There was a certain dejection to how she said it that made Nate think that she wasn’t happy with her job. But that wasn’t his business, surely.
“So there’s nothing to stop him coming in and sitting down.”
Stella shook her head. “He’ll just get a cup of coffee and sit for hours. The other servers are good about never making me take his table, but he’s just there, watching...and then he’ll follow me out when my shift changes, say all these things to me...”
“What sort of things?”
She wrapped her arms around herself. “That we’re meant to be together, that he’s never going to give up, that he can’t stand the idea of being without me. He hasn’t made any threats or done anything violent, but...”
“You’re right to be worried,” Nate said, keeping his voice calm and matter-of-fact. “I don’t want to frighten you, and maybe this isn’t the case with Todd, but these situations can escalate, and it’s much better to call for help now, before anything happens. This way we can make sure nothing does.”
Stella nodded, looking miserable. She looked up from her hands, meeting his eyes—maybe for the first time in the conversation? Nate was struck immediately by their clear golden-topaz color. He’d never seen anything like it. “How do we do that?”
How do we—of course, the job. “For now, we watch and wait. This kind of stalker can be infuriating, sometimes, because he avoids direct confrontation and he hasn’t done anything illegal. But from what I saw outside, he seems careless. He’ll slip up eventually and do something we can put him away for.”
“Like what?” Stella asked.
She was worried about what might happen. “Breaking and entering, violence, something like that,” Nate said quietly. “Listen to me, Stella.”
Finally, finally, he gave into his instincts and stood, crossing the room to sit on the couch with her. She turned toward him immediately, and when he reached for her hands, she gave them to him right away.
She was trusting, he thought. Open and honest, ready to give up the whole, hard story without any protest. Reaching out her hands without any hesitation.
He was going to protect that trust. Keep it safe and intact, so that she wouldn’t have to worry about giving it away in the future.
“No matter what Todd does, or threatens to do, I’m going to be right here,” he said, looking her straight in those beautiful topaz eyes. “You don’t have to worry about what he might do.” He smiled. “I can promise you that that man is no match for me.”
She smiled back, tentative but with that same trusting beauty. “I can believe that.”
“Good. Believe it.” He squeezed her hands once, then reluctantly let go. “Now, I’ll sleep down here tonight—this couch looks comfy enough.”
Her eyes widened. “You shouldn’t—we have a guest room—well, it’s my grandmother’s old room, and we never actually have guests, but it’s a nice room with a real bed...”
Nate shook his head firmly. “I’d rather be down here on the ground floor in case anything happens. That’s the only staircase, right?” He nodded in the direction of the one Eva had gone up.
“It is, but...”
“But I’d rather be here, where I can put myself between an intruder and the rest of the house, than upstairs where I’d be too far removed. Okay?”
Stella bit her lip, but nodded. “All right. But let me show you the bathrooms and the kitchen and so on—please do make yourself at home.”
She led him on a quick tour, getting him blankets and pillows for the couch in the process, and he built a careful mental map of the house in his mind. It wasn’t secure at all, of course, because there was usually no reason for a residential home to be an intruder-proof fortress. But fortunately all the bedrooms were upstairs, and from what he’d seen of the outside, there wasn’t an easy way to scale the walls.
Unless someone were a shifter that could fly or climb. But Todd was a wolf, so that wasn’t likely to be a problem.
When he’d seen the whole place, he gave Stella a smile. “Don’t let me get in the way of your evening,” he said. “I’ll set myself up downstairs and stay out of your hair.”
Stella started to protest, then visibly stopped herself. “Of course,” she said. “You want to do your job.”
That wasn’t what Nate had meant at all—he wanted Stella to feel free to go about her life, get ready for bed or talk to her daughter or whatever she wanted, without worrying about hostessing. But before he could correct her, she went on.
“I’m not usually this—” Her hands fluttered. “I feel like I can’t make any decisions. Normally I’m more capable, I promise.”
“Don’t apologize,” Nate said quietly. “You’re scared. And that’s something that affects your brain. All of the fight-or-flight chemicals are in overdrive right now, and that makes it hard to pull back and do any complex thinking. It happens to everybody—doesn’t matter if they’re a little kid or a big strong man.”
That last made her smile. “Like you?”
“Like me,” he confirmed. “I have experience with situations like this, and tools to deal with them. But if it was something else, something I was totally unfamiliar with, I’d be scared too, and I’d know that I wasn’t going to be thinking clearly. It’s okay.”