Chapter Twenty-Eight
The next morning at Fitzgerald Brewing was quiet, as those who had to come in walked around groaning and drinking water, looking much the worse for wear. Elle figured she did too, but for a different reason. She went about the usual tasks, checking the brew schedule—now back to its usual busy, but not utterly frantic, level—before she began measuring out the ingredients for the Czech Pilsner, one of her favorite summer brews.
Ross wandered onto the brewery floor around noon. He found her in the lab, checking the specific gravity of the Pils before moving it into fermentation. She ignored him, content to let him watch her move around the room, doing her job, as her brain fumbled for something to say. She wanted so badly to confide in him, to lay the whole thing at his feet and ask him to help her through it. But years of training and even more years of avoidance had taken their toll. She kept her lips zipped.
When he reached for her arm at one point, she ducked out his reach, claiming she didn’t have time for nonsense. “Elisa, every tooth in my head aches, each in its own special way I am so hung over. Be nice to me? I hear kissing would help.”
“Not now, Ross. Okay?” She ran out of the lab, gnawing at her lower lip, finding make-work jobs to do to keep from having to see him for a few more hours.
By four-thirty, she and the silent, slow-moving cleaning crew had the brew house ready for the next batch. She sat, wiping her face with a towel, exhausted and drained from avoiding Ross all day. Groaning at the ache in her lower back, she pushed away from the edge of the mash tun, needing to write up the brew’s progression in the log, then get the second shift going before she headed home.
Rounding the corner, doing a mental check of her meager pantry and wishing she could go to Ross’ hotel for dinner and more, she ran straight into his chest. “Watch where you’re going,” she spat out, backing away from him. Nerves jangling, she found herself staring at the floor, hand to her neck when she registered the fury in his expression.
“Elisa,” he said, keeping his voice steady. “Look at me.”
She did, setting her jaw against the compulsion to throw herself into his arms. “When were you going to share this with me?” He held up a phone—her phone—face out so she could see the screen, filled with the last thing she’d been reading, for the millionth time. The Monster’s face filled her brain, making her blink and take a few steps back.
“What do you mean?” she asked, her voice low and wimpy.
“I mean, this asshole is going to be here, in this town, and you’ve obviously been obsessing over this article. This was what was wrong with you yesterday. So, I’ll ask again. When were you going to tell me?”
“Never,” she said, blinking back tears. “I wasn’t going to tell you at all.”
“Well, at least I got an honest answer out of you.”
She grabbed her phone and tucked it into her jeans pocket. “That is a violation of my privacy. What gave you the right to open my phone, anyway?”
“That is completely beside the point,” he insisted, crossing his arms and letting the line of stubborn between his eyes deepen.
“No, actually, it’s part of the point. I’m entitled to my own life, you know. Just because you…we…I… Oh never mind.” She tried to stomp past him, but he held out an arm, nearly clothesline choking her in the process. “Move your stupid arm,” she hissed under her breath.
“Talk to me, Elisa,” he said, griping her shoulders and pulling her so she stood in front of him again.
“Go to hell, Hoffman,” she said, keeping her voice and expression as neutral as she could manage.
“At the moment, I’d consider myself already there.”
They stood, glaring at each other for a few seconds. She could smell the booze wafting from his pores, but instead of making her angry, it made her feel terrible for ruining this triumphant week. She slumped back against the wall.
He stepped forward and gathered her close, murmuring into her hair. “Let me help you. I know it’s a new thing for you, but I want to. I love you, remember? Stop making that so fucking hard, why don’t you?”
“I never told you I’d be easy to love.” She had her face pressed against his chest and could smell his clean-showered skin under his shirt.
“Okay, fair enough.” He leaned away and lifted her chin. “Talk to me. Tell me what we can do to keep you safe. Do you want to go away? Now that this place is back on track, I don’t have a damn thing to do, nor a job to go to out west. Let’s take a vacation. Maybe head to someplace with a beach, a private hut, room service and lots of…”
“Stop it,” she said, shaking her head. “I can’t just go on vacation to avoid him. He found me. And I guarantee the reason He’s here is to…to…” She buried her face in his chest again, relief at having told him this making her dizzy.
He frowned. “Do me a favor?”
“What?” she muttered, still pressing her face into his chest.
“Stop using capital letters in your voice when you refer to that asswipe. I can hear it, you know. I can tell you’re doing it.”
“I…don’t know what you mean.”
“Yes, you do.”
They stood staring at each other a few seconds, seemingly sunk deep in their own thoughts.
“I know,” he said, gathering her in his arms again. “Let’s take Trent up on his invite to Petoskey. That’s not running away. It’s right here in Michigan and you’ll be surrounded by friends. The weekend he does whatever the fuck he’s doing at the casino, you won’t be anywhere he can reach, or even know about.”
