The Billionaire's Touch (The Sinclairs #3)(34)

She was whimpering now, and the sound of her distress tore straight through Evan’s heart. She was dreaming, but what in the hell was her nightmare about?

As if she’d experienced her mistress’s bad dreams before, Lily approached Randi cautiously and started to lick her face.

“Nooooooo!” The tortured sound that escaped from Randi’s lips was a combination of a scream and a plea.

Evan sucked breath into his lungs painfully as he moved forward just as Lily launched herself onto Randi’s legs and her mistress sat up, panting. “Oh, God. Oh, God. Not again.”

Evan waited for her to notice him, afraid of frightening her. She clutched her dog to her chest and fisted Lily’s silky fur as she rested her forehead on top of the retriever’s body.

“Lily,” she said in a still-panicked, breathless voice, letting go of her death grip on her dog as she apparently recognized that she’d been dreaming.

Finally, he spoke quietly. “Are you okay?”

Randi continued stroking her dog absently as though it comforted her.

“Yes.” Randi’s voice sounded tremulous and anything but fine.

Unable to contain his fear, concern, and relentless desire to comfort her for another moment, Evan gently pulled the dog back to the floor and picked Randi up so he could sit and let her sprawl on his lap. Automatically, she wrapped her arms around his neck, and Evan rested her head on his shoulder while he stroked her silky, dark hair.

“What happened?” he asked soothingly. “I could hear you screaming from downstairs.”

“Nightmare,” she murmured into his sweater. “I’m sorry I disturbed you. I used to have them as a teenager, but I thought they were gone. I hadn’t had one in years until Joan died. This is the second time it’s happened since. I think maybe they were triggered because I’m alone again.”

She’s not alone. She has me.

He tried to curb the fierce longing to make her understand that she wasn’t without somebody who cared just because her foster mother was gone now.

“What were you dreaming about?” Evan tried to keep his tone even, but he hated anything that frightened her, even if it was only a dream. “Why were you denying that you were a whore?”

“Long story,” she said anxiously. “The dreams are left over from a long time ago. It’s over.”

“Talk to me, Randi. Please.” Evan intentionally used her nickname, sensing that whatever was bothering her was attached to her childhood and maybe her mother. If her memories were this frightening, he vowed to never again call her by anything other than her nickname. “Tell me about your life before you came to Amesport.”

“My mother did bad things. I did bad things,” Randi told him in a warning voice.

“I don’t give a shit what your mother did. You aren’t your mother, and you were just a kid. Tell me,” Evan cajoled.

“My mother was a hooker.”

Evan could feel Randi’s body shudder as she made the confession.

Randi continued in a rush, “She was a prostitute for as long as I can remember. She was only sixteen when I was born, and I never knew who my father was—probably one of her . . . clients. We had a small apartment near her corner, but I didn’t see her very much. There were quite a few other prostitutes who lived in the same building, worked the same general area, and they took turns visiting me. Sometimes they brought me food. They were kind to me when they didn’t have to be. I wasn’t their kid.”

Evan’s grip tightened in Randi’s hair, his entire body shuddering with anger as he thought about a child growing up in those kinds of conditions. “What happened?”

I have to stay calm. This is about her and not me. She needs me right now.

And damned if he didn’t want her to need him.

“One of the ladies helped me register for school, and I went every day. I don’t remember anything much before early grade school.”

“Did your mother bring her men back to your apartment?”

“No. She’d leave, sometimes before I got home from school, and sometimes she wasn’t home when I left in the morning.”

Evan felt his temper flare even hotter, an unusual occurrence for him. Randi had basically raised herself, with the occasional help of some prostitutes? “How did you end up in Amesport? What were you dreaming about? Something that really happened?”

She nodded slowly against his shoulder. Her voice was unsteady as she continued. “When I was thirteen, my mother left and never came home. They found her body a week later. She was murdered, probably by one of her johns, but they never found the perpetrator.”

Evan’s anger ramped up another notch. “So you were alone?”

“When social services found out I existed, they took me into foster care.”

Confused, he asked, “So you were adopted by the Tylers?”

“No. I was fostered to a family in Southern California. And then I ran away.”

Evan knew there was something missing from her story. “What happened?” He knew she had a reason why she ran away. If she’d had any sense of stability after her chaotic childhood, she wouldn’t have left.

“My foster father knew I was the daughter of a prostitute. He assumed I had the same skills as my mother,” Randi told him quietly.