An Innocent Thanksgiving (Holiday Heat Book 2) Read online

  I drove back to Maggie’s apartment and parked across the street. It was nice to know that I was welcome. The last few times I’d been here, I had been unsure of how it would go. Maggie had been hesitant about me, about us, and I could understand that. But now we were both all-in. I could just walk right up and—

  The door was locked.

  Huh. That was odd. Maggie was expecting me. But I supposed she could’ve been worried about safety, given that Fern was a small child. Smart of her.

  I knocked softly, worried the doorbell would be too loud and would wake Fern off.

  For a moment there was silence, and then I heard was sounded like—a thump, and—and scuffling? It was like two people were struggling.

  “Maggie?” I called out, trying not to be too loud.

  I heard what sounded like someone whispering, but I couldn’t quite make out the words. Was Maggie whispering to me?

  “It’s not a good time,” Maggie called. “You should come back later.”

  Her voice was tight and high, not at all like her usual self. Was something wrong? My instincts were screaming at me to get in there, that something was bad—had Fern hurt herself? But Maggie wouldn’t tell me to leave if Fern was hurt.

  “Is everything okay?” I called back.

  “Everything’s fine!” Maggie replied, now sounding far too cheerful.

  There was another whisper, this time a little more forceful, and I still couldn’t hear the words but I could tell now that the voice was a man’s. It sounded threatening.

  What the fuck was going on?

  “Open the door, Maggie, whatever it is, I’ll help,” I said. “Is Fern okay?”

  “She’s asleep,” Maggie replied. “But you really need to go, okay? Go away.”

  I didn’t know what was going on, but something was wrong. I could hear the fear in Maggie’s voice. I didn’t know if there was a robber in there, if he had a knife or some other weapon to Fern, or Maggie, if he was hurting them, but I wasn’t about to let anything happen to either of them.

  This was possibly the stupidest thing I’d ever done, but I couldn’t exactly call the police. What was I going to tell them when I didn’t know what was going on? And what if it took them too long to get here?

  I backed up, and with everything in me, I ran at the door, ramming it with my shoulder.

  Ow.

  The door didn’t really budge, and I backed up again with a snarl stuck in my throat, ready to ram it again—and then remembered, of all things, a book I’d read forever ago that talked about what to do when faced with the worst-case scenario. It was actually supposed to be a humorous book, or at least much more lighthearted in its delivery than most survival handbooks, but it did seriously tell you how to deal with situations like getting caught in an avalanche or facing a mountain lion.

  One of the things it talked about was how to bust open a stuck door. And it had said that using your shoulder actually didn’t work, because of how doors were constructed. But if you used your foot and kicked right at the lock and handle of the door, that was where it was weakest and you could get it to bust open.

  I braced my weight back on my left foot and kicked at the door. It didn’t go the first time, but I could feel the door moving, which was more than it had done when I had hit it with my shoulder. I did it again, and again, and then on the fourth try I kicked and the door flew open, the lock busted.

  I’d worry about replacing Maggie’s door later. What I saw inside the apartment was enough to drive every other thought out of my head.

  There was a man that I vaguely recognized—I was pretty sure he was Maggie’s neighbor, wasn’t he? I had seen him in passing here and there and Maggie had mentioned him to me. She’d said that he was friendly. A nice acquaintance.

  Now, he was standing behind Maggie, his hand around her throat from behind, like he was going to squeeze.

  My heart froze for a second before taking off at breakneck speed. Maggie’s eyes were huge and even from back here I could see that she was trembling. She looked terrified. Even when we had been sitting at the dinner table with Mark and Violet, I hadn’t seen her look like this. Back then, for one thing, she had been trying to hide her fear. And she had been scared, yes, but she had also been somewhat prepared. Or trying to prepare herself, anyway. It was something scary that she—that we—had to do.

  This wasn’t something that we had to do. This wasn’t music that we had to face. This was someone attacking her and preparing to harm her, and possibly Fern as well. Fuck, was Fern okay?

  I glanced over their shoulders, towards the bedrooms. “Fern’s asleep,” Maggie whispered.

