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  Stay Away From My Daughter COPYRIGHT © Lorhainne Eckhart, INC., 2019 All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Contact Information: [email protected]

  Stay Away From My Daughter

  The Friessens

  Lorhainne Eckhart

  Contents

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  The Friessen Family Series Reading order:

  The Friessen Family Tree

  Stay Away From My Daughter

  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

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  What’s coming next in The Friessens

  Other Works Available

  Chapter 1

  About the Author

  Links to Lorhainne Eckhart’s Booklist

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  The Friessen Family Series Reading order:

  Click here to download the complete Friessen Legacy Series checklist and series reading order

  * * *

  The Outsider Series

  The Forgotten Child (Brad and Emily)

  A Baby And A Wedding

  Fallen Hero (Andy, Jed, and Diana)

  The Search

  The Awakening (Andy and Laura)

  Secrets (Jed and Diana)

  Runaway (Andy and Laura)

  Overdue

  The Unexpected Storm (Neil and Candy)

  The Wedding (Neil and Candy)

  The Friessens: A New Beginning

  The Deadline (Andy and Laura)

  The Price to Love (Neil and Candy)

  A Different Kind of Love (Brad and Emily)

  A Vow of Love, A Friessen Family Christmas

  The Friessens

  The Reunion

  The Bloodline (Andy & Laura)

  The Promise (Diana & Jed)

  The Business Plan (Neil & Candy)

  The Decision (Brad & Emily)

  First Love (Katy)

  Family First

  Leave the Light On

  In the Moment

  In the Family: A Friessen Family Christmas

  In the Silence

  In the Stars

  In the Charm

  Unexpected Consequences

  It Was Always You

  The First Time I Saw You

  Welcome to My Arms

  Welcome to Boston (A Paige & Morgan Short Story)

  I’ll Always Love You

  Ground Rules (A Friessen Family Short Story)

  A Reason to Breathe

  You Are My Everything

  Anything for You (A Cat & Xander Novella - link included with You Are My Everything)

  The Homecoming

  Stay Away From My Daughter

  The Bad Boy

  Want to know how all the series are linked? Stop by my blog for all the details: http://www.lorhainneeckhart.com/what-is-the-reading-order-of-your-books/

  The Friessen Family Tree

  Click here to download your copy of The Friessen Family Tree

  * * *

  Stay Away From My Daughter

  Her father says he’s no good for her, and she doesn’t want to believe that he might be right.

  Sara Friessen, the youngest daughter of Laura and Andy, believes she’ll never find the man who can make her soul sing, especially because after just one meeting with her father, every young man who has ever knocked on her door has come to the quick conclusion that she isn’t worth the trouble. Fearing the promised wrath (as Andy so aptly puts it) that could befall them if they mess with his daughter, they always run the other way.

  * * *

  That is until one night when a mysterious handsome stranger comes to her rescue. He’s bold and strong, just the kind of man she never expected could be real or that she would ever possibly meet—but she soon uncovers a hidden truth and the cold, ruthless side of the dark world he belongs to.

  * * *

  Even though he tells her to stay away from him and that no good can come from getting involved with the likes of him, Sara’s heart has different ideas, and she’s determined to show him that true love is all they could ever need.

  Chapter 1

  Her phone was ringing again, a ridiculous squawking rooster, a.k.a. the ringtone she’d assigned for her dad, and it echoed as she walked across the dimly lit parking lot of the college campus, which was half empty.

  Sara Friessen was tempted once again not to answer.

  She could do that. She had done that.

  What would she pretend when her dad asked her why she hadn’t answered her phone, which he paid for? Would she say she hadn’t heard it, or would she tell the truth, which was that she was feeling as though she were on a tight leash and didn’t want to have to face yet another inquisition?

  Yeah, the latter definitely wouldn’t go over well, considering how overprotective her dad was of his family. Scratch that—he was obsessively overprotective of his youngest daughter. His sons were a different story, a fact she’d pointed out to him was the pure definition of sexism. He’d told her to deal with it, because it was a man’s role to protect his daughter, his wife, his family, and if that meant he was sexist, well, then he happily would take the title.

  That was an argument she wasn’t going to win with her dad.

  She was pretty sure her dad had also put a tracking app on his phone so that he would know where she was every minute of the day. She wondered, truth be told, of the legality of that. It was a gray area of the law, considering she was his daughter, but her dad wouldn’t take kindly to having that pointed out to him.

