Let Me Call You Sweetheart: Come Rain or Come Shine by Gwen Hayes Read Free Book Online Page B

kitchen,” he said. “You can talk while I plate you up the best pasta you’ve ever had.”
    She nodded, a little more agreeable than he liked her.  
    Medusa followed them, settling on her dog bed by the window. Charlie sat in the chair he held out for her, and he dished her up a plate of food she would love, but knew by her expression she wouldn’t eat. Not now, maybe later. He’d reheat it and they could eat it in bed.  
    “Tell me,” he said simply.
    She shrugged her shoulders. Her soft, creamy shoulders.
    Focus, Jeeves .
    “I was mugged.”
    His heart dropped to his knees. There was no moisture left in his mouth. “Your scar.”  
    She nodded. “I was mugged at knife point. The guy stabbed me anyway, after I gave him my purse. He left me to die in the alley.”
    Jeeves knew he needed to shut up and let her talk. He wanted to throw something—a punch would be best. He wanted to yell and kick and smash things. Someone hurt her. Left her to die. If he felt powerless about it now, how awful that must have been for her.
    “But you didn’t die.” Thank God .
    “For a long time, I wished I had.”
    What wasn’t she telling him?
    “Why?”
    “It happened a week before my wedding.”  
    Charlie looked so numb, and so damned far away. His heart was already in his knees, where was it falling to now? There wasn’t much further it could go. “Your wedding?”
    “I spent my wedding day, what should have been my wedding day, in the hospital. There were complications. I had a hard time healing, mostly because I didn’t want to.”
    Jeeves knew she’d never been married. The fiancé must have been a real piece of work to drop her after that. “Why didn’t you want to heal, sweetheart?”
    He was ready to hear a story about how the man who was supposed to love her couldn’t deal with her scar. Maybe he wasn’t understanding about her trauma.
    “They killed him first.”
    Jeeves shot from his chair and knelt next to hers. Jesus.
    Her hands shook, so he pulled one into his grip, and she began spilling like a soda from a shaken bottle. “There were two men. They pulled us into the alley. We gave them everything—my purse, his wallet, my engagement ring. I swear, we did everything they asked. They took it and then one of them slit my fiancé’s throat. I watched him go down.” Charlie closed her eyes. “He fell and for one terrible, wonderful moment there was no blood. And then, oh God.” Jeeves squeezed her hand and she drew a shaky breath. “The other one stabbed me and they took off.”
    She took a fortifying drink from her wine and handed the glass to Jeeves so he could do the same.
    “I didn’t leave my apartment for two years. I couldn’t even go down to get my mail. I worked damn hard to get this far, Jeeves. Intensive therapy and a really aggressive desire to see the ocean. This town rebuilt me when I moved here.”
    “You’re very brave.”
    She snorted at that. “I’m still scared. Scared of you.” She met his gaze head on.
    “I don’t think you are.”
    Charlie wrinkled her brow as if he hadn’t been paying attention to a word she’d said.  
    “I think you are holding on to being scared because it’s what you know.” Jeeves twined a lock of her hair around his finger. “You’re not really afraid of me. Of us. You’re afraid of not being afraid anymore.”
    “I like not being afraid,” she argued.
    “I’m in love with you, Charlie.”
    She inhaled sharply. He hadn’t meant to say it. Hell, he hadn’t even been sure he was until he said it. But it was out there now and his world was suddenly ripe with possibility.  
    “Do you think telling me that is going to get me into your bed?”
    “Yes.”
    She rolled her eyes. “Do you honestly believe that telling me you love me is going to make me less scared?”
    “No.”
    She shrank into herself a little.  
    “Telling you I love you was the scariest thing I’ve ever done. Now I want you to be brave and love me