How the hell had she ended up in a bathroom with the ex flavor of the week? She looked every inch the beautiful seductress from last night in her short black dress and stilettos. Makeup done perfectly, not a hair out of place. If it weren’t for the fury vibrating off her, Becca wouldn’t even have looked at her twice. She didn’t associate with beauty queens on a regular basis, especially ones who liked to call her a whore and a bitch.
“Cathy…”
“Charlene.” The blonde seethed. “Are you so stupid you can’t even remember my name?”
“You’re not important enough for me to remember you name.”
That really set her off. Her hands clenched. Smart move, Becca. Insult the crazy ex. Mason said she wasn’t physically dangerous. She probably just needed to vent. Not that Becca was in the mood. She needed to pee, like, yesterday.
“I’m not important?” She tossed her mane of hair over her shoulder. “Just who the fuck do you think you are? A bedwarmer? His new whore until he gets bored?”
“I’ll never be any of those things.” She couldn’t resist the sly smile that flirted with her lips. “He loves me.”
Charlene laughed. “He doesn’t love anyone. He’ll use you and throw you away.”
“I don’t think so. Dimitri and I have known each other for almost ten years.”
“You’re lying.”
“No. I’m sorry, but I’m not. Dimitri and I have been friends since high school. I’m the only woman he talks to at least once a day. Every day since we met, he’s hit up my phone. Can you say that?”
The anger in her eyes bled to rage. She started to quiver, her nose flaring.
“I am sorry he treated you badly. You didn’t deserve that.”
“You’re right, I didn’t. I worked too damn hard to lose everything because of you.”
“You never had him to lose, Carlie…”
“Charlene!” Before Becca could blink, the woman had grabbed her head and smashed it against the sink. Pain exploded along her cheek and erupted behind her eye.
“You think you’re so smart, don’t you? I worked for this, you little whore. I did whatever sick fucking thing he wanted me to, I took care of him, I sacrificed three months of my life catering to him. It was me who was supposed to finally land a ring on my finger, not you!”
What the hell? Becca’s head swam, but she was so mad, it didn’t matter. Years of training kicked in and she tried to twist, to break the woman’s hold on her, but she was at a disadvantage.
Another hard slam against the sink, and Becca struggled to grasp something to hold onto, but Charlene was too fast. She jerked her up and slammed her face into the mirror so hard it shattered.
“Do you think I played the submissive whore expecting nothing in return?”
Before Charlene could slam her head again, Becca managed to grab onto the sink and land a solid kick backward, hitting her right between the legs. It caused just as much damage to a female as it did for a man. She could vaguely hear shouting through the door, but she ignored it.
Spitting out blood, she swung, landing a solid hit along Charlene’s jaw. The woman cursed and dropped, dodging the second blow. Becca felt a stinging pain right above her knee and looked down to see the woman had stabbed her with a nail file. A fucking nail file!
She might have laughed at her if it didn’t hurt like a son-of-a-bitch.
Becca grabbed her by the hair and dragged her over to the toilet, submerging her head for a good minute. “Bitch, you have no idea who you’re fucking with. I am the daughter of Dallas Rhodes, Sergeant at Arms of the Rebel Sinners. You do not get to fuck with me.”
Charlene kicked out, her feet connecting with Becca’s knee, and she went down. Bitch knew to take out the knees. She had to have taken at least a basic self-defense class. Becca blinked, and she was on her, her knees around her shoulders. Charlene’s fingers gripped her throat.
“He’s mine! I worked for him. You have no right to take what’s mine.”
Charlene’s fingers squeezed around her throat, her knees on Becca’s arms. She felt her air slowly start to be cut off. This was so different from her panic induced attacks, where her lungs simply stopped working. This felt like her throat was closing off and she was trying to suck enough air through a straw until even that was gone. She bucked, trying to dislodge her, but it wasn’t working.
“You can’t have him. He is mine. Do you understand me?” Charlene screamed into Becca’s face, every inch the psycho they’d assured her she wasn’t. What the hell happened?
Her vision started to blur, and she scrambled, looking for anything to help her. She pulled her legs up, trying to slam her knees into Charlene’s back, but the angle was wrong. She did, however, feel the nail file protruding from her leg and grasped it.
Yanking it free, she gasped at the pain, but used the file to stab at Charlene as best she could. At first, the blows came nowhere near her, but as Becca grew more desperate, her concentration became deeper and she aimed the blade right at the woman’s side, angling her own arm to jab it deep.
