Asking For It Read Online Free

neighbor. As far as Kate could tell, Bert lived off the squirrels he shot with his twelve-gauge and a government disability check.
    She didn't like him, but she wasn't going to begrudge anyone a meal. And Bert was canny enough not to push it. He didn't take more than a few suppers a session.
    "Even if I were desperate enough to offer Bert a job as counselor," Kate said, "he wouldn't take it. The man is a professional welfare case."
    "Agreed." Arnie paused. "Ricky, then?"
    Kate shot the caretaker her own sidelong glance. "He's a bit old for this kind of work."
    "And I'm not?" Arnie's smile showed the lines of his fifty-odd years. Toning down his smile, he leaned his forearms on the plank table. "Ricky would do it, but he makes you nervous."
    Kate tried not to shift on the wooden bench. Ricky was her biggest success story. Ten years ago, he'd come to the camp angry and defiant. He'd left the camp ready to turn that energy toward a constructive goal. After passing the bar last year, he was working like a dog in a big-time Los Angeles law firm.
    "I don't think his employer would take kindly to Ricky asking for two weeks off," Kate said.
    "True," Arnie agreed quietly. "But that's not the point. He does make you nervous."
    Kate looked away from Arnie's soft brown eyes. Ricky was no longer a boy, but a man. And recently it seemed as though he'd been exhibiting a man's type of interest in her.
    So yes, he did make her nervous.
    Asking Ricky to drop everything in order to help her out for two weeks would not be sending the right message.
    "Ricky needs to prove himself in this new, big job," Kate told Arnie.
    Arnie heaved a deep sigh.
    "I know," Kate said, "I need another warm body."
    "You need a miracle," Arnie said.
    Across the room by the big main doors, the tables went quiet. The shouting and gesturing of the boys simmered to nothing. The cessation of noise drew Kate's attention as much as a sudden explosion would have.
    She looked over to see a figure take shape out of the darkness beyond the dining room's open doors. She found herself coming out of her seat even before she saw the figure resolve itself into a man: a tall man, one who carried himself with a certain arrogance, even as his feet wobbled an uneven pattern toward the big double doors.
    He caught the jamb of the door to steady his balance. "Excuse me," he said, into the hush that had fallen over the room. An angry red bruise closed one of his eyes and blood oozed from a cut on his opposite cheekbone. His dress shirt, which appeared once to have been white, was hanging on by a mere thread at the shoulder, exposing a leanly muscled chest. His wool pants were a canvas of rips.
    "Excuse me," he said again, in a deep, scratchy-smooth voice. "Uh... I... Somebody grabbed me this evening. In Los Angeles. Or maybe it was yesterday evening." His gaze drifted over the fifty people in the big room. When his eyes hit Kate, they stopped. Abruptly. He stared at her. Intently.
    Because she was the only female? Because he sensed she was in charge? A shivery sensation passed over Kate from his focused scrutiny. Then his gaze fell. He put one hand to his forehead. "I'm sorry, very sorry, but I think I'm going to..." As his voice trailed off, he slid down the frame of the door and onto the floor.
    The room erupted. Exclamations, cries, shouts of excitement. Tony and José, two of Kate's sixteen-year-old counselors, rushed toward the man on the ground.
    "He's breathing," Tony told Kate when she reached the group huddled over the unconscious intruder.
    "Pulse is good," José said.
    "What on earth...?" Kate murmured. Under the rips and dirt and bruises the man could have walked out of a boardroom somewhere: clean-cut and recently barbered.
    For the love of —
    He'd been grabbed, he said? From Los Angeles? Then how had he ended up here, miles from there — miles from anywhere? Kate looked down at his injured face, which now projected an eerie calm. Inside her swirled a stew of contradictory