His gaze blazed at her. “Doesn’t matter. I’m here for however long it takes.”
“However long what takes?” she asked.
“Catching whoever’s been prowling around your house,” he said with a swallow that sounded thick and hard, full of regret. “Those weren’t my footsteps in your yard and on your porch. My money is on your attacker, and since I let him get away, I’m gonna take care of him. Once and for fucking all.”
Emma’s heart tripped into a sprint and her belly took a sickly tumble. “You think someone’s prowling around my house?”
A single nod. “I didn’t leave your kitchen window open, Emma. And someone opened your gate that night that Chewy got out. And in addition to those footsteps…” His hesitation almost killed her, but finally he continued. “…someone tried to break into your basement.”
“What?” She whirled and looked at the house, as if a giant neon arrow might suddenly appear to point out all the things that had been done to the place in her absence. But of course, no such signs existed. And everything looked just like she expected. The big tree in front of the red brick façade of the 1940s-era row house, Christmas lights glowing from the double front windows, the carved wooden door festive with its big, round wreath.
“Through the rear window well,” Caine said. “He put the well cover back in place to hide what he’d done, but I found the window broken while you were out on Sunday. The opening was probably too small for a man to get through, though.”
Emma could barely process everything Caine was saying. “I…I have to call the police.”
“I already have,” he said. She peered over her shoulder at him. “Henry Martin is a friend of mine. I know you talked to him. He’s apprised of the situation, but he’s out of town until Wednesday. In the meantime, I bolted down the well cover and one of Martin’s men is riding regular patrols. And I’ll be out here watching.”
She shook her head. “No, Caine. No, you won’t.”
Chapter 10
Caine’s blood turned to ice as Emma rejected his help. He supposed he deserved that after the way he’d walked out on her the other night, but he wasn’t leaving her vulnerable—when it was his failing that had created the vulnerability in the first place.
“Emma, I know I fucked up in how I treated you. But you need to hear me. I’m not leaving.”
“Okay, fine. I hear you. But hear me. You’re not staying out here while you do it.” She arched a brow over those warm blue eyes.
He frowned. “Meaning?”
She tilted her head like he was confusing her. Which, right back at ya. “Meaning you’re coming in. If you’re going to keep an eye out for this guy for me, then you’re not going to stand in a snowstorm ‘til your skin turns red and raw to do it. On Christmas Eve, no less. You’re coming in the damn house.”
He inhaled to—
“Don’t even think of saying no. You are the kind of person who gets invited in, Caine. At least, you are to me.”
If she’d sucker punched him, it wouldn’t have stolen his breath as much as throwing his words back at him managed to do. And damn if her words weren’t pinballing around in his chest, knocking against things that didn’t often get disturbed. But he couldn’t think about that just then. “Em—”
She gasped and her eyes went wide. “Oh, my God. Caine. Oh, my God.”
Alarm lanced through his blood. “What? What is it?”
“You have to see something,” she said, already moving to cross the street. “Oh, my God.”
He was at her back in an instant. And then they were in her house and stepping across a pile of pillows and blankets. She beelined for the dining room table, Chewy excitedly in tow, and roughly sorted through a stack of mail.
“Look,” she said, turning with a piece of paper in hand. No, a card.
The glassy fear in her eyes just about gutted him. And then he looked at the card.
You Better Watch Out! a Peeping Tom Santa said. On the inside, that same Santa proclaimed, I see you when you’re sleeping! It was unsigned.
What. The. Fuck. Seriously. What kind of twisted company made a card for Christmas that was this goddamned creepy?
“Is there an envelope?” he asked, rage rearing up like a beast inside his chest.
“Yeah,” she said, her voice no more than a whisper. “Here.”
Her name and address had been printed on a label, and there was no return address. “The stamp hasn’t been cancelled.”
“What?”
He turned it so she could see. “It hasn’t been cancelled. There’s no postmark. This wasn’t delivered by the mailman, Emma.”
Her eyes went wide. “Someone dropped it through my door. Personally.”
Trouble stalked around inside Caine’s lizard brain. The part of him that was all instinct, the part where fight and flight and the will for survival lived. And Caine knew. Emma didn’t just have a prowler. Or an intruder. Emma had a fucking stalker.
“Someone’s watching me?” Her inflection posed it as a question, but she was already nodding to herself, working it out just as Caine had. Fingers pressed to her mouth, she started shaking her head. “Oh, Jesus. This might be even bigger…” Her gaze collided with his. “Someone threw a brick through the window of my classroom at school. The weekend you and I met. I got to school on Monday morning to discover the vandalism. Do you…do you think that’s part of this?”
Aw, fucking hell. Alarm bells blared inside his brain. Yeah, there was every goddamned chance that was part of this.
“Don’t hold back on me, Caine. Not about this,” she said.
“Maybe it’s better not to hide from the truth?”
“Always,” he’d told her just moments after he’d broken into her house for her.
God, she was brave. He knew firsthand how hard it was to live knowing your life might be in danger. And to face that danger head on. So he respected the hell out of the way she was handling this. “Given everything I now know, I think it’s too coincidental not to be related.”
