Total pages in book: 85
Estimated words: 82077 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 410(@200wpm)___ 328(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82077 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 410(@200wpm)___ 328(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
Was I safe? With my husband the knight who stood between me and the world?
I ran through so many emotions in a short time, because yes, she’d completely and utterly misread him. But were there others she had not misread? I was certain of that. She had given us her credentials in the beginning, and she was a trained psychiatrist who worked with battered women and teenagers. Her heart was in the right place, and she’d made a point to come speak to me. Was I sad for her that Sam’s love language threw up red flags for her? Yes. But even though Sam was most definitely the alpha in our relationship, in our home, it was less about him being the leader and more about him being the protector. The one who sheltered all of us. What she didn’t understand was that he was home to me and my kids.
I took a breath. “Thank you for your concern, Jillian, but––”
A woman—I wanted to say her name was Abbey if I was remembering right when we went around the room, but I couldn’t see the sticker with her name on it—gasped sharply beside us. My first thought was, oh no, she’s having a contraction, because she was very clearly pregnant. She and her husband, Luke—his name tag was right there on his Bulls sweatshirt—like Sam and I, were there as support. When I turned, Abbey stepped sideways in front of her husband.
“Honey?” he asked as I saw another man then, crossing the room to us. What instantly made the alarm bells go off in my head was the gun in his hand.
“Is this the fucker you left me for?” the man roared as he charged over to her.
Instantly, Luke stepped around his wife, shielding her, and even though she tried to move, he kept her where she was.
The intruder had the Glock aimed at the middle of Abbey’s husband’s chest. “That kid she’s carrying should be mine,” he snarled.
“No,” Luke said gravely, staring daggers at the man who could easily end his life. “You don’t brutalize someone and then think they’ll turn around and give you the greatest gift in the world. It doesn’t work like that, you useless piece of shit.”
The man stepped back to shoot the husband in the face.
“Please don’t,” I rushed out, needing to buy time until Sam got back. “You’ll ruin an excellent meeting that’s going so well.”
He rounded on me, giving me that same look I’d been getting most of my life, like I was nuts. “I will kill all of––”
“Federal marshal,” Sam thundered from where he was, walking across the room, not stopping, gun drawn, glaring. I always thought he was glorious; I couldn’t help it. I’d been smitten from the first, but when he was in savior mode, there was something very larger-than-life heroic that happened to his entire demeanor that made me sigh like a lovesick ingenue.
The guy pivoted with his gun up, and my husband put one in his thigh that made him crumple to the ground. Sam was there in seconds, kicking the gun out of reach, rolling the guy to his stomach, and warning him that if he moved, he’d put a bullet in the other leg. He then ordered everyone out of the room and got on his phone.
Of course, no one moved, everyone too stunned, too scared to do anything but remain frozen and watch as he barked into his iPhone. The people who could move were on their phones, either taking video or calling the police.
Jillian stepped around beside me.
“I misread him,” she confessed in a voice that cracked and broke. She’d been scared, as most would be. “I apologize.”
Because she’d seen the difference between “fuck around and find out” Sam and the truly loving, kind man he normally was. He adored me and couldn’t keep his hands off me, and yes, to some people, that much attention, every day, all the time, would be cloying and suffocating. To me, which was why we fit together like two pieces of a puzzle, it was perfect.
I loved being grabbed out of the blue, kissed, hugged, and being wrapped up in his arms and clutched to his chest. Having him touch me was like air. Telling him that I needed space, ordering him to back off and let me breathe, had never, not once, occurred to me. And lots of my friends thought the same way Jillian did. They adored Sam but were unsure of the weight of his constant demonstrativeness on their psyche. Lots of people who met us, who fell under the spell of his friendship, realized quickly that the care and feeding of the chief deputy was beyond them. I didn’t mind. I loved the job and planned to never give it up.
“Honey, go to the car and get me zip ties.”