Guarded Heart (Dubicki's) Read online

  Guarded Heart

  A Dubicki’s Novel

  Lisa Andres

  Copyright © 2014 Lisa Andres, Kindle Edition

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. Any and all references to songs, song writers, and/or singers in no way imply connection with, relationship to, or ownership of any of these entities but are used as cultural references within the time period of the piece.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner, Lisa Andres.

  Cover Design by Regina Wamba:

  www.MaeIDesign.com

  Editing by Patrick and April Durham:

  www.editingandebooks.com

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  About the Author

  Prologue

  Great. They’re at it again.

  Carissa was tired of her mom and her mom’s revolving door of boyfriends. For all of her 14 years she could remember, her mother had always had some creepy-looking guy on her arm. She was used to feeling emotionally starved by her mother’s neglect by now, and the creepier the guys got, the more she was grateful for that.

  Carissa’s mother was a runway model with a host of addictions. She had a very expensive cocaine habit, and, thus, her choice of boyfriend always had to help support her lifestyle in some way. Her latest boyfriend, Ray, took the “seedy” award, and Carissa seriously thought he was a drug dealer. At the very least, the guy had to have a rap sheet that rivaled an epic novel. It was usually quiet because her mother and Ray were gone so much, but when they were in residence, she either heard them having sex or fighting. Tonight, it was clearly the latter. If the yelling didn’t convince her, the broken dishes did the trick.

  She put in the ear buds of her MP3 player in attempt to drown out the noise. Ray had gotten her the gift for her fourteenth birthday last month. Even though she didn’t like him and found the gift suspect, she loved it.

  She’d never known who her dad was. She doubted that her mother even knew. It was frustrating. And embarrassing. One of her mom’s boyfriends had beaten her mom so badly they’d had to move to another state.

  Carissa wiped away a tear that had spilled down her cheek. She felt like her entire childhood had been a prison, and she wasn’t going to be paroled for four more years. On the outside, she tried to be so normal. She wished she had more friends and would have loved it if she could stay the night at a friend’s house every once in a while. Though sleepovers were not as common as they were a couple of years ago, they would still provide the perfect refuge from whatever chaos was happening in her own home. If it could even be called a home.

  She dreamed of what her life would be like when she grew up. She knew she’d find a college far, far away. Anywhere that would take her where she didn’t have to live at home. She wanted to be a nurse or a veterinarian. She loved animals. Most days they were easier to be around than humans.

  Daydreaming, she closed her eyes and lost herself in the music. She didn’t notice the door to her room had opened. Or that her mother’s boyfriend Ray was creeping his way into her room and onto her bed.

  By the time she realized what was happening, it was too late. He was so much bigger than her that he overpowered her almost immediately. Carissa whimpered and begged him to stop.

  “Don’t worry, Cassie. This will be real good.”

  When she tried to fight his hands reaching out to touch her inappropriately, he slapped her. He seemed to like her fear; he told her that if she fought him, he’d only hit her harder.

  She closed her eyes and nearly gagged on her screams as the innocence that held the last piece of her youth was taken from her.

  Chapter 1

  Carissa Hart was getting sick of this heat wave. Minnesota was generally known for its cold climate, but, for as cold as it got in the winter, it got equally hot in the summer. By August, she was usually praying for fall just to end the oppressive heat waves of the summer. Her job as a nursing assistant at a hospice and nursing home was demanding, and, on a hot day like this, that basically meant she needed a cold shower when she got home. She walked out of work at five o’clock and tried to refrain from pulling her shirt off and ringing the sweat out of it. She couldn’t wait to get home and out of the heat. Today she was thankful that she had a short commute. The retirement home she worked at was in Roseville, Minnesota. It was technically a suburb of St. Paul, but it also bordered northeast Minneapolis where she lived.

  Carissa had been on her own since she was a teenager, which made her mature for her 21 years. She’d been on her own so young because her survival depended on it; now she was proud of the fact that she’d graduated high school early and had obtained her nursing assistant certificate at 18 because of it. Her next career goal was to be a registered nurse, a dream she knew would come in time. Right now, she was just happy to be on her own and to have her own place.

  Carissa walked in the door of her modest one-bedroom apartment. It was in a turn of the century fourplex apartment unit. It had a certain vintage charm with its old cabinetry and even boasted a stove that looked like an antique that Carissa found delightful. She could sometimes hear the neighbors through the walls, but they were mostly harmless. She still took pride in that this was her very first home of her own.

  She’d worked as a waitress for the first two years after she moved out and then decided it was time to think about a career. She liked helping people and thought that being a nurse was something she’d like to do. She liked her job as a nursing assistant. It was sad working in a nursing home with a hospice sometimes. There were so many of the seniors dying that had no one to be with them. She spent a lot of her time there listening to them because she knew what it was like to be alone.

