The Love She Craves: Selling Her Soul to Declan (13 page)

She pulled her hand out of his and crossed her arms over her chest. “You need to exit here so I can get my purse at the truck stop.”

He took the off ramp to the access road and crossed under the highway to the diner where she worked. The tires of the Jeep crunched on the caliche of the parking lot and slid slightly as he pulled to a stop.

“Jimbo’s here. I need to…. Oh, God, where’s his credit card?”

“I’ve got it, Nyxie. It was in the pocket of your uniform and I put it in my wallet for safekeeping,” he said. “Did you charge anything besides that pizza?”

“No.”

“Good. I’ll give him some money to cover it, so you won’t have to worry about paying him back.”

She unbuckled her seatbelt and reached for the door handle. “I’ve got money in my purse. I can pay him back.”

“I’ll get your door
and
give him the money. I want to make sure he understands you are paid in full.”

Nyxie understood then, it was not about the money, but about the possessive nature of a Dom/sub relationship.

This was going to be so embarrassing. Everyone knew she never had a boyfriend before—they teased her about it enough. Sometimes they called her Virgin Mary Mary Mary because she had three children and her virginity.

Worse yet, what would they think of her knowing Cody had spent days in a coma and she’d been picking up men at the hospital?

“You can stay here if you want. I won’t be long.”

He gave her a look of irritation and opened his door. While she waited for him to come around, she pulled her phone off the charger.

“Behave,” he murmured as he helped her out of the Jeep.

“Me? You’re the one who’s planning on going in there and making fools of both of us.”

He gave her a hard look as he released her arm. “How am
I
going to embarrass us?”

“You’re going to go in there, hovering over me and acting all alpha male. You’re going to be rude to Jimbo because you think he wants to sleep with me. He doesn’t deserve that. He’s been a customer for years and he’s never once made a pass at me. If he wanted to, he would have by now.”

“That shows how little you know about men. He’ll see this as an opening—because you’re indebted to him now. He’s your knight in shining armor. I bet he does something he’s never done before—kiss you, hug you, hold your hand—some kind of physical contact.”

She made a scoffing sound. “That shows what you know. I was going to go in there and give him a big hug for what he did for me.”

“Don’t you dare,” he said low and slow.

She gave him a saucy smile and darted for the entrance
completely forgetting his edict about opening doors.

He ca
ught up with her inside where one of the other waitresses held her in an embrace. It seemed to take her off guard. She looked rigid and uncomfortable.

“Nyxie, introduce me to your friend.” He said the only thing he could think of to break the contact. Was she like that when he embraced her? Surely, he would’ve noticed. He had noticed her reaction when Joseph patted her back. When she had said she didn’t like being touched by people she didn’t know well, he thought she just said it to cover his rudeness.

Nyxie pushed her away and moved closer to Declan. How odd that she felt more comfortable around him than one of her coworkers. People, customers and employees alike, crowded around her eager to hear news of Cody.

“How is he, Nyxie? How’s Cody.”

“He still critical,” Declan answered when she hesitated. “We’re keeping him in a coma a little longer, but the pressure on his brain is going down.”

“Y’all remember Declan Stryker, don’t you?” Nyxie said trying to make everyone feel as if they already knew him. “Coach Stryker’s son…. He nearly led us to state his senior year.”

There was a collective acknowledgment by the locals. It didn’t matter if they had kids in the high school, nearly every family in town turned out on Fridays for the home games. “He’s one of Cody’s doctors. He saved his life.”

Some of the people surged forward to shake his hand or hug him. It made him uncomfortable that she made such pronouncements when Cody could still die.

“We’ve given him a chance. He’s still not out of the woods.”

“Get back to work!” a gruff middle-aged man with a scraggly gray ponytail yelled dispensing the crowd. The man smelled of French fry grease and cigarettes. “I hope you’re here to work.”

“I’m here to get my purse,” she said.

He thrust his hands on his hips and squinted at her. “When can I put you back on the schedule?”

“You can’t, she quits,” Declan said.

She swung around and gave him a hard look. “No, I don’t.”

“Yes, you do,” he said in imitation of her tone.

“Oh, yeah, being unemployed is going to help me get my kids back.”

