Chapter Thirteen

 

Mercy

 

It doesn’t take Abe long to pass out. Just a few minutes after he went to my bedroom, I followed him to put on some comfy clothes and round up my laundry to wash. He was already asleep on his stomach, taking up more than half of the bed with only a hint of covers draped over him from the ass down. I got a nice view of the large, black tattoo that takes up most of his back – the Savage Kings words along with their bearded skull wearing a crown just like the patches on the back of his cut. It’s meant to be a scary, intimidating image anyway. So, on someone as big and muscular as Abe, it’s a little terrifying at first. But I’m not afraid of him, even if he does have a gun. If anything, he makes me feel safe just being here in the house with me, even if he’s unconscious.

The faint ringtone of my phone snaps me out of my perusal of the sleeping biker lumberjack, so I tiptoe out of the room with my clothes hamper to grab my phone from my purse. No surprise, it’s Sasha.

“Hello?” I answer.

“Hey, girl. How are things going? Any more stalker notes?” she asks in concern.

“Nope. Abe is a pretty effective deterrent,” I answer with a smile.

“Oh, I bet,” Sasha agrees. “Has he been good for anything else?” she asks.

“Maybe,” I give in to her curiosity as I lift my shoulder to hold the phone up to my ear while heading to the laundry room that’s next to the kitchen with my hamper. “He’s having a nap right now.”

“A nap?” Sasha asks. “You’re telling me that the big, bad biker is napping like a toddler?”

“Yes,” I reply with a giggle. “He didn’t sleep much last night.”

“Well, it wasn’t because there was any hanky-panky going on, right? Didn’t he sleep on the sofa? What’s up with that?”

“I-I dunno,” I say as I pull my dresses from the hamper and put them in the washer. “And while I know I’m not supposed to be…dating while filming the show, that’s not really what we’re doing.”

“Right, because you’re just fucking, or so you say,” Sasha replies.

“That’s right, we are,” I agree as I dig around in the hamper looking for my white zippered undergarment bag. It’s the easiest way to wash all my bras and panties in the machine without them getting messed up. Who has time for handwashing each one separately? It’s bad enough that I also have to line dry them.

“Sure. For now,” Sasha adds while I keep hunting through the hamper. “But sometimes just fucking turns into more…”

“Sometimes. Not always and not in this case,” I say, and then heave a frustrated sigh when I reach the bottom of the hamper without finding my bag.

“What’s wrong?” Sasha asks.

“Nothing,” I tell her as I straighten. “Just trying to wash a load of clothes but can’t find my laundry bag. It must still be in my closet.”

“Oh, okay,” she says before, “So, you know we could totally double date now…”

“We’re not dating!” I remind her with a roll of my eyes as I head back to my room. Lowering my voice when I’m outside the bedroom, I say, “Even if we were, I wouldn’t be allowed to do so with Abe in public.”

“You could just not do the show,” she suggests.

“I have to do the show. We start shooting tomorrow, and I need the money.”

“Fine, whatever. They don’t have to know about Abe being more than your bodyguard.”

“Right,” I agree before I say, “Okay, now I have to go and finish my laundry.”

“Have fun!” she tells me.

“I’ll try. Talk to you later,” I say before we hang up. Placing my phone on top of my dresser, I tiptoe over to open my closet doors to see if the garment bag fell out into my rows of shoes lined up on the floor. I remove all of them from the closet, and still I can’t find the damn bag.

Ugh, it's so frustrating. Where the hell did a week’s worth of underwear go? I just put my sports bra and panties from my run in the garment bag this morning before we left. It’s not like the whole thing could just get up and walk away…

Panic floods me when the only other possibility hits me – someone came in and stole them.

No way. That’s…that’s gross and preposterous! What kind of creep would do such a thing?

Oh, god.

A creep who leaves me twisted notes saying that I’m his soulmate and digs through my garbage maybe?

How sick can someone be to do that?

Yuck, yuck, yuck.

I refuse to believe he somehow got into my house and took my belongings. That’s impossible with Abe around. None of the windows or doors were opened or he would’ve told me, right?

For the next half hour, I search every room in the entire house for my garment bag before I finally admit the truth to myself.

All of my dirty panties and bras have been stolen.

