Page 52 of Roark
“Aunt Birdie!” she yelled louder this time and ran down the hallway toward the three bedrooms. Aunt Birdie was staying in the biggest one all the way to the back.
Suri slammed into the door, her hand slipping on the knob as tears clogged her throat. “Aunt Birdie!”
When the door finally opened, she burst inside and was about to scream when to her left, another door opened.
“Chile, if you don’t stop making all that noise at this time of night… Folk are tryin’ to sleep. Or if they ate that last bowl of buttered beans before going to bed, like I did, they were probably stuck in the bathroom too.” Aunt Birdie closed the bathroom door behind her and walked toward the bed.
Suri leaned over, pressing her hands to her knees as she tried to catch her breath and calm the adrenaline pumping through her. “I just needed to make sure you were here and alright,” she said between breaths.
“Well, where else would I be? Unlike you, I don’t hang out ‘til all hours in the morning with some no-good man.”
Suri shook her head as she came to a full stand again and looked over to her aunt. She was wearing a long pastel-colored nightgown, as she did every night. Her head was wrapped with a silk scarf, and the eye mask she always slept in was hanging by the elastic string around her neck. Her ensemble was made complete by those ridiculous slippers with feathers or something fluffy on top. “He’s not a no-good man, and it’s called a date.”
Aunt Birdie pursed her lips. “Hmph. Well, last week you were on a date with a no-good woman. You need to make up your mind.”
Suri could only shake her head; she was in no mood to argue with her aunt tonight. It was enough that the mean-as-a-rattlesnake-woman was alive and well. “Alright, I’m sorry I disturbed you. Good night, Aunt Birdie.”
She didn’t wait for her aunt to respond but left her room and moved through the house until she was once again in the living room. She hadn’t turned on any lights when she’d come in because Aunt Birdie was a staunch believer in conserving electricity, so empty rooms had to be pitch-dark at all times. Thankful for that tonight, Suri crept toward the window. Pressing her side against the wall, she eased an arm around slowly, pushing the curtain until there was the barest space for her to peek through.
Her heart thumped and then stopped. He was still there, and his head was tilted back as if he were looking up at her.
“Fuck this,” she snapped and released the curtain.
Going back into her room this time, she yanked the shoebox from beneath her bed and pulled out the gun she kept there. A quick check of the bullets, and she released the safety before heading out again. She had to close the front door quietly, because she didn’t want Aunt Birdie coming out to see where she was. Running down the steps with gun in hand, Suri had no idea what she was going to do beyond telling the bastard to get lost, but as she arrived on the first floor and made her way to the front door, a loud boom and then a bright burst of light sent her flying back.
At a little after midnight, Tamika sat on the edge of Roark’s bed and sighed. “I told myself to stay in the room with my mother all night.”
Her initial plan had been to slip into bed with him and lose herself in the warmth of his embrace, because for a guy who was still relatively new to the snuggling thing, he was pretty damn good at it. But Roark was awake. He’d been sitting up in the bed, his laptop open, notepad, pen and a blue spiral-bound book with a burst of white flowers on the cover next to him.
“How’s she doing?”
“That’s just it,” Tamika said and turned sideways, lifting one leg onto the bed so she could look at Roark. “While she was in the hospital, Dr. Duvall had a psychiatrist come down and speak to her, so she’s now on an antidepressant, along with her pain medications, which I’m not totally sure is a good cocktail of meds. But besides that, she’s been on the antidepressants for about five days now, so when she began talking I figured that was the reason why. I had no idea she needed to talk because she’d been holding in so much.”
Roark closed his laptop and leaned over to set it on the nightstand. “I wish my mother had talked.”
Tamika had wondered how he felt about everything her mother had said earlier this evening. If it was hard for her to hear that her parents knew the man who wanted them dead, and had pissed that man off by leaving him in a burning car, then it had to be even harder for Roark to hear his mother had known for at least two years that this man was alive.
“How did they live with this for so long?” she asked. “And how did your mother finally find out Kaymen was alive?”
Roark shook his head. “I don’t know. That’s what I’ve been sitting here trying to find out. I hadn’t gotten around to closing out her email accounts and lucky for me, my mother was extremely organized. She kept all her passwords written down in her planner. I’ve been going through each email, trying to find some mention of Kaymen.”
She kicked off her slippers and pulled both her legs up on the bed, scooting back so she could lean against the headboard the same as him. “I don’t know what I’m going to do if something happens to her. If he gets—” She stopped talking when she felt his hand covering hers.
“It’s not going to happen.”
For endless moments, she continued to stare down at his hand over hers. This was exactly why she’d tried to force herself not to come in here. “So much is happening.” She hadn’t realized she’d said that out loud until he squeezed her hand.
“That it is.”
“Which means we should try to focus on one thing at a time, right? Prioritize. Sex was good. It was fun in the midst of all this…um, darkness. But now we have to concentrate on protecting the people we love and keeping our focus on them. Tell me that’s what you’re thinking too. Tell me I’m not the only one deciding to stop whatever physical was going on between us while we get to the bottom of all this killing. Dammit, open your mouth and tell me, Roark.”
She dragged her gaze away from their hands and looked up to see that he’d been staring intently at her. Tamika knew she’d just babbled all the things that had been running through her mind in the last five hours. She also knew she was being a rambling idiot. What happened to that woman who was so in control of herself, her thoughts and her body? The one who’d said yesterday that they could just have sex until it was time to move on?
With waves of embarrassment swarming through her, she sighed. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” he said. Then he moved, using his other hand to pick up the pad, book and pen and toss them all onto the floor so he could slide closer to her on the bed. When he was still again, he lifted her hand to his lips, dropping a soft kiss on each of her fingers. “What I’m going to tell you is that Cade and Pierce are going to find this sonofabitch and they’re either going to kill him where he stands or they’re going to haul his demented ass to jail. That’s what I know without a doubt in my mind.”
Her heart was still fluttering from the sweet kisses he’d just dropped on her fingers; now she was looking into his eyes and feeling the potency of his words.