  Her thumb hovered over the green and red buttons. Answer or decline? Andy Friessen was not a man she could keep blowing off, especially considering how late it was.

  “I’m seriously on my way home,” she answered and said, putting all the annoyance she could into her tone and letting out a frustrated sigh as she kept walking to her black pickup. Well, it was her dad’s older model, which he’d insisted she drive, a fully loaded crew cab with leather seats—and yet another way to control what she was doing. He’d bought a newer version, also black. She’d have preferred to pick up a practical starter car for a few hundred bucks, something that would be entirely hers, not handed to her by her father. Just once, she’d like to be able to manage everything about her own life.

  “Your father has called you twice, Sara,” her mother said. “You were supposed to be home already. It’s after ten.”

&n
bsp; She dug in her purse for the truck keys. It was looped over her shoulder with her laptop bag, and she could feel the tension that pulled across her shoulders as she felt the tightening of the leash around her neck. It was a joke between Sara and her mom, but at times like this, she swore she could feel the leather biting into her skin. It felt very real.

  “Would it do any good to say I lost track of time? Seriously, Mom, I’m eighteen and would really appreciate it if you and Dad would ease up. Maybe you could remind him, since I’m pretty sure he’s tracking me, that I’m capable of taking care of myself. I need some space. Stuff happens, and I’m going to get sidetracked when I’m studying. I thought you were going to talk to Dad about backing off. It’s getting really fricking embarrassing when I’m studying with my friends and my phone keeps ringing, and there’s Dad’s name on my screen. Even my friends are starting to wonder about this incessant need to set a ridiculously early curfew and continually check in…”

  “Are you done?” Her mom cut her off, and she could hear impatience and sternness, which she’d never heard in her mom’s tone before. “Sara, you said you would be home at nine, and it’s now eight after ten, to be exact. When you tell us you’ll be home at a certain time and you don’t show up, we worry, and then you don’t answer your phone, so what are we to think?”

  Something about the way her mom was talking let her know clearly that she’d gone too far and there was no talking her way out of this. She didn’t have to be standing in front of Laura Friessen to realize how mad she really was.

  “Where are you, exactly, right now?” Laura said. “Because you said you were going to meet friends to study and do homework at the coffeeshop. Let me remind you, Sara, if you lie to me, it will be the last thing you ever do, and even your father isn’t going to step in and save you from such a fate. You go on and on about wanting to have freedom to date, to make your own decisions and be treated like an adult, but being eighteen means only that you’re eighteen. You’re still very much my daughter, and you’re acting like a spoiled, inconsiderate brat. That makes you anything but a responsible adult, because responsible adults don’t cause unneeded worry to their parents. This just confirms that you can’t be trusted, and the short leash your father has you on is necessary, because you can’t even pick up the damn phone and call us to say you’re going to be late and tell us where you are. Then we wouldn’t be sitting here, worrying and thinking you’ve been in an accident and are lying half dead on the side of the road!”

  Holy shit! She’d never received this kind of scolding from her mom before, and she could feel the reprimand, realizing she should have picked up the phone instead of letting her friends goad her into not answering. The fact was that she’d been hanging out in the dorm party area on the comfy stained sofas, passing around a bottle of tequila, not doing homework in the coffeeshop. “Okay, I get it,” she said, about to hang up. “I’m on my way home. Ten minutes and I’ll be there.”

  “Twenty, Sara, because ten is what it takes if you’re speeding, which is exactly what you’re not going to do. And you didn’t answer me about where you were. You said you were at the coffeeshop, but to our surprise, when we phoned the coffeeshop because we were thinking the worst, you want to know what they said?”

  She pulled her phone away. “Fuck,” she said under her breath. Of course she should have known. She and her friends had walked in and then right out of the empty coffeehouse. Tonight, everyone was hanging in the dorm, drinking, partying, and doing what every normal college kid did—nothing her parents should ever know about.

  “I heard that, Sara,” Laura said. “You want to tell me where you were, or do you need those twenty minutes to come up with a story? Let me remind you we already know the truth.”

  Oh, shit! Maybe her dad was having her followed. She wouldn’t put it past him, and she felt the hair on the back of her neck spike. It was a creepy feeling, and she found herself looking around the basically deserted lot, with just a few other cars. She could hear the faint noise of someone’s music coming from the dorm she’d just left.

