Page 8 of Hidden Rocco
He drank his bottle and stared at her with big brown eyes. She ignored the writhing misery inside her and wiped her tears. “Jacob, we’ll be fine.” She stood, palm to her heart. “Part of me wishes I’d hired a nurse right now but it will be okay.” Her mom had always complained she was both independent and stubborn, but this was why she was a good CEO and now mother.
The convulsion was subsiding, but soon she’d have horrible back pain because of it. “I’ll go get my medicine. Your mom will be healthy soon.”
Mica made it to the door just as the room went black. Despite how her muscles were being tortured with spasms, she headed to the side of the bed and found her flashlight. “The lights went out like some horror movie, but see? These are fun. Flashlights.”
She flicked the lights on and off making bunny ears on the wall.
Jacob cooed.
The torment in her body caused her back to convulse.
She should have grabbed her pills. She bent over the crib and massaged her baby’s head gently. “Tomorrow you and I will play some more, okay?” She took a few painful steps toward the door, pretending her strained muscles weren’t a problem and spoke her lie like her infant baby was keeping track of her. “I just need to check the locks and windows.”
Her son never needed to know she required medicine.
Mica slipped out the door with all the lights now black. “Finish your bottle, sweetheart. I’ll keep you safe. I promise.”
Once she left the area she lived in, she just used her flashlight to find her generator enough to keep hundreds of guests toasty warm as her future hotel would cost a lot in electricity monthly, and on another night, she might skip entirely as she was only one person with a baby. The flashlight was the only brightness in the dark.
She made her way down the stairs as her stomach flipped from multiple cramps. The poison hadn’t killed her though doctors weren’t sure exactly what it would do as the toxin had never been identified.
Mica stepped into the kitchen and goosebumps grew on her arms. She flashed her light toward an open window and her body cringed as she made out a masculine shadow.
Had Ali’s family come for her? Her guns were locked up. For now she used the wall to hold herself taller and asked, “Who are you?”
The dark-haired man, tall, in loose clothes, bowed his head. “Lost, ma’am.”
If he was here to kill her, he’d have shot her. Not called her ma’am.
No way she could make it upstairs to get her son if he intended harm.
So she stepped forward as lightning flashed outside. She swallowed and said a little prayer. “There’s a storm rolling in.”
He glanced around the kitchen. She wasn’t sure what he saw in the darkness, but he asked, “Is this a hotel?”
Her body doubled down and cringed in pain, but she held her head high. What if he worked for Ali? “There are no rooms available. Town is down the main road.”
He met her gaze and for one moment she was mesmerized.
She wanted to trust him.
But the last man who’d caught her eyes had left her to die, so she was a horrible judge. He said, “I don’t have a car, ma’am.”
Without bags and in horrible fitting clothes, she was loaded with questions. She glanced up at the roof and half-expected the lightning outside to strike her. But this man seemed… genuine. It was already so blinding white outside and she’d send him to his death in the storm if he spoke the truth. No car, and lost, in these elements? But her instincts that led her to billions of dollars in profits kicked in and she wasn’t loaded with a million questions. She needed to learn to trust herself and her instincts again. And her gut said that Rocco was good and not a threat. She said, mostly to herself, “I’m a fool.”
He raised his palms up. “I just need a place to stay until the storm-”
“I’ll get you a room but I’ll need to lock you in.”
His lips thinned and he said, “I don’t like locks.”
He'd come through her kitchen window. Thunder boomed and icy rain pelleted the glass.
The storm had started early.
If she’d been caught by surprise outside, she might have climbed in a window too.
Which also made her stupid for justifying crime. She crossed her arms. “I don’t like strangers nearby when I sleep.”
