Held by You (12 page)

“You might regret that. I may need a favor sometime and I’ll come knocking on your door.”

“Anytime.” John ended the call then arranged to have Linda Solomon put under surveillance.

Maybe now they’d get somewhere.

She runs through the forest as fast as she possibly can, her breath coming in harsh gasps. She’d never been a fast runner, but fear propels her forward.

Branches snag her hair, bushes scrape her arms, and she has to jump over fallen trees that slow her down. Her heart thunders and adrenaline surges through her so that she shakes like a junkie, yet it gives her the strength to go on. Adrenaline allows people to do things they normally couldn’t do. Like run faster than the men following her.

I can’t let them catch me. I can’t!

Behind her the men crash through trees and bushes, the loud sounds growing closer and closer.

Her skin hot, her face flushed, she’s certain her heart is going to explode.

“Bitch,” one of them shouts. “Get back here.” His voice tells her he’s closer now. “I’m gonna teach you a lesson. Then I’m gonna kill you!”

Oh, God.

Fear drives her on, but still she can hear them gaining on her with every step she takes.

She trips on a tree root and screams as she topples forward. She lands hard on the ground, her face in dead leaves and pinecones. Her nose fills with the smell of pine and earth. Her hands claw at the soft damp earth as she struggles to push herself to her feet.

Before she can get up, one of the men grabs her by her hair and drags her backward. Pain shoots through her scalp and she screams as she looks into the cold dark eyes of a faceless man.

She screams again as she feels the cold metal of a gun barrel pressed to the back of her head.

Hollie bolted upright, a scream tearing from her throat. Her heart pounded and her entire body shook. Her body was coated with sweat.

“It’s just a dream,” came a soothing female voice and a light touch on her arm.

Hollie wildly looked around expecting to see forest but instead she saw a bedroom that was familiar yet not. She was in a king-sized bed, her fists clenching damp white sheets.

She met the kind gaze of a pretty woman who had dark hair cut short and warm hazel eyes. The woman was probably twenty-five years older than Hollie. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, her hand on Hollie’s arm.

“You had a nightmare, Hollie,” the woman said, her voice gentle and almost hypnotic. “Everything is all right.”

But the moment the woman said that everything would be all right, it all came crashing down on Hollie at once. The living nightmare of the past couple of days was a reality far worse than her dream. She’d been in jail for forty-eight hours, accused of murdering her stepbrother, and was out on bail.

Tears flooded her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. She buried her face in her hands as the woman beside her continued to rub her back and murmur soothing words. She wasn’t sure who the woman was, but she had a maternal way of calming Hollie down. She bit her lip lightly—it didn’t hurt this time. How long had it been since Carl had hit her? She couldn’t think clearly. More tears squeezed from her eyes as she thought of Carl, his murder being the reason she’d been in jail.

When Hollie gathered herself the best she could, she raised her head and looked at the woman who smiled and said, “I’m Angel, John’s stepmother.”

“Hi.” Hollie sniffled as Angel handed her a tissue. “Where’s John?”

“He had to go to work,” Angel shifted on the bed and moved her hand away from Hollie’s shoulder. “He didn’t want you to wake up alone so he asked me to stay with you.”

“Thank you for being here.” Hollie dabbed at her nose with the tissue that was damp from her tears and Angel handed her another tissue. “How long was I asleep?”

Angel tilted her head to the side. “Almost twenty-four hours.”

Hollie’s eyes widened. “Twenty-four hours?”

Angel glanced at the clock beside John’s bed. “It’s almost noon and he brought you home around one yesterday afternoon. I’d say you needed the rest after all you’ve been through.”

A sick sensation, like milk curdling in her belly, made Hollie feel like she was going to throw up. She swallowed back the awful feeling. “I guess so,” she said.

“I washed your clothes.” Angel gestured toward a chair beside the bureau, where Hollie’s clothes were stacked. “We can go shopping for new clothes if you’d like. John doesn’t think it’s a good idea to go back to your ranch. Not yet.”

“I think that would be great.” Hollie looked at the clothes that she’d spent two days in. She really didn’t want to wear them ever again, but for now it was a necessity.