“Nyxie, I can’t drive you back and forth twice a day when I’m working eighty hours a week. We’re going to stop administering the coma drugs in the next few days. He’s going to need you there.”

She looked like she might cry. “I have to work. I have bills like everyone else.”

“I can cover them.”

She wanted to argue with Declan, but didn’t want to draw more attention to her sudden relationship. She turned back to Bob. “I’m taking a leave of absence. Will I have a job when I’m ready to come back?”

“I’m going to have to hire someone to replace you, so when you come back, it may take a while to get back to that many hours.”

She nodded. “Thanks.”

Bob made a dismissive gesture and walked back to the kitchen passing Jimbo Adkins sitting on his usual stool at the counter.

“Jimbo, I want to thank you for everything.”

Jimbo swiveled around, but did not get up. “Hey, it’s no problem. Glad I could help,” he said reaching out and taking her hand. He gave it a quick squeeze before letting go.

Declan reached past her with Jimbo’s credit card wrapped in a hundred dollar bill, the deposit slip with his phone number on it hidden under the bill. “This will cover her charges and your gas for driving her,” he said.

“Nyxie can pay me back any time,” Jimbo said.

Declan inwardly fumed. What kind of ass would ask to be repaid under the circumstances? “Take it. It’s just one less thing for her to worry about right now,” he said. “Get your purse, baby. You don’t want to be away from the hospital any longer than necessary.”

14

Nyxie’s emotions teetered on the edge of a cliff remembering the last time she was driven from the truck stop to her house. It was rare for her to be inside anyone’s vehicle and even rarer not to ask to be let off at the end of the block.

“Pull up in front of this brown house,” she said.

He stopped the Jeep at the curb. “This looks nice,” Declan said as he eyed her landlady’s house through the passenger window.

“We don’t live in the house. We live in the garage apartment. You really don’t need to stay. If you want, you can go visit your parents and come back for me in half an hour or an hour.”

His gaze moved from the house to the apartment made from a detached garage. The garage door had been removed and walled up. A swamp cooler protruded from the bottom half of one of the two windows.

Ignoring her, he exited the Jeep. When he pulled open her door, she was staring into her open purse. A wad of money that hadn’t been there before, stared back at her.

“What’s wrong?”

“They must’ve taken up a collection.”

Some bills had well wishes written on them while other people had written little notes on napkins and scraps of paper. Nyxie felt overwhelmed. She cleared her throat. “I want to check up on Mrs. Jones and pay my rent before we go,” she said not knowing how to deal with her emotions.

Declan reached in, took a hold of her arm and helped her out. “How long have you lived here?”

“All my life. You have to understand my parents were teenagers when they got married. They had no family support. I came along three years after Melinda.”

She fished in her purse for her key as they approached the small apartment, wondering if she’d even locked it when she left. As she opened the door, Nyxie stood in the doorframe staring at the swamp cooler, thinking what a waste of money it had been to leave it on with no one there. Then she slowly scanned the room trying to imagine how someone who’d never been there before would view her life. Other than the police and her landlady, Nyxie didn’t think anyone had ever been inside before.

She’d gone to work before the kids were out of bed and it surprised her to find they were not in the habit of making the bed as soon as they were up because it was always made when she came home from work. The covers were pulled up haphazardly, but the bedspread did not cover the pillows and the sheet and the blanket peeked out from the side. Likewise, their lunch dishes were not washed. The pot still sat on the hot plate.

“Yuck,” she said crossing the room and snatching up the pan and three bowls as she headed into the bathroom to wash them.

Declan stood inside the door speechless. Four people lived inside the double car garage. He noticed the musty smell of the dirty-filtered air conditioner before his eyes adjusted to the dimness of the room. He flipped on the overhead light then took out his cell phone and began recording the room.

“Everyone sleeps in the bed together?” he asked as he filmed the queen size bed that dominated the room.

“Yeah, we all fit,” she said as she looked up from her dishes and saw what he was doing.

“What are you doing? Stop.”

“Nyxie, Junior needs to see this. He needs to know what he’s up against. I guarantee this will come up in court.”

He panned across the room. The walls were lined with totes, boxes and cheap laundry baskets making the room feel smaller and claustrophobic. A folded card table with mismatched folding chairs leaned up against the wall behind a rickety rocking chair which was the only real furniture besides the bed.

