Chapter Two
Ally
“Heads up, Ally!” warned Frannie. “Jonah just grabbed a booth in your section again. I don’t know why you won’t give him a chance. He is one of the most eligible bachelors in the county. But all you do is run and hide whenever he comes in.” Frannie shook her head at me.
“Frannie, I have so much on my plate as it is, working so much and taking care of Sam. The very last thing I need right now is a man who will just end up being a jerk anyway,” I whispered loudly as I raced off to the kitchen to pretend I was prepping for the dinner rush.
One look at that man and I couldn’t think straight, let alone speak in coherent sentences. It had been years since I had felt an attraction that strong, and to be honest it scared the hell out of me. After my divorce three years ago, I swore off men forever. Forever.
Tom was the mistake of a lifetime. Not only did I pay for it, but our child did as well. I met him when I was only eighteen years old, fresh out of high school. Officer Tom Lane took a shine to me for some reason and I ate it up, of course. He was older, more mature and an officer wearing a uniform. How could a girl resist? He gave me flowers, took me to fancy dinners, bought me pretty dresses, and even paid to have my hair done. Being inexperienced and impressionable, I had no clue I was being controlled and groomed. Kept on a leash, I didn’t even realize what was happening until it was too late and we were married.
Something was off almost right away after we were married. He stayed out all night often, saying it was for work. But when I called they said he wasn’t on shift. Then he came home one day and told me that he was framed for something at work and was fired. He would never tell me what they accused him of. Then, he started drinking. At first it was just a few beers, then it was a twelve pack, and then he moved onto whiskey. The whiskey turned him into a monster that I didn’t even recognize. That was when the beatings began. Out of the blue, if I said something the wrong way, he would backhand me so hard I would fly across the room. I hoped that when our son was born things would get better and they did for a short time.
For years, I couldn’t fathom why a man who was supposed to be a good guy that loved his wife and child, could hide such a shady past and present. I felt stupid, ashamed and hurt by his betrayal. He loved his booze, women and gambling more than his family. Never could hold down a job for longer than a few months. But, when he was arrested and sent to prison for selling drugs and guns, I was subpoenaed as one of the prosecution’s witnesses. In the end, he was sentenced to fifteen years and that was finally it, we were free.
It was such a relief that I just sat and cried and cried until all the tears were gone. I vowed to never cry where he was concerned again. No more worrying he would come home drunk and smack me around, if he came home at all. I felt free. But that freedom was short lived. Tom was connected in so many ways that if he really wanted to hurt us, he could whenever he chose and we would never see it coming. It could be the guy on the corner that looked like he was walking his dog, or the woman at the grocery store that seemed to always be following me, or even worse police officers. Paranoia was my constant companion. It seemed like everywhere I went, there was a cop car sitting, just watching us.
I knew we had to get out of town for the sake of my sanity. We needed to go live the life we were meant to. With only eight hundred dollars to my name, I looked at the map and just picked a town that I knew from my childhood. One Tom knew nothing about. Wordly, Illinois was where Grams was born and raised. During my teens, we often went to visit her sister, my Great Aunt Helen. With both gone, it was hard but it was soothing at the same time, untouched by my mistake.
I loaded up everything that would fit into our ancient, barely running, red four-door sedan, and told Sam that we were going on a new adventure soon. I assured him that everything was going to get better. He was so young then and didn’t understand why we had to leave. I took the only gift my grandmother gave me, one I hid in the rafters of our house from Tom, and I hocked my grandmother’s diamond broach. It used to belong to her mother, our family heirloom. It was over one hundred years old and worth a great deal of money. I didn’t care about the monetary value, but it broke my heart to hock it. I could hear my grandma saying, “Sell it silly girl sell it and run! It’s only jewelry.” I finally relented and contacted someone I had known for quite some time that Tom knew nothing about. She was able to acquire us new identities, transportation, a bit of extra money and set a plan in motion for our escape.
My decision to leave came just in time, as the day before my planned exit from town, Tom had someone deliver a message to me.
“My Dearest Sarah,
All is not forgotten or forgiven. Vengeance is mine!
Your ever-loving husband,
Tom
I wasted no time tying up loose ends and getting out of town. Sam, was only four at the time and so easily coaxed into the new name game on our long trip. It was a game at first and he would win an M&M for every time he said his new name. He was born Jacob and renamed Sam. I wondered how much emotional trauma he would have as he got older and started to remember things from the past, but for the moment we were okay.
