Unshakeable Pursuit (Christian Romantic Suspense)

Chapter 6a

Maylin took a step back.

The stranger was taller than Geoffrey, with dark hair in a steeply receding hairline. The man's chin tilted up in a faintly arrogant angle as he studied Geoffrey beneath heavily lidded eyes. Then his gaze slid to Maylin, and it seemed that a predatory gleam appeared. 

A sharp spasm ran through her.

Without warning, Geoffrey lunged at him, pinning him to the wall of the building with his forearm jammed beneath the man's neck. "Who are you?" he demanded.

The man's eyes had bugged out of their sockets, and rather than fighting Geoffrey, his large, knobby hands fluttered helplessly. "I just ... the girl ..."

"What do you want with her? Who are you?"

"I just wanted to ask her out," the man choked.

Geoffrey stiffened. Heat flooded Maylin's face.

"I swear that's all," the man said, his voice high with panic.

Geoffrey released him grudgingly. "Sorry," he mumbled.

The man rubbed his neck. "You're lucky I don't call the police," he said petulantly.

Maylin didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Maybe it had simply been her own paranoia making her suspicious. She was only dressed in jeans and a blouse, the extra set of clothes she kept in her locker at work, nothing particularly attractive. Coupled with the stress of the past two days, the man's attention wasn't as flattering as it might have been. "It would have helped if you hadn't been staring at me like a stalker," she said acidly.

"You were the one giving off signals." The man sounded like a spoiled child. 

Maylin didn't bother to respond. Geoffrey looked like he might take offense at that, so she pulled him to the curb just as Cisco drove up in the Mustang.

"I'm sorry," she said as they drove away.

"Don't be." His voice was tight.

"No, I shouldn't have suspected him." She felt guilty for needlessly heightening Geoffrey's already hot stress levels.

"No," Geoffrey said quickly. "If I'd seen him looking at you, when he came outside, I'd still have done the same thing." He looked over at her. She didn't notice her hands were tightly clenched in her lap until he put his warm palm over them.

His touch made her breath quicken, but so did his words. She felt ... safe with Geoffrey.

No, she couldn't start thinking this way about him. How well did she really know him? Sebastian had made her feel safe when she first met him, but she soon learned that he had wanted to control her. And he'd done it, with words that still cut sharply in her memory. In many ways, there were echoes of Sebastian in the tight control Geoffrey had over his emotions.

She couldn't go through that again with another man. She wanted someone ... softer. Not someone strong-willed like Geoffrey.

"Thanks," she said lightly, and then pulled her hands away from his.

He rested his palm against the gearshift. "It's late, but the library is open for another hour. Let's go there to look up Cassandra Wong."

Maylin felt safer at the library since it was so empty. If those Asian men came in to look for them, they would stick out like a sore thumb. "Cassandra obviously didn't want us to know who she was, which makes me think she doesn't work at KSN," Maylin said as they headed upstairs to the computers. "If she was trying to stay anonymous, she wouldn't want to flash a badge from the very hospital she works at."