I gave his trim waist a hug. “Yeah, Cal. Thanks.”
He finally removed his arms, I dropped mine, but he didn’t remove himself until after he wrapped one hand around my right biceps and gave me a reassuring squeeze.
Then he looked to Deke. “Let’s get to work.”
“Let you in and you can take a look around,” Deke replied. “Know Max gave you the plans and sent you some pictures but figure you need to get the lay of the land. You do that, I gotta take Jussy to her room. You’re gonna have to give us a few minutes, brother. After that, she’s gonna be with us, not out of either of our sight, not even in her bedroom. You with me?”
Cal studied Deke a beat before he nodded.
Deke looked down at me. “You with me?”
Me not hanging out in the room where I got strangled without Deke there with me?
I was totally with him.
“I’m with you.”
That was when Deke nodded, took hold of me again, this time with his arm around my shoulders, and he turned us to the house.
And that was when all thought of Deke’s chest, his stomach, ass, legs, cutoff fleece shorts, gentle morning mood and Cal’s miraculous change due to the love of a good woman went out of my head as I stared at my front door.
My house was beautiful on the outside. All those windows. All that stone. That arched doorway. The flagstone walk that led from the graveled drive to the front door set in wide but lazy and meandering, curving here and there randomly. The old pines and aspen undisturbed around the front, the selection of the ones left standing so perfect I would not need a lot of landscaping. All of this making it seem like the house had been there forever. Like it grew up among those trees, not as it was, having been carved into them.
I concentrated on that, not the sick curl of fear in my belly.
I was there with Deke and Cal. Cal was going to give me a kickass security system. I had people around me who I had not known long but even before crisis hit, they’d shown they were good people and were going to be great friends.
This was my place, my space, my sanctuary, my oasis. I’d chosen it out of pure instinct and I’d chosen well.
And no asshole fuckwad was going to take that away from me.
This thought I must have communicated with my body somehow because I felt Deke give my shoulders a squeeze before he muttered, “That’s it, gypsy.”
I drew in breath and Deke jiggled his keys in his hand to find mine.
We stopped at the front door. He let us in. I felt Cal move in behind us.
Straight away, Deke headed us toward my bedroom.
I noted the light was different because the big window that was in the space where my dad’s collection was going to be was boarded up.
It was weird, the guy came through that window, making all that racket. Much easier, I would think, to bust through the windows at my front or back door.
Deke didn’t give me a chance but to glance at it.
He moved me right to my bedroom, attached to him, his arm strong around my shoulders, my thumb back in his belt loop.
We made it to my bedroom, sidling in on a connected slant, and Deke stopped us a couple of feet inside.
I instantly felt a tingling in my scalp, a memory of being dragged by my hair to my bed.
The next second I took in the room.
Except for fingerprinting powder on the nightstand, the lamp still overturned, it just looked like I’d gotten out of bed and that was it.
On that thought, Deke let me go and moved directly to the lamp. He righted it and turned to the bed. In one sweep of his long arm, the heavy down comforter went sailing to the floor at the foot of the bed. He then grabbed a pillow and shook it out of its case.
“Deke,” I whispered.
He tossed the naked pillow to the floor, the empty case to the bed and looked to me, reaching for another pillow.
“Got extra sheets?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Get ’em,” he ordered. “Hurry, want you right back.”
I swallowed and nodded again.
Then I went to the fabulous laundry room Deke gave me, set my travel mug aside and got the extra sheets.
By the time I got back, the pillows were all nude and on the floor and he was yanking the flat and fitted sheets off the mattress.
He gathered them up and headed my way, stopping for only a second to say gently, “Start making the bed, Jussy.”
I nodded yet again.
He moved out of the room.
I went to the bed, dropped the folded sheets on top and just stood there, staring at it.
I understood why Deke left me in there alone but with the knowledge he’d come right back. I also understood why he wanted me back in my house sooner rather than later so I didn’t build on the rational fear I had of a space that was mine, making it irrational and insurmountable.
But I wished he hadn’t gone.
Because if I tried really hard, I could hear the gurgling noises I made while attempting to breathe with that asshole’s hand around my throat.