Page 14 of Daddy's Little Librarian
She braced herself. With the coolness of the can tucked up in her palm, one finger on the trigger, she got ready. What she was ready for, she wasn’t quite sure. She liked to think she might be brave enough to charge upstairs in defense of her bodyguard, should he yell out, but she felt every bit as likely to scream and run away.
There it was again. Another footstep, another creak approaching the top of the staircase.
Kurt wouldn’t be coming back unless he knew there was no one upstairs; if there was no one upstairs, he wouldn’t be sneaking. It was Gopher, her brain supplied. It had to be.
Swallowing past the lump in her throat, she raised the aerosol spray. Her hand was shaking, but she didn’t back down. She’d done a lot of backing down these last few months, but she wasn’t alone anymore. It wasn’t like before. Someone believed her now.
The footsteps picked up, starting down the first flight of stairs. There was only the minute space of the landing and the corner between herself and her tormenter now. Cold panic tickled through her.
Oh God… Oh God…
A huge shadowy shape lurched around the hallway corner, and Scotti waylaid her intruder with a scream of warbling hysteria. It was only after she’d completely emptied her aerosol can directly into his face, did she realize that shadow was much too big to ever have been Gopher.
The manly bellow that followed wasn’t Gopher’s, either.
“Agh!” Kurt yelled, tripping on the stairs as he vaulted backwards. He fell, spitting and swiping at his eyes, shouting, “What the hell is wrong with you, woman!”
Running to the light switch at the bottom of the stairs, she quickly flicked it on. Sure enough, Kurt was on the ground, grinding the heels of his palms into his eyes and swearing.
“Oh, Kurt, I’m so sorry!”
A loud thump hit the small, decorative roof on the east side of the house, over the study window and underneath her bedroom, and crashed into the bushes on that side of the house. When brush rustled near the door, she panicked all over again.
Running to the door, she slammed and locked it without ever catching sight of Gopher. Kurt was still wheezing and rocking on the stairs when she reluctantly came back to the stairs. She winced as he coughed, scrubbing at his red eyes.
“What the hell did you use on me?” he demanded.
Looking down at the label in her hand, Scotti sheepishly told him, “Feminine hygiene spray. Hypo-Allergenic. With aloe.”
She supposed she ought to be glad it wasn’t sink cleaner. She could have blinded him.
Peeling open red-rimmed eyes, he glared at her.
“Floral, um… fresh?” Scotti said, though she knew that wouldn’t make a difference. Biting her bottom lip, she guiltily tucked the spray can behind her back.
He got up off the floor, looking mad as hell. It made her flinch when he pointed at her with a very big, very angry finger. “That’s one,” he growled and stalked past her into the bathroom to wash his face.
Feeling awful, Scotti stood on the stairs where he left her. One what, she wondered as she watched him go, but she kept the question behind locked teeth. Maybe later, when he’d had a chance to calm down, and if nothing else happened to keep him this upset, then maybe she’d dredge up enough courage to ask.
Chapter Six
“Where are you going?” Kurt called from the kitchen where he was installing fresh, functioning locks on all the windows.
“I’ll be just a minute,” she called back, halfway up the stairs and heading toward her bedroom. Once there, she closed the door as softly as she knew how, collected Bat Bear from amongst her friends on the dresser, and then put herself in the closet. She didn’t turn on the light. There was no way to keep Bat Bear from knowing what was happening, but she didn’t need to see it. Nobody needed to see it. That was why she crawled all the way into the back corner of her closet to sit cross-legged behind the shielding skirt of two long winter coats, several full-length dresses and her old graduation gown. Hugging Bat Bear to her chest, she buried her face into the popcorn-smelling back of her head, and did her best to cry in a way no one who wasn’t supposed to know would hear.
She just needed a minute, she told herself. Then she’d go back downstairs and pretend that dealing with this didn’t scare her or bother her at all. Just one, short, tiny minute.
She never got it.
With her face buried against her stuffie, she never saw the cracks around the closet door light up, but there was no missing the boom of Kurt’s low voice snapping out, “Answer me right now, where are you?”
Scotti yelped, she startled so bad. She clapped her hand over her mouth, but the damage was already done. In the next instant, the closet door swung open and there was Kurt. Hiding behind her dresses, she couldn’t see him, but she knew he’d have no problem seeing her. Or, at least, the cross of her legs and half of Bat Bear being strangled in her arms.
Hangers scraped on the bar overhead and the coats and dresses parted, spilling her in light. Kurt looked at her.
Great, now she wasn’t just sad, she felt stupid too.
“It’s not what you think,” she said, sniffling and swiping her eyes dry on her wrist.