“This is the closet you slept in as a kid?” he asked pulling open the door. He pulled on a string hanging from the ceiling to turn on the light.

“Yeah,” she said. “It didn’t have the chest of drawers inside back then or the boxes. I don’t know why I keep that old TV. Even with a converter box, I can’t pick up the stations without an antenna.”

The walk-in closet couldn’t have measured more than six-foot square. Declan turned off the light and stepped out, closing the door. A small pink porcelain gas wall heater was set into the three foot gap between the door of the closet and the bathroom where Nyxie was finishing up the dishes.
His parents had a nearly identical heater in their master bathroom. “Is this how you heat the apartment in winter?”

“No, the open flames seem dangerous to me. I have an electric space heater in one of the totes. She stepped out and put the dishes onto a draining rack with a towel under it, then rushed across the room and made the bed.

He stepped into the bathroom and filmed the small room. The concrete floor sloped to the middle of the room to a drain. Only a white plastic shower curtain separated the shower from the rest of the room. He noticed one side of the curtain was thumbtacked to the wall, presumably to keep the toilet paper, sitting on the tank, dry. The sink had no cabinet to hide the plumbing. A small trashcan, a plunger and a package of generic maxi pads sat below it, tucked into the corner. Four threadbare towels with frayed edges were crowded onto a small towel rack.

He stepped out and filmed the corner where she had fashioned a kitchen. It consisted of a second card table with an old two-burner hotplate, a toaster oven, a crockpot and a tiny microwave. Under the table sat a dorm size refrigerator and a clear plastic tote with her pots and pans and cans and boxes of food in it. He
eyed the boxes of generic mac and cheese, tuna helper and biscuit mix next to three packages of Raman soup, cans of pasta sauce, noodles, dried pinto beans, half a dozen cans of vegetables and tuna and half a loaf of bread. He knew if he had to eat that way, he’d be underweight, too. He opened the small refrigerator and saw a half-gallon jug of milk resting on its side because it was too tall for the shelf, an egg carton, stick margarine, a produce bag with two small apples, another bag with two large potatoes, a bag of baby carrots and a few condiments.

He shut off the camera feature of his phone and immediately forwarded it to the lawyer. When he turned to her, Nyxie stood with her arms crossed over her chest and her eyes locked on his.

“I’m not going to apologize. This place is ninety-nine percent cleaner than it was when I grew up.” Her voice wavered and her lips and chin trembled.

“Fuck. I’m not judging you, Nyx.”

He pulled her into his arms, but she stood rigidly, not putting her arms around him. Did she ever?

“I try so hard,” she said. “Cody and the girls help where they can. I’m getting all the bills paid. I don’t know what else to do.”

“You know they’re not going to let you have them back as long as you live here.”

She pushed him away. “I know!
” she screamed, her eyes suddenly awashed with tears. “Don’t you think I fucking know that?”

“Calm down, Nyxie, we can fix this. I can fix this.”

Declan raked his hands through his sun-streaked brown hair and cursed under his breath. “On my next day off, we’ll come and pack up your stuff. We can store it for now. You can stay with me—stay, not move in—until we can find you some place or even until they give your kids back. You need to learn to use the system. With three kids, you should qualify for at least a two or three bedroom Section 8 apartment and food stamps. I’ll be happy to support you and your kids while we’re together, but I don’t want to think you might go back to living like this, ever.”

She stared at him, her breathing fast and hard. A tear slipped over her lashes and she wiped it way harshly with the back of her hand. Slowly, the tension in her body began to ebb as she realized with his help she really might be able to have her family back. “Thank you, Declan. I mean, sir.”

He put his crooked finger under her chin and lifted her face to his. “You understand why I don’t want you to live with me with your kids—I just don’t see how we could keep our sex life private. They’d hear something or see something.”

“No, I don’t want them exposed either. I don’t really feel comfortable staying with you when I barely know you, but I admit it’s more practical than living in Chimera Flats.”

A text alert on his phone chimed. He gave her a quick peck before reading the text.

