His To Keep by Stephanie Julian

wife and his kid. He was dragging me back to the truck when he got hit. I should have died, damn it. Not him.” The words had the ring of a familiar mantra, something he said over and over again. “My injuries killed my career, but here I am. And Nino’s in a coffin.”
    Annie wanted to put her hands over his, to wrap her arms around him, but he was driving and it looked like he needed all the concentration he had to keep going. Still, she couldn’t be quiet.
    “Nic…” if you had died that day, a piece of my heart would have gone with you, “when your parents came to get Janey at school, I wouldn’t let them leave without me. I came home with Janey. I told everyone it was for moral support. But I was being selfish. I had to see for myself that you were going to be okay. When they brought you back here from Germany, I would go to the hospital with Janey and wait in the hall. I told her not to tell you I was there.”
    With an abruptness that startled a gasp out of her, Nic pulled into a parking space with a jerk then turned to spear her with a white-hot gaze. “Why didn’t you come in to see me?”
    No turning back now. “Because I was afraid you’d send me away.”
    She didn’t know how long they sat there, staring at each other. His expression showed nothing but that intense gaze of his burned. Then he laughed, but there was no humor in the short sound.
    “I never thought of you as anything other than another sister when you were a kid, Annie. And then I come home one day and you’re eighteen and a beautiful young woman. You were the only person I could think about. The one person I couldn’t have, still too young and out of my league.”
    His gaze seemed to bore a hole straight through her. She couldn’t believe she’d heard him right. Then he turned away and swore, just once, but so viciously she flinched.
    Then he sighed. “Is this the right address? I made sure we weren’t followed so you don’t have to worry about that.”
    Annie blinked and looked out the front window. They’d arrived but it hadn’t registered with her brain.
    When she nodded, he got out of the car and walked around to open hers. He reached in to help her out of the car with a firm grip on her arm, as if he was afraid she’d try to get away. “What is this place?”
    Annie took a deep breath to clear her mind and shove his words to the back of her mind for examination later. Right now, she needed to focus. “Dawn House. Look,” she paused, trying to decide how to put this, “you can’t go in with me. You might scare the girls.”
    His brows raised. “Well, hell, Annie. Don’t hold back to spare my feelings.”
    Grimacing, she tugged at her arm until he released her then started toward the former apartment building in the middle of a side street. “Sorry, that didn’t come out right. Dawn House is a female-only shelter for abused teens and runaways. The girls are sent here by the police or from the homeless shelters in town. We take them in, get them counseling, medical attention, send them home, if that’s what they want.”
    Nic took another look at the building before returning his intent gaze to hers. “What do you do here?”
    “I run it.”
    Taking a closer look at the three-story brick building, Nic noticed it was nondescript in every way from the surrounding buildings. Which was probably the point.
    Manayunk had made a name for itself in recent years as an artists’ enclave, but it still had a blue-color feel to it. And it was large enough to hide a shelter like this.
    Which Annie apparently ran in all her spare time when she wasn’t working full-time for DeMarco Investigations.
    He followed her up the stairs to the front door where she turned.
    “I’m going to be here for at least four or five hours. If you need to take the car—”
    He shook his head. He was going nowhere. “Why don’t you take me in and show me around.”
    She frowned and he could tell she didn’t want him here. Tough. He wasn’t