Read My Lips: Restricted Version

RML: Chapter 10 (R)

Chapter 10

Later that night after the sun set majestically along the western horizon, Linc prodded Egaeus into Raven Rose’s neighboring stall.  “Get on in there, you cur,” he said, swatting Egaeus’ rear.  The horse kicked back slightly with his back leg, and Linc growled at him.  “If you want any more granola tonight, you’ll behave yourself.”

Egaeus blew out a massive breath, jerked his nose in the air and swished his tail stubbornly as he ever-so-slowly entered his stall.  “I don’t know why I ever kept you,” Linc grunted while Egaeus rotated to stick his head over the side and study Raven Rose.  The mare munched silently on her oats, but she batted those long lashes at Egaeus.

“Flirt,” Linc said with a grin to the midnight beauty.  “No wonder you got yourself knocked up.”

Linc’s cell phone jingled from his back pocket.  He laughed at Raven Rose as she whinnied softly at Egaeus and answered, “Yo, Linc here.”

A violent sob came over the line.

“Hello?  Who is this?”

“Lincoln?  Oh, God, I’ve been calling your house all day!  Are you at home?”

Linc frowned.  “Who the hell is this?” he asked again.

“It’s Chloe...from the wedding,” she answered in a hysterical voice.  “You have to help me -- you have to help Amber -- you have to go get her -- I don’t know what else to do -- you have to do this -- please, go get her -- she doesn’t know anyone else, and I know I should have talked her out of moving all the way up there -- there’s no one to look out for her -- she needs me, and I can’t help her -- I’m sorry for everything I said to you -- please, please, please say you’ll go get her!”

Linc listened to the crazy woman ramble on, barely spewing out one sentence before pleading out another.  “Whoa, slow down...what are you talking about?  What’s happened to Amber?”

“Oh, God!  She was attacked--”

Linc’s breathing stopped.  Attacked?

“--and the guy held a knife to her throat--”

Linc’s heart stopped.  Dear God...

“--and the police have her, and they won’t let her leave until someone comes to get her because she’s in this protection program that my parents put her in when she was a child, and I know she’s old enough, but the police don’t want to be liable for her safety if she leaves on her own, and I can’t get up there, and I need you to go get her.  You’re the only person I know who lives there, and if you’d been watching her like I told you to, then she wouldn’t have gotten on that stupid bus and gone off by herself and got herself mugged!”

Linc held the phone away from his ear to stare at it.  Was she seriously bitching at him while begging for his help?  “Now, wait just a damn minute--” he began, momentarily forgetting why she called in the first place, but she cut him off, “No!  You wait a damn minute.  If you don’t get your ass to that police station and get my sister, then I swear to God, Lincoln Martin!  You’ll be sucking your booze through a silly straw for the rest of your miserable life!  Don’t you get it?  Some bastard held a knife to my sister’s throat!”

Yeah, he got it.  His heart was still a lump of not-thumping muscle in his chest.  He pictured Amber on some dark street with the gleam of a blade cutting into her flawless skin, and yeah, he saw red...a deep, dangerous crimson that blurred his vision.  That angelic, ninja-punching, beautiful girl with the very-kissable lips getting mugged by some creep...Why didn’t he ever check up on her?

Probably because he was scared to death of getting close to that mouth of hers again.

“Where is she?”

Chloe told him the precinct Amber was being held at, and he ran up to his truck, his heartbeat finally deciding to catch up with his panic.  “I’ll call you back when she’s safe at home,” he told Chloe.  The sister said, “Oh, thank you, thank you, thank--”

Linc ended the call.  He’d better get more than a thank you for rescuing a not-so-helpless female.  Maybe a kiss...

No...she’d kick him in the balls if he tried to kiss her.  Which was a sight better than what he’d like to do to the guy who mugged her.  That bastard had better not harmed a single hair on her head...

*****

One hour earlier...

