Page 176 of Rescuing You

Jasmine pushed up from the bed. “I’ll be ready when Michael arrives.”

Leila headed down the stairs. Michael’s house had three bedrooms, all on the second story. The ground floor held a living room, an eat-in kitchen, and a dining room. He’d said his house was a Cape Cod—apparently, that was the name of the style. Also, an area in Massachusetts, she discovered when she looked it up.

Strange. But so many things in America were.

Like the way people she’d never met before smiled at her as if they were friends.

The way the neighbors had come over to introduce themselves, guessing she and her sister were new owners or renters. Michael was there so infrequently that neighbors had thought the house unoccupied.

She might’ve guessed the same if she’d peeked in the windows. There was a little furniture, but it looked brand new and largely untouched. There were no family photos, no personal items. It was a house, not a home.

Which Michael had explained away easily. “I bought it a while ago, but I’m hardly ever here.”

And he still wasn’t. He’d moved Leila and her sister in, but he’d been staying with his brother Sam, who lived nearby.

Which was where Leila and Jasmine were going today.

To meet the family.

A knock had Leila glancing out the window. Michael stood on the front porch.

She opened the door. “Why are you knocking on your own door?”

He leaned down and kissed her lightly.

But the kiss turned into something else. He wrapped his arm around her and held her against him, deepening the kiss and almost making her forget her fear.

After a minute, he lifted his head. “Hey.”

It took her a moment to recover. She stepped back. “You don’t have to knock. This is your house.”

“I’d better not get quite that familiar. Seems wiser somehow.”

Yeah. She knew what he meant.

“You sound better today.”

She took his hand and pulled him inside. It was chilly out there, a cold wind coming from the ocean. But the sky was bright blue, bluer than any sky she’d ever seen. And though most of the trees had lost their leaves, some still hung, bright yellow and orange and red. The rest skittered along the roads and sidewalks, their scent woodsy and comfortable.

Maine was so different from where she’d grown up. And different from Munich. It was beautiful.

She loved everything about it. Or maybe she just loved this man and, by extension, the place he called home.

He closed the door behind him. “You ready?”

“I am. My sister is coming.”

“How’s your throat today?” He’d been eager for her to meet his family, but he hadn’t wanted to introduce her until she could talk without pain. Now, after asking permission with his gaze—which she granted, as she always did—he moved her turtleneck aside to look at the bruising.

The marks had gone from red to black-and-blue to purple. They were fading now, just a few purple smudges, barely noticeable on her dark skin.

He saw them, though, and scowled, like he did whenever he remembered what Waleed had done.

Far less damage than Qasim had done to Jasmine, whom Leila awakened many nights to pull out of nightmares.

It was probably wrong to wish a man dead, so she begged forgiveness every morning. But every night, at the sound of her sister’s whimpers, she wished it again.

Even so, Jasmine seemed better in every way. Not just because she felt better. She seemed to have a different feeling about the baby she’d said she didn’t want. Now, though her stomach was still as flat as ever, Leila had caught her often with a protective palm over the tiny baby inside.