Angel eased off the bed, getting to her feet. Hollie hadn’t realized how tall Angel was until she stood. “Lunch is almost ready,” Angel said. “Why don’t you get dressed and join me in the kitchen?”

Despite feeling like she could never eat again, Hollie nodded. “I’ll be right there.”

After Angel left the room and had closed the door, Hollie slid out of bed, walked the short distance to the chair, and saw that her purse was sitting next to the clothing. She took off John’s T-shirt and boxers. She wouldn’t have minded staying in them—she had liked that connection between her and John.

Once she’d slipped into her own clean clothes, she went into the bathroom and looked into the mirror for a moment. Her gold-brown eyes were red, her eyes puffy, and she still had the remnants of a black eye. The split in her swollen lower lip was healing even though it still hurt a little.

She splashed cold water on her face. It helped liven her up a bit and her mind seemed a bit less foggy. She used John’s comb to try to calm the sleep-tousled locks of her light brown hair. Her feet were cold so she tugged on her socks but didn’t bother with shoes.

When she padded out of the room on the hardwood floor, she made her way toward the kitchen. She paused and looked at the fire dancing merrily in the fireplace before continuing to the kitchen. Had it only been a few days ago that she and John had spent time together at the table with mugs of hot chocolate?

The smell of chicken noodle soup and fresh cornbread made Hollie’s stomach rumble. “Can I help with something?” she asked Angel as she entered the kitchen.

Angel nodded toward a cabinet as she took a large stockpot off of a red-hot burner, transferring it to a cool burner on the stove. “You can grab a couple of soup bowls from that cabinet and spoons from the drawer to the left of the sink.”

While Hollie got out the bowls and spoons, Angel pulled a pan of cornbread from the oven and set the pan on a stone trivet. When Hollie set the bowls on the counter, Angel ladled soup with noodles into the bowls.

“Homemade noodles?” Hollie asked.

Angel nodded. “The cornbread is made from scratch, too.” She nodded toward the fridge. “I have a casserole in there that we’ll put in the oven to heat up when it’s time for John to come home.”

They ate in companionable silence. Hollie wasn’t up to talking about anything that had happened, and was glad Angel didn’t ask. After they finished eating and cleaning up what little mess there was, Hollie followed Angel into the living room.

Angel settled into the recliner and picked up a large hoop with a quilt stretched across it. She put a thimble on one finger and started hand quilting the material.

The quilt was pieced with material in vivid colors of blue, yellow, pink, purple, and green. “It’s beautiful.” Hollie sat on the sofa close to the recliner that Angel was sitting in. Hollie tucked her socked feet beneath her. “My mom used to quilt by hand. I still have one that she made when I was a little girl.”

If Carl hadn’t gotten hold of it—she hadn’t noticed when she was cleaning up.

“I do some by hand and others on a quilting machine that’s set up in my woman-cave at home,” Angel said with a grin. “A glass of wine, new material, a pattern, and I’m ready to go.”

Hollie laughed. It felt good to laugh. In that moment it was easy to forget all that was going on in her life. For a while they talked about John and Mike who were her stepsons, as well as Reese and Garrett who were her own children. She spoke with pride about each one of them.

“Sometimes they were all more trouble than they were worth,” Angel said with a smile. “But they’ve got good hearts, every last one of them.”

“They are fortunate to have you as their mother.” Hollie spoke wistfully to Angel of her own mother.

When Hollie got to the part about her father remarrying so that she would have a mother, she went quiet and sagged a little as she thought of her stepmother and stepbrothers. Things could not have been more different between her family and John’s.

Angel seemed to recognize the fact that Hollie needed a change of subject. “I think it’s time to put that casserole in the oven.”

She started to set aside the hoop but Hollie stood and said, “I’ll do it. What temp and how long?”

Angel settled back in her seat and answered Hollie’s questions. Hollie retreated to the kitchen and pre-heated the oven while she got out the casserole and put away the now dry dishes that had been stacked in the dish drainer.

After she put the casserole in the pre-heated oven, she returned to the living room and took her seat on the sofa, close to Angel.

“When John gets home, why don’t I pick up a few things for you at the store?” Angel said. “Just give me your sizes and I’ll see what I can find that will suit you.”

