Revved Up Hearts (28 page)

“What am I going to tell
Jeremiah?”

“I don’t know.” Her mom laughed. “It’ll be
okay.”

“Mom, I got to go. I need to get ready for work. Thanks for the info. Tell everybody that I said hi and that I love them. I’ll talk to you
later.”

“Okay. Bye. I love
you.”

“I love you, too,” Dawn told her and then hung up the
phone.

Later, Dawn told Bryan the whole story on the ride to work. Bryan laughed until he cried. “It’s not that funny,” she
said.

“It’s hilarious!” Bryan exclaimed as he wiped a tear from his eye. “I can’t wait to tell
Valerie.”

“Stop
it!”

“I can’t help
it.”

“What will Jeremiah
think?”

“I think he’ll laugh harder than I
did.”

“You don’t think he’ll be
mad?”

“No,” Bryan said. “Can I be there when you tell
him?”

Dawn called Jeremiah as soon as she got to the office. He did laugh and told her that he was glad that everyone knew about the two of them. He promised to come by the shop later and take her to
lunch.

Dawn was sitting at her desk a few hours later when the secretary’s voice came over the loudspeaker. “Dawn, you have a visitor in the lobby.” It was too early for Jeremiah. She wondered who it could be as she walked to the lobby. She turned the last corner and started through the door that separated the shop from the lobby. She saw who the visitor was and froze. It was
Kevin.

What was he doing here? She thought for a moment about what to do. She could run out the backdoor. No. That’s what heartbroken Dawn would’ve done. After all, hadn’t she run all the way to North Carolina from Arkansas? But Dawn wasn’t that heartbroken person anymore. The last time she had seen him, she couldn’t even look at him without crying. She looked at him now. He couldn’t see her through the tinted glass door, but she could see him. She could honestly say that she felt nothing for him. But how would she feel when she talked to him?
There is only one way to find out
, she thought as she pushed open the
door.

He saw her and smiled.
No reaction to that smile
, she thought. That’s good. As she got closer, she realized that he wasn’t that handsome.
Another good sign
. “Hello, Kevin,” she greeted him when she finally got to where he was standing. “I didn’t expect to see you
here.”

“Good morning, Dawn,” he said, but he didn’t seem very happy. “How are you this
morning?”

“Fine. What brings you all the way to Charlotte?” Dawn hated all this small talk. There had to be a reason he was here. The sooner she found out what it was and he left, the
better.

“I need to talk to you,” he answered. “Is there someplace private we can
go?”

The thought of being alone with Kevin was not an appealing one, but she wanted to get this over with. “Sure,” Dawn said as she led him back out to the shop area to a vacant office. She left the door open so that she wouldn’t have to be totally alone with him. There was also a big window that looked out toward the shop. Anyone who was in the shop could see what was going on in the office.
I need this office
, she thought as she offered Kevin a seat. He didn’t take one. She offered him something to drink, but he refused that as well. She sat down in the chair behind the desk and waited. He turned his back on her to look out the window. She wasn’t sure if he was watching what was going on out there or just stalling. When he finally turned to look at her, there was anger on his face. “I think you have made your point. So when is this charade going to
end?”

“What charade are you talking
about?”

“When you stopped talking to me and put off the wedding, I was willing to give you some time to be mad. I played along when your dad and brothers threatened me. I also played along when you changed your cell phone number and refused my calls to your house. It started to get old when your parents told me that you didn’t live with them anymore. But that had been going on for about a month now. So imagine my surprise when I turned the race on yesterday and saw my fiancée kissing another guy. As I’ve said before, you’ve made your point. It’s time for you to come home and marry me. You got your revenge. You’ve embarrassed me
enough.”

The nerve of this guy.
Dawn was shaking with anger. “I have embarrassed you!” she replied through clenched teeth. “Everything was always about you, wasn’t it?” she asked.
Don’t let this guy get to you
,
she thought.
He’s not worth
it.

“What do you mean?” he
asked.

Lord, help me
, Dawn thought as a calm came over her. “You think the last few months have been all about you? Let me explain to you that they were not,” she said, took a deep breath, and then continued. “I am no longer your fiancée. I didn’t put off the wedding. I cancelled it because I am not going to marry you. You think you have been embarrassed, but how do you think I
felt?”

“What do you
mean?”

Goodness gracious but this guy is dense. And I always thought he was so smart.
The words
strike three
came from somewhere in the back of her mind. The thought made her smile. “How embarrassing do you think it was for me to cancel my wedding? To call all those people: the caterer, the florist, my pastor, and tell them that I wasn’t going to marry a no-good, cheating, snake in the grass. I had to call all my out-of-town relatives to tell them to cancel their
trip.”

“Dawn, we discussed this before,” he yelled. “What happened was an
accident.”

“No, Kevin, it wasn’t. An accident is a car crash or a broken bone. When you break the trust between two people who supposedly love each other that is not an accident,” she yelled back. “You made a choice and destroyed what we had.” She was no longer sitting. She was standing behind the desk with her hands on it, leaning in his direction as she
screamed.