The pain was enough to loosen Charlene’s fingers, and Becca managed to buck her off, rolling in the tight space of the bathroom stall and grasping her by the back of the neck as she came up. She shoved her head in the toilet again and held it there, letting her up for air only after she started to choke. “Come near me again, and I promise, I will kill you. I know where to hide the body.” She slammed her head against the toilet’s basin before letting her go. “Do you understand me?”
“Fuck you,” Charlene slurred, and Becca’s own anger reared up. She balled her fist up and smashed it against Charlene’s nose.
“Stay the fuck away from me.” She threw her down and scrambled backward, waiting to see if Charlene would get up, but the wound in her side coupled with the blow to her head kept her down. Fucking bitch.
She stood, very aware of the pain her body wanted to let her know it was in, and limped to the bathroom door, watching the wall of mirrors to make sure the stupid woman didn’t try to jump her again. When she reached the door, she found it locked. Charlene must have locked it when she was busy trying to calm her panic down and not paying attention. She thought she’d been alone. How the hell did she get past Henry? Or had she been in here waiting? Hoping Becca would come in? Something the police could get the answer to. Becca just wanted out of the damn bathroom.
Dimitri and Henry were both on the other side, along with security.
“What the fuck…”
“His crazy ex,” she told Henry before inching around him, the enormity of the situation rising to swallow her. Her panic reared up, and she shook her head, trying to squash it.
Count to ten, close your eyes, and count to ten.
Dimitri was there when she opened her eyes, the hallway spinning. “Do you have any more psychos I need to know about?”
Before Dimitri could answer, the room got dark and the voices faded as the panic and the pain finally got to be too much and she passed out.
***
The soft hum of the AC woke her. She spotted Dimitri looking out over the terrace. Her head hurt the minute she stirred. Charlene had gotten in several good blows, and she had a concussion. The doctors had wanted to keep her overnight for observation, but she’d refused. All she wanted was to go somewhere quiet and recoup. Dimitri hadn’t said a word since she came to at the hospital, in the middle of them stitching up the cuts on her face. The ride back to the hotel had been in complete silence. Not that she’d minded at the time; her head had been killing her.
Now, it worried her.
She sat up, closing her eyes against the pain.
“You’re not supposed to be up,” Dimitri fussed, coming over to the bed and pushing her back down.
“He speaks.”
“Don’t be smart.” He pushed her hair out of her face. “You scared the hell out of me.”
“I shocked the hell out of myself.” Becca had no clue she had a switch inside that someone could flip to ever cause her to do them physical harm. It reminded her of her dad, and that scared her. She wanted to be nothing like him.
“What do you mean?”
“I hurt her, D. I didn’t think I could ever hurt anyone.”
“She would have killed you if you hadn’t.” He checked the bandage on her leg. “I should have been there. I sat on my ass and trusted someone else to protect you. I’m so sorry, Krasivaya.”
He was blaming himself for this? Granted, it was his ex, but no one knew she had this in her. She was a beauty queen, not the Karate Kid. Dimitri couldn’t have known.
“No one knew she was capable of this. Don’t blame yourself for her actions.”
“I’m not. I’m blaming myself for not being there to protect you because I couldn’t fucking walk!” The self-loathing that lashed out of him took her breath away.
“I don’t blame you, D, so stop blaming yourself. If you want to blame someone, blame Christy.”
“Charlene.”
“Whatever.” She took a deep breath and let it out. “I couldn’t remember her name in the bathroom either, which pissed her off, but what I told her is still true. She’s not worth the time it would take me to learn her name. The only thing I care about is that I’m here, safe, and I’m glad you made me come on this trip.”
“You’re glad?” Dimitri stared down at her like she’d lost her mind. “You got attacked, nearly choked to death, you’ve had more panic attacks in two days than you’ve probably had in a month…”
“Not true. I usually have at least three or four a week.”
He shook his head. “You make it sound normal.”
“It is normal, at least for me. And, yeah, I am glad because I learned that when something matters to me, really matters, I can control the panic and not let it control me. Doesn’t mean I’m cured, far from it, but it’s a step in the right direction.”
“I guess your therapist knew what she was talking about, huh?” He kicked off his shoes and climbed into bed beside her. “Sometimes the only way to heal is to face what scares us.” He pulled her into his side, careful not to jostle her too much.
