As it turned out, Alan had his own excitement which had made him late. I had already told him what had happened, and was waiting for him to tell me what had happened with him. After all, he had a black eye. Pretty sure that wasn't accidentally put there by any of his daughters or his son or AJ would have mentioned it in comedic fashion.

Currently, he was still steamed about my incident. "You could have been killed, Breanna... I mean Cassie."

"But I wasn't Uncle Alan. I was praying and ready to go if it was my last day to live. But I was rescued." My voice drifted off as I felt a smile on my face at the thought of Aster, then in an effort to calm and make Alan laugh, I reached across the table and poked his arm. "If you had taken me and AJ to the karate training you promised I could have defended myself." I gave him a smile that was as wide and goofy as I could make it.

His blue gray eyes softened, and a laugh escaped his lips. "Touch'e." He stood and hugged me tight. "I just didn't like the thoughts of losing you, Little Hollywood."

He was back in his seat now, visibly calmer. "So what happened to..." I let my voice trail off and pointed at his bruising eye.

Alan rolled his shoulders. "Yeah... it was... unexpected."

"We have time." I smiled. A waitress appeared with the bag of frozen peas that she had offered after everything had settled down, and she had spotted Alan's eye. "Thank you, ma'am."

She nodded in response, "Your food will be out shortly," then dashed away to another table. Sure enough, while Alan was stalling she came back with two plates full of food. "Enjoy. After the day you two have had the boss said this order was on the house." Without she was gone.

I took a sip of the sweet tea in front of me. "Go on, Alan."

Alan nodded, "On the way here, I was actually early, believe it or not. So I went for a walk and it was a God thing that I did. There was a woman being harnessed by this man..."