“Is anyone going to be a good fit?” she finally asked.
He gave her a hint of a smirk, and he looked into her eyes, freezing her where she stood across from him. “Not right now they won’t, McKenzie. You’re stuck here for a while.”
A shudder passed through her. She was never going to survive this. With no way to respond to his statement, she finally wrenched her gaze away from his mesmerizing eyes and left his office.
The day wasn’t even halfway over and she desperately needed a drink. Happy hour couldn’t come soon enough.
Chapter Seven
Her eyes barely open, McKenzie pulled into her driveway and sat in her car for a few minutes. She needed to paste a smile on her face and pretend she wasn’t burning the candle at both ends. Long ago someone had told her that if you smiled past the pain, you would eventually give a real smile, so it was her goal to turn her lips up no matter how upset she was. She also needed to remember that there was a reason she was doing all of this.
She was barely able to pull herself from the car, and she felt a rumble in her stomach as she dragged herself up the short path to her front door. She fumbled around on her keychain until she found the right key, then slipped it into the lock and turned it. But before she was able to open the door, a voice spoke that sent chills down her spine.
“You’re looking mighty fine, McKenzie.”
That voice! For years that voice had given her nightmares, had haunted her in ways that she feared would never go away. She had hoped she’d heard that voice for the last time, had changed cities, had done all she could to avoid it — the voice belonging to the man who had ripped away her innocence. Who had turned her into the woman she was today.
Anxiety instantly filled her, but she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of showing it. He was a part of her past that she had prayed that she’d never face again, but didn’t she know the past was never forgotten?
Turning, she found him with a lit cigarette dangling from his puffy lips, and her eyes widened. Though the voice was exactly the same as she remembered, the man was almost unrecognizable.
Time had not been good to him.
In the last ten years he had grown larger, and it was in a bloated, beached-whale kind of way. His eyes had also changed. They were dull and lifeless — drugs and alcohol had obviously not been kind to him. Those eyes moved up and down her body, and though he was trying to appear relaxed as he leaned against the rail at the bottom of her porch, she could see the twitch in his fingers and other subtle hints that he was high on something but flirting with withdrawal.
“It’s been a long time, Nathan,” she said between clenched teeth. She was afraid that if she unclenched them, they would begin to chatter, and that would show the man weakness. Not acceptable. But what was he doing at her home, her refuge?
“It would have been much sooner, but I lost track of you after you ran away. I’ve searched a long time. You can imagine my surprise when I found out you were running a top-notch whorehouse,” he said, a gleam lighting up his eyes, but just barely. “I was disappointed that the doors were closed by the time I was able to get here. I would have loved to have tasted your offerings.”
She was sure he would have. But he couldn’t have afforded them, even in his “prime.” And never in a million years would she have inflicted that kind of man on her girls. “I’m surprised you didn’t know I ran it. After all, you were the one to show me the ways of the real world, weren’t you?” Her temper was escalating the more he looked at her, spoke to her.
“Now, now, McKenzie, I’m not feeling very welcomed right now. Why don’t you invite me in for a nice drink so we can reminisce about old times?”
How had she ever found him attractive? How had she ever fallen for his lies?
“I told you the last night we were together — if together is the right word — that I never wanted to see you again,” she reminded him. Yes, she was slightly afraid of him, and she had reason to be, but she wasn’t about to stand there and pretend she felt anything for him but disgust. Dealing with him had always been a lose-lose proposition, and that hadn’t changed.
“Ah, those are just words spoken in a lovers’ spat, baby doll,” he said, his lips twisting up in his sick attempt at a smile. The man never smiled, not really, not with any warmth. He had once been a predator of the most despicable kind, and she’d been unlucky enough to find out too late. But now she wasn’t sure he was capable of taking care of himself, let alone of going after more innocent young women.
“Please tell me why you’re here.” McKenzie’s exhaustion had returned, and it was overwhelming her. Not good. The last thing she wanted to happen was to pass out. She’d done that once in his presence, ten years ago, and the results had been unthinkably horrific.
“You stole from me, McKenzie. I want what’s owed to me.”
McKenzie’s mouth dropped open at his words. She couldn’t have possibly heard what she thought she’d just heard. Not a chance. She was silent for several moments as he squirmed on her bottom step and she gaped at him.
“Would you care to repeat that?” she said, her voice colder than ice.
He shifted again and broke eye contact, as if unable to face her wrath. He was pathetic, but she wasn’t foolish enough to underestimate a desperate man. While speaking with him, she had pulled out her pepper spray, gripping the small bottle in her hand, ready to use it if necessary.
“You ran away with the money from that night…” He trailed off at the outrageous gasp coming from her, but he had to add, “My share as well as yours.”
“I took nothing from you, Nathan,” she said tightly. “And if I were you, I wouldn’t dare bring up that night.” Cold fury — or was it hot? — was pouring through her.
Desperation must have begun to make him brave, because he straightened up at her words, and his eyes darted around, maybe searching for witnesses. She didn’t know. But if he took one step toward her, she did know that he would regret it.
“That’s where you’re wrong, sex kitten. I spent time and money on you, trained you, prepared you, and then got you a good first job. And the thanks I got from you was that you ran away in the middle of the night with my money. That, in my book, is theft.”
“I didn’t know I was being trained,” she reminded him. “I never asked for that.”
“Ah, but you see, don’t you, that you used what I taught you to create a very successful business.”