He’d almost lost her. The fear ate away at him, berated him for failing the one person who had never failed him. She was his to protect, and he’d not been there when she needed him. Becca might not blame him, but it was something that was going to take him a long time to come to terms with.
When Henry told him she was locked in the bathroom and there was the sound of fighting going on, his heart stopped. He’d gotten there as fast as he could, but he’d tortured his legs so much over the last few days, it hadn’t been fast enough. They’d been about to break the door down when she walked out, bloody and swaying.
She fell, and he’d thought she was dead for a minute. Her face had been chalk white with the very red strangulation marks around her throat. It staggered him. Henry had to make him let her go so the EMT’s could do their job. The hospital assured him she’d be fine. Her scans came back clean. There was no permanent damage done.
He’d prayed to God for the first time in forever, promising anything and everything if only she’d be okay. When the doctors told him she was going to be fine, he’d sat in the chapel for a long time, thanking God and trying to come to terms with his feelings.
His dad had been right about one thing. The thought of life without Becca was too much; it had brought him to his knees. He knew the love he had for her was the forever kind of love that he wrote about in his books. He was a manwhore, and unless he’d experienced love, he couldn’t convince readers of the love story between his characters. That love stemmed from the woman in his arms. He’d loved her all this time and had been too stupid to realize it.
“Dimitri?”
“Hmm?” He absently stroked her arm as he tried to find the words to tell her how much he loved her.
“Do you think people can be terrible because of their family? Bad genes?”
“What do you mean?”
“My dad loved fighting. He liked to hurt people. When I was in there, all I could think about was hurting her. I wasn’t Becca anymore, I was his daughter, and I flipped a switch. I hurt her, D. I don’t want to be like my dad. I can’t be like him.”
“You’re not like him, baby. You defended yourself using what you learned from your brother, your dad, and anyone else who taught you to fight. You saved yourself today. You weren’t a victim, you were a fighter, a survivor. Self-defense doesn’t turn you into your dad.”
“I hope so.”
“I know so, Krasivaya.” He kissed her softly on the temple, careful of the bandage covering the wound. “I learned something today too.”
“What’s that?” She yawned.
“That I love you.”
“I know you love me, D.”
“No, sweetheart, I mean I’m in love with you, and probably have been since high school.” She went still in his arms, and he continued. “I didn’t realize it until I saw you lying there hurt, and there was nothing I wouldn’t have done to make you okay. I had a come to Jesus moment, as you call it. He and I talked while the doctors checked you out, and I promised to do right by you. I’m going to marry you, Rebecca Joyce Rhodes.”
“You might have had a come to Jesus moment, but that doesn’t mean I have. You can’t marry me.”
“I beg to differ. I am going to marry you.”
“Dimitri, you only just realized you had feelings for me. It’s too soon to talk about long term. We need to get to know each other, to…”
“I call bullshit.” He leaned down and lightly kissed her. “We do know each other better than most people who get married do. Nikoli only knew Lily a few months before he proposed. Same with Kade. My dad knew in a week Mama was the woman for him. You and I have known each other for years. I know your quirks, you know mine.”
“It’s too soon.” She shook her head, the stubborn, mulish look creeping into her expression.
“Do you love me?”
“Yes, D. You know I love you. You ran when you realized it, remember?”
“I know I screwed up, but when don’t I screw things up? I’m not asking you to marry me tomorrow, just before the year is out. Is that enough time for you to wrap your head around this?”
“You make it sound like I don’t have a choice.”
“You don’t.” He nipped her ear. “I told you I like control, and in this I’m not giving you a choice. I love you, you love me, and we are going to have our happily ever after, even if I have to drag you kicking and screaming into it.”
She laughed. “Bossy man.”
“Yes, but I am your man.”
“And if I don’t want you?”
“I think I can convince you otherwise.” He gave her a devilish grin.
“But not tonight.” She smiled shyly up at him. “I don’t think I have it in me to resist. Besides, you said no sex for two weeks, remember?”
Fuck. She was back to that shit? He was about to argue when she turned and he caught the deep bruising around her neck. He kicked himself and his dick. She was in pain and didn’t need him trying to seduce her or get her to agree to marry him with sexual warfare.
“Tell you what, why don’t we get some sleep and continue this conversation when we get back to LA?”
“Sounds like a plan.” She snuggled into him, and he lay there while she fell asleep, thanking God again tonight for the biggest blessing he’d ever been given.