She released a shaky breath and nodded. “Okay. Okay.”
“And, if I’m going to take this to the logical conclusion,” Caine said, seeing this whole thing laid out from start to finish for the very first time. Sonofabitch. Why hadn’t he put it all together sooner? “I’m going to have to say that your mugging wasn’t any coincidence either.” And that meant that all of this really was his fault. Because if he’d done what he should’ve that first night, none of the rest of this escalation ever would’ve happened. “Fuck. It’s entirely possible the man wasn’t trying to grab your purse, Emma.”
She put a hand to her forehead and rubbed. “So, if he wasn’t trying for my purse…”
He could tell from her tone that she knew—she was what her attacker had really been after. But she’d asked that he not hold back, so he wasn’t going to. Does that apply to how much you want to touch her again, McKannon? Or how sick your stomach’s been with regret since you cut and run? Or how fucking impossible it was to avoid thinking of her these past days? You gonna come clean with all of that, too? None of which he could deal with now. Not when this thing was so much bigger than he even knew.
“I think he was trying to take you,” he said. Protective rage roared through Caine so hard and so fast that it was like his blood was suddenly made of gasoline. All at once, the combination of his winter outer riding gear with a sweatshirt and a base layer was too much, and he ripped the coat off and hung it over a chair. “Sonofabitch,” he growled. Why hadn’t he seen this sooner?
“Wow. Okay.” Her lips trembled, but she was holding herself together like a champ.
“Do you have any enemies, Emma? An ex-boyfriend? Someone that seemed put out that you rejected him? Anything like that?”
Her gaze went distant, but finally she shook her head. “Not that I can think of. The last guy I dated moved to DC in August, and it was his idea to break up because he was moving. It was amicable.”
Caine’s mind raced.
“What about people you see hanging around the neighborhood, the intersection? Men who might hang at that convenience store and maybe could figure out your routine?” Although, he had to admit, while they’d been surveilling Ana Garcia’s house, they hadn’t seen anything like that, and they would’ve noticed.
“Sometimes there’s a homeless man who pushes a big grocery cart of his belongings down the alley out back, but he’s never said a word to me. And everyone who’s ever mentioned him has described him as harmless.”
Blowing out a breath, Caine made mental notes about all these possibilities, but his gut wasn’t yet feeling pulled by any of them.
She pressed her hands together as if she were praying and rested them against her chin. “So, what then? What do I do?”
“We,” he said as an urgent, demanding possessiveness dug its claws into his soul. Dug them in, deep.
And it was, without question, something he’d never felt before in his whole life. When you felt as unworthy as he did, you rarely believed that you deserved to possess anything at all. But now, in the face of her vulnerability, Caine dared to hope that he might deserve...what? Not her, exactly, because after being viewed as no more than a possession by the couple that ran his group home, the idea of possessing another person made his stomach roll. But maybe the chance to get to know her, at the very least. And maybe even the chance to give her the things he’d always wanted but had never been able to have.
Even daring to hope for such things made him feel like the bottom might fall right out from underneath him. And when that happened, he’d just fall and fall and fall…
But if she was going to be brave, he sure the fuck would, too. “We’ll figure this out, Emma. Do you hear me? You’re not in this alone.” His voice sounded like it’d been scoured with sandpaper.
She peered up at him, and her bottom lip trembled a little more. “Promise?”
“Jesus, come here,” he rasped, hauling her in against his chest. He held her tight with one arm and stroked her hair back with the other. And Christ, she felt so good there. So warm and soft against all his cold hardness. So right. These thoughts were so foreign to him he hardly knew what to do with them, but that didn’t make them any less true. He had to swallow around a knot of emotion before he could go on, but when he finally did, his voice was rock solid again. “I give you my word, Emma.”
He made one more promise, too, but this one he kept to himself. Once, he’d failed to protect someone he should’ve. Worse than that, her death had been his fault.
Caine vowed to himself—he wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.
This time, he’d rather die first.
* * * *
“Are you sure you’ll be okay here?” Emma asked, hardly able to believe…well, so many things, really. Because the night had been one long tidal wave of revelations that left her feeling like she could barely keep her head above water. But, for the current moment, what she almost couldn’t believe was that Caine was sitting on her couch preparing to spend the night in her house.
For one moment, earlier, she’d thought he was leaving, but he’d only gone outside long enough to move his bike off the street to the where the cut-through walkway met the alley behind her house.
So now, she had to believe that he was going to be there for her. Not only because he’d been there for her even when she hadn’t realized it, but also because the promise he’d made to her had been said with so much conviction that even now just the memory of it rushed goosebumps over her skin.
“You’re not in this alone. I give you my word.”
“More than,” he said, tugging the knit hat off his head and scrubbing at his short black hair. He tossed the hat aside. “I don’t require a lot, Emma. Don’t feel like you have to take care of me.”
The words made her ache. Because she didn’t think anyone took care of Caine McKannon. Worse, she feared that quite possibly no one had ever taken care of him. She didn’t know how that could be, but something about him set off the same alarm inside her that rang whenever one of her kids was in some kind of trouble at home.
