Fresh Ice (28 page)

“Great.
I’ll just wet my hair in the sink. Although I have to admit I was looking forward to a shampoo and scalp massage.”

Sarah smiled weakly. How was she supposed to survive cutting
Nathan’s hair in the middle of his kitchen and not in the safety of the salon? She’d have to really concentrate or she’d end up giving him a Van Gogh style haircut. “I’ll go get you a towel,” she said and then went into the bathroom and brought one back.

While Nathan dipped his head under the kitchen faucet, Sarah
pulled out a kitchen chair for him to sit on. She went to her bag and took out her scissors, comb and clippers and Nathan smirked. She really
did
keep
everything
in that backpack.

“I don’t have a cape though
,” she told him.

“That’s okay.” He sat
down in the kitchen chair. “It’s just a shirt,” he said and tugged at the hem.

They exchanged a smile and it helped put her at ease.
She picked up her comb and combed through his hair.

“So, why did you choose
to start doing hair?” he asked.

“I like the idea of making people feel good. When a woman leaves my chair feeling like a million bucks it’s the greatest feeling
in the world.” She picked up her scissors and started cutting. “Why did you choose hockey?”

“It sort of chose me.
” Sarah’s fingers in his hair nearly put Nathan in a trance. “You know, you’re really good at your job. So good, that when you’re doing it I can hardly think straight.”

She breathed in and forced herself to keep cutting even though the tone of his voice made her shaky inside.

To cut the front, she straddled his leg and he reached out and caressed her thigh. It was an innocent gesture and she looked down and smiled at him. Although her senses were in overdrive because of his closeness, Sarah kept on cutting.

“There. All finished
,” she said a few minutes later. She brushed the clumps of hair from his shirt then stood back to admire her work.

He gently took her wrist
before she could step out of reach. “Wait,” he said when she tried to tug free. He pressed a kiss to the spot on her wrist where her pulse raced. From how she acted at the library, he knew she wanted this. Why did she keep running away?

That kiss in the library made Nathan want
to fling Sarah over his shoulder and take her back to his cave. She’d initiated it all on her own and it had been…glorious.

He never knew what was going on behind those big blue eyes of hers but when she looked at him like she had in the library, it didn’t matter what she was thinking. All that mattered was that she trusted him enough to give him a mind-blowing, knock-your-socks-off kind of kiss like that. It had been worth the wait ten times over.

Now, she just stood frozen in place, waiting and searching his eyes.

His thumb made circles on her waist.
“I’d like to kiss you…again.” Nathan said.

“I don’t
know…” She trailed off.

He let go of her hand and
stood up. “There’s no pressure, Sarah. I just wanted you to know.” He took his shirt off, shook the hair from it and wadded it up. Then he walked to the closet, took out a broom and started to sweep up the hair on the floor.

S
arah couldn’t let the opportunity pass to test whether his gentleness from that night in the kitchen and then again at library was a fluke or not. Could a man really be so gentle time after time? She needed to find out. “Nathan, wait.”

Nathan
stopped sweeping and turned to look at her. His arms hung loosely at his sides, the broom dangled from his hand.

“I want to kiss you, too
,” she whispered. “Can you…sit back down? You’re so tall.”

He smiled
, leaned the broom against the refrigerator and returned to the chair.

S
arah stepped into the V of his legs and rested her hands on his bare shoulders. His skin was warm and smooth.

He reached up and caressed her cheek.
“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered.

“Thank you,” she breathed.

Nathan waited patiently until she ever so slowly leaned toward him and touched her lips to his. On her waist, he kept his hands as gentle as a whisper. She parted her lips and he followed her lead. She let her tongue dart out to explore his mouth. When Sarah found his tongue, she gently caressed it with her own.

Nathan
ran his hands from her waist down to her hip and back up again. When she pulled back to catch her breath he kissed her temple and down her neck. He slid one hand up under her shirt and she stiffened.

“Oh, God, I can’t
,” she whimpered.

She opened the door on his passion
only to slam it shut again.

She
started to step back, but he closed her in with his legs. “You don’t have to run away, Sarah. It’s okay.”

She shook her head.
“I’m sorry, but I can’t do this.”

“Okay.
We won’t do any more.”

“
I…I’m just not ready yet.”

“
It’s all right. I’m not going anywhere.”

She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and buried her face in his neck.
The emotions she was holding in made her shudder. “Oh, Nathan. I’m so sorry.”

He tried to pull her back so he could see her face, but she
pushed away from him and walked across the kitchen. She grabbed the broom and started sweeping where he had left off.

Nathan stood up and watched her. She
continued to sweep even where there wasn’t any hair. The broom was just a ploy to keep her hands busy. “Sarah?”

She shook her head and kept sweeping. “It’s all just too good to be true.”

“It
is
true, Sarah. It’s okay to let something good happen to yourself for once.”

She shook her head again and
mumbled something he couldn’t make out. “It’s all just too good,” she said again.

“I’m not perfect, Sarah. I’ve made huge mistakes that I’m not proud of.”
There was one giant mistake in particular he hadn’t told her about.

“Me too,” she admitted, her voice so soft he could barely hear her.

“That’s okay.”

“
God, Nathan, I’m so scared.”

He took a step toward her.
“Of what?
Me
?”