Amber stood at the bus stop, waiting for the number four bus to take her back across the river and into the city.  Tomorrow, she was definitely going car shopping.  Or as soon as possible.  Thank goodness she got her driver’s licence a year ago...although she’d probably have to retake the test since she now lived in another state.  This waiting for a ride was getting old fast.

Her visit to the craft fair had been productive, but it took four buses to get her there and her purchases were getting heavy in her arms.  She carried a cardboard box that held a stoneware mixing bowl in a yellow-orange drip pattern that reminded her of an upside down sunset.  To protect it further, she wrapped it in a lamb’s wool shawl she just couldn’t turn down, and she had also purchased a soft, seersucker tunic dress in a smokey violet color.  And of course, she couldn’t resist the pretty, shell and beaded necklace with matching earrings and bracelet that would go perfectly with the new dress and that pair of soft brown, buckle boots she bought back in December at an after-Christmas sale.  It was an outfit she was eager to wear on her next date...if she was ever asked out on a date.

All in all, she was more proud of herself than of her prizes.  

The afternoon had been wonderful and free, and Amber loved being among all those people, browsing like a normal shopper, and not having to worry about inadequate communication.  All she had to say was, “How much?” and watch their lips move when the hawkers spoke the price.  She’d even spent a few hours at one booth sponsored by the local Deaf and Blind school, just getting to know some of the people from her culture who resided in the area.  That’s where she bought the shawl.  A girl of ten years knitted it.  Amber looked into the big brown eyes of that little girl and couldn’t sign “No, thank you.”  It wasn’t the most perfect shawl ever knitted, but it was soft and the little girl was so shy and sweet, earning money with her school to take a field trip to the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago at the end of the school year.  How many times had Amber, herself as a child, sat on the other side of booth tables and tried to sell little handmade keychains and awkwardly embroidered handkerchiefs to help fund a school trip?

It brought back sad and happy memories, and Amber vowed to visit the school the next time she got a chance.  Maybe she could arrange a field trip to the library...

Now, with the sun drifting down in the sky, shadowing the street with an orange-grey gloom, she was ready to head back to her apartment and admire her accomplishments in solitude.  Unfortunately, she was the only person at the bus stop, and the neighborhood wasn’t all that safe-looking.  So, she got a little itchy between the shoulder blades from standing on the corner, exposed like she was.

No matter, she told herself again and again.  There’s a police station down the block.  Nothing will happen to me here.

Amber hefted her box in her arms.  It was getting really heavy now.  She rolled her head around on her neck, trying to work a kink out and feeling like she was being watched.  Imagining glowing eyes peering out of a black alley, she scanned the darkening street in both directions.  There was no one around -- there wasn’t even any cars going by, but the feeling wouldn’t go away.  She stood there for almost ten minutes, getting more and more antsy about her feelings.  Her fingers cramped around the edges of the cardboard, and her feet were starting to ache from standing there for so long.  She wished the bus stop had a bench for her to sit on, but apparently this wasn’t a very popular stop on its route.  Which did nothing to ease her mind or her itchy shoulder blades.  

Thinking it would be safer to head to the police station and inquire about a taxi service, she shifted the box’s weight and took a step in that direction.  Then she sensed a presence behind her.  A creepy, Nightmare-On-Elm-Street kind of presence.  The kind that made every fine hair on her arms and neck stand up on end and pull her skin taut.  Screaming wasn’t an option.  She saw a flash of silver right before a cold metal pressed into her jugular, and her heart stopped beating.  

Crap.

A smelly body crowded up against her back, giving her an imprisoning whiff of something she’d rather not think too much about.  Hot, rancid breath tickled her ear, and she knew -- just as she knew her very life was at stake right now -- that someone was talking to her.  But what was she supposed to do?  She couldn’t hear anything.  Did the person want her money?  Or her box?  Or her body?  Oh, god...not rape.  Anything but that.  Sour memories flooded back to her...hands all over her, bruising her arms and thighs, covering her mouth, pulling her hair...the smell of sweat and gym socks and bad breath...  Why did evil assailants always reek of halotosis?  