  As Carissa made her way into her apartment, she was greeted by her cat, Cal. Cal was an orange and white tabby that she’d rescued the previous year because she sometimes preferred animals to humans. She and Cal were loners, and she loved having a kitty to spoil at home.

  “Hi, baby. How are you today?” she said as she bent down and stroked his head.

  He greeted her with a purr and pushed his head into her hand in appreciation. She got him a treat from the top of the fridge and poured herself a glass of lemonade. Right then she was very grateful to have the window air conditioner unit in her living room. She’d take a shower, make a quick dinner, and then roll out the hide-a-bed sofa. It looked like she and Cal would be sleeping in the living room in the air conditioning that night.

  She liked having her own space. Living with other people really had never gone well for her. She knew that isolating herself from the world was her way of putting her guard up, but right then that worked for her. Since she’d run away from home as a teenager, she’d had only one boyfriend s
he’d let in, and he didn’t treat her well. He was verbally abusive and an alcoholic, and it took her a while to wake up and not allow herself to be lost in his problems and his addiction. He’d been older than her, and she now thought her lack of a father figure was why she had been drawn to him. She put up with him because whatever he did, she’d been through worse. When she finally woke up to it, he didn’t take kindly to her leaving him. Since then, she’d pushed away every male that had tried to get her attention.

  To say she’d had a tough childhood would be putting it mildly. Between her mother’s schedule as a model and her penchant for narcotics, it left little time for her. Most of her childhood was spent wondering where her mommy was, and she had always felt alone. One of her earliest memories was of being around four years old and trying to get her shirt off. She just couldn’t seem to get it over her head and felt like it kept getting tangled. Like a four-year-old would do, she went to find her mother to try to get the shirt over her head, but no one was there. When no one came, she took matters into her own hands and got a knife to poke in the back of her shirt to enable her to get it over her head. That episode had gotten her a scar that she still had and probably should have had stitches in at the time.

  She also had a pink circular scar on her arm that she told people was a birthmark. In reality, it was from the cigarette butt of one of her mother’s angry boyfriends. She’d been barely able to talk when that happened, but she still remembered the pain as the cigarette seared a hole into her little arm. She’d considered getting a tattoo to cover the spot up but decided she liked the reminder of where she had come from and the strength it represented.

  In her younger years, Carissa and her mother had spent a lot of time at her mother’s friend Marilyn’s house, whom Carissa later realized was also a drug addict. Marilyn was a model and had two children: Tommy, who was eight, and Izzy, who was four. Carissa had been around five when they’d all met. In many ways, they’d grown up together. When you were brought up in a childhood rampant with problems, you had two choices: you could either fall victim to it and follow in the same footsteps, or you could rise above it. Tommy grew up to be a drug dealer. He even sold to his mother and eventually landed in prison. Izzy had ended up pregnant by the time she was 15 and getting high by the time she was 16. Carissa hadn’t talked to either of them since the night she ran away. She wondered what trouble she would have gotten herself into if she would have stayed around; she was glad she never had to find out.

  They’d moved to Minnesota from the east coast when Carissa was eight. Her mom had said it was to get away from her family, but Carissa now wondered if she had been running from a drug dealer or some other thug. When Carissa had started school, all the kids had laughed at her for talking funny with her New Jersey accent. They all said she sounded like she was from the television show The Sopranos. At first they tried to correct her speaking, but when that didn’t work, they just made fun of her.

  Carissa had met her best friend Dana when she was in her nursing assistant training. It was a short program, but they connected right away. Dana had an abusive father, Carissa had an abusive mother, and they were pretty tight from the get-go. Dana’s family was from New York State; Carissa’s had been from New Jersey. What were the odds that they would both land in Minnesota? Neither of them was particularly mushy or big believers in fate, but if there was one thing that seemed oddly destined, it was for the two of them to meet.

  “Hey, lady,” Dana called as she gave a courtesy knock and walked in the door.

  Dana stopped by every once in a while after work. Since the heat wave, she’d been over lots more. Her place didn’t have any air conditioning. Dana was tall enough to look like she’d been the one that came from a family of models, not Carissa. Carissa was petite in comparison. Dana’s straight, chestnut brown hair always looked perfect. It was long but not too long. One might think she had a personal hairdresser or something. She didn’t. It was just naturally beautiful hair. It was a point of envy to Carissa who worked at flat ironing her hair every day only to have it frizz out within an hour on a day as humid as that one. She didn’t even know why she bothered.

  “Hi! Just hang out for a second while I change out of my work clothes,” Carissa yelled from her bedroom. Her long and somewhat unruly dishwater-blonde hair frustratingly beyond hope was now up in a ponytail artfully wrapped around her head like a bun.

