Need You for Keeps (Heroes of St. Helena, #1)(67)

“The only way the rescue shelter would agree to the adoption was if he got professional help dealing with Bruno’s aggressive behavior. Bruno was stubborn and scared and most people would have given up the first week, but Lance was determined to make it work.”

Which would have made this Lance guy seem like a knight compared to the other people in Shay’s past.

“When the last session was over and Bruno graduated, Lance asked me out for drinks to celebrate. He was everything I had dreamed of—nice guy, attentive, loved his dog. He also had a big family and lots of friends, and I fell. A few months later he lost his job and moved in with me. A few months after that he found a new job. In Portland.”

Ah, Jesus. Jonah could tell from the look on her face exactly where this was going.

“I guess I wasn’t a part of the relocation package, but all my stuff was.” She looked at the floor again and Jonah could tell she was working hard to hold it together. “I came home from work and my apartment was empty. I called the cops, thinking that someone had broken in. When Lance didn’t return my calls or come home that night, I thought he was hurt. I called every hospital, his family, everyone. Either they hadn’t seen him or they wouldn’t return my calls. Imagine my surprise when I found a slip from the pawn shop in the garbage for this.”

She held up the ring that was always on a chain around her neck. It looked like an antique, with dozens of little diamonds surrounding a deep blue sapphire. Jonah took it in his hands, surprised at how ornate the band was.

She twirled it in her hand, then pressed it to her chest. Finally her eyes met his and the charity walk, the election, none of it mattered. Everything he’d been stressing about all day was obliterated. Because being a protector didn’t even begin to explain what he became in that moment. What he felt when he looked into her eyes, seeing the pain and betrayal and heartache that she kept so well hidden, changed everything for him.

It changed him.

“It’s beautiful.”

“It was my mom’s,” she said, a sad smile on her lips. “She got it from her mother and passed it on to me, and I wanted to pass it on to my daughter.” He hated how she worded it past tense, as though having a family wasn’t in store for her. Because she’d make one hell of a mother and a wife. “The man at the pawn shop wanted three thousand dollars for it.”

“What did you do?” he asked, although he already knew how this story ended and it broke his heart.

“I found one of Lance’s checkbooks in my purse, wrote out a check for three grand, and got my mom’s ring back.” The look she gave him was pure Shay—raw and defiant and 100 percent unapologetic. And Jonah might have fallen a little more in love with her because of it. “It turns out that even though the money was mine, it’s considered grand theft and bank fraud because it was in his account.”

There were so many things he wanted say about the situation and that f*cker, Lance, but none of them would make it better. Nothing Jonah did could undo what had happened or erase the pain of the fallout. So he pulled her into his arms and held her.

At first she was stiff, not sure if she wanted to give in, but then her body gave up trying to carry the weight and sank into his. He ran a hand up her spine, slow soothing strokes to reassure her that he was here for her. No one had been there for her when it had all gone down, and that pissed him off, but he could be here for her now.

Little tremors shook her body, so he tightened his hold. To his surprise she didn’t cry or even speak, just slid her arms around his waist and absorbed his hug like it was her lifeline. And he admitted, silently to himself, that he was pretty sure she was his lifeline too.

The silence stretched on as the gentle summer night surrounded them, the breeze brushing across their bodies and pressing the skirt of her dress against his thighs. The silence drifted past comfortable and into something charged, simmering with growing sexual heat. Jonah noticed that goose bumps dotted her back everywhere his hands moved, and that her arms were no longer around his waist but resting on his hips, her fingers dangling off his back belt loops.

Lifting her head, those eyes of her slaying him, she rose up on her toes, pressing all of her curves against him, making him question yet again if she was wearing a bra. She didn’t look away, instead holding his gaze so steady he felt it all the way to his bones. Then she dropped it to his mouth and he felt it somewhere else a whole lot more interesting.

“You could invite me in,” she said against his mouth. “If you want.”

Oh, he wanted to all right. He wanted to badly.

He wanted to bring her to his bedroom. And it wasn’t just to see if her dress would hit the floor with one calculated tug of that bow. Although he wanted that too. Desperately. But he wanted more. And he wanted it with Shay.

Only when he forced his focus off of that bow and back to her eyes he was confused as to how to get there. By the looks of things, so was she.

“Invite me in, Jonah,” she whispered, all of that earlier playfulness gone.

She pressed her mouth to his, light and tentative, as though asking permission, and Jonah knew they weren’t talking about his house anymore.

“Only if you’ll stay,” he whispered.

“Even if you have to leave for work?” she asked, her eyes so big and wary his chest tightened.

Shay had spent most of her childhood being shuffled from one home to the next without ever finding a family, and her adulthood giving away animals she loved in hopes that they’d find what she was afraid she’d never have. It was easier for her to grant other people’s wishes than to wish for someone who might wish for her back.