he lifted her up, settling her in place.
“Hold on to me.”
A flashback of her hands roaming his bare skin hit her with electric force. Leigh closed her eyes, fighting tears of shame. She didn’t open them until the bike stopped. Helplessly, she gazed at the dark building of Wickert’s garage.
“What are we doing here?”
“I have a key and I know the alarm system. I thought you’d want to clean up before I took you home.”
Home. She had no home. Not anymore. Only an empty house where people waited without hope.
Her stomach knotted. She wanted to cry. His features were harsh. She swallowed her tears, feeling mortified and ashamed.
She barely recognized herself in the mirror of the ladies’ room. Her hair hung about her face in tangled strands. Her eyes were huge dark pits against the ghostly white pallor of her skin. Streaks of mascara gave her a raccoon appearance, and there was more than one dark bruise forming on the skin of her neck. Leigh remembered his mouth there and whimpered. The temperature could have been below freezing instead of the high seventies she knew it to be even at this hour of the night.
Holding the comb he’d thrust into her hand after unlocking the door, she sank onto the dirty tile floor and sobbed until there were no tears left. Shame paralyzed her. How could she go back out there and face him?
He claimed she’d been drugged, but that didn’t matter. Neither did the fact that she’d had a crush on him since she was fifteen. What mattered was that she’d given her virginity to a man who couldn’t even tell her apart from her sister.
Given? She’d practically demanded that he take her.
And that was more demeaning than all the rest.
His knock on the door brought her scrambling to her feet. She brushed at her tear-stained face.
“Are you okay in there?”
“Yes.” It came out as a croak of sound. Her voice was thick from crying. “I’ll be out in a minute.”
“Do you need anything?”
Her mother. She would have given anything she possessed to have her mother here beside her right this minute.
“I’ll be out in a minute,” she repeated.
Leigh waited until she heard him move away from the door. Splashing water on her face, she used the rough paper towels to rub fiercely at her face, trying to remove all traces of her smeared makeup. Her sister’s blouse was buttoned all wrong and her fingers still didn’t want to cooperate, but finally, she managed that small task. Trying to tame her hair with his comb proved impossible.
She tried not to think about the marks on her skin or the puffy appearance of her lips, or the strange, small ache between her legs and elsewhere. She could smell him on her skin, and still feel him pulsing inside her. And the shaking started again in earnest, because she still wanted him. It was all she could do to pull herself together and exit the ladies’ room.
Gavin came away from the dirty wall with a primitive grace she still found compelling. Worse, a part of her longed for him to pull her into his arms and hold her. She needed to hear that things were going to be okay, that he wasn’t disgusted with her. But he made no move to touch her and his stern expression was angry.
With her?
“Come into the office. I made some tea.”
“Tea?” There was a surreal feel to everything.
“Mrs. Walken claims tea with sugar is good for shock. I suspect we both need a cup. Besides, the coffeemaker’s broken again, so it’s tea or soda.”
“I’m not thirsty.”
“Drink it anyway.”
She was so cold inside, she didn’t think even a gallon of hot tea would help. She’d probably just embarrass herself further by vomiting it right back up. Leigh looked quickly away from the cookies he’d bought from the vending machine.
“Try to eat one. We need to give your system something to absorb besides the drug.”
A protest formed in her head, but she blocked the words before they could slip past. Sipping tea and nibbling on a cookie gave her something to do, a focus other than looking at him.
“What were you doing at that party?”
Leigh cringed. “I went with Nolan.”
“Ducort?” he asked in obvious disbelief. “What’s a kid like you doing with a creep like that?”
Forcing herself to meet his eyes she said simply, “He asked me out.”
Gavin muttered something under his breath. A pulse in his neck began to throb. He looked as if he wanted to hit someone. She cringed. Instantly, his features transformed, softening.
“Listen to me, Leigh, I’m sorrier than I can say about what happened. I swear I didn’t recognize you at first or I would have taken you straight home.”
She swallowed the hurt, refusing to cry in front of him. The old desk chair she’d sat down on squeaked in protest. “Thanks a lot,” she managed to say.
Gavin didn’t seem to hear her. “You are not to blame. Do you understa—”
Leigh stood so fast that the cookies scattered across the desktop. “Don’t you dare patronize me. I’m not twelve.”
“At least tell me I didn’t seduce a minor.”
“It was consensual sex, not seduction,” she told him, shaking from head to toe.
“You were drugged,” he said bluntly. “And you were a virgin.”
“Well, I don’t have to worry about that problem anymore, now, do I?”
Headlights bathed the interior of the gas station. A car was pulling up out front.
“Your sister’s here.”
Horrified, she stared at him. “You called my house?”
“No, I called the Walkens. I wanted advice before we go to the police.”
She gaped at him. “We aren’t going to the police!”
“You were drugged. Don’t you understand? Ducort slipped something in your drink. He intended to rape you. Only, I got to you first,” he added grimly.
For a second she thought she would pass out. Dimly, she heard him opening the door at her back.
“Bad luck for you, huh?” she spit at him. A clamoring anger filled her. “Well, don’t give it another thought. I sure don’t plan to. I’m not going to the police. But if either one of you ever comes near me again, I’ll make you rue the day you were born.”
Gavin stepped aside. Hayley and the Walkens stood in the doorway
