Protected by Him Read Free Page A

made me happy, but again, all I could think about was Colt -- how he’d said that anyone who knew how to google could have tracked me down easily.
    No! It wasn’t true! I told myself. I hardly had any presence online, no email, no facebook. It would have been nearly impossible for Declan to find me.
    I forced myself to relax as Declan took my drink out of my hands and set it down on the table.
    “Do you remember the promise we made to each other?” His green eyes were staring into mine, and his hands were on my thighs now, gripping them gently.
    “Of course.”
    He smiled. “I kept that promise all these years,” he said, and I felt the devastation roll over me. He’d stayed true to me, even as he’d moved on with his life, even as he’d gotten a good job and nice a place to live. He was gorgeous and smart and kind, and he could have any woman he wanted, and yet he’d kept his promise to me.
    He took my hand and raised it to his mouth, kissing my knuckles softly. As his lips touched my skin the sleeve of my sweater slid up a little, and the top of my bandage peeked out. Declan’s eyes slid over it, but he didn’t say anything.
    “Olivia,” he murmured, and then he was moving toward me, his lips about to brush against mine.
    I turned my head.
    “I’m sorry,” he said, pulling back. “I’m so sorry, Olivia. I shouldn’t have – ”
    “No.” I wiped my palms on my jeans again. “I just… I need to tell you something.” I needed to tell him about Colt. I couldn’t kiss Declan and not tell him what I’d done.
    It wasn’t right, and it left an uneasy feeling in my stomach.
    But that wasn’t the only reason I was feeling uneasy.
    I felt uneasy because I wasn’t feeling anything else.
    There was no rush of excitement, no thrill in my stomach, no anticipation and butterflies. Off course I was excited to see Declan, and it wasn’t that he was making me feel weird or uncomfortable.
    It was more that he wasn’t making me feel excited. I wasn’t getting a rush. It was like seeing an old friend – nice and comfortable, but not exciting.
    Not the way it was with Colt.
    Stop thinking about him!
    “Go ahead,” Declan said. “Whatever it is, Olivia, you can tell me.”
    I opened my mouth to start talking, but a second later, the front door opened and a girl appeared in the doorway to the kitchen. She had long blonde hair and a pale complexion, and she was holding two brown grocery sacks.
    “Hey!” she said happily when she saw Declan. “I got out early, so I thought I’d come over and surprise you with a home-cooked meal.” Then her eyes fell on me, and a confused look moved over her delicate features. Her gaze moved to Declan’s hands, one of them wrapped in mine, the other still on my thigh. “You have got to be kidding me. Again, Declan?”
    He stood up, quick as a flash. “Amanda,” he said. “No, it’s not…. this isn’t what it looks like. This is Olivia. She’s my sister.”
    “What?” Amanda and I both said at the same time, both of us staring incredulously at Declan.
    “I mean, she’s my foster sister. We grew up together.” He said ‘we grew up together’ the way you really would say it about a sister, and not about someone you’d made a promise to be with forever, a person you’d pretty much promised your heart to. “There’s nothing going on between us romantically. Right, Olivia?”
    His eyes met mine, and I saw that same familiar look reflected there, the one Declan and I used to give each other whenever we were sharing a secret, telegraphing to the other that something needed to be kept just between us.
    But those secrets, those lies we told back then, all of them were about survival, about keeping each other safe -- a lie about how much we’d eaten so that we wouldn’t be punished, a lie to a social worker about our living conditions so that we didn’t end up separated or in an even worse place. The lie he was asking me for now was just to be deceptive.
    I should