Nodding, she turned to go upstairs, but then she turned back. Maybe because he was here for her. Maybe because it was Christmas Eve. Maybe because something about this man spoke to something inside Emma. And she said, “What if I want to take care of you?”
That pale gaze cut up to her. Narrowed. Flashed hot. “Night, Emma,” he said.
She heard the command behind it, so she turned and padded up the steps, Chewy at her side.
But three hours later, she remained wide awake. The snow storm sent wind battering ominously against the windows. Every once in a while, something banged somewhere outside, sending her heart into a desperate sprint. The old house creaked and groaned, and her brain was convinced that every noise was her attacker closing in on her.
Not even Chewy’s calm slumber was enough to convince her there was nothing to worry about.
“Screw it,” Emma said, suddenly sitting up in bed. She grabbed a pillow and the weighted fleece blanket off her footboard. “Come on, Chewchew.” She scooped him up so his hopping strides down the steps wouldn’t disturb Caine. “We gotta be quiet, okay?”
Out into the hall. Down the steps. Into the living room, still illuminated by the warm rainbow of lights on the tree.
“What’s wrong?” Caine asked, propping himself up on one elbow.
“I’m sorry to wake you,” she said. Even though his company made her feel better. A lot better. “I couldn’t sleep.” She put Chewy down and arranged her pillow and blanket, then she stretched out on her back.
“You’re not serious right now, right?” he said from right above her.
She looked up to find him peering over the edge of the couch. “What?”
“I’m not sleeping on the couch while you’re on the floor.”
“I’ve slept here many times. I don’t mind.”
He sighed. “Emma.”
“Don’t be difficult, Caine.” She yawned.
He chuffed out a little laugh, and it made her smile. Especially when he leaned over the couch again. “No one besides my brothers has ever given me as much shit as you do.”
“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” she asked, even though his tone had mostly sounded amused, if not a little exasperated.
“I’m not sure yet,” he said.
She laughed. “Well, I don’t know what to tell you, Caine. You’re not that scary. And I get the impression that you need someone to give you a little shit every now and again,” she teased.
He turned so that he lay on his stomach, half his shoulder hanging off the couch. One hand came down and stroked a path through the length of her hair. “I don’t want to scare you at all, Emma.”
Aw, God, the sincerity in his voice reached inside her chest and took root there. “You make me feel safe,” she said.
“I…” He shook his head and cleared his throat. “I can’t lay up here while you’re down there,” he said again.
“Then…then come down. If you want.” Her heart thundered in her chest, because she really wanted. Not just because his proximity made her feel safer, but because she’d been craving closeness with him ever since he’d walked out of her kitchen that night. Closeness of any kind. Of every kind.
For a moment, he didn’t react at all, and then he pushed himself up, stepped over her, and stretched out on the blanket an arm’s reach away. Emma worked hard to act nonchalant and keep her utter exhilaration off her face. A feat that was easier when Chewy lumbered out of his dog bed to sniff Caine—his socks, his threadbare jeans, the old white undershirt. Caine laughed—he actually laughed—when Chewy got to his face and sniffed, then licked at the thin growth of scruff that covered his jaw.
“The floor is his territory,” Emma said, grinning as she watched Caine tolerate her best friend. “This is the official welcome.”
“That right?” Caine asked, petting Chewy’s back once, twice. Gingerly, like he wasn’t sure if he might hurt h
im.
Emma nodded against her pillow, her heart doing a little flip-flop in her chest. “Consider yourself officially adopted as one of Chewy’s human staff members. He will now expect you to feed him, fill his water dish, give him T-R-E-A-Ts, take him for walks, and do other tasks as assigned by the management.”
“T-R-E-A-Ts?” Caine repeated, amusement plain in his tone.
“I’m too comfortable to get up to get him one, but if I say the word, he’ll bug me until I do. Thus, the highly secret code of spelling the word instead.”
Chewy made his way back to his dog bed and laid down with a huff and a long groan.
“Same, Chewy,” Caine said.
As Emma watched the interaction, observing Caine’s gentle kindness toward the most important creature in her life, those roots in her chest began to grow.
“I was scared,” she whispered. “Upstairs.”
Caine came closer. “I’m so fucking sorry.”
She rolled onto her side, coming closer, too. “You’re here, Caine. That counts for a lot. No, that counts for everything. You have no reason to be sorry.”
Something flashed behind his eyes, something that said he didn’t agree. But he didn’t voice it. For a long moment, he just stared at her. And it was quite possibly one of the most intimate moments of Emma’s life. Lying in the darkness early on Christmas morning, walls and barriers down so that another person could look into her eyes and see everything she was, everything she wanted, and everything she feared.
Gathering her courage, she forced out the words that told him what she most wanted just then. “Can I lay close to you?”
He groaned and pulled her to him, and then he rolled onto his back so that she was sprawled all along his side, her head on his chest, his arm holding her tight. “I’ll give you anything I can, Emma.”
She hugged herself to his chest, feeling for the first time just how markedly lean he was. “Right now, I just want you, Caine. That’s more than enough.”