  “It’s not a big deal. We really did go into the coffeehouse but ended up in the dorm instead, where it was more comfortable on the sofas and less noisy.” She winced, wondering if her nose grew, because the music blasting in the dorm had been anything but quiet. “Okay, Mom, I’m at the truck.” She pressed the fob and heard the lock click. “Just unlocked it and am getting in, so I’ll be home in twenty. You don’t have to wait up…”

  “We’re waiting up, Sara,” her mom said, and then the line went dead. Her mom had hung up on her.

  She was seriously in deep shit. She stared at the phone, knowing her parents were likely going to give her an earful when she got home, and maybe it wasn’t her dad she needed to be worried about. Would they be able to smell the two shots of tequila she’d had? She stopped at the truck after opening the door and held her hand up to her mouth, taking a whiff. Yeah, maybe some gum would help.

  “Hey there, great party.”

  She glanced over her shoulder to the guy walking across the lot: light hair, blue jeans, and a green and white jersey.

  “Sure,” was all she said as she pulled open the back door of the truck and rested her computer bag on the seat. Then the guy was there in front of her as she tried to close the back door.

  “So this is your truck? Fancy,” he said with a smile. His wavy hair and face weren’t familiar, but she could see the interest for her in his expression.

  “Yeah, it is. Excuse me.” She stepped back, but he moved in front of her and was now standing between her and the open driver’s door.

  “So how about giving a guy a ride home? Maybe we can continue the party,” he said.

  She went to step around him, but he moved in front of her. He had about three, four inches on her in height and a solid build, too. She could smell the cigarette smoke on him.

  “Sorry, not interested. My dad would kill me. I don’t know you, and I’m kind of late, so no.”

  He didn’t move, so she stepped back, taking in the darkened parking lot and wondering who this guy was.

  “Well, that’s not how it seemed in there.” He gestured with his thumb to the dorm, which was still lit up, the party going strong. “I guess I’m confused. You were drinking with everyone, passing the bottle around, there for a good time. I noticed the looks.” His hand was on her arm, his grip strong.

  What the fuck? She pulled her arm away. “Hey, back off. I seriously think not. I was hanging with my friends, and if you think I was eyeing you up, you’re delusional. I don’t even remember seeing you. You’re dreaming, buddy.” She went to step around him again, but he took a step closer to her, right in her space, right in front of her. He was so quick, and she shrugged off his hand as it touched her shoulder again. He was so close she could smell the liquor, the lingering nicotine. That smell alone made her want to gag.

  “I know you were interested.” He leaned in, and it happened so fast, the hard kiss he pressed to her. She could taste the stink of beer, booze, a dirty ashtray, and she stepped back, pushed him hard with both her hands, pissed off.

  “What the hell is your problem?” she snapped. “Stop…”

  But he was in her face again so quick, and he grabbed her, his hand around her, pulling her against him. He was so damn strong, and she could feel the panic rising, the anger at the fact that he wouldn’t back off.

  “What the hell are you doing? Stop! Get your damn hands off me!” she yelled, and she fought against him as he held her tight.

  He slapped his hand over her mouth. “Shut up,” he hissed.

  She fought like a wildcat, kicking, clawing, and she somehow managed to get his hand from her mouth and screamed, but he grabbed her hard and slammed her to the pavement.

  It happened so fast. She could smell nicotine, his fingers pressed so hard over her mouth as she fought at the hand digging into her face, clawing with her fingers and kicking with the heels of her sneakers, using everything she had
.

  She bit on his hand hard, and he yelled. When he pulled his hand away, she screamed as loud as she could again, considering she was still struggling for breath. Then she felt the punch to her face and was slammed to the concrete again, hitting her jaw, scraping her cheek on the cement. The sting of the ground barely registered as she struggled with the weight of him on top of her. His hand was back around her mouth, and somehow he’d pinned one of her arms behind her back, the weight of his body pulling so hard that she thought he’d wrench her arm from its socket.

  She couldn’t pull her arm out, and he was working the button of her jeans, the zipper. She could feel the tug as he pushed her into the concrete, and she could hear him fumbling with his own belt, feeling his weight grinding her into the ground. She fought and squirmed and struggled to breathe, because now he was choking her, his hand squeezing her throat.

  This couldn’t be happening, but he was strong—brutally strong. He overpowered her, and his large hand squeezed so hard she couldn’t breathe, knowing that she was going to pass out. She couldn’t get air, and he was going to rape her, hurt her, maybe kill her. She was getting weaker, struggling for a breath and then another. She couldn’t pass out, not like this, but even though she fought, she couldn’t get his hand off her throat.