 

…

 

Abe

 

I wake up with my nose filled with the sweet scent of mangos.

Wow. I don’t know how long I was out, but I slept like a big dog in Mercy’s bed.

Blinking my heavy eyes open, I’m surprised to find her in bed with me. But it’s not in the good naked way.

Mercy’s sitting on the bed next to me fully clothed in sweats with her knees raised and her arms wrapped around them. What’s most worrisome is her face. There’s a blank thousand-yard stare that’s directed toward the wall.

“Hey,” I say, and just that one syllable causes her entire body to jerk like I’ve startled her. Her eyes squeeze tight as she blows out a breath as if to settle herself down. “What’s wrong?” I ask even before her emerald eyes finally open and meet mine.

“Wh-why would you think something is wrong?” she asks, not denying that there is in fact something wrong, but wanting to know how I figured it out.

Sitting up on my elbow to get a closer look at her, I tell her a lie instead of the truth – that her eyes are wide and she’s practically rocking herself back and forth like she just saw a ghost. “Random guess.”

Taking a deep breath in that makes her chest rise underneath her tee, she exhales and says at the same time, “Myintimatesaregone.”

“Huh?” I ask since she said it so fast, running the words together so that I didn’t catch it.

“I can’t find my bras and panties. The, um, recently worn ones.”

My brows draw low as I try to comprehend why she’s so upset about missing clothes and shit while I’m still waking up. Is that a chick thing? I’ll have to ask Chase.

“You probably just misplaced them,” I tell her.

Mercy shakes her head violently in disagreement. “No, Abe. I’ve looked everywhere for hours. They’re gone – an entire weeks’ worth!” she exclaims. Then, softer, she says, “I think…I think he stole them.”

Fuck!

I pop up straight in the bed when I finally understand what she’s saying. Her creepy ass stalker stole her panties and bras! “That sick son of a bitch!” I roar. The thought of some random asshole touching her delicates is just wrong. “When? When did he come in here?” I ask as I look around the room again for anything out of place.

“Sometime after we left this morning,” she answers.

Shit. He came in while we were gone today? Or while I was fucking her? Dammit, I knew that was a bad idea, and I did it anyway!

Throwing the covers off of me, I jump out of bed and start getting dressed, putting my shirt, cut and jeans on before I pull out my cell phone.

“Who are you calling?” Mercy asks.

“Reece,” I grumble. “This is his fault. If he would've been here this morning with that fucking security system, this wouldn’t have happened!”

“He’s already been here,” Mercy informs me, making me freeze.

“You’re kidding,” I reply. “He came? Reece was here?”

“Yes. He set everything up and said to call if I had any questions about how the keypad works or whatever,” she says.

“Reece was here? In the house? While I was fucking sleeping?” I exclaim, then end the phone call. Looking out the window, it’s completely dark. How long was I asleep?

“Why are you yelling at me?” Mercy asks, still sitting in the same spot with her arms around her legs. “You asked him to come by to install it…”

Stabbing my fingers through my hair to give it a tug, I say, “I should’ve heard him. How did I sleep through that shit?”

“You were tired,” she answers even though I was mostly asking myself the question. “And he wasn’t here very long, just an hour or so…”

“An hour or so!” I shout. Two or three minutes is all it would take for that bastard stalker to come in here and hurt her. The fact that I left her unprotected for hours is unacceptable.

“It’s fine, Abe.”

“It’s not fucking fine,” I disagree with a shake of my head as I sit down on the edge of the bed to put on my socks and boots.

“Where are you going?” Mercy asks.

“I need to check the system,” I tell her as I pull on one of my boots, then the other. “And I need to keep an eye out on the front and back yards…”

“I’d rather you stayed in bed with me,” Mercy says. “Some sick bastard stole my underwear. I’m scared, Abe.”

Fuck, I hate hearing her say that shit. Getting to my feet, I turn to tell her, “I’m gonna be either outside or in the living room…”

“Will you please just…just hold me?” she asks softly.

“I can’t,” I reply. “I can’t do that and be a half-decent bodyguard. Earlier today was a mistake. A distraction that could’ve ended up with you hurt.”

“But it didn’t,” she replies.

“No, it didn’t that time, but it could the next time. That’s why there won’t be a next time,” I assure her before I walk out of the bedroom.