Price of a Kiss (Forbidden Men 1)

Grabbing her wheelchair, I rolled her down the hall and back to the kitchen, which had a nice big open space in the center of it.

I booted up some Flo Rida on my iPhone, set the volume to full blast, and we got a “Good Feeling” going. Holding hands, we whirled around the linoleum, dancing in our own way.

We totally connected. She loved how I sang off key to the song and made the wheels on her chair skid into a circle.

“Only…Mason…dances…with me,” she confessed a few minutes later when I plopped into a kitchen chair beside her, exhausted after our workout.

Something warm and tight trickled through me at the mention of him. “Does he? That’s nice.” I snagged a cookie off the center of the table, trying to sound blasé about it, when really I wanted to ooh and aww and blurt out how much my crush on him was growing that very second. “He sounds like a good brother.”

“He’s the best.” She snatched a cookie too and began to munch.

I froze, not sure if cookies were allowed. I mean, if her supper needed to be blended, solid food must be taboo. Right?

But she grinned at me as she downed the entire thing. So, I grinned back.

And life was good.

From there, our night only got better. I found a flashlight and put a red cup over it before setting it in the middle of the living room floor—my very safe interpretation of a campfire. Using Sarah’s dolls as fill-in people, I arranged our little party into a circle around the pseudo campfire. Then I helped Sarah from her chair and propped her back against the sofa with enough pillows on either side of her to keep her from tipping over.

We ate supper there—she held her own cup, of course, without a single spill—and I told her the golden arm ghost story. She loved every second and actually argued with me when I insisted it was bath time. But she ended up being helpful and pointed out the location of things when I needed to know where her soap and shampoo were kept.

By the time I got her into bed, we were both drained. She fell asleep almost immediately, and I stood over her for a minute, awed by such a wonderful, sweet child. She actually wanted to hug and kiss me goodnight, and we’d only known each other a couple of hours. When she said, “Love you,” into my ear just before dropping off, I almost started bawling.

I think I loved her too; she was just too precious not to.

Lightly brushing her hair out of her face, I pressed a kiss to her temple and left her sleeping peacefully.

I settled on the couch and closed my eyes to catch my breath. And like Sarah, I fell asleep almost immediately, worn out from all the energy I’d put into entertaining my new buddy. But something jerked me from a muddled dream where Jeremy was pinning me to the door of my childhood bedroom and opening his pocketknife with an evil leer. “I told you trying to get rid of me would be a big mistake.”

A muted light shimmered from the hallway, providing me a dim, shadowed outlook of the Arnosta living room. I had no idea what time it was, but it felt late. Groggy and disoriented, I stirred and yawned. I began to sit upright when I heard a noise from the back of the house.

A thump and then scraping wood yanked me alert.

That didn’t sound right.

I panicked because I’d left my purse in the kitchen when Sarah and I had danced earlier, and the kitchen was way too close to where that sound had originated. My mace, Taser, and cell phone were in there.

Hell, yes, I owned a Taser. My psycho stalker ex-boyfriend had tried to kill me four months ago.

What was worse, I suddenly couldn’t remember a thing I’d learned in self-defense training.

Oh, God. How was I supposed to protect Sarah?

Sarah! Wait, what if she’d somehow gotten out of bed, and that was her back there, hurt?

I had to know what that sound was. But, Lordy, I wasn’t sure if I had the courage to find out.

To be on the safe side, I snatched one of the dolls we’d used for our campout that was still sitting on the floor with its back propped against the entertainment center. Then I crept to the opening of the hallway, scared out of my gourd.

Thinking of Sarah’s safety first was the only thing that gave me the nerve I needed to put one foot in front of the other, because if Jeremy had found me and followed me here, there was no way I was letting him anywhere near that sweet, innocent girl.

I paused at the partially closed doorway to her room, holding my breath, half hoping she was inside—and safe—and half hoping she wasn’t—because if it wasn’t her making that noise, then who the hell was?

I nudged her door the rest of the way open and peered into the darkness inside. The nightlight plugged into the wall revealed a perfectly shaped Sarah-sized lump on the bed. Then she shifted, making her mattress and sheets rustle.

Okay, so she was here. Then who else was in the house with us? If Dawn—or even Mason—was home, wouldn’t they have woken me and told me I could go?

Something moved again in the back bathroom at the end of the hall, the one Dawn had told me not to use because the toilet didn’t work right. It sounded like a drawer opening and shutting. Was someone looking for drugs or a weapon to use against me?