The knife pressed harder into her flesh.  Amber swallowed, not daring to move any other part of her body.  She had to stay calm.  She had to stay focused.  Her aikido self-defense instructor taught her how to handle situations like this, but she’d never been holding a cardboard box in both hands.  Her first instinct was to drop the box, but that would break her bowl, and she really liked that bowl.  Instead, she opened her mouth and said as clearly as she could, “Deaf...I deaf.”

The pressure of the knife relaxed a moment.  But only a moment.  The point dug into the soft hollow of her throat as the body slinked around her.  Amber blinked at the man pointing a knife to her throat.  Dirty, dingy hair lay in strings across his filthy forehead.  His clothes were brownish, grayish, layer-upon-layer of feculent, tattered rags, hanging loosely off his bony frame, and if he’d ever had a full set of teeth in his mouth, it had been a long, long time ago.  Which only made it harder for Amber to read the words off his lips.  They looked odd to her, a mush of nonsensical shapes and patterns of speaking.

But she soon got the gist of what he was after.  Thank goodness, it wasn’t her body.  Amber didn’t think there was enough exfoliating shower gel in the world to wash away this guy’s touch.  She shuddered, knowing he stood only a foot away from her.  With his grime-encrusted hand -- not the one holding a four-inch knife to her throat -- he jerked the box out of her arms.  The weight of it caused it to tilt in his grasp, and the shawl-wrapped mixing bowl tumbled to the ground.  Amber couldn’t hear the shatter of the stoneware as it impacted with concrete, but she could feel it to her bones.

No!

Like watching a movie in slow motion, the broken pieces scattered through the larger holes of the wool shawl, and the dirty, stupid man staggered backward to avoid the flying shards, giving Amber the opening she needed. Her blue eyes glinted a lightening storm as she raised them to meet his gaze.  I loved that bowl.  Her fists curled up into little balls of wrath by her side, and years upon years of abuse and suffering, cheating and swindling, the lies, the excuses, the treachery, for every woman violated in any way by every jackass of the male species that ever existed...all of that soared through her blood.  Uneasy, chalk-white terror drained the blood from the face of the pathetic, unlucky bastard.  He tried to back away, the coward that he was, but he was frozen in her glare.  Amber lowered her chin as her lips pursed to a thin line.  A dark, unforgiving tunnel folded around them as she focused only on him and the punishment he was about to have hand-delivered, especially cultivated just for him.

Time came to a dead halt...and Amber gave him the tiniest of smiles...

I had plans for that bowl...

When it was all over and the filthy man lay unconscious at her feet, Amber finally inhaled a soothing breath, closing her eyes for a moment to clear the stench from her mind and nostrils.  Feeling better than she had in a very long time, she silently praised herself.  Go Team Woman!

Then she looked around.

Crap.

Two policemen stared at her, frozen with dumb, stupefied expressions and gaping jaws, their guns eased slightly out of their holsters. “Holy shit!” she saw one of them say.  Red and blue rotating lights of a squad car lit up the night sky, casting the street into one of those awful cop drama scenes from television.  Amber swallowed nervously.  Double crap.  She pointed a shaking finger at her box by the mugger’s head.  “He broke my bowl,” she explained.

*****

Tires skidded to a dead stop outside of the police station on the west side of town near the river.  Linc barely allowed the key to clear the ignition before he jumped out of his truck and raced into the building.  His boot heels pounded out a quick tattoo on the linoleum tile floor.  Amber...get to Amber, his brain chanted along with his still-pulsating heart.  Get Amber safe.  A plump woman sat behind the glass partition in the reception area, like the inside of an aquarium, and Linc rested his palms on the small ledge under the window, trying to keep his hands from shaking wildly.  The police might think he’s on drugs if they saw how violently he trembled.  The woman smiled briefly as she glanced up at him and asked through the circle of holes in the middle of the window, “May I help you, sir?”

