Her lips pursed, then curved with banked happiness. “He used to get after me for flirting. He said I was inviting trouble.”
At the time, Cannon had considered her the trouble. “I’d always assumed you were just eighteen.” Later, before leaving, she’d told him she was almost twenty.
As if that embarrassed her all over again, her pleasure faded. “It’s not that I was dumb or that I screwed off in school.”
“I know that.” Because her parents had died when she was thirteen, she’d spent the rest of that school year grieving and got held back. Then for the year after that, different relatives shuffled her around from state to state, no one wanting to keep her.
Until she’d landed with Tipton Sweeny. But again, she’d missed so much schooling....
“I felt dumb,” she admitted. “Most of the kids knew I was older. Especially the boys.”
Cannon could imagine how they’d hit on her. With the way she looked, she’d have been every high school boy’s wet dream.
She tugged at that lock of hair a little more before flipping it back behind her shoulder and putting both hands on the tabletop.
She did that often, catching herself and slipping back behind that mask of poise.
“You were so different,” she said. “I guess that’s why I always felt safe teasing you.”
Safe. An odd word to use. “If it’s any consolation, I had to concentrate real hard to resist you.”
Biting back a laugh, she nudged him. “You are such a fibber.”
“It’s true.” And now, being older, she was even more appealing. And he no longer had to resist.
Maybe gathering her thoughts, she sat silent for a moment. Tipton wanted him to be there for her, to make things easier, so Cannon waited patiently, giving her time—strangely content just to be with her.
When she looked at him this time, she kept her gaze deliberately direct. “After that, I proved what a coward I am.” Loathing sounded in her tone. “That was even worse than the infantile flirting.”
He was here for Tipton, Cannon reminded himself. But Tipton was far from his mind as his fingertips grazed her jaw, his thumb smoothing over her downy cheek. “That’s not true.”
Shying away from his touch, she leaned forward, her forearms on the table, her head dropping. “The rest of you were strong and brave and all I did was fall apart.” Laughing, she covered her face. “God, it still humiliates me to remember it.”
“Listen to me, Yvette.” He cupped his hand around her nape, his voice low, intimate. “You were young and afraid. No one would blame you for that. But you didn’t get hysterical. You didn’t escalate things. So you shed a few tears. So what? Hell, I was shaking I was so pissed off.”
Twisting, she faced him—and in the process she managed to move away a few inches. “You shook with anger, I shook with fear.” For a brief moment, her eyes closed. “I remember that day like it just happened. Those men breaking into the pawnshop, threatening me and hurting Grandpa, abusing that woman...”
“Shh.” Cannon remembered it all in detail, too. If he lived to be one hundred, he would never forget. How much worse must it be for her? “They’ll spend the rest of their lives rotting in prison.”
“Thank God.”
“Yeah.” The cops had been after the sick f**ks for a while. They were known for underground p**n , forcing women into sexual situations and taping it for their own twisted thrills. They’d used the pawnshop to make one of their videos, gaining Yvette’s and Tipton’s compliance by dousing them in kerosene and threatening to set them on fire. Not because they needed the location, but because that had been part of the thrill for them.
Yvette worried that she’d been a coward; he marveled that she was still able to smile so easily.
“They’ll never hurt anyone else,” she swore softly.
“No.” The two who had survived would die in prison. “They’re gone for good.” Before being caught, they’d twice gone after Yvette, breaking into Tipton’s house with a twofold agenda in mind.
They had wanted to rape Yvette, using her in the p**n video.
And they’d wanted to trap the cops who’d been after them.
She clenched her hands on the tabletop. “I want to see the lieutenant while I’m here in Ohio.”
“I’m sure she’d like that.” Cannon remained friends with the lieutenant and the detectives who had intervened that day. It was that friendship that had taken him to Tipton’s house at the same time as the detectives. He’d been a part of it all, experiencing firsthand the helplessness and fear as the thugs repeatedly explained their plans to kill the cops and use Yvette.
Luckily, they’d been outmaneuvered and things had backfired on the bastards in a big way. Cannon had gotten in on that action, too, and the attack had ended with one of them dead and the other two arrested—but not before Yvette had suffered a living nightmare. No, she hadn’t been raped, but she had been groped, threatened, terrorized and forced to watch the torment of others.
What Cannon remembered most about that day was how badly he’d wanted to protect her. He had avoided getting involved with her, but when he’d seen her so defenseless, when he’d felt her stark fear, it had all become very personal for him.
And somehow, through the passing of three long years, it remained personal. His hand curled into a fist.