  Okay. That was… that was something, I supposed. Hopefully we could deal with all of this before Fern woke up, although I doubted it.

  “Let her go,” I growled. I had never heard my voice like that before. It sounded like it didn’t even belong to me, deep and guttural and utterly enraged. But then, I had never felt like this before. I had never been so possessed by fury like this.

  “I don’t think so,” the man scoffed, taking a step back. His hand tightened around Maggie’s throat for a moment, flexing, either to keep her from running or to keep me from doing anything. Maggie gave a small whimper of fear, and I just about saw red.

  Before I knew what I was doing I was grabbing the guy’s arm and wrenching it free, I think wrenching his shoulder too given the grunt of pain that he let out. I don’t think the asshole expected me to just go after him like that, and he stumbled back a little in anger and shock as Maggie cried out and dove out of the way, elbowing him to keep him from grabbing her again.

  “You motherfucker,” the man growled, and I released his arm so that I could swing at him, punching him square in the jaw.

  The guy staggered back again and then swung at me, but I ducked. This person was fit, sure, clearly he hit the gym, but hitting the gym and being in a fight were two completely different things. Traveling the world all alone on a budget, getting what jobs I could—usually as a dishwasher at a restaurant or something—I didn’t exactly stay at the Ritz. I lived in bad neighborhoods and I had no friends, so I’d had to learn real quick how to defend myself. I’d gotten mugged once or twice, and there was a truth to discretion being the better part of valor and your wallet not being worth your life, but I had learned how to fight back. I hadn’t gotten mugged at third time.

  I swung again, this time with my left fist instead of my right. I’d made a point to learn how to be ambidextrous when it came to fighting, even if I was ordinarily right handed. People never expected that. I hit the guy in the temple this time, and he nearly went down, his legs buckling before he righted himself again. I grabbed him before he could recover himself enough, one hand seizing his hair, another fisting in the front of his shirt, and yanked him around so that he was now towards the door and I was behind him.

  “Get the fuck out,” I growled, “and stay out!”

  I basically ran him out of the house, charging through until he was outside the front door and then slamming it behind him. I wasn’t sure how well the door would stay closed now that I had kicked it open and damaged the lock, so I grabbed the coffee table and a chair and stacked them in front of the door, just in case. I was confident that I could handle this guy if he came in again, but he might have a weapon this time and I needed to focus on Maggie and Fern.

  Maggie was standing by the kitchen, trembling, her face drained of color from fear. I wanted to take her into my arms, but before I could do anything, I heard noises from Fern’s room.

  I took off my jacket and handed it to Maggie for her to put on, so Fern wouldn’t ask why her mom was dressed just in lingerie. Maggie slid it on gratefully, and my heart thumped loudly, painfully satisfied at seeing her in my clothes. There was enough of a size difference that my jacket swallowed her up a little, covering her, keeping her warm almost like a blanket.

  Maggie grabbed her phone off the back kitchen counter, and I swallowed, my throat going dry as I realized just
how far away it had been from her. She had probably tried to grab it, or had wanted to, but hadn’t been able to get to it. The idea of salvation being so close and yet so far away while that asshole had his hand around her throat…

  Fern emerged from her bedroom and I quickly turned to her as Maggie began speaking with the 9-1-1 operator. “Wha’s goin’ in?” Fern asked, her words all garbled as she yawned, rubbing at her eyes.

  She was wearing tiny blue footie pajamas with sleepy sheep on them, looking like the most precious damn thing on the planet. In her arms were two of her stuffed animals, a pig and a cow. I scooped her up and rubbed her back. My heart felt like it stopped as she nestled her head on my shoulder, completely trusting.

  “Nothing’s going on,” I assured her, carrying her back into her bedroom. “We’re just going to go sleep at my place, have a fun sleepover, okay? But first, you’re going to keep sleeping and we’ll wake you up when it’s time to go.”

  “Can all my friends come?” Fern asked as I settled her back into bed, indicating her many, many stuffed animals.

