Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 69356 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 277(@250wpm)___ 231(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69356 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 277(@250wpm)___ 231(@300wpm)
The guy started to creep out of the shadows. For the first time, I thought I might actually see his face instead of his shape lurking just far enough back that I can’t identify who it is. Just as I gave one hefty beat of my hand, the door opened.
Right into my face.
“Oww,” I whined as I held my nose and headed inside without hesitation.
I did not want to be out there with whoever was stalking me.
Nope. No. Nuh-uh.
“Sorry.”
My breath hitched at the dark and dangerous tone.
“Oh,” I breathed. “Hi.”
He jerked his chin in my direction. “Felt bad for not payin’ for my clothes. I’ll clean up a bit.”
“Thank you for getting the door. There was someone out there,” I told him. “Creeped me out.”
His eyes narrowed. “You know who it was?”
If I knew who it was, I wouldn’t have been scared to death in my own restaurant for the last half a year.
“Nope,” I said. “I don’t.”
When I led him farther inside through Murph’s apartment and then the break room, I barely looked at where I was going.
The man, Zach, however, did.
He took everything in as he followed me to the store.
When we got there, I saw that he’d already cleaned up his trash and put up the chairs.
“Thank you,” I said softly. “I appreciate it.”
He grunted out something unintelligible and then headed for the front door.
“Thank you for the food and the clothes.”
Then he was gone, and I felt like he took a piece of me with him.
CHAPTER 2
I need to start making healthier choices.
-Me as I walk into a bakery
ZACH
Present day
“Hey, who are you?”
I looked up from the truck that I was working on to see a little girl, about six or seven, standing in my garage.
I blinked.
“I’m Zach. Who are you?” I asked, looking around for a mother or a father to this little kid that was trespassing on my property.
“My name is Zakelina.” She narrowed her eyes at me. “Why do you make so much noise?”
My lips almost twitched. “I don’t intentionally make too much noise. Did I wake you up?”
It was after nine in the morning. I didn’t know a single kid that would still be home at nine o’clock in the morning on a school day. Let alone not awake.
“You didn’t.” She shook her head. “My mom and dad forgot about me. Do you think you can give me a ride to school?”
I felt my stomach clench. “They forgot about you?”
She was about to open her mouth to say more but a car came zooming down the road and pulled into the driveway so fast that she slid a little onto the grass.
“Oh my God. Zak!” the woman cried frantically, leaving her car running and her door hanging open as she sprinted toward the house.
“Mom!” the girl, Zakelina, yelled. “I’m right here! I was just asking our new noisy neighbor if he’d take me to school.”
The woman’s head whipped around so fast that she likely had whiplash.
Her eyes went wide as she frantically searched the area for her.
When she finally found me, her eyes went even wider.
“Zak, get over here, baby,” she said, looking at me with disgust in her face.
I narrowed my eyes, knowing exactly what she was thinking.
I didn’t like it one bit, either.
I was many things, but a fuckin’ pedophile wasn’t one of them.
“Maybe you should pay more attention to your kid,” I suggested when she met Zak halfway across the lawn. “And not forget that you left a young girl at home alone.”
The woman swallowed, and I could see that she wanted to say more, but common sense dictated that she not.
Especially when she took me in, top to bottom.
I was a big guy.
Six-foot-three and a half and filled with so much muscle that it was more than obvious that I worked out.
Which was funny, because that seemed to be the only thing that I had to do some days.
Then again, other days I worked so much that I barely had time to catch any shut-eye or eat.
Working for Lynn, the man that’d gotten me out of prison after serving only a fraction of my sentence, wasn’t what I was used to.
But after losing my medical license, there was nothing else I could do.
Unless I wanted to be a midwife, which I most certainly did not.
At this point, based on my looks, I had a feeling that no rational woman would want me to be anywhere near her and her vagina.
At least, not a well-balanced one, anyway.
“I didn’t mean to leave her,” she said. “Today was rough.”
I studied her eyes, took in her stiff figure, and wondered what ‘rough’ was to her.
I doubted that it was anything compared to my rough.
“Sure,” I said. “And I didn’t call her over here or anything. She came on her own. I didn’t even know there was a kid over there until today.”