by Miley Maine
“This isn’t how your vacation was supposed to go,” she said.
“No. It’s not. But it wasn’t how your first wedding gig was supposed to go either.”
Once we were on the road, I pulled my phone out, grateful that it still had some battery left. Just like that goon had implied, I had four missed calls, all from the same number.
Shit. That was my buddy calling me back. I hit the button that would dial his number.
“Jackson. I’ve been trying to get in touch with you.”
I glanced over at Loren, who was now asleep. Good. She needed the rest. “Yeah. Thanks. Give me the intel.”
“The guy you called about is neck-deep in debt. Debt from gambling at horse races, debt from mortgage that he never should have qualified for, and debt from a business deal that went south.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah. So he grew up filthy rich, and now he’s not. He’s wasted all his money. His parents have cut him off.”
That must have been why they weren’t at the wedding. “What about the wife? Did anything come up?” I asked.
“Yeah. That’s where it gets interesting. The wife, Marie, is filthy rich. But it’s all tied up in trusts. She works as a preschool teacher three days a week, but she receives a stipend, and all of her expenses are pre-paid. So she may look rich on paper, because she has three houses, a boat and two luxury cars, but in reality it’s all tied up in assets. Assets she’s not allowed to sell.”
“So if the husband needs money, he’s shit out of luck.”
“Exactly.”
It was all starting to come together. Douglas had run himself into the ground with debt. Someone, probably someone violent who was in the mob, wanted their money back, and they wanted it now. Douglas was a dumb shit, so he went looking to marry a rich woman. The only problem was that the rich woman’s money wasn’t really hers. It was her family’s and she didn’t have jack shit to give him.
And then he’d come up with the plan to kidnap Loren, and try to get a ransom from her high-profile family.
“Thanks man. I appreciate it.” We got off the phone, and I called my supervisor and told him I’d run into some problems. He got on a secure line, and I told him the whole story, including the parts about Douglas and Marie, and my theory that Douglas was behind the kidnapping.
He didn’t disagree. He did however curse me out for several minutes before telling me he’d get started on handling the fallout from the five guys I’d shot.
Now what was I going to tell Loren? She’d reacted badly enough when I said Douglas was an asshole. And yes, she’d apologized, but she probably overreacted in the first place because she was sensitive as hell about the whole independence versus dependence thing.
But for right now, maybe she didn’t need to know. And yes, I knew that would piss her off. And maybe it should. But I’d just killed five guys on the trip that was supposed to fix my nightmares, and I was fucking terrified that if I told Loren the truth, that she’d go off half-cocked and try to fix it by calling her cousin and warning her. She might have defended Douglas, but the moment she found out he was using her cousin, and trying to take advantage of her wealth… Well. I knew Loren well enough to know that she would go nuts and go to great lengths to defend her cousin.
And I hadn’t made it through tonight to just have this shit start all over again.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Loren
I woke up with my face pressed against the window of a Jeep that Jackson was driving. But not the first Jeep I’d ridden in with him. No, this was the Jeep of one of the men who’d attacked Jackson and tried to kill him.
I still hadn’t really processed what had happened. I knew the fog would lift eventually, and I’d be a complete mess over what happened. I mean, I was supposed to be taking photographs of a wedding. Not watching men get their heads blown off.
But I was grateful to Jackson. Without him, I’d be alone in the woods, assuming I would have gotten away from those men, or I’d still be locked up in that place.
“Who was that on the phone?” I’d been semi-aware of Jackson talking on the phone, but I couldn’t follow most of it because I’d fallen asleep on and off.
“My boss and a former Army buddy.”
“Did they say anything important?” I asked.
“No.”
“Jackson. Please. This affects me too. I heard you asking for the details of what happened. I was kidnapped too. I was the one that was going to be used for ransom.” I put my hand on his leg. “I have the right to know.”
“You may have a right to know, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.”
“What? How can you say that?”
“Because sometimes certain information just makes everything harder.”
“Jackson. I need you to tell me what you know,” I said.
“I’m not going to talk about it right now. I talked to someone who’s an expert, and you’re just going to have to accept that.”
I crossed my arms. “I don’t have to accept anything.”
“You do, because I’m done talking about it.”
How could one person be so infuriating? “I don’t want any more decisions made for me. I am an adult, and I just demonstrated that. I got drugged, kidnapped, and then I fucking escaped. I escaped, just like you taught me. But that’s not good enough for you, right?”
“Of course it’s good enough. I'm proud of you, and impressed.”
“But not enough to tell me the truth.”
He didn’t answer.
“People in a relationship need more than a command. They need a discussion.”
“Loren.” He glanced over at me, then put his eyes back on the road. “We’re not in a relationship. This is fake.”
Crushed would be too light of a word to describe how I felt in that moment. Lower than dirt. My heart, already a little battered, broke into pieces.
I didn’t have a reply for that. There was no snappy retort that would patch up that wound. As my throat burned with shame, and my stomach clenched up tight, I realized that I was in love with Jackson.
