Kathi S Barton - [Aaron's Kiss 04] by Karen Fuller Page A

make a quick escape out the door when Lizzy came running into the kitchen.
    Sam didn’t allow people, especially kids, in her domain. Lizzy stopped about two feet from Sam. Lizzy looked nervous and unsure of herself and of Sam. Good , Sam thought. She had hurt Sam and needed to understand that things had consequences.
    “Hey kid.” Sam was just as unsure about her. She didn’t know any other kids but this one and her brother. Sally’s children were grown and had moved away, and Betty was living with another woman and they didn’t have any plans of becoming parents.
    “I came to give you this, and to telled—tell you how sorry I am. I didn’t know I was hurting you. I didn’t think through my actions.”
    Lizzy shoved a drawing of a stick person surrounded by cakes of all sizes, some bigger than the person, at her. Sam was touched. She had no doubt that Lizzy had been coached by someone, but Sam was happy all the same.
    Sam walked over to her zero doublewide fridge and stuck the picture to the door over several orders that were in mid-fill. Lizzy ran over and hugged her legs, then jumped back at the pop that went through her and Sam. It wasn’t always audible, but this time it was.
    “Yeah, that’s why I don’t like to be touched. Didn’t hurt you, did it?” Sam reached out and gently rubbed Lizzy’s head. Sometimes the energy Sam let off was painful, others just a small static charge.
    “No. I didn’t know people could pop someone like that. Does that happen all the time?” Lizzy made the last question sound like it had many more syllables than it actually had.
    “A lot, yeah. It’s because I’m an empath. Do you know what that is?” Lizzy started to nod then changed it to a shake. “Well, I can feel everyone’s feelings and emotions, all the time if I don’t close myself off to them. The pop is an overload to my system. When you touched me, I get all of you at once and it ‘pops’ me.”
    “Does it hurt you?” Lizzy asked her.
    Sam was not sure if she should share with a little kid, but figured if she wanted to stay one step ahead of her, Sam would be better served if the kid knew what she was getting into. But when Sam answered her, she looked directly at the two women standing in her kitchen.
    “Yes. Well, sometimes, if I’m not prepared for it. I could see you coming full tilt, so I braced myself for it. Usually it’s much bigger, but you haven’t been around long enough to have that many different emotions pinging through you all the time yet. If you were older, it would have been very strong. Hello, Mrs. MacManus, Mac, how are you guys tonight?”

    Sam looked to the door at the back of the shop, wondering if she could make it out the door before Betty and Sally left for the night. Tomorrow she was going to have a long talk with them both about phone messages and the importance of telling them to her seconds before someone showed up.
    “Don’t even try.” Sara looked from Sam to the door, as if to say, “I know what you are planning and I will stop you. I came here to talk to you.”
    “Well, I have some baking to do, so if you wanna talk, you’ll have to do it in here.
    I’ve been in and out of injuries of late, in case you hadn’t noticed, and I’m a tad behind.” Sam went back to her work, determined to ignore them. It was like trying to ignore a thunderstorm in one’s own house.
    “You’ve been hurt more than you have been getting at our house? Gosh, you must be really clumsy, ‘cause you been hurt a lot!” Mac made it sound like Sam had done nothing but bleed all over the place since she had met him. Which, after careful thought, she probably had.
    First she had been shot, which he hadn’t witnessed but had seen the aftermath of, then she had been put into a deep sleep to heal first from his mom and then Tucker.
    Then last night, she was hurt again by being thrown against the wall. Yeah, she thought, she had been really hurt a lot.
    When everyone converged in the