“I’m here to get Amber...”  His voice trailed off when he realized he didn’t have the slightest idea what her last name was.

The receptionist raised her thin eyebrows for more information.  “Amber...?”

“Um...”

She puckered her lipsticked lips with annoyance.  “I’m guessing that you are not related to this Amber?”

Linc sighed.  “I’m a distant relative,” he lied, emphasizing the distant part.  “Her sister, Chloe, called me, and since I’m the only person in this city that they know, I’ve come to the rescue.”

The woman slid out a small drawer at the bottom of the dividing window.  “I’ll need to see some I.D.”

Linc got out his drivers license and dropped it in the drawer.  She studied it for a minute, and then said, “This will take a moment.  Please have a seat.”  She stood up and walked to the back of the station.  Linc stayed right where he was.  A policeman walked by in the fishbowl room with a tube of glue and opened up a door just behind the receptionist’s desk, and there was Amber, sitting at a table in another room, her head tilted at an angle as she sternly concentrated on delicately placing a small yellow shape onto another, forming what looked like a bowl-shaped puzzle.  

She was putting together a puzzle in a police station?  After getting mugged?

He’d never understand this girl.  She was an anomaly.  He knew what kind of pistol she could be when riled up properly, but she looked so sweet right then -- wearing a ratty, paint-smeared sweatshirt that fell off one shoulder and a loose ponytail -- and it was difficult to recall how she could best a man twice her size.  Some escapee hair fell into her face, and she hastily pushed it back as she picked up another yellow puzzle piece.  A tiny pleat lined her forehead, giving him an urge to smooth out that frown with his fingers.  Her little pink tongue stuck out of the corner of her pink mouth, and Linc wiped sweat off his temple.  Was it getting hot in here?

The young policeman with glue spoke to her, and she looked up to watch his mouth, and Linc thought it was getting very hot in there.  He didn’t like the way the young buck smiled at Amber, and he didn’t like the way Amber smiled back at him as she took the glue.  Then Linc saw the small bandaid on her neck in the soft flesh just under her chin, and his skin felt tight and scalding on his body.  She’d been hurt...some bastard held a knife to her, and she’d been hurt.

Okay...the bandaid was only one of those really small ones, the kind that barely cover up a shaving nick...but that was totally beside the point.  Some bastard cut her!  Linc hoped the police locked up the guy, because if not...

The receptionist entered the small room and spoke to Amber.  Linc watched her eyes grow wide with alarm, and then the other woman showed Amber his license.  Amber frowned with confusion, glanced out of the room, saw him standing there on the other side of the glass window...and burst out laughing.  The pure sound of it filled the entire station.  

What was so funny?

Amber gathered up her bowl puzzle in a box and nodded at the receptionist.  The woman came back to the window, slid out the drawer with his I.D. in it and said, “She’ll be right out.  And by the way...her last name is Hayes.”

Hayes?  Amber Hayes.  Linc liked the way that sounded.  What was her middle name?  Probably something that suited her...something sweet and dangerous at the same time...

The glue man escorted Amber to the front, carrying her box, and Linc took a second to study him.  He didn’t like what he saw.  He smiled too much.  He smiled too much at Amber.  The man’s eyes twinkled too much, too, as he looked down at Amber.  Linc scowled at him.  

Amber gave the receptionist a quick hug, and she was let out through a locked door.  Linc put his hands on his hips.  That policeman was still with her.  And he was still smiling at her.  And Amber was still smiling at him.  Then she looked at Linc and gave him a hateful look.  Hateful!  He’d driven across the city, broken God knows how many speed limits to get here, ran about a zillion red lights and stop signs, and he got a hateful look for his efforts.  All glue man did was bring her some glue!  And he got a smile.