  “Of course they can.” It would take a few extra minutes but there had to be a laundry basket or something we could shove all her stuffed animals into to take them with us.

  I tucked her in, and then went back out to the living room, my ears straining to see if I could catch any sound that would tell me the guy was still out there. I couldn’t hear anything. Maggie noticed my expression and mouthed he’s gone as she nodded along with the dispatcher on the phone. “Yes, we’re safe, we’ve barricaded the door. Uh-huh. Thank you.”

  Not wanting to impose but also wanting to help calm Maggie’s nerves, I went into the kitchen and began preparing a pot of tea. It was something I’d noticed about Maggie that she inherited from Mark. They were both big tea drinkers, as opposed to Violet and myself who were coffee addicts.

  Maggie shot me a grateful smile when she noticed what I was doing. Her hands were still trembling slightly, even when she finally finished up with the dispatcher and got off the phone. “The police will be here in about five minutes,” she explained. “She offered to stay on the line with me but I said it was fine. I… I have you. And I don’t think he’s coming back.”

  “Who is he?” I asked, setting her cup of tea down in front of her. Oh, what the hell. I might as well have a cup too.

  “He’s my neighbor,” Maggie said, confirming my suspicions. “The one I told you about at dinner.”

  “You said he was a little too friendly sometimes.”

  “Yes. I… I didn’t realize how much.” She took a few deep breaths. “He’s been trying to ask me out for months now, and I worried that I should get more firm with him, but I didn’t want to be hurtful. I figured that if I kept turning him down he would get the hint and it would all be fine. But he didn’t, and when he found out about you… he just lost it. Went berserk. It was terrifying.”

  She looked up at me, her hazel eyes large and still scared, and I reached out to gently flatten her fingers around the warm mug of tea, holding hem and keeping them warm. “I was going to ask you this tomorrow,” I said, “and see if… if you didn’t think it was too fast. But do you want to move in with me? The furniture’s leftover from the previous owner, so we can sell it, all of it if you want, get new stuff… I finished the mural for Fern’s room and I haven’t started on the things I want to do for our room and some of the others, art I want to put up, but… you shouldn’t stay here.”

  Maggie shook her head and for a moment I was nervous that she was disagreeing with me, but then she spoke and I realized that she was shaking her head at the idea of staying here any longer. “I agree. I shouldn’t… I don’t want him to know where I am. Even if I do plan to slap him with a restraining order.”

  I grinned at her. “That’s my girl.”

  The cops arrived a few minutes later. While we waited for them, I just wrapped an arm around Maggie, keeping her close, keeping her warm. She debated going into her room to change but she didn’t know how much she should keep things the same, and so she just wore the lingerie and my jacket to cover herself as she explained the situation to them—how she had dressed up for me, her boyfriend, and how Leo (that was the bastard’s name, apparently) had taken advantage of that and nearly done worse damage than he actually had.

  It wasn’t a fun process, giving our statements to the police, but there was the silver lining of hearing Maggie call me her boyfriend for the first time. The only thing that could’ve been better would’ve been hearing her say ‘my husband’ but I reminded myself to be patient. There was making up for lost time and then there was rushing into things, and the last thing I wanted to do was overwhelm Maggie—especially after what had happened tonight.

  The cops advised Maggie on how to go about pressing charges if she wanted, and how to contact someone to get a restraining order. Maggie nodded through all of it, taking the business cards they gave her, her lips pressed together with nerves but a determined look in her eye. I might have been the one to punch Leo, but I had no doubt that my beating was going to look like child’s play by the time Maggie was through legally destroying this asshole.

  Eventually we got everything squared away. The cops went to Leo’s front door but there was no answer and there didn’t appear to be anyone home. I wasn’t surprised. The guy had been thrown out of the house, he had to have known that we’d call the cops—and on top of that he’d be humiliated. He was probably hiding out, maybe at a bar somewhere he could drink his woes and anger away.

  Maggie didn’t like the idea of not knowing where Leo was, but I promised her that it was going to be okay. He would turn up eventually, and we’d serve him with so many papers it would make his head spin.