“If it’s not any trouble.” Hollie gave Angel a grateful look. “To be honest, I’m afraid of running into people I know and my students. And then there are those who might recognize me from what they’ve read in newspapers or watched on TV. Not to mention reporters and photographers—the press is the last thing I want to see.”

Angel nodded with understanding. “It’s no trouble at all. I’ve been needing to pick up a few things for myself, so I’ll kill two birds with one stone.”

Hollie shuddered inwardly at the word “kill.” She was glad that Angel didn’t seem to notice.

Angel took a small pad of paper and a pencil from out of her quilting basket and handed both to Hollie who wrote down her sizes for shirts, jeans, panties, bra, and shoes, along with some toiletries. Holly wanted to burn what she was wearing now and she had no shampoo, conditioner, deodorant, and other things of her own—she’d had to use John’s. When she was finished writing, she handed the notebook and pencil back to Angel and both items disappeared into the basket again.

The lock to the front door clicked and the dead bolt was shot back. For one moment, fear tore through Hollie. What if it was whoever had killed Carl? She didn’t know why anyone would want to kill her, too, but the fear was still in her mind.

When the door opened, Hollie breathed a huge sigh of relief to see that it was John. Of course it was John. Who else could it have been?

She stood as John removed a black leather jacket from over his uniform. He gave each of them a tired smile as he draped the jacket over the arm of the sofa. He looked so good in his uniform, sexy and strong. He was a powerful man and his uniform emphasized that fact.

He walked across the room, and gave Hollie a big hug. As he hugged her, his stubbled jaw felt cool from having been outside and she shivered from the feel of his cold clothing through her warm T-shirt and jeans. When he released her from the hug he kissed her, a quick, firm kiss on her lips. Her lip only felt sore now and it didn’t hurt when he kissed her. It surprised her that John would kiss her in front of his stepmother, considering they hadn’t even been on a normal date.

“How are you holding up?” he asked Hollie as he held her.

“I’m fine.” Hollie tried to smile back but knew that she hadn’t been successful because of his worried expression.

He squeezed her to him again before releasing her. “Everything is going to be all right, Hollie. I’m going to make sure of it.”

“Thank you.” She looked at him and felt a deep confidence that this man would do everything in his power to prove her innocence. “I know you will.”

Angel started putting her quilt, thimble, needle, and hoop into a large basket. “Now that you’re home, John, there’s no time like the present to get a little shopping done.”

“Thanks, Mom.” He gave her a hug when she got to her feet.

She kissed his cheek. “You know I’m here anytime you need me.”

He smiled. “That goes both ways.”

Angel gave Hollie a big hug next. “I’ll bring some clothes by tomorrow morning. I’ll leave the tags on so that you can return anything you don’t want.”

“Let me get you some cash out of my wallet—” Hollie’s heart sank. Carl had taken what little cash she’d had out of her wallet the night he’d hit her. “I forgot, I don’t have any. Can I write you a check?”

“We’ll settle up later,” Angel said. “I’m not worried about it in the least bit.”

“Okay.” Hollie managed a smile. “Thank you.”

Angel started to pick up her quilting basket, but John held up his hand. “Let me get my jacket on and I’ll carry it out to your car.”

With a smile, Angel went to Hollie and hugged her tightly again. Angel grasped Hollie’s upper arms as she drew away and held her gaze. “You hang in there. I know John will take care of this horrible mess you’re in. I have no doubt about it.”

“Thank you.” Hollie couldn’t help but feel better when Angel sounded so positive and sure that things were going to be okay.

Before leaving, Angel slid into her coat and pulled a woolen scarf around her neck as John put his own jacket on. Before John walked her out the front door, he picked up the basket then closed the door behind them. Hollie pulled aside the curtain draped overs the front window and watched John accompany Angel to her car.

When John looked over his shoulder, he saw Hollie looking out the window. For a long moment, for what seemed like an age, they held each other’s gaze.

She wondered what he was thinking and wondered if he could read her mind. She could fall for this man so easily. And in truth, she was already falling for him.

John held Hollie’s gaze as she looked at him through the window and it was like a punch to the gut. She looked so sweet and innocent. She didn’t deserve any of what was happening to her.