Chapter Six
Alicia
There was a little girl under my aunt’s sofa…
And I think I scared her more than she scared me.
I screamed in the end because I could only determine I’d been shocked. I heard something coming up behind me while I’d been playing my aunt’s vintage piano and that terrified me. I had never been much of a jumpy woman, on my toes constantly in the often male-dominated environment I worked in. Because I worked with men, strong and powerful leaders in both business and law, I had acquired somewhat of an iron stomach. I didn’t do flustered. But this girl, well, she unsettled me.
Especially, with what she’d done after the scream.
I barely caught a glance of deep-colored hair with tones reminiscent of a foul’s shiny coat before she’d fled, scurried really. With quick feet, she’d dropped to the floor and pushed herself underneath my aunt’s couch. She had been so quick I might have missed her had my senses not been so vigilant. I’d heard someone behind me, felt the ray of an intense gaze on my back.
I guess I had been correct.
She had been staring at me at least for a little while. I knew by how deep she’d gotten into the room. I heard her literally right behind me. Maybe only three feet away.
I had never seen anything like it, the way she’d reacted to me and her behavior. Yes, I had screamed, but the highest capability of that reaction to a stranger was a jump at best. This little girl hadn’t jumped. She’d cowered, shrinking to the floor before tucking herself away under the sofa. One might have seen that reaction from an animal, a terrified being in attempts to flee a predator.
Not another human being such as myself.
My fingers to my robe, I wrapped the material tight around myself, my body at odds with standing versus trying to say something to her. Finding an option in the middle, I bent at the knees. My intention had been to speak to her, do something in this situation.
But I paused right away by what I saw.
A tiny human lay formed up in a tight ball, her arms and legs secured as well as they could be in her tight position beneath the couch. She faced away, her shoulders and back donned in a red-and-white-striped t-shirt, which currently all shook like a leaf. Her knees also knocked against each other in the same way while covered in a set of blue jean coveralls. I knew because the material crisscrossed at her back, a real, live kid under there.
Pushing my hand into my hair, I fell back a little, the reality in front of me I literally couldn’t believe.
I went back for another look at what’d happened, what was happening as plain as the oak floor underneath my feet. There was a little girl under my aunt’s couch.
And she truly was terrified.
I swallowed, not knowing what to do. Should I call the authorities? I didn’t know the answer. She could be a runaway or something and found her way into a house that was usually vacant.
I looked again, her body still racked with tremors. Reaching, I figured I should do something. I couldn’t leave her there.
She looked so scared.
My hand got within inches of shiny locks of a deep brown before the resonating sound of thick boots filled the room. Steps followed in from behind me and I turned to find Gray in my aunt’s hallway, the door open and the sheer size of him nearly filling the archway leading into the living room.
“Alicia?” he questioned, eyes wild, everything wild. His dark hair and brow shined with perspiration, his white t-shirt dirtied and sticking damp to the outlines of his defined chest.
He crossed the room over to me in two strides.
“You all right?” he stumbled, his words stumbling. His hair cut the air when he shook his head. “What…? You screamed, right?”
I had screamed. I had been scared.
But not nearly as much as her.
In all my own flustering by what happened I couldn’t voice any of that though. I could only point down to… her.
He followed my hand with his gaze, confusion and all-out wonder on his face.
“I didn’t know she was there,” I started, mouth opening and closing. “She was just there and—”
“What are you talking about?”
I pointed with vigor to the floor. “The girl. I don’t know who she is. She scared me and I screamed.”
I didn’t think anything of what I said made any sense. My words were jumbled up, my body wracked and thrown, but somehow through my rambles something got through to him.
And whatever did put nothing but pure terror on his face.
His features visibly transformed from worry about me to dread about something else and whatever that was had him on the floor in not a breath, not even a whisper of it he’d been so quick.
A soft and raspy, “Laura?” hummed from the depths below me, within him, and I stepped back, my hands to my mouth. Gray had himself close to the floor on his side with his scruffy cheek pressed to the dark wooden slats on the floor.
He spoke to someone, tones of cool and soft vibrato in his normally gruff and sometimes terse voice. There had always been somewhat of an edge to his voice when we exchanged words. I figured that was just how he communicated.
I couldn’t have been more wrong.
My steps continued to the outskirts of the living room, then later the hall. He spoke as if he definitely knew her and the feeling in there, the love in his words…
He talked her down. There was lots of “stay with me” and also “just look right at me.”
My hands warmed my lips, my breaths on my palm. Like so many things today, I didn’t know what to make of this. That girl was scared and there was no way she’d come out willingly.
A tan and muscular hand lined with dark hair across the knuckles disappeared underneath the couch and when it came out, it wasn’t alone.
Tiny fingers with little nails on top of them wrapped around a hand that could literally devour it whole, Gray’s hand so vast. Hell, his hand could do that to mine and I was a grown woman, but his hold was so gentle with hers. He tugged slightly and soon the small hand turned into an arm, a shoulder covered in red and white t-shirt stripes.
And then a face, a baby doll face. Round cheeks and big, dark eyes I’d only seen on the likes of puppies. Her skin dark, so much darker than Gray’s, the girl looked to be of an ethnic origin, possibly Hispanic.
She pressed her forehead to the other side of Gray’s neck, which I couldn’t see. He let her stay there, using both her limbs to wrap around his neck. He picked her up in the next moment, using only his legs to get himself off the floor before pushing his hands under her tiny legs and holding her. I think his next move would have been the door, his long strides taking him right out of the living room and quickly into the hallway.
Gray turned just before he would have, his hand on this little girl’s head. He wouldn’t let her see me, her head cradled as if to protect her. She wouldn’t even know I was standing not three feet away from her if she wanted to. He made sure of that.
The largeness of his chest rose and fell.
“My daughter,” he said, something I suspected had I not known by the care he displayed on that hardwood floor.
His lips moved. “You told me she could rest in your spare bedroom.”
Spare bedroom… my aunt’s spare room and the one I’d been sleeping in? She’d been in there? I hadn’t recalled giving such permission.
But then again, I’d had so much wine yesterday.
The sudden feeling of that wracked my brain, no more adrenaline or coffee to see me through. The liquor’s after affects ran rampant within me, my way of not dealing with my emotions when it came to everything that went down last night on the phone with Bastian.
I pushed my hands into my hair. I probably hadn’t heard Gray. He no doubt had asked, but I wouldn’t have heard anything this morning. Especially considering how early he came over today.
The man in front of me breathed deep.
“She must have just heard your playing,” he started, his voice cracking a little. He pressed a hand to her back. “Your aunt… She used to play. She—”
A shake of his messy hair must have shaken him out of the rest of what he’d been about to say.
Standing back, he held the girl closer than he had just a moment before, backing toward the door.
“I’m sorry,” he said, large boots retreating. One hand reached for the door. “I’m just so sorry, Alicia.”
He turned and I managed to get one look at that little face, her eyes on me and absolutely haunting in their beauty. She was like a tiny angel, a lost child in Neverland, but that’s all I got before Gray cut us off with the close of the door.
He left me wondering, long after he departed, what he was actually sorry for.