Page 56 of The Encounter
She nodded. “Yes.” Before meeting his gaze, she sighed and furrowed her eyebrows. “I’m sorry for everything you’re having to deal with. I know everything that happened last night couldn’t have been easy for you.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Doll, I wasn’t the one who was drugged.”
“I know, but you got the raw end of the deal here. You’re having to deal with the bad press. But I’m fine. Nothing happened.”
He pushed himself up and rolled her onto her back before straddling her hips and leaning forward to place his arms on either side of her head and hovering above her. “I don’t care about the press. And you can’t say nothing happened. Something happened. And it was a big deal. It landed you in the hospital.”
Aside from Kayla, it had been a long time since someone had worried about her. After her parents died, she moved in with her grandma, who did her own kind of worrying, but she was grieving as well. She had lost her son and daughter-in-law in the car crash. Her grandmother’s health had declined rapidly after that. Once Maddie had moved off to college, the tables had turned and Maddie was the one who had to do the worrying and take care of her ailing grandmother.
It was hard since she was across the country, but she had spent a fortune paying for in-home care for her grandma, completely depleting the money she received from her parents’ estate. Once her grandmother passed away, both Maddie’s and her grandmother’s savings were gone. The only saving grace was that her grandma had paid off her house—the house that Maddie and Kayla now lived in.
Her grandmother’s health had forced Maddie to take out student loans. When her parents had passed, she had been set up with enough money to cover the cost of any tuition she would have, but once her grandmother got sick, there wasn’t another option. She took loans out for her tuition and used the money to cover her grandmother’s expenses. It was the least she could do for her grandma taking her in when she was orphaned at fifteen.
“It wasn’t a big deal,” she whispered.
His hands smoothed the wild curls along her face. “Itisa big deal.”
Tears sprang to her eyes, and she tried to roll to cover her face, but he had her caged in. She covered her face with her hands and stifled the sob that tried to escape.
“Hey,” he whispered. “It’s okay. You’re with me. You’re safe.”
She shook her head; her face still covered by her hands. “I didn’t even know they put something in my drink. How could I not have realized it?”
He lightly grasped her wrists and tugged her hands away. Tears streaked her face, leaving a trail from her eyes and past her ears to wet her hair.
“They were professionals. They’ve likely done it several times, and why would you know? It’s not something you could have expected.”
“But it’s what you hear about all the time. Don’t leave your drinks unattended. Don’t let it leave your sight.”
Jace sighed. “Maddie, you never left your drink unattended. You held it the entire time, and they took advantage of the fact that the dance floor was packed. They bumped into you and dumped something into your drink without you realizing it because there were people pressing in from all directions. It would have been impossible to know unless you outright saw him do it. You cannot blame yourself for this.”
She sniffled. “But I should have known.”
“No. You shouldn’t have. And I will not let you take the blame for this. You did absolutely nothing wrong last night. You did everything right, but there are people out there who are awful human beings. They will take advantage of any situation they can, and that’s what they did to you and Kayla. They took advantage. But you know what?”
He stared at her, waiting for a reply, so she wiped her eyes and whispered, “What?”
“You two came out on top. And because you came out on top, we could catch those assholes. They won’t be able to harm any other women again.”
“That’s thanks to you. You sent us to your office. Robert stopped them from following us. If I hadn’t met you…” She trailed off and shook her head.
He cupped her cheek. “If you hadn’t met me, you wouldn’t have been at the club last night and wouldn’t have been in harm’s way.”
“You don’t know that. Kayla always drags me out to clubs. We could have still been there last night and had a very different outcome.”
“We’ll never know. So how about we agree that it all worked out? And those guys are no longer out hurting women.”
She nodded. “Okay.”
He leaned forward and kissed her lips. When he pulled back, he said, “If you ever need to talk about this, please talk to me. I want to be there for you. I don’t want you to suffer over this.”
“Okay.”
He pushed himself up and gazed down at her, still straddling her hips. “As much as I love this view, I think we need to eat.”
She rested her hand on his thighs and gripped them. “When do I get to take care of you?”
He laughed and scooted out of her reach before sliding off the bed. “Maybe later tonight.”