“
No, not you. Of…of
this
.” She spread her arms out to gesture to the both of them.

“
We’ll only do what you’re comfortable with, Sarah.”

“I know
.” She continued sweeping, moving around the kitchen like a caged animal. “And I know now that you’re genuine and you’re not going to slip one day and beat the shit out of me.”

“I’m not going to hurt you
, Sarah. I will
never
hurt you, okay?”

“I know.”

“What happened today at the arcade?” Nathan couldn’t avoid the subject any longer. Giving Sarah her space wasn’t going to do either of them any favors. “Who was that little girl?”

The broom stilled and
Sarah stared down at the floor. “She was me.”

Chapter Twenty

The Secret

“Tell me what happened to you in L.A.,” Nathan pleaded. “Whatever it is, I won’t judge you. I promise. No matter what happened in your past, it won’t change how I feel about you.”

Nathan
was sincere, but Sarah doubted he would still be able to look her in the eye once he knew how dirty and horrible she really was.

“I don’t care if you were a stripper or a drug dealer, a prostitute…or a…a bank robber, okay?”

Sarah let out a shaky laugh. “You’re not far off.” She gripped the broom handle and swept at invisible crumbs.

“Please, just tell me. I’m not going to beg you to trust me. You know how I feel about you and you know I’ve proven I’m trustworthy a hundred times over since you met me.”

She turned away from him and swept in front of the sink. She couldn’t stand to look him in the eye when she told him everything. She didn’t want to see the disappointment or the repulsiveness flash across his face. And she didn’t want him to see her cry again.

She took a deep breath and squeezed her eyes shut. The past came flooding back like a movie playing in her mind.
And then she began to speak…

“When I was
fourteen, my parents sold me to my Uncle Dwight in exchange for heroin. He beat me nearly every day and he forced me to…well, let’s just say he did unspeakable things to me. My life was a living hell. One day more horrific than the next. A few months later, I ran away and when he found me he beat me to within an inch of my life.”

Nathan stood in agony and listened. He’d taken hundreds of shots from pucks moving a ninety miles per hour to his body and occasionally the face, but none of them hurt as bad as hearing
Sarah relive the past.

“When I was
sixteen, I couldn’t take it anymore and I tried to kill myself. I thought death was the only way to end the torture. I guess I couldn’t even do that right because Dwight found me and beat me and told me that if I ever tried it again I’d better finish the job or he’d make things even worse for me.”

The broom clattered to the floor and she slumped over.

Nathan rushed to her, gathered her up in his arms and held her. He stroked her hair and kissed her temple and murmured comforting words while she sobbed into his t-shirt.

When she caught her breath,
she told Nathan the rest. “Two years ago, Dwight went to jail for drug possession and spent some time there. I got a job at a cleaning service and started saving money to run away again. When he got out of jail, Dwight let me keep my job, but forced me to hand over my paychecks to him. I told him the cleaning service was paying me cash under the table and lied about how much money I made so I could still keep some to put aside. I stole money from his stash and gave it to him as my paycheck. I didn’t want to be dishonest but I had no choice if I wanted to make a new life for myself. I’m not proud of what I did.”

“
It’s okay, Sarah,” Nathan murmured into her hair.

“
One of the businesses I cleaned was a beauty school. I met Miri, the owner, and we became friends. Miri is my angel. She’s the only person who knows where I came from and the only person I’ve ever trusted. Eventually, she talked me into enrolling in her beauty program and I agreed so that I’d have some type of skill to fall back on when I finally left town. After being around such ugliness for so long, I guess the idea of making women look pretty appealed to me. So, Dwight would drop me off for work and pick me up at the end of my shift but instead of cleaning, Miri taught me everything about hair.

“For so long I believed I was good for nothing because
Dwight told me so every single day. He had me convinced I was garbage. Then Miri came along and showed me I could be someone. That I could have a talent and function out in the
real
world with
real
people. She convinced me I was worth a better life.”

“She sounds
amazing.”

Sarah sniffed. “She is. She’s the one who
arranged for me to work for Peach. A few weeks ago, Dwight took a trip to Mexico and I stole all the money from his stash and took a bus to Red Valley and here I am. I went from wanting to die to finally having something to live for.”

“Oh, Sarah.”
Nathan held her close and wiped her tears with the pad of his thumb.

“
And I get here and everyone is so nice to me. And then I met you and you…you’re amazing, Nathan. You’re like one of the heroes from those romance novels I read. And it’s all just a little
too
perfect and I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. I keep waiting and waiting because it’s all so good and I know something bad, something ugly,
has
to happen to screw it all up.”

She buried her face in his neck and fresh tears ran down her cheeks.

* * *

Nathan
knew he couldn’t change the past. The only thing he
could
control was his reaction to it. And right now, while the rest of the house slept, he chose to beat the crap out of his punching bag in the spare bedroom.

Sarah’s
story had rocked him to the core. Every punch landed was for every day Sarah endured at the mercy of her vile uncle.

What amazed Nathan the most was how
she had taken the gruesome hand that was dealt to her and made something beautiful out of it. Easily, she could have ended up a strung out mess but she’d prevailed. As small and delicate as she was on the outside, there was a warrior within. And that impressed the hell out of him.

S
arah inspired him to keep going and aspire for more, no matter what the past had taken away from him. If Sarah could overcome it than so could he.