Authors: Luxie Ryder
Sacrifice
Sacrifice
by
Luxie Ryder
Evernight Publishing
Copyright© 2010 Luxie Ryder
ISBN:
978-0-9867225-3-0
Cover Artist: Dara
Editor: BL Brown
ALL
RIGHTS RESERVED
WARNING:
The
unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is
illegal.
No part of this book may be
used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission,
except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.
This is a work of fiction. All names,
characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events,
locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
DEDICATION
To
my family and friends—thanks for your support.
Sacrifice
Luxie Ryder
Copyright © 2010
Chapter One
Hallie
Matheson gave the cord on the blind a hard flick and let it snap up to the top
of the frame. The jerk banging on her door in the middle of the night was going
to get an earful…
Instead,
she screamed.
A
pale face contorted with agony pressed against the glass. The fist Hallie
assumed to be making all the noise flattened on the pane as the man it belonged
to pushed himself back a few inches and opened his eyes.
“Hallie,
it’s me.”
She
screamed again for a different reason. “Ethan!”
Her
hands shook as she fumbled with the knob, desperate now to let him in. The
latch came free of the lock and the door swung out of her grasp, slamming into
the wall with a glass rattling thud. With nothing left to hold him up, Ethan Butler’s
considerable frame fell to the floor.
“Oh
my God…what happened?”
She
rolled him over and bit her closed fist to silence another shriek of terror. A
deathly pallor had stolen the tan from his handsome face, replaced with a waxy
gray. His usually sparkling blue eyes were now dark as night, the whites almost
obscured by tiny, blood red veins.
Hallie
pressed a hand to his forehead, recoiling instantly from the cold, clammy flesh
under her palm. “You need a doctor.”
“No!”
Ethan rolled away from her, groaning as he struggled to his hands and knees. Hallie
ignored his protest and wrapped both arms around his torso to help him to his
feet. “I just need to lie down a minute, that’s all.”
He
lurched towards his apartment door, the one opposite hers, leaving Hallie with
no choice but to go with him. If he fell again, he would take her down too. She
was relatively strong and fit for a thirty-five year old woman but her five
foot six frame was no match for his. At almost a foot taller than she, Ethan’s
impressive size had been the first thing she’d noticed about him. But right
now, with his huge, muscular body half slumped over hers, she wished he was
smaller.
Hallie
used all of her strength to prop him against the wall and reached into the
pocket of his jeans to search for his key.
“Hey,
don’t get fresh.” His hoarse croak brought her attention back to his face.
“You
wish!”
I tried it once and look how badly
that played out.
Despite the painful reminder of her failed seduction
attempt months ago, his teasing words relieved her. There couldn’t be too much
wrong with him if he could make a joke. But then his crooked grin contorted
into another grimace as a spasm of pain tore through him and his hands clutched
at his stomach.
The
moment she opened the door he fell into his apartment. Ethan struggled to his
feet, determined to make it on his own and staggered to the bedroom, sprawling
on top of his bed. He groaned deeply when Hallie switched on the light.
“Ethan,
what happened? Do you need a doctor?”
“No.”
“You
keep saying that but there’s obviously something very wrong with you.”
“Damn
it, Hallie! No doctors!”
She
swallowed the urge to tell him to kiss her ass. After all, he’d just turned up
after two weeks away and pounded on the door at three a.m. until she’d let him
in. Instead she offered, “Suit yourself.”
Hallie
decided to leave him to his self-inflicted misery, convinced now more than ever
that he was drunk or stoned or something, until another agonized groan stopped
her in her tracks. When it passed, he lifted his head and gazed her way.
“I’m
sorry…okay? I didn’t mean to shout.”
She
sighed. “Have you been drinking?”
The
crooked grin she knew well reappeared. “No, but I could sure use one right
now.”
Whether
he’d been joking about the drink or not didn’t matter, once the words left his
mouth Ethan passed out almost immediately.
Hallie
gave Doc Fletcher a call just in case, hoping he could calm her nerves, but
unfortunately, his mention of food poisoning left her more frustrated as well
as frightened.
“I
don’t think it’s food poisoning, Doc. For a minute back there I thought he was
dying.”
“Thought
I was dying after I had me some bad shrimp once.” He chuckled as if remembering
it fondly. “Stop worrying. Cold sweat, stomach cramps—sounds like food
poisoning to me. He just got back from
Orleans
“That’s
where he said he was going when I spoke to him last week. Said he was there on
business and asked me to take in a package he was expecting while he was away.”
“Shrimp,”
Doc Fletcher said, as if pronouncing a final diagnosis.
Hallie
pushed a little harder. “I’d feel much better if you’d come take a look at
him.”
“Can’t
do that right now, honey. Maisie Johnson is waiting for me to deliver her
twins. I’m pretty sure young Ethan will be okay, but if you’re worried, you
should take him to
Hallie
put the phone down before she said something to the kind old man she might
regret later. County was twenty miles away in Tillbrook. How in the hell was
she supposed to convince Ethan to get in her car and stay alive until she got
him to a medic? She grabbed a robe from her apartment and walked back to his bedroom,
regretting—and not for the first time either—that she’d never left the hick
town she grew up in. Fairborne had a population of only two thousand and didn’t
need its own hospital. When her grandmother became ill, Hallie was forced to
make a forty mile round trip everyday to visit her in Tillbrook.
Ethan
was still in bed but his clothes were strewn across the floor, and he’d pulled
a sheet half over his body. She tiptoed across to look down at him, tempted to
check his forehead again but afraid to disturb his much-needed rest. Her gaze
travelled over his body, to the dark chest hair still glistening with sweat. Ethan
was toned and hard, right down to where the sheet rested on his hips. He
groaned softly and she looked back to his face, afraid he’d caught her drinking
in the sight of his naked torso, but he slept on.
A
dark, angry bruise on the side of his neck caught her attention. Hallie leaned closer
to look at it but he rolled away, obscuring her view. Maybe he’d scratched it
on the door frame when he stumbled into the room. Her own wrist throbbed from
banging into the wall when she tried to help him.
After
a while, Hallie grew bored of waiting to see if he would stay asleep and wandered
into the lounge, unsure what she should do. She couldn’t just leave him to fend
for himself. What if he woke in agony again? More importantly, what could she
do for him if he did?
She
flopped down on a couch and looked around the room. Ethan lived well. It annoyed
her to see he’d done a better job with his half of the house than she had with hers.
So he had looks as well as taste…typical.
The
walls of the lounge were a subtle coffee shade, complimented by taupe leather
sofas facing each other in front of the fireplace. A large Persian rug covered most
of the stripped wooden floors and a mahogany bookcase dominated the window wall,
facing a plasma screen on the opposite side. The expensive furnishings put the
modern utility style units in her bland beige home to shame. Still, it wasn’t
her fault she didn’t have as much money as him.
Hallie
couldn’t help but notice he had no pictures of family or friends…or even girlfriends,
but then Ethan Butler had been an enigma since the day he’d moved in.
When
her grandmother passed away earlier in the year, Hallie decided to rent out
half of the house she’d inherited. Since losing the only family she’d had—her
mother dying in childbirth and she’d never known her father, Hallie’s
grandmother had been everything to her. The convenience store she’d inherited
along with the house kept her busy at first but after only a few short months,
Hallie was desperately lonely. The few friends she’d had growing up, either married
or moved away as soon as they were old enough. Hallie stayed on in Fairborne to
take care of her grandmother and never got around to dating much or making new
connections.