Way of the Warrior (Troubleshooters #17.5)(36)
Now those eyes melted her with the heat she saw there when he looked at her. She’d seen that heat so many times when he thought she wasn’t paying attention. She’d seen it when they were standing in his kitchen when she’d walked in unexpectedly to drop off his present. And she’d never wanted him as badly as she had in that moment. Fortunately, she’d been able to quickly recover from the heat that had flooded her cheeks with a flippant remark. If he was going to try to deny the desire that simmered between them, she’d do the same, by God.
But that kiss…
It wasn’t so easy to recover from that. The brush of his lips against hers had sent white-hot heat zipping through her veins to pool in all the right, womanly places. And she’d been sure he felt it, too. But he’d jerked away from her touch, almost ass-planting in his haste to get away from her, for crying out loud. He was embarrassed by his scars, she knew. He thought they made him less desirable. He’d once told her as much after one of his surgeries. It was just a casual remark about how women would be lining up to be with a fine specimen of man like him. But she could see the pain in his eyes when he said it.
And it broke her heart. He’d never had the calm self-assuredness of his eldest brother Tom, whose quiet strength made him the obvious heir-apparent to their family’s law enforcement legacy. Nor did he have the cocky swagger of his brother Gabe, who thought he was God’s gift to women. And he certainly didn’t share the defiant, rebellious streak of his younger brother Kyle, who always felt like he had something to prove. But Joe had always had the confident bearing of a man who knew the true meaning of courage. He’d never backed down from a fight, not once. To see him lose that confidence now left an agonizing ache in the center of her chest.
“Sadie!” she heard Joe call from the doorway as she hurried to her car. The screen door slammed, echoing down the street in the older residential neighborhood in spite of the heavy shade of the trees that crowded in among the houses, their leaves full and just beginning to turn the bright crimson and gold of autumn. “Let me explain!”
She shook her head, waving his words away with a fluttery motion of her hand. Yeah, like she needed him to make the rejection worse by talking about it…
When she heard him jogging to catch up to her, she jerked open the car door, intent on getting in before he could say another word and add to her humiliation. But the moment she swung open the door, she let out a startled yelp, turning away to avert her eyes and relieved as hell to find Joe’s strong arms going around her and pulling her close.
“What the f*ck?” he muttered, seeing the wilted, blood-drenched roses lying on the driver’s seat. His face was hard when he ordered, “Go back inside.”
He didn’t wait for her to move, just swept her behind him and edged her quickly back toward the house before she even had the chance to protest. Once they were inside, he peered through the glass panes in the door, eyes narrowed as he scrutinized the surrounding area. “You’re calling in sick.”
Sadie’s heart fluttered at his concern, but she continued, “It’s not that easy. I don’t have time to find a sub. You don’t—”
“How long’s this been going on?” he demanded, sending a knowing look over his shoulder. When she opened her mouth to deny prior incidents, he interrupted with, “You’re not nearly as upset by this as you should be. So, don’t even try to tell me it hasn’t happened before. How long’s this been going on?”
She hesitated a moment before admitting, “About a year.”
The outrage in his eyes was exactly why she hadn’t said a word. “Are you shitting me?”
Sadie huffed, frustrated with his anger when she’d only been trying to protect him. “Joe, all the books I read on PTSD said—”
“Piss on the books!” he shouted, closing the gap between them in one long stride to take hold of her upper arms. “You should’ve come to me.”
Sadie lifted her gaze to meet his, momentarily mesmerized by the way the morning sunshine streaming in through the kitchen window made the flecks of gold in his whiskey-colored eyes dance with light. “I didn’t want you to worry,” she murmured, damning the way her heartbeat was thundering in her ears, the tempo picking up the longer he stood this close.
He abruptly released her to run a frustrated hand over his golden brown hair, newly shorn high and tight. “Do you have any idea who it is?”
She shook her head. “It started out with just a few poems left on my desk at school, then explicit notes, telling me what he wanted to do to me. I thought it might’ve been a student, so I reported it to my principal. But the notes got more intense, violent. A couple of weeks ago, the roses started showing up.”
“Do you still have the notes?” Joe asked.
She shook her head. “No, I turned them over to the police.”
This brought Joe up short, and his eyes went stormy as he demanded, “Which police, specifically?”
Sadie closed her eyes, instantly realizing her mistake. “Your brother. Tom.”
Joe’s face went rigid at the mention of his eldest brother, his jaw clenched so hard she half expected to hear his molars crack. “I’m driving you to work,” he announced. “And then I’m going to have a word with my big brother.”