“It’s Emily. She sent our test results to my e-mail.” He punched a few buttons on his phone to get into this e-mail. “Polaris Office,” he said under his breath as he clicked on the first attachment. He moved next to her so she could see the screen, too. “This is my STD screening. Everything’s negative—I figured it would be, I’m pretty careful, but I’ve had a couple of blow jobs without a condom or dental dam.”

Nyxie turned red. “I don’t really want to hear about your past either,” she said bumping him with her shoulder.

“Sorry.”

He returned to the e-mail and clicked on the next attachment. “It’s your CBC,” he said. “Your white blood cell count is a little elevated; you probably have some minor infection, a cut or the end of the cold. We already knew your glucose was low at the time of the draw. You’re really anemic. The prenatal vitamins she gave you have ironed so that should already be coming up, but we need to monitor you.” He exited that attachment and went into the next. “This is your nutritional screening. No surprise here. You’re malnourished pretty much across the board. I hope the children’s don’t look this bad,” he said without thinking then wanted to take the words back.

He exited quickly. “Where are the other tests?”

He went back into his inbox to see if there was a second e-mail from her. Not finding another, he exited his e-mail and called Emily.

“Where are the rest of Nyxie’s test result
s?” he asked without preample. “Pap smear and STD test.” He rolled his eyes and handed Nyxie the phone.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Onyx. You haven’t told Declan you’re a virgin yet?” Emily Saunders said.

“No, I tried, but he didn’t grasp what I was saying.”

Emily laughed. “Men are stupid like that sometimes. May I tell him?”

Nyxie hesitated. Since every time she tried to bring it up he cut her off by telling her he didn’t want to hear about her past, it seemed having Dr. Saunders tell him, might be easier. Besides, she wasn’t sure if he’d be mad he gotten stuck with a girl with no experience to bring to the table. “Uh, I guess.”

“Do you have your phone?” the doctor asked.

“Yes.”

“Program my number into your contacts, then snap a picture of his face when I tell him and send it to me.”

Although Nyxie didn’t think he would have the kind of reaction Emily seemed to, she could see a touch of humor in the situation.

“I don’t know if I know how.”

“What?” Declan asked.

“She wants me to program her number into my phone.”

Declan took her phone from her hands and found his hands were shaking. Christ, did she have an STD? Was that why her white count was elevated? Fuck. Why hadn’t he done the test before he entered into a contract with her? If she had HIV or AIDS, he might have to rethink this. Hell, he didn’t know if he wanted to hassle with herpes either.

“What’s her number?” he groused impatiently, his annoyance tinting his voice making it flat and overly controlled.

Nyxie repeated the numbers as Emily said them. “Okay, get your phone back. Do you know how to get into the camera?”

“Yeah, just give me a sec,” she said into the phone. She reached for the phone and clicked on the camera feature which he moved to the home screen the night before.

“Okay, here he is. She wants to talk to you again.”

Declan grabbed his phone, practically yanking it out of Nyxie’s hand. “She gave you permission in the office to discuss her file with me. If you had bad news, you should have told me first and let me break it to her.”

“Declan, she already knows. She said she tried to tell you….”

“If she told me she had an STD, I think I would’ve noticed.”

“Douche bag, she doesn’t have an STD,” Emily said using her most professional voice.

“Then why won’t you send me the results?”

“Declan, I didn’t do an STD screening on her or a Pap smear, just like I didn’t run a pregnancy test. I didn’t need to. The only thing that girl has ever had anywhere near her vagina is my finger. Her hymen is intact.”

The shutter clicked several times in quick succession and Emily laughed on the other end of the line.

“Breathe, Declan. Say something.”

“Fuck off, Emily,” he said then hung up on her.

Nyxie continued to snap pictures of him. He mostly looked mad but there had been that brief moment of complete shock.

“And how do you feel about letting me pop your cherry?” he asked pulling the phone from her hand. He turned it on her and began taking pictures.

She blushed and bit her lip. “I don’t know. I’m nervous.”

“That’s not what I meant. How do you feel about losing your virginity to
me
?”

Her face began to change subtly and she pulled her lips between her teeth as if she didn’t want to say.

“Your face speaks volumes, Nyx. I knew you weren’t ready. I guess I already knew sex for you would be more than just a physical exploration of limits and sexual gratification.”