She sniffled and disentangled herself, pondering this, trying not to reject it outright.
“Maybe,” she said, swiping at her streaming eyes. “I don’t know.” She looked up at him. “I do know one thing—I’m starving. And you could probably use some food to soak up the booze, no?”
“Yes, I absolutely could. Let’s head into the pub. I want one of Melody’s bloody burgers. She’ll burn one for you, I’m sure.” He kissed her forehead, cupping her chin in one warm hand. “And we can talk about the weekend with her.” He raised an eyebrow.
She nodded, and let him lead her across the back hall into the kitchen, then into the early evening business of the Fitz Pub.
* * * *
By the time she was draped over Ross’ inert body as he snored softly, the weekend had all been arranged. She and Ross were even going to stay another week after everyone else left, to ensure that The Monster had left town without His—his—prey.
As she drifted, something prodded her wide awake. She rose, careful not to disturb Ross too much, but he was way gone, having eaten a huge meal, drunk about a gallon of water, and fallen sound asleep in front of mid-season baseball game on the telly. After pulling her phone from the heap of clothes she’d left on the floor, she opened the calendar and stared at the date, exactly four weeks from today when her preliminary hearing was scheduled.
Sighing, she leaned back against the foot of the bed, staring the ceiling as Ross’ soft breathing sounds floated into the air. That’s right. She had a damn manslaughter charge still hanging over her head.
“You’re quite the little troublemaker, aren’t you?” the inner nag piped up, as clear as day. “Not on the job a month before you’re blowing some hapless asshole’s brains across your boss’s office.”
Of course, both Austin and Ross had done nothing but sing her praises for that act. And the crack team of public relations pros in the Fitzgerald marketing department had done their job, keeping the gritty details from the press. But once she was in court, the whole thing would spill out, tarnishing her as a crazy, gun-toting, German whack job.
What she would not give for something resembling a normal life, she thought. What would that be?
She woke to the sensation of being lifted up into a set of strong arms. Of familiar lips on hers, of warm hands stroking her, caressing her, loving her. They made love in utter silence, slowly, and yet with an urgency that made her breathless by the time he pulled her on top him, once he’d licked and sucked her to a beautiful climax. The hot length of his dick along her eager pussy made her gasp. As she stared down at him, the ropes of her dreadlocks blocked out the world, leaving just the two of them, two lost souls who found each other in a foreign land.
“I love you, Hoffman,” she whispered at the same time she shifted her hips and took him fast and deep—so deep all at once she cried out into the cool, dark air.
“Shh,” he said, stroking her breasts, her stomach, her hips and thigh with a sort of reverence that thrilled her. “Just be still. Feel me inside you.”
She nodded, sitting up straight and relishing that angle as he continued to lightly stroke her shoulders, her arms, returning to her breasts and tweaking both her nipples at once. She gasped as her hips began to move.
He rose on his elbows, then sat all the way up, keeping their bodies intimately connected as he pulled her legs to either side of his hips so they were rocking together on the bed. “Ah…God, yes.” She sighed into his chest, feeling him deep, the angle of his dick mirroring the way he’d use his fingers. “Yes.” She exhaled as the orgasm hovered, teasing her. He was close too. She’d gotten so that she could sense his triggers and signs. His breathing was quick. His fingers flexing on the small of her back.
“Now, lie back, my love,” he said, pulling her arms from around his neck and pushing her slowly away from him. “Lie back…like that.”
She propped on her elbows, keeping her legs draped over his hips. His jaw clenched as he kept a tight grip on her. This even better angle, combined with the way he stroked her clit with his thumb, brought on the fireworks. She pressed against him, matching his rolling thrusts into her, knowing that her pussy tightening and pulsing around him from the climax would make him come.
He groaned, his hands dug into her upper thighs and his head tilted back, matching her stance. He came hard, continuing to thrust against her in rough spasms. When he opened his eyes, they were bright, lit from the moonlight streaming through a break in the blinds behind her. “I adore you, Elisa. Marry me.”
“Don’t ask me that right now, please. Just let me enjoy this feeling.” She lay all the way back, forcing him to lean forward. When he did slide out of her, she winced, but didn’t mind the pain. He headed for the bathroom, returning with a warm, wet cloth he used between her legs, always muttering intimacies in German as she drifted, stretched out with her head to the foot of the bed and her feet on a pillow.
“Marry me, Elisa,” he insisted, dropping down next to her, propped on one elbow.
She turned to him, touched his jaw, and smiled. “All right,” she agreed. “But let’s keep it to ourselves a while, at least until I can get past that…that weekend, okay?”
“Yes. Anything you want, darling Elisa. My love.” He gathered her close, flipped her onto her side and they slept pressed together like spoons, upside down on the bed, through the rest of the night.