  “I brought you some tacos. I didn’t think you’d want to cook tonight,” Dana said as she put a takeout bag down on the counter.

  Carissa came out of the bedroom and smiled. Tacos were one of her favorite things, and Dana knew it.

  “So what do you want?” Carissa teased as she savored her first bite of a taco.

  “What do you mean, what do I want?” Dana said in a playful tone.

  “Oh, come on, Dana. You are trying to butter me up for something if you brought tacos,” Carissa said as she grabbed some chips that Dana had brought with the meal.

  “Well, now that you mention it, I thought we could go out on Friday night.”

  “Out? You know I don’t really like going out. Are you seeing a new guitar player or something?”

  “No, not yet, but give me a chance and I’ll find one,” Dana laughed. She was a highly intelligent woman that always made good decisions. When she’d met the one guitar player that she’d dated last winter, all of the good decisions that seemed to be part of Dana’s make-up flew out the window. She now joked that she was somewhat of a groupie, but she wasn’t really that bad. Yet. “Carrie and Melissa are going out and thought it’d be fun if we join them.”

  Lately, Dana had been encouraging Carissa to get out of her shell. Carissa was kind of shy by nature. It may have been from feeling like she’d been trying to hide or get away from her painful past for most of her life. She was an adult now and didn’t have anything to worry about. At least that’s what she tried to tell herself. Part of her would always be a fighter that slept with one eye open, but she supposed she could let her guard down for one night and try to have fun with the girls. Even if she called Carrie and Melissa mean girls behind their back.

  It took some cajoling to get Carissa to consent to go out. By the time Dana left a couple of hours later, she’d agreed. Dana reeled her in with one of her “you deserve to be happy” pep talks. Dana loved giving her pep talks.

  Carissa worked a short shift Friday and, even though she wasn’t much for bar hopping, was looking forward to a night out. Although Carissa had reluctantly agreed at first, she began to get kind of excited. She wasn’t sure for what, but it would be fun to see some of the city nightlife this weekend with one of her best friends.

  Chapter 2

  “Jesse, you’ve got to work on your ground techniques. You know Velasquez is not good at packing punches like you, so he’s going to focus on getting you with joint locks or chokeholds.”

  Pablo Cruz had been Jesse’s new trainer for the last few months. There had been competition among a few mixed martial arts, or MMA, fighters to acquire Pablo, and Jesse was lucky to have won Pablo to his fighting staff. Pablo was a taller version of Jesse with a darker complexion. He had coarse, dark, wavy hair and eyes as dark as his hair, but as far as body type, he and Jesse were well-matched. That’s one of the reasons Jesse liked him.

  Pablo used to train a famous Brazilian fighter. Although Pablo was from Florida originally, he had moved to Brazil for five years to train Matheus Rocha. Rocha was a middleweight Brazilian champ consistently over the last few years. Rocha eventually decided to take on a different coach, which brought Pablo back to the States. His experience with Rocha ultimately advanced his career to one of the top MMA coaches in the United States. Brazil was a highly successful country in the world of MMA fighting, and acquiring the skill-set that Pablo had teaching one of the most powerful Brazilian fighters of the recent past was a coup.

  “Yeah, I know what I’m up against. I have him in size, but he can get me with his floor skills if I let him,” Jesse said.<
br />
  “That’s why I have added a vigorous jiu-jitsu routine to your schedule three days a week now.”

  Jesse groaned but knew it was for the best. He loved the challenge and had to stay diligent because he had a fight in a just over a month. His opponent, Damon Velasquez, was a fighter from California. Jesse had worked with him when they were much younger. Damon had come to Minnesota for a year when they were both 17. He’d been a good fighter then, and Jesse was sure that his skills had only grown. They’d been watching endless tapes of Damon’s recent fights since they’d learned he was Jesse’s next opponent. Jesse wanted to beat him to a pulp. For a brief time, they’d been friends, but that all changed when Jesse had lost badly to Damon two years ago. He’d been waiting for his shot at vengeance, and now he was about to have it.

  Jesse’s brow creased with concern as he wondered if Damon would bring his sister, Janelle. Janelle had been one of the random hook-ups in his past that he’d like to forget. She was as relentless as her brother in a female form. After their hook-up, which Jesse went into believing that it was casual, he learned quickly that Janelle didn’t mean what she said. He wasn’t sure if she was crazy or just had a thing for him. When he thought of Janelle, he knew she was suspiciously close to being certifiably crazy. After they’d slept together, she’d done everything short of boiling a rabbit on his stove to convince him they had to be together. It took Jesse a while to get her away from him. He did not want his focus diverted from his true opponent, Damon Velasquez.

  After his long jiu-jitsu training session that afternoon, he showered and tried to let the stress of the day go. There’d be plenty of time for more training and more stress tomorrow.