Great. I was in love with a hot, sexy asshole, who was controlling and domineering, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.
The rest of the ride to Jackon’s cabin was silent. I had no idea what to say, or what to do. I was on my way to this man’s dream getaway, and I would have rather been anywhere else in the world.
I was certain he felt the same way. He’d wanted to come to Alaska for some peace and quiet, and I wanted to strike out on my own, establish my independence and start a business.
Neither of us was doing so well with our goals, but we were both alive, which was just about the only positive thing I could currently find.
Well and the cabin. As we pulled up, dawn was breaking, and I had to admit that the cabin was a definite positive. It was made from real wooden logs, and it had a wrap-around front porch. It was set about a hundred feet from a stream, and a gravel path led right to the cabin’s doorstep.
Alpine trees framed the lake, and little yellow flowers lined the path. I wished for my camera. I rubbed my face. I didn’t even know where my camera was. One of the first kidnappers had mentioned it, but I hadn’t had the time to look for it. Maybe someone would get it back to me one day. At this point I was sure it would be bagged as evidence.
Once again I didn’t have any luggage, or any belongings, not even a toothbrush, but Jackson managed one, still in plastic, as well as some old t-shirts I could wear as pajamas that night.
“Let me take care of your wrists,” Jackson said, holding up the first aid kit.
I lifted my arms. I had forgotten about my wrists. I sat at the kitchen table and let him rinse them off with a distilled bottle of water.
His wrists were barely scratched. “How’d you keep yours from getting bloody?”
“Years of practice,” he said.
He washed the deep scrapes with peroxide and then wrapped a gauze bandage aroun
d each one. Having his hands on me for something so intimate, especially after our conversation in the car, really sucked.
I was in love with him, and that was a fact. It was good that I was honest with myself about it. Half of me wanted to never speak to him again. The other half wanted to pull him in his bedroom and rip off all his clothes.
It was one thing to sleep with a guy when you were having fun. It was another thing altogether to sleep with a guy when you were in love with him — and he didn’t love you back.
Even though the magic was over between me and Jackson, the cabin was so picturesque that I was determined to enjoy it as much as possible. I walked the path near the lake, I skipped stones in the water, and I even took one of his kayaks out for a quick spin. All of that only took a few hours.
Exhausted, both physically and mentally, I finally broke the silence. “I know it’s morning, but I’m ready to go to bed.”
“The cabin only has one bedroom,” Jackson said. “But I’d feel better if you slept on the couch where I can see you, in case you have a reaction to the drugs.”
“It’s been hours. Probably at least twelve hours. I’ll be fine.”
“I don’t know what they used, but it was strong. It knocked me out cold too, and I’ve got a pretty high tolerance for a lot of stuff.”
“Fine,” I said.
Jackson didn’t comment, but gathered up a pillow and some blankets for me. I took them without saying thank you.
Once I’d settled on the couch, he came to sit in front of me. “Listen. This is very important. If anyone shows up here, do not let them inside. Do not open the door. Even if it’s one of your family members,” he said.
Why did he think my family would show up? I knew better than to ask. “Okay,” I said, and I turned over and went to sleep.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Jackson
I’d really screwed up with Loren. It would be easy to blame my attitude on the stress we’d both faced recently, but the truth was that sometimes I just thought I knew the best.
And sometimes I did know best, which only reinforced my belief.
I didn’t come up with that assessment on my own -- my teammates had told me that I was controlling more than a few times, with varying degrees of anger. So this was nothing new for me. But it was the first time that I really wanted to change that, for any reason other than practicality.
If my team was mad because I was too controlling, then I needed to adjust so we were operating at maximum efficiency. I really didn’t care about consoling them or coddling them.
But with Loren, I wanted to make her life easier, and happier. And so far I’d done neither.
I had saved her life, but I could tell that I’d really done something that crossed the line on the way to the cabin. Was it the fake relationship comment? I wasn’t sure why that was so offensive. It was her idea.
And I really wasn’t up for asking. I just wanted things to go back to the way they were.
I wanted a relationship with Loren. I didn’t want it to be fake. But I had no fucking clue how to get there. It probably wasn’t even possible. She was just starting out in life, and I was in the middle of my very disruptive and dangerous career.
When Loren woke up, her black mood had dissipated, and the sunny smile I’d come to enjoy was back.
She bounced up off the couch and went to brush her teeth. When she was done in the bathroom, she held her hand out. “Truce?” she asked.
I shook her hand. “Truce.” I really wanted to survey the property, and see how best to fortify it or defend it, if it came to that. I’d disabled both our phones so they couldn't be tracked, but rich people have resources, and I’d never underestimate how much their money could accomplish when they wanted something. I wasn’t sure that Douglas had much money to throw around, but in the case of a missing cousin, would Marie be willing to donate to the cause?
I had no idea. I wasn’t sure if her family even knew she’d been kidnapped. The kidnappers had told her they wanted money, but they’d clearly had a boss, someone pulling the strings that neither of us ever saw.
