.”

Krista waited for a second, thinking he was
contemplating an answer. Instead, he just cuddled closer.

“That didn’t answer my question,” she
prodded.

Sean sighed and rolled on his back. Krista
shimmied over to put her head on his chest, careful not to touch
any sore parts.

“I had a troubled youth,”
Sean said quietly. “Hell, I
was
troubled youth. Sometimes I stuck up for kids
getting bullied so I could fight the biggest and the strongest.
Sometimes I was the bully daring anyone to stand up to me. Getting
pummeled felt better than dealing with my parents. Fights after
school, and then detention because…”

“
How long did that last?”
she asked.

He laughed bitterly, “The real fighting
lasted through high school, but I didn’t shy away from it in
college—I just tempered it with…other things. I finally started to
put the aggression into acting until I kind of worked through
it.”

Sean started drawing patterns with his
fingertips on her back. “What was the cop saying to you? Are they
going to put him away?”

“They should have enough to do it,
yeah.”

“So you are safe?”

She didn’t want to tell Sean that she would
never be safe in this house anymore. She didn’t want to tell him
that she would have to move again. She still didn’t know if she was
actually going to. If Jim went back to jail, she would be safe for
a while at least. Maybe she wouldn’t have to move for a year or
more.

But then, wasn’t that just
putting off the inevitable? Was it fair to get even more attached,
and
then
leave?
Sean’s life was in San Francisco. He had a home, a great job, and
his sister was supposed to move out here soon. He was established,
his roots were deep.

For this conversation, Krista decided that
the less said the better. When in doubt, just get naked.

Making love to him was exactly that: making
love. It was the most tender experience she had had, yet. He
treated her with velvet gloves, kissing her, stroking her, even
entering her with reverence. His kisses were slow, soft and deep.
He whispered he loved her and other sweet nothings as he entered
and retreated. In turn she was soft and gentle with him, letting
the passion build slowly. Each stroke feathering it higher. Each
kiss blowing the spark to life.

And the spark did ignite. It built and
built, they both climbed higher in each other’s arms, taking their
time with great effort and slow caresses. The result was an
explosion of feeling that lit sparks behind their eyes, both in
body and in the heart.

It also brought tears to Krista’s eyes. She
was thinking about walking away from this. From him. From Sean.

As Sean held her after, she kept the sobs
quiet and her tears confined. She still needed to think this
through. She still thought there might be another way, if only she
could think of it.

She fell into a listless sleep.

Chapter Thirty-Three

The next morning they were both oddly quiet
on the way to work. It felt too good waking up next to him. It felt
right getting ready in the same house. It felt wrong that she was
thinking about moving on without him. If things were different she
would actually contemplate marriage with this man. Quite the change
from when she first met him.

As she lowered herself into her desk, she
realized she didn’t have one deadline for the day. She had stuff to
do, and things to tie off in order to start getting ready for
Tory’s campaign, but nothing was dire. So she just kind of sat for
a minute, staring at the walls.

Then she looked at her email.

One was from John. He wanted to meet at
eleven. One from Sean, asking her to stop by before John’s meeting
when she had a chance.

“Couldn’t get enough of me?” Krista said to
herself in her British accent.

Hopping up, she decided she’d go hang with
Kate and Jasmine for a minute before she barged in on her love.

An hour and a lot of gossip later, Krista
wandered into Sean’s office cool and relaxed. She’d forgotten what
a normal workload was like.

Sean had changed into a
pinstriped, tailored suit once he got to the office. The natural
light was streaming in the windows and spilling over his head and
shoulders, casting him in an unearthly aura, making his green eyes
luminescent. He, unfortunately, had a black eye and a wicked bruise
on his jaw. Ben’s doctoring helped, but you wouldn’t know it from
looking at him. You
would
know it from looking at Jim, though.

Krista stopped at the door at the
magnificent sight of him. Instead of lust, though, she was struck
by the feeling of love so powerful it stopped her breath. It was at
that moment Sean glanced her way, doing a double-take upon seeing
her, then locked eyes. He knew what she was thinking. The concern
on his face from the phone call melted into a little boy looking at
his first love. Her heart swelled so big it took over her whole
chest.

“Yeah, gotta go. I’ll talk to you at
one...bye,” Sean finished. He turned to Krista and gestured for her
to take a seat, trying to be all business.

She wasn’t, “Good morning handsome. I love
you lots.”

He smirked at her, his eyes flashing.
“Krista, I wanted to talk business with you. Also…” He cleared his
throat. His face turned red and he reached for his mouse. “Love
you, too,” he looked at his computer in embarrassment.

“Uh huh. Oh, before that, though, you should
know that I told Jasmine and Kate about the weekend.”

Sean leaned back and took on a serious look.
There was also sadness there. He nodded.

“About the party and getting you naked.
Nothing else,” she finished.

Sean blinked a couple times. “Oh... okay.
They know to keep it to themselves? About us?”

“Obviously.”

“And you didn’t want to tell them
about...”

“The giant ex-boyfriend tracking me down and
getting in a fist fight with my current...uh...lover-guy?”

“Current boyfriend and yes. Also that he was
attempting to kidnap you,” Sean looked both extremely angry and
also a little sick.

“Details. And no, I don’t want them to know.
I want him to remain a closed book, like he was. He can haunt my
past, but that is where I want him to stay.”

“Except that he is currently haunting your
future,” Sean flinched and shook his head. “Sorry, I meant
present.” He shook his head again and looked out the window. His
body was still but his brain was churning.

“He’s in jail. He isn’t haunting anything.
Now, what did you want to talk to me about?” She was
matter-of-fact. She didn’t know what he was thinking and she
certainly didn’t want to have this conversation.

Sean sighed, still looking out the window,
“Your meeting with John.”

“Oh. Are you going to be in it?”

“No.” Sean turned back to her. There was
that focused work look, but the sadness from a moment before wasn’t
completely gone. “John wants to meet with just you. I thought I
would prep you for it. You are still too...naive when it comes to
John’s manipulations.”

“I don’t even know what he wants to meet
with me about. And thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“He knows Tory is looking to moonlight you
into his company. Remember I told you that when Tory is interested
in something, he learns all he can about it?”

“I remember something to that effect,
yeah.”

“Well, Tory knows what everyone in our team
makes. He knows what we’ll probably get as a bonus. He knows what
cut the company is keeping for itself. He knows our benefit scheme,
and he knows what this company can offer each of us that he is
interested in.”

“How the hell does he know all that? What,
did he hire someone to break in and look at our paychecks?”

“It seems he has already convinced Marcus to
work for him. It wouldn’t take much--Marcus makes a fraction of
what he should.”

“Except, Marcus needs someone like Ben to
translate.”

“Well…” Sean looked uncomfortable.

Krista eyed him severely.

“Ben has been contacted. He’s already had
his meeting with John.”

Krista sat still a moment. “Do Kate and
Jasmine know?”

Sean’s brow puzzled. “What—why would—I don’t
know—I don’t understand the question…”

“Well, Ben doesn’t talk
business all that well. At
all
actually. He shouldn’t be left on his
own.”