That was three years ago. I hadn’t stopped looking over my shoulder since I got the message from my mistake. That’s why I needed to keep my guard up. I had my son, great friends and we were safe. What more could I want? Maybe a man for me and a father for my child, definitely a protector; a true hero. I knew I could take care of us, but to have someone to truly care for us sounded nice. Maybe Jonah Bradford could be that person for me… for us.
Sure, Johan had a certain appeal. He was an ex-Navy SEAL working as co-director of his family business, Bradford Securities. Surely, he could protect us. His six foot, two-inch frame draped in solid, thick muscle said don’t fuck with him. He had a hard jaw with a long deep scar from his temple to the edge of his chin on the right side with a close cropped dark beard that didn’t quite grow over it. Some women might not find that attractive and maybe even scary, but I thought it was sexy as sin. I daydreamed of walking up to him, touching the scar from the very top, just barely with the tip of my finger and tracing it all the way down to the edge of his chin. Taking a deeper breath, I imagined my tongue tracing the scar instead. Oh yes. Daydreams were wonderful. Then when you added the dark, almost black hair and those eyes…oh my…as blue as a clear summer sky. They were so intense that I swore that he could see right into my soul if I stared into them too long.
Okay! Knock it off Ally! No men! That was our deal. Be a mom first and foremost. No men…. sigh… but if only… just for a moment a girl could dream, couldn’t she?
Why, oh, why, wouldn’t Fran just leave it alone? Yes, Jonah could melt the panties off the Virgin Mary herself by gazing into his baby blues, but he was a complication I didn’t need. I couldn’t trust him. No, I wouldn’t trust him. Another man would never be trusted with my heart. Not just my heart, but my child’s as well. Our lives were finally on the right track after living here for three years. Destroying what we had built over a man, was not an option. I was good and more than capable of taking care of my son. I didn’t need anyone. So, I thought at the time.
Forming new relationships had been one of the hardest things to do since we moved to the little town of Wordly, Illinois. I couldn’t even tell the people that I was closest to, my real name, so could they really be my friends? I felt like a traitor. A con-artist of sorts, playing her biggest con game. I knew I could trust Frank and Fran but if they knew who we really were, they would be in danger too. My mistake may find a way of locating us when we least expected it. I didn’t want my mistake to become theirs too. I had to keep everyone safe. So, for that moment, I was Ally Black, and my eight-year-old son, Samuel was my protector, my shy turtle, we were orphans to the world. No husband. No dad. No family. Just the two of us with no one to truly protect us.
That was what I kept telling myself so that I kept things as they were without Jonah.
God, I still cringed thinking about the first time I laid eyes on him. Not my best moment. When I first saw Jonah, he literally took my breath away. I was already nervous, my hands sweaty and shaking when I walked up to his booth and took his order.
“Hi! Welcome… my name is Ally. Can I have you forever?” I blinked and blinked, feeling my face flush as if it was on fire. I actually felt a bit dizzy when I realized what I had asked him. “Can I have you forever?” Oh. My. God! If I could have run screaming from the diner, I would have.
As I pondered my faux pas, a deep as the ocean laugh filled the room. Mortified, I looked up and saw it was Mr. Dreamy Eyes laughing at me! Could it get any worse? I should never have even thought that to myself. I knew better than to think that. It’s my karma. Karma hates me! I cleared my throat and tried one of my, I totally said that on purpose smiles and said, “May I take your order?”
For the love of God, he was still laughing! Talk about humiliated, I swore he was laughing so hard he snorted. Yes, actually snorted. Just about then one of the other waitresses came up to me and whispered loudly to me, “Your skirt is sticking out of your undies, hon. This is a family place so go put your tushy back where it belongs.”
I was mortified. I just stood there in shock. No, no, no, no, that couldn’t be happening, but it was. I slowly started to back up as cool and as casual as possible with Mr. Dreamy Eyes still laughing and by then several other tables were getting a good chuckle out of my predicament. And wouldn’t you know it, I backed right into a waitress carrying one of those huge trays full of food and drinks. I was bathed in scrambled eggs, hash browns, and several cups of milk. The entire diner was staring at the commotion as Mr. Dreamy Eyes walked over to give me a hand. He took a towel from the counter and started wiping the milk from my eyes.
As he continued to chuckle, he said in that deep growly voice of his, “You know if you would have waited for my answer to your question, it would have been a yes.”
I mumbled under my breath for a second and he tilted his head closer, “I’m sorry I didn’t quite catch that?”
“I said, karma hates me with a freaking passion!” He walked away entirely amused.
Since that day, I avoided him at all costs. I did not do well with humiliation, even when it was self-inflicted. That was a few years ago, and whenever I did happen to pass his table he always called out, “May I have you forever, Freckles?”
I would just scurry along like I couldn’t hear him.