One smile.  Was that too much to ask for?  For saving her ass?

“So...” the annoying policeman was saying to Amber, “I guess I’ll see you around...”  

Amber flicked her fingers and said, “Okay, thank you,” as she signed to him.  Then she turned on Linc and her blue eyes hardened.  The policeman noticed her reaction to Linc, and placed a hand on her arm to get her attention again.  Linc growled low in his throat.  He was pretty sure his face was growling, too.

“Amber?” the man said when she looked back at him.  “You sure you want to go with this guy?  I can give you a ride home.”

Over my dead body.

She smiled -- again -- and took her box from him.  “No worry,” she spoke in her unique voice.  “He barks, not bite.”

What?!  Did she mean “All bark and no bite”?  I’ve got plenty of bite, babe.

Her eyes turned over to Linc, and they were dancing with humor as she smiled sweetly at him.  About damn time.  Then she said, “He big teddy bear.”

Teddy bear?  Teddy bear?!

I’m a grizzly bear, woman!

Two more policemen poked their heads out of the door and grinned at Amber.  How many guys has she got strung up back there?

“Hey, Amber...tell your uncle how you drop-kicked that perp,” one of them said.  Amber grinned and shook her head at them, but Linc was focusing mostly on the uncle part.  They think I’m her uncle?  He glanced at the window partition and saw a vague reflection of himself.  He really should have shaved that morning.  Even his whiskers were starting to turn gray.  And the scowl on his face only made him look older.  

“You should have seen her,” the guy went on, proud that he got to witness the amazing feat.  “I’ve never seen anybody move that fast.  Pow, pow, pow!  One second the creep was sniffing her hair and the next, he was two karate chops from being a chalk outline.”

Amber blushed a bright pink.  All three of the policemen, one of them almost as old as Linc, gazed adoringly at her.  

Time to go.

“Let’s get you home,” Linc told her, trying -- without success -- to install some sympathy in his voice.  He knew only too well how it felt to be drop-kicked by this ninja ragdoll.  If anything, he’d almost feel sympathetic towards the guy she dropped...almost.  The jackass cut her...he deserved every punch she landed on him.  And maybe a few others, if Linc ever got his hands on the bastard.

Amber sighed heavily, shifted her box in her arms, and nodded.  The three policemen noticed how she still carried her box with the puzzle bowl in it, and they all sent Linc unpleasant looks, like to say, Offer to help her with this stuff, you ill-mannered oaf.

Linc breathed out a low grunt and crossed the room to her.  “Can I help you with that?”

Amber’s blue eyes bounced around his face.  She bit down on her bottom lip, and...  Jesus, can someone turn on the air conditioning in here?

“No...I carry,” she said, turned to smile her good-byes to her policemen admirers, and brushed by Linc to the door.

Linc tipped his hat to the men, who glared hatefully at him now that Amber wasn’t looking, and pivoted on his boot heel to follow her outside.  “Take good care of that lady,” one of them said behind Linc in a low voice, “we know where you live.”  Linc kept walking.  

He met her at his truck and opened the passenger door for her.  She didn’t look at him as she tucked the box in the middle of his bench seat -- between them, he noticed -- and crawled in.  No word of thanks.  Nothing.

Linc exhaled wearily and closed the door.  He circled the hood, wondering about her behavior.  The night turned chilly, and he flipped on the heater after getting behind the wheel and turning the ignition.  She fastened her seat belt. The strap crossed between her breasts, making them more defined against her sweatshirt, and fit snugly over her hips.  His mouth went dry.

She’s practically jail-bait...get you head out of you ass...stop thinking about her like that...

Linc took off his hat and laid it on top of the box.  She stared stubbornly out of her window as he backed out of the parking space.  Okay...so she won’t look at him, which only made it impossible to ask her what happened to her tonight.  Or, he could ask anyway.  But the result would still be the same.  She won’t see him talking to her, so she won’t answer.  Better to wait until he got her home safely.  

