Chapter 10
TEN
Hopewell Shelter for Women and Children
This is ridiculous, Chloe thought. Just ask him. What do you want from me, Mike?
How hard could it be?
She finished folding the stack of donated clothes. Many of the women who came to the shelter arrived with only the clothes on their backs. They needed everything. Clothes, food, money. Safety, above all.
Chloe remembered that. Remembered clearly not feeling safe. She’d spent her entire life with the low drumbeat of danger in her head, not knowing where it came from
Chloe’s life now was perfect. She was totally ensconced in the warm embrace of a loving extended family.
Harry was the finest brother a woman could possibly have.
And Ellen and Nicole were more like sisters than sisters-in-law.
Best of all, she got to have Gracie and Merry in her life.
The idea that she could watch those two beautiful little girls grow up, be part of their daily lives, was an enormous joy.
San Diego was fabulous, beautiful and sunny.
She’d bought an apartment in Harry’s condo and had access to an immense white beach, right outside her door.
To all intents and purposes, she lived in a resort.
Sam was even teaching her how to swim. Her swim instructor was a former Navy SEAL. How cool was that?
She volunteered at the shelter three days a week. The work was so important and satisfying she was seriously thinking of going back to school in the fall and getting a degree in psychology and doing this full time. Everything was perfect except for one thing.
Mike.
That first day felt like a lifetime ago and in a way it was.
Her life had changed so much. That magical day she’d thought that maybe she’d found…
well, a new love sounded foolish. It was the first day they’d ever met, after all.
But she thought that maybe she’d found someone who could penetrate her wall of loneliness.
Mike had been blatant in his desire. And that kiss at the Del…And the orgasm!
How stupid of her to confess that it had been her first orgasm. Women don’t let men have information like that. It made them vulnerable and if there was one thing Chloe was an expert on, it was vulnerability.
The memory of that episode at the Del still made her bloom with heat six months after the fact.
How pathetic was that? How sad that she still blushed when she thought of a kiss six months ago from a man who hadn’t touched her since.
At the very most he would extend a hand that hovered when he thought she might fall.
Well, she wasn’t falling these days. Mike had taken her in hand, so to speak—without ever touching her—and subjected her to his own body building program, pushing her and pushing her and pushing her to become strong.
It appeared that Mike felt there wasn’t a problem on earth that couldn’t be solved by lifting weights.
And, well, he was right.
Chloe had had every form of physical rehab possible in her life, but it only served to put her on her feet, more or less.
Mike insisted on a strict regimen of weight lifting. Morning, noon and night. His theory was that she needed to strengthen the muscles wrapped around the bones and he made her train like mad.
Chloe had seen all those films where a nasty Marine shouted in the faces of the recruits, scaring them to death. Mike took the opposite tack—he cajoled her. Daily. Relentlessly. Without ever touching her.
And it worked! When she flexed her arm to make a muscle, she made a muscle. You could crack walnuts off her quadriceps.
She walked easily and well. Once she actually ran!
To her knowledge, Chloe had never run in her life.
She would have been too terrified. Once afternoon Gracie had wandered off on the beach and she found herself running after her.
When she realized what she was doing, she laughed.
And Mike laughed with her, sharing in her delight.
And that was the thing. Because though Mike’s rejection of her as a woman was complete and total, insulting in its thoroughness, every time she turned around, it seemed, Mike was there.
He moved in all her new furniture, set up all her shelves, fixed everything in sight.
He drove her to the shelter, picked her up after work, took out her garbage, carried in her groceries.
Her little family ate together at most meals and Mike was always right next to her, passing her things, cajoling her to eat more.
He took her to work, to the shelter, to the supermarket.
And in all that, he never touched her, not once.
He was driving her insane.
Nicole and Ellen were no help. They didn’t understand it either. Mike had stopped, cold turkey, what Ellen delicately called his ‘fooling around’ and Nicole crudely called his ‘fucking on an industrial level’.
Both of them thought he was in love with her, but by the same token were totally unable to process the fact that he never touched her. Maybe because their own husbands couldn’t keep their hands off them. For the Mike they knew, formerly known as the ‘man-slut’, this behavior was incomprehensible.
