The Wildflower (Completed) (Southern Nights)

Chapter 16

"The Heart of a Wildflower"

2012 Copyright All Rights Reserved

Chapter 16

Sitting at the kitchen table, Elizabeth was in shock. She didn’t understand. Why would someone do this to her… her of all people. She didn’t make it a habit of bothering others and for the most part she stuck to herself, at least until Zeb showed up on her front doorstep.

Her small kitchen was swarmed with people. Conversations were a total blur as she stared relentlessly at a small crack in her kitchen table. Her mind couldn’t even begin to process the amount of malice that it would take for someone to be so cruel.

So many unanswered questions ran through her mind. Who would do something like this? Why would they target me of all people? And furthermore, how did they even manage something like this with Zeb and me just mere feet away?

One of the older detectives had grilled her with these same questions. For an hour he went on and on and all she could tell him was that she didn’t know. It didn’t make any sense to her. Folding her hands on the table, she dropped her head down and groaned. Her head hurt so bad and she just didn’t want to think anymore.

Zeb walked into the kitchen and rested his hands on her shoulders. She felt his strong, sure fingers gently massage her tightly coiled muscles. She lifted and turned her head up just enough so that she could see him staring down at her.  Worry, concern and anger all mingled and decorated his features.

“How are you holding up, darling?” As bad as Elizabeth felt, that slow southern drawl of his was like a balm to her broken soul.  It comforted her in a way that she could have never imagined.

She let out a ragged sigh and half-heartedly lifted her shoulders. “As good as can be expected, I suppose,” she said suddenly feeling dog tired. She sat up a little straighter and rolled her neck while he continued to work his magic on her shoulders.   “I just can’t think of anyone who might want to do something like this to me.  It doesn’t add up.”

Zeb dropped a kiss on the top of her head. “We’ll find out who did this,” he promised her. “We’ll find out and then we’ll make them pay.”  He squeezed her shoulders again reaffirming his promise.  “I’m not going to let anyone hurt you again.”

She could hear the sheer determination ringing strongly in his tone. She had no doubts now about what kind of man Zeb really was. He was a good man. Nothing like the person she had thought him to be over the last few years. For so long she had placed him in the ’bastard’ category that seeing him here now, standing beside her, encouraging her, telling her that everything was going to be okay was so surreal. And to make matters complicated, she still wasn’t all that sure she even deserved him. How pathetic was that? She let out a slow, steadying breath and closed her eyes, desperately trying to get a handle on her runaway emotions.

“Sir?”

Zeb patted Lizzie’s shoulders before turning around to face the detective that had just walked into the kitchen. “I’ll be right back,” he whispered.

Elizabeth weakly nodded and then laid her head back down on the table. What she wanted most right now was for everyone to just leave so that she could go curl up in her bed and sleep. Maybe, she thought to herself, that she would wake up and realize that all of this was just one big, bad ugly dream.

“Lizzie… Elizabeth, where are you?” Elizabeth lifted her head at the urgent sound of Christopher’s voice just in time to see him pushing past a balding older man dressed in what she thought was a piss poor imitation of an Armani suit.