Glimmer (Glimmer and Glow 1) - Page 109

A trace of annoyance crossed his handsome face. “I spoke to Peterson about it. Idiot. You’d think he’d never tailed anyone in his life. And then Rigo went and screwed up as well, letting you see him in the parking lot.”

Alice’s mouth fell open in disbelief. Hurt and embarrassment followed fast. “How could you not have said anything in the stables? How could you let me go on being that afraid when you knew who it was all along?”

He dropped the phone on the dresser with a thump and turned to her. “Damn it, what did you expect me to do?” he asked, his eyes ablaze. “You were scared out of your mind, and it wasn’t because a man was behind you on the path in those woods—or at least not completely. Peterson only triggered something in you, that’s all. A buried memory of something that happened a long time ago, a genuine fear for your life that happened in that exact same spot! You were in a panic, Alice. Are you forgetting where I said that kidnapping took place?”

“I don’t want to talk about that right now,” she nearly shouted.

“So what do you expect me to do?” he replied just as fiercely. “Let you walk around like a lit fuse down there at the camp? Go to work at my office in town and pretend you couldn’t blow at any second back here, that something traumatic couldn’t happen to you?”

“I’m not that fragile!”

“Yes. You are,” he grated out, grasping her shoulders for emphasis. His deep voice rang in her ears like a struck gong.

She looked into his eyes and unwillingly saw his desperation. She couldn’t imagine what this was like for him. How could she imagine, really, when she couldn’t fully grasp what had happened to her in the past twelve hours of her life?

The last twelve hours? Every day, every minute of her entire life suddenly seemed inexplicable. She was mentally grasping for a sense of the familiar. Knowable.

She swallowed thickly. “I disagree,” she said more quietly. “But I’m trying to see your point of view.”

“Thank you,” he said, his hands tightening and then gentling on her shoulders.

She met his stare. “I’m still going to go back to work tomorrow at the camp.”

“Alice—”

“Nothing will have changed, Dylan. The men you brought here to look out for me will keep doing their job.”

“Everything’s changed.”

“If you don’t agree to this, then you’re going to have to fire me as a counselor. Because otherwise, I’m going back to the camp tomorrow.” Regret spiked through her at her unintended harshness. She reached, touching his whiskered jaw, trying to ease some of the anger and tension she saw there.

“You can’t just let this go on indefinitely,” he said.

“I won’t,” she whispered heatedly. “I just need time. Isn’t that a reasonable request? The camp, the kids—all of it is important to me. It’s familiar. Comfortable.”

A spasm went through his stiff features. “There’s so much you haven’t let me explain, Alice. I feel like I’d be sending you out into the world completely vulnerable. You’re even more at risk than you were before.”

She stepped closer to him, her arms going around his neck. He lowered his head slowly when she pressed gently at the back of his neck. She pressed her lips to his rigid ones. “I’m not a child. Not anymore. I’m going to be okay. Dylan?” she whispered when he didn’t respond, and his lips remained stiff.

“I want to speak to Sidney about it to get his opinion,” he said after a pause.

“Okay,” Alice agreed. She had a feeling from some of the things Sidney had said that he would agree more readily than Dylan. Hadn’t he told Dylan they should follow her lead? His arms went around her waist and he pulled her against him. She pressed her face against his chest.

“And you’ll keep spending the nights and Sundays with me. Otherwise I won’t agree to it.”

Alice smiled against a dense pectoral muscle and hugged him tighter. “I didn’t want that part

to change. If it weren’t for you, I think I’d be going stark raving mad right about now,” she mumbled.

Should she be angrier at Dylan for his lies and manipulation? Maybe. All Alice knew was that she couldn’t muster outrage at that moment. Perhaps to be angry at him would imply that she took it all personally, which she didn’t.

Addie Durand wasn’t her—Alice.

As if to willfully contradict her forceful thought, a vision of that woman in the hallway, the one wearing that filigreed gold bracelet popped into her mind’s eye. She clamped her eyelids shut against Dylan’s chest as a powerful emotion surged through her, and she desperately stifled it. She didn’t want Dylan to sense her piercing angst.

She knew who that woman was now.

It’d been Addie Durand’s mother, Lynn. She’d been calling out to her daughter. It’d been like little Addie’s memories had been transplanted into Alice’s head, or at least that’s what it felt like.

Tags: Beth Kery Glimmer and Glow Erotic
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