I thought that puppet-master was Douglas, and I thought he might be coming after us.
He was desperate, and a desperate person was a scary person. Loren might be mad at me, but I was going to keep her safe as well as I could.
“You want to ride the four-wheeler with me?” I asked her.
“Sure.” Because she’d been kidnapped wearing a nice dress, but now she put on a pair of my shorts and tied them up, along with one of my t-shirts. She looked adorable.
I got the four-wheeler started and she hopped on, right behind me. Her bare legs were pressed right up against my jeans. And her breasts were pressed right up against my back.
I concentrated on navigating over the uneven land. We stopped and repaired fence posts, and picked up fallen branches, and I kept an eye out for anything suspicious.
After we’d checked every inch of the fence, we waded through the lake, and then we went to the patch of ground my grandfather called his wild garden, where he’d grown onions and miner’s lettuce and because they didn’t take any work to maintain, they kept coming back year after year.
We gathered as much lettuce as we could carry and took it back to the cabin to make a salad.
Even though we weren’t acting on it, there was still so much chemistry between us. I had to force myself not to do things like lace our fingers together, pull her close to me and kiss her, and grab her around the waist and spin her.
Even without our relationship, which was a lot more real to me than fake, it was the most fun I’d ever had with someone doing something so mundane.
But then it ended.
We didn’t have any warning. There was no crunch of tires on gravel, or the sound of the gate banging back into place.
There was just Loren’s cousin Marie, walking out of the woods, sobbing.
Loren ran to the door. Her hand was already on the lock by the time I grabbed her upper arm. “What did I tell you about letting anyone in or going outside?” I asked.
“Not to do it. And Jackson, I get that. But I can’t leave my cousin out there crying. That’s cruel.”
Goddamnit. I should have told her the truth in the car. Then she’d understand why I didn’t want her to go out there.
I had continually fucked this up over and over. I’d been promoted in the military because I made quick decisive decisions, and my men followed them. For eighteen years I’d followed the patterns that I learned in Ranger training that taught me how to assess a situation and make a decision.
It had finally become crystal clear to me that kind of method would never work in a relationship, even a pretend one. Not even when a relationship encountered a problem that seemed more like a battle problem than a romantic one.
I couldn’t fix the past, but I could try to make Loren understand now.
I let go of her arm and stepped back. “Listen, there’s something I need to tell you. You were right yesterday in the Jeep. I should have told you then.”
Loren nodded and stepped away from the door. “Go on.” She opened a cabinet and pulled out a glass.
Relaxing my stance, I moved away from the door so I didn’t look like I didn’t trust her. If she tried to get to the door, I could still block her from here. “Your cousin is here because of her husband.” I held up my hand as her mouth opened. “Keep an open mind. I have reason to believe that Douglas was the reason --”
I never got to finish that sentence, because Loren didn’t intend to get a glass of water. She bolted and ran, going straight out the back door of the cabin. I tried to grab her. I jumped forward, arms outstretched, but I missed her by about two inches. My body hit the floor, and I scrambled up.
Thanks to me, Loren was rushing into something she didn’t fully understand.
I ran after her but it was too late. By the time I got to the front of the cabin, Marie was in Loren’s arms. She was gasping for air and crying hysterically
. I patted my pockets, but I didn’t have my gun. Shit. I’d left it lying on the bedroom dresser.
This was no survival mission. I was really fucking this up. I’d somehow made us sitting ducks, and I wasn’t even keeping my weapon with me. Was I still addled from the drugs they’d shot me up with, or was being in love with the person I was supposed to protect messing with my judgment?
I scanned the treeline, but didn’t see anything. Getting my gun was a priority, but I didn’t want to leave Loren alone with Marie. She could have a syringe in her pocket for all I knew, and she could attempt to inject Loren.
If she really had come here for help, I wasn’t letting her in the cabin without a weapons check and a pat down to make sure she wasn’t concealing a knife, gun, or some kind of tracking device.
“Tell me what’s wrong,” Loren said to her as soon as some of the wailing had abated. “Did something happen to Douglas?” she asked.
“He’s a liar!” Maire said in a hoarse whisper. “Everything he said was a lie. He doesn’t have any money. He doesn't even own his car. The bank repossessed it. He’s been living on his family’s name and reputation, but they’d disowned him now, and he’s got nothing.”
“Oh Marie, I’m sorry,” Loren said, hugging her again. Marie sniffled and wiped her face with her arm. “I caught him going through my bank records last week. I should have known.”
“Good job, wife. A perfect performance,” a loud male voice called out.
My blood chilled in my veins as I looked up to see Douglas standing at the edge of my property, holding a long-range rifle.
“It wasn’t a performance, you loser!” Marie shouted at him. “I hate you. When I get done with you, you're going to prison!”
He walked forward, with the gun aimed right at Loren. “Right. Your daddy’s going to catch me and send me away,” he sneered at Marie. “I have news for you. By the time your slow-witted father figures out what’s happened, I’ll be in Belize.”