Problem.  He didn’t know where she lived.  

At the corner, stopped at a red light, he let the truck idle.  The street was devoid of traffic, so when the light turned green, he didn’t shift into gear.  They sat there for a few seconds.  Amber finally glanced up at the light, and then turned inquiring eyes to him.

Much better.

“Directions, please?”

She sighed.  “Library district,” she announced.  “West 10th.”  Then she went back to studying the view outside her window.  Linc shifted into first, made a U-turn in the middle of the intersection, and headed downtown.

At every chance, he glanced over at her.  Her profile lit up from the dash lights, and the flesh-colored bandage on her neck held his gaze more than once.  She reached up to touch it, tenderly prodding the pad, and winced.  Linc’s heart stuttered.

“Are you okay?” he asked at another red light.  “Amber?”  He bent toward her, getting into her peripheral vision, but she continued to ignore him.  He stretched his finger over and grazed the bandage.  She jerked and cast accusing eyes on him.  “Are you okay?” he asked again.

“Yes,” she replied.  “Small cut.”

“I’m sorry,” he heard himself say.

She blinked.  “Why?”

The light flicked to green.  “You’re hurt,” he said, shifting into gear.  “Can’t I be sorry for that?”

“No.”

Her reply hit him like a battering ram.  The stick shift slipped out of his grasp, and the truck jerked.  Amber’s body locked against her seat belt, causing her to gasp with indignation.

“Sorry,” he muttered, getting his vehicle under control again.  She glared at him.  But at least, she was still looking at him.  “Why can’t I be sorry for you getting hurt?”

She didn’t answer.  She made some offhand gesture that Linc didn’t catch because he was concentrating on the road.  “Amber,” he said at another intersection -- this one, he stayed at for a moment to make sure she saw him speaking.  “I know you can talk.  Why can’t I be sorry?”

She sighed.  “I...I not talk good,” she said hesitantly.  “Sign is easier.”

“You talk just fine,” he assured her.  “And I don’t understand the signs.  Please, just speak as well as you can, okay?”

She lost her bitter expression and rolled her eyes.  A small smile tugged at her lips.  “Okay,” she said.  He repeated his question, “So, why can’t I say I’m sorry?  It is the polite thing to do, so I’m told, anyway.”

“You not do it,” she said with a smirk and another eye-rolling.

“Well, no...”

“Then why sorry?”

“Well, because...I don’t know.  I just am, okay?”

A beat passed.  “Okay.”

With a few more hesitant directions, he parked outside of her building, and Linc bent over the steering wheel to look up at where she lived.  He whistled.  “Some place you got here.  I heard these lofts go for a pretty penny.”

She shrugged and opened her door.  Linc hurried out, too, to help her.  She struggled to get her box, and he bent around her body to assist her, his front pressing against her back, and he liked how soft and warm she felt against him.

Amber froze.  Linc froze, too.  God, how long had it been since he had a woman’s body against him?  Too long.  He closed his eyes, loving how her bottom fit perfectly against his thighs and how her beautiful, long hair smelled like sunshine, even at night.  Too late, he realized a certain body part reacting strongly to her warmth, and he knew the exact instance she felt it, as well.  With a squeak, she bolted to the side, freeing herself from his touch.

Linc decided it was best to not comment on it, and instead, grappled with the box.  With it in his arms, he held her precious items captive, thinking he could use it to gain access to her home.  She owed him, after all.  If anything she owed him an explanation as to why her sister had to call him to go get her when she was fully old enough and capable of getting home from the station through a cab ride.

She bit down on her lip again, eyeing her box in his arms, and then raised those illuminant eyes to him.  He stared her down.  What was she going to do?  Side-swipe his knees and make him drop her stuff?  A slow smile spread across his lips.

Amber sighed.  “Would you like to come up?”

“Yes,” he said with a full-blown grin.  “I would.”