Full Throttle(9)
“Not that I’m saying I have a future with you,” she quickly added, a look of panic flitting across her pretty face. “But I figured it was because I recently decided to start taking chances that I felt this instant, uh, attraction, or connection, or…whatever you want to call it. I figured it was because I’d finally opened myself up to—”
He pressed a finger against her lips. “First of all,” he said, smiling down at her, “take a breath. And secondly, has anyone ever told you your accent comes out when you get worked up?” She’d started leaving the r sounds off the ends of her words until wonder sounded more like wondah, and years sounded more like yee-ahs. And miracle of miracles, his discomfort seemed to drift away in the face of hers. Maybe because he realized he wasn’t the only one toting around a heaping helping of emotional baggage. Or maybe because, in that moment, he felt certain of something. Like, the universe or Patti’s spirit—although he really didn’t believe in any of that—was telling him it was okay to let go. To finally, finally let go. A lightness unlike anything he’d experienced in a very long time lifted away a piece, just one tiny piece, but a piece all the same, of the heavy burden he’d been carrying around inside his heart, inside his soul.
“They have,” Penni burbled around his finger. “To my eternal dismay.”
Okay, and she was adorable. Simply adorable. With her too-expressive eyes and that little bump on the bridge of her nose…
Everything inside Dan softened at the same time something on the outside of him, something decidedly south, hardened. “The Bronx?” he asked, removing his finger.
“Brooklyn.” She nodded.
Grinning down at her, delighting in how good he suddenly felt, in how good she felt against him, another AA adage drifted through his mind. A man can’t be content with simply getting by. And truthfully? That’s all he’d been doing since rehab. Getting by.
Ozzie and Steady were right. His gentle, loving wife wouldn’t want him wasting away. She’d want him to move on, to find some semblance of happiness. Some semblance of a life. And on his initial attempt to do that, he needed someone kind and understanding. Someone who wouldn’t laugh at him if—heaven forbid—he burst into tears in the middle of it. Someone who would hold him, comfort him, be patient with him. And Penni DePaul, bless her sweet heart, seemed to fit the bill perfectly.
“That’s what I’m gonna call you,” he whispered, gently cupping her face in his hands, lowering his lips to hers. “Brooklyn…”
Chapter Three
Abby’s world came back to her slowly and in pieces…
First there was smell. Too much smell. The dank, salty aroma of dried fish competed with the bloodier scent of freshly butchered meat and the wet, decaying odor of the popular durian fruit. Then there was garlic, pepper, cinnamon…ugh. All of it together triggered her gag reflex.
Which made her realize her ears were back online, too. She could hear herself hacking, gasping above the noisy chatter of raised voices and the steady droning of…what was that? The sound was vaguely familiar, reminding her of the time she’d been snowed in during a family ski trip to Colorado.
Generators, maybe? Which would explain the hint of exhaust adding to the bouquet of stomach-churning scents.
Blech! Smells like Chewbacca’s burned butt hair. Where the hell am I?
When she opened her eyes, it was to find a world of chaos and color. She appeared to be floating like a lost balloon through an alley that backed up to one of Kuala Lumpur’s many night markets. The back sides of multi-hued, tightly spaced booths—which she knew were overloaded with everything from produce, meat, and spices to trinkets and textiles—drifted by on her left. On her right was a labyrinth of alcoves and alleyways filled with the empty carts of the night market’s hawkers. And when she glanced up, it was to see the hardened jaws of two men. Tendons and veins bulged in their necks as they struggled under her weight. Okay, so she wasn’t floating, she was being carried.
Memories assaulted her…
The pinch of the needle. The body that refused to respond to her commands. Her security detail’s perplexing absence and the presence of a handful of strange men. The apathy that soon followed…
Well, she could only wish for a drop of that apathy now. Because the stark terror was back in full effect, causing her heart to race so fast she was dizzy. Or maybe that was thanks to the remnants of the drug in her system.
“Help me,” she croaked, reaching out to a wide-eyed Malaysian woman standing next to an empty cart. Or at least she tried to reach out. Her stupid arm weighed in at a cool thousand pounds and didn’t do much more than twitch as it dangled from her shoulder socket. And her voice? Heaven help her, it was nothing but an airy whisper.