Jillian Chantal

This week, the authors of Tuesday Tales are writing to the word prompt hazy.  I’ve gone back to an old story as I have like 3 partial manuscripts and am fiddling around with them before National Novel Writing month starts November 1 as I’ll start a new story then.

This is the story with the human trafficking – I’ve shared part of it before. The heroine is shaving the hero’s beard and coloring his hair grey so he can go undercover on a raid.

I watched her continue to remove the overgrown part of my beard. Man, I did let it get out of control.

Finally, she stepped back and studied me. “You already look more respectable.” She slathered some shaving cream on my face.

Turning away, she made her way to the bar area. “Now comes the fun part.”

With a wicked gleam in her eye, she ran a straight edge razor over the strip to sharpen it. “Better hold real still.”

I trusted her not to kill me, but not necessarily not to maim me. After all, how much did I really know about this woman I was trusting to get near me with a deadly weapon?

“Scared?”

I shook my head.

“Let’s see about that, shall we?”

Deciding it was better not to look, I closed my eyes at her approach.

I sensed the heat of her body when she neared me, but kept my eyes shut as a hazy memory of a dream came to me. It was from when my sister was missing. I’d never been able to make sense of it but now, something niggled at the back of my brain. I frowned in concentration, reaching for the thread.

“I promise I’m not going to hurt you. I’ve done this before. No need to act like Marie Antoinette on the way to the guillotine.”

Dawn’s words startled me out of zone I was in. “Sorry. I’m sure you’re good with blades and won’t nick me unless you intend to. I was thinking about something that happened a long time ago and couldn’t quite remember it all.”

“Need some help?”

“No. It’s nothing.”

“I’ve been known to be a great listener.” She made the first cut into the shaving cream. The sound of the hair being scraped away was oddly soothing. It was past time to get back to normal.

As she worked, I focused on emptying my mind. If I didn’t try to force the dream memory to come, maybe it would.

“Now that you’ve settled in and seem to be trusting me, want to tell me the secret you don’t want Ben to know?” Another scrape of the razor across my face accompanied her question.

Nope. No way was I telling her. Not until Shannon was safe.