He now led the life of a monk.
He rarely left her side.
He never touched her.
It was driving her crazy.
How could she get Mike out of her mind, how could she get over him, how could she move on, when he was always around?
And then of course there was the delicate issue of maybe dating someone else, though she found it impossible to drum up interest in the bank manager, the building superintendent, the orthopedic surgeon and the journalist for the Union-Tribune—all of whom had asked her out at least once.
It would be nice to want to go out with someone. But how could that happen when the sexiest, strongest, most vital man in the world was always in her face? Right next to her?
And—in the case of the journalist—glowering so menacingly the man had backed away, palms up.
Though Chloe wasn’t confrontational by nature, maybe the best thing to do would be to just say it.
Tell him to stay away from her because the truth was, he was breaking her heart.
Having him so close, every day, there every time she turned around, but so far away emotionally… well, it was almost unbearable.
He’d snared her heart that first day and he wasn’t letting it go.
The door that gave off an inner courtyard opened and she whirled, grateful for a distraction from her thoughts of Mike, stuck in her head like a burr.
Maybe it was the director of the shelter, Marion.
Kind, gray-haired, no-nonsense. Or maybe Consuelo, her favorite of the women who showed up for informal group therapy.
She was stunningly beautiful and had a kind heart.
And was being ground down into dust by her job as a high-class prostitute.
But it was neither. Two big men pushed their way into the room. Very big men.
Chloe’s heart rate picked up immediately, started beating wildly, a primordial response she was trying to learn to control. Not every big man was a source of danger. Look at Sam and Harry and Mike. She had to stop this instant panic every time a larger-than-normal man stepped across her path.
She’d seen a mugshot of Rodney Lewis, the man who’d killed her mother and had sent her to the hospital for ten years. He’d weighed over 300 pounds and he was the origin of her panic. Knowing what caused it didn’t make it abate, however.
Chloe schooled her face to blandness, wiped her suddenly-wet palms down her linen shift. She had to stop reacting to big men like this.
The closer the two men came, though, the more her Alarm-o-meter dinged red. They carried themselves well, like athletes. Both blond, not badly dressed, not well dressed. The clothes of busy men who had money but weren’t obsessed with fashion and needed to do physical things in their clothes.
What terrified her were the eyes. Light blue and as remote as the eyes of dolls. Their body language was neutral, the only menace their utter and complete fitness. She watched them as they crossed the room to her.
Chloe planted her feet firmly and straightened. Grow a backbone, Chloe. She couldn’t be a slave to her past all her life.
The two men weren’t supposed to be here and she’d tell them that, after which they’d leave.
A normal human transaction, the kind she’d been having for only the past six months, since reuniting with Harry.
This needed to become permanent—this ability to speak to large men who weren’t Harry or Mike or Sam without being terrified.
“Miss Chloe Mason?” the taller of the two asked. He had a guttural voice and foreign accent. Only a foreigner would call a 28 year old woman ‘miss’.
Chloe’s heart was thudding hard against her rib cage. Her body was sending her signals she tried to ignore.
“Yes? May I help you? Though I have to tell you that men aren’t allowed here in the shelter. The door on the wall to my left will take you directly out into the parking lot.”
The only men allowed into the shelter were Mike and Harry and Sam, since RBK was such a big supporter. Not to mention the fact that they helped women who were in immediate danger disappear.
“We’ll leave soon,” the other man said. He was slightly shorter, stockier, with the same dead light blue eyes. He, too, had an accent. “Just as soon as we clear a few things up. We have something to say to you and you better listen.”
They moved closer, right into her space. Chloe backed up and they followed. Classic aggressive behavior.
It was then that Chloe understood she was in trouble. Her body had been right all along.
This was the administrative wing of the building and it was after hours. No one was around. If they knew the setup here at the shelter, they were banking on the fact that she was isolated.
“We need for you to listen to us,” Tall Guy said. His face was blank and terrifying in its lack of emotion. Chloe could smell them—a nauseating mix of unwashed male and a heavy cologne. They looked wrong, they acted wrong, they smelled wrong.