Free Enchant the Dawn by Elaine Lowe Page B

wide enough to catch a baseball when he took in Sophia’s current position perched atop Daron. She pulled back and made a great show of rearranging her skirts as Alan started to whoop his laughter.
     
    Sophia turned her eyes toward the sidewalk, where June stood with her eyebrows raised, non-judgmental but waiting. The sadness and worry in her eyes and in her life energy was enough to galvanize Sophia into action. She clambered over Daron and made her way over to June, not looking back to see if the men followed. Somewhere in the mess of turbulent fire that swept back into her mind when she was no longer locked with Daron in an intimate embrace, there was a little girl who needed her. For all the slow-working torture she had endured from her “gifts”, she might as well try using them for some good.

 
    Chapter Seven
     
     
     
    Hester, June’s little chavi , was coughing enough to break the heart of a far tougher man than Daron West. It made a soul feel guilty for taking a deep breath with ease. Daron could feel her panic from two floors down and cursed himself for being so wrapped up in Miss Sophia Hunter and her strong thighs and elegant neck and indecipherable eyes.
     
    He started to run, trying to get to Hester and trying to chase away the last dregs of arousal from his system so he could focus on the task at hand. He wasn’t terribly surprised to hear the clatter of shoes on the stairs behind him. June knew what his haste meant and Sophia was damned clever. The worn but clean halls of his building had become as familiar as the back of his hand and he swerved around Mrs. Gianoli and her twins on the second floor as he dashed to the third. There in 5C, the door was unlocked and it slammed open when he pushed at it. Hester was sitting in her favorite green chair by the old smoky stove, huddled in the blankets that Mary and Irene and Ixchel had given to June over the years they’d all come to care for the little girl. So she was swathed in warm Merino wool and the bright embroidery of Mexico and the best of South Carolina quilt work. Hester raised glazed blue eyes to his and Ixchel was muttering in kind but tense Spanish as she ran a warm cloth over Hester’s sweat-drenched brow.
     
    He’d known Hester for almost half her life, ever since he’d found June standing on the roof of this building on his fifth day on the job. June had been holding her wisp of a girl to her chest and singing an ancient Irish lullaby under a full harvest moon with a prayer for health and wellbeing through the rest of the year. Daron had heard his father sing something similar, something his grandfather had sung as a child from Eire.
     
    Once Daron had made his presence known, June had been terrified of him, of all men really. But Hester had started to cough and Daron had done what came naturally. He’d taken Hester’s tiny little fist in his hand and felt all the fear and panic bubble up out of the little sprite and into himself and down and out into the warm dark of the void. The coughing had eased up a bit and June had looked at him with tears of thanks in her eyes.
     
    “ Madre de Dios, ya están aquí !” Ixchel greeted him with a stream of excited Spanish that he could barely make out but in general he thought it was prayers to her namesake Goddess and a litany of saints and martyrs that he’d finally gotten back with help. Hester was older than the first time he’d helped her but only a bit bigger, her pale skin fine and thin, with huge pale green eyes and the same flaxen hair as her mother. Blotches of purple sagged under her eyes and her cheeks were a false bright red from the continued exertion of trying to catch her breath, of trying to force out all the air she could and wait for new air to return. She was so very tired.
     
    He crouched in front of Hester and stripped off his gloves and took her hand as he had years ago and drained from her as much of the pain as he could. He gritted his teeth that he could do