“You can’t be
serious.”

Had this guy always been so cocky and possessive? Had he always been so arrogant? “I quit a good job that I had held for almost ten years. I trained new employees. I was very respected there. I sold a car that I loved and moved halfway across the country. I left my parents’ house. They are both in their sixties now. They needed me to help with things around the house that are getting harder for them to do. That hurt my parents so bad, leaving like that.” Despite her earlier vow to stay calm, she was furious. “If that isn’t serious, Kevin, I don’t know what
is.”

In two steps, Kevin was behind the desk with Dawn. He drew back and slapped her hard in the face. “I am tired of your mouth. Now you are going to listen to
me—”

Before Kevin could finish, Bryan grabbed him from behind and dragged him away from Dawn. The absolute fury on his face was frightening. Good thing it wasn’t directed at her. “No! You are going to listen to me,” Bryan said as he spun Kevin around to face him. “A real man never, never hits a woman. You are a bully and a
coward.”

“Let go of me!” Kevin screamed. “This is none of your
business.”

“Yes, it is,” Bryan assured him. “Not only does Dawn work for me, she’s my
friend.”

“This is my property,” Edward said from behind Bryan. “And you are
leaving.”

“No, I’m not. Not without
Dawn.”

“The cops are on the way,” Edward calmly told him. “If you are here when they get here, you will be hauled off this property and arrested. So you can leave by yourself or with help, but either way, you are
leaving!”

“This isn’t over,” Kevin said as he continued to struggle with Bryan. It was no match. Bryan was four inches taller and thirty pounds heavier. He released Kevin with a shove. Kevin stepped toward Dawn again, but Bryan stayed between
them.

“Try something,” Bryan said with his hands in fists at his side. “I’d love to finish
this.”

Kevin finally figured it out and stepped toward the door. “This isn’t over,” he repeated. “We’ll finish this sometime,” he said as he pointed at
Dawn.

“Not here,” Edward said. “If you ever step on my property again, you will be arrested for
trespassing.”

“The restraining order I get will make sure that you are never again close enough to me to finish anything,” Dawn told
him.

Kevin took a long look around the room. Not only were Bryan and Edward there, so were Travis and the rest of the crew. After taking one last look at Dawn, he pushed through the crowd and left. Travis told a couple of guys to follow Kevin to make sure he left while Edward went to get an ice pack for Dawn’s
face.

Bryan made Dawn sit back down while he knelt beside her to examine her cheek. “We saw him come into the office with you. We called the secretary to find out who it was. When she told us it was Kevin, we kept an eye on him. When he hit
you—”

“Ouch!”

“Sorry about that. Had he ever hit you
before?”

“No. He had always been a perfect gentleman who treated me like I was made of glass. It wasn’t until I broke up with him that he started acting weird. That’s one of the reasons I left. I suspected that he was capable of something like
this.”

“Why didn’t you get a restraining
order?”

“He never did anything to warrant that. He just acted strange. The first chance I get, I’ll get
one.”

“You’ll go this afternoon. I’ll go with you if you
want.”

“That’s not necessary,” Dawn
said.

“Yes, it is. We don’t know where he went or what he might try if he catches you
alone.”

“I guess you’re
right.”

“I don’t think anything is broken, but you’re going to have a nasty
bruise.”

“What’s going on? Did you hurt yourself?” came Jeremiah’s voice from the door. In all the excitement, Dawn had forgotten that Jeremiah was coming to take her to lunch. What would he do when he found out what had just happened? Only one way to find out. Dawn opened her mouth to tell him, but Bryan spoke
first.

“Kevin was here,” he told Jeremiah as Edward arrived with the ice pack. Dawn winced as the coldness hit her
face.

Fury spread over Jeremiah’s face as he realized what they were trying to tell him “Did he hit you?” he asked Dawn. She only nodded because she couldn’t find her voice to speak. “Where is he? I’ll kill
him!”

“He’s gone. I threw him out,” Edward
answered.

“Why didn’t you keep him here so that I could…” Jeremiah’s voice trailed off. Instead of finishing, he strode over to the chair, picked Dawn up, and put her in his lap as he sat down in the chair. “Are you okay?” he asked her quietly as he tucked her head under his
chin.

“Yes, just
mad.”

“I’ll leave you two alone,” Bryan said and walked out the door. Dawn and Jeremiah just sat there, saying nothing, for a long
time.

“Are you sure you’re
okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Tell me what
happened.”

Dawn started to tell him, but Bryan returned just then with a couple of uniformed police officers. Instead, Jeremiah listened as Dawn told the cops what had taken place. They issued charges against Kevin as well as giving Dawn a temporary restraining order against him. All she had to do was take the paper down to the courthouse and make it permanent. Jeremiah assured the police that he would escort Dawn there this afternoon. Assured that the danger was over, the police left. Jeremiah wanted Dawn to go to the courthouse right then, but there was something that Dawn needed to do
first.