  I helped Maggie to pack as much as she could, all that she needed, and then we bundled Fern into my car. I drove to my house, with Maggie following behind in her car. We left most of her stuff in our cars for the night. We could unpack it in the morning. It wasn’t really about needing it all right this second, it was about having it at my place, and not at hers, so that we would only have to go back for the big furniture items.

  Maggie picked Fern up and I led them to Fern’s bedroom, where Maggie gave a small gasp as she saw the mural for the first time.

  It was all of Fern’s stuffed animals, playing on an adventure in the forest. Fern’s stories featuring her stuffed animals were so vivid, I’d wanted to bring them to life, and it had been ages since I’d done a nature scene. I’d devoted myself mostly to cityscapes, to people, that sort of thing—along with abstract work when it suited me. Capturing the beauty of nature was new, but it had seemed to fit Fern.

  The look of warmth and happiness in Maggie’s eyes was all I could’ve asked for.

  “The rest of the furniture we can switch out,” I whispered, pulling back the covers so that Maggie could carefully lower Fern into the bed. Fern was basically still asleep, a little confused but trusting the both of us about this ‘sleepover’ thing. “Bring in her stuff from her room. I can even call a moving truck company tomorrow, if you want.”

  We arranged all of Fern’s stuffed animals onto her bed with her, and then tiptoed out. “It’s perfect for her,” Maggie assured me after we closed Fern’s bedroom door. “And I know that you won’t want to hear it, but thank you. You’re going to say something about how of course you did it and it’s nothing but you really did save me. You could’ve walked away but you didn’t.”

  “Of course I didn’t.” I pulled her into my arms the way I’d wanted to this entire night, through all of it. I was nervous that Maggie wouldn’t want to be touched, really, after that entire ordeal, but she sank into me and rested her head on my chest like it was all she’d wanted to do.

  Maggie wrapped her arms around me, holding on tightly. “I was so scared,” she admitted at last. “You saved me. Thank you.”

  “Hey, I’d do it all over again. Or worse.” I kissed the top of her head. “Babe, I’d do anything for you.”

  Maggie pre
ssed a kiss to the base of my throat, and a hot shiver ran down my spine. “I gotta say, it’s a pity I didn’t get to really appreciate seeing you in that outfit. The idea of you getting all dressed up for me…”

  “I got all dressed up for you on our first night, remember?” Maggie said playfully. She pulled back, taking my hands and inspecting them. “You’ve got a few scrapes, c’mere.”

  Punching someone hurts, although nobody really bothers to tell you that before you punch someone. I was lucky that my knuckles hadn’t swollen up or gotten bruised.

  Maggie led me into the master bathroom and made sure that my scrapes on my knuckles were taken care of. Watching her look out for me and take care of me made my heart swell up in my chest. We looked out for each other, and that was how it should be. Although hopefully usually not with a damn asshole trying to assault her.

  She finished up and kissed my knuckles softly. Seeing her give such tender care, automatically, like she wasn’t even having to think about it never mind second guess it… I had worked hard to earn her trust like this. I hoped I would always be worthy of it.

  “Would you like to see the bedroom?” I asked.

  Maggie smiled. “I thought you’d never ask.”

  I already thought of this bedroom as ‘ours’ instead of just mine. Maggie hadn’t said yes to the whole moving in thing, exactly, and I didn’t want to pressure her too much, but the look on her face as she stared around the space, like she was cataloguing it and figuring out how she wanted to redecorate it, her eyes narrowing… it gave me hope.

  “What do you think?” I asked.

  “I think it has a very nice, comfortable looking bed,” Maggie teased.

  “You want to test out the mattress?” I asked, stepping up to her from behind and gently, slowly wrapping my arms around her waist. I didn’t want her to be reminded of the way that asshole had held her, like she was a rag doll to just toss around and abuse.

  Maggie sank back against my chest and hummed.

  “We can always just sleep, if you’re too tired,” I promised. She could very well not want to do anything sexual after what had happened, and almost happened, tonight.