Bright lights seared through my eyelids. A vehicle stopped and waited with a low rumbling. A door opened. Footsteps. A man cursing. Even as far gone as I was, I knew he was really pissed, and some tiny, human part of me wished I could smack him and say that in this situation, he wasn’t the one with the real problem, but I also wanted to promise him that I would take excellent care of his cows.
Arms wrapped around behind my shoulders and slipped under my bent knees, and I knew that it was ok to let go.
~~~
I opened my eyes into complete darkness and realized that I was on a soft bed. Warm. I blinked slowly, exaggeratedly, and slowly raised my arm in front of my face. And saw nothing.
I didn’t panic, not yet, but struggled to remember what had happened. Unfortunately, I remembered too much… losing control of the car in the most pathetic, least out-of-control way possible… walking for what seemed like forever but probably hadn’t been, panicking and thinking I was being smothered by the night.
With a deep breath, I squeezed my eyes closed and pressed my fingertips to my face. My hands were encased in a bulky, scratchy fabric. I wasn’t quite sure if I could feel my fingers or if they were just tightly wrapped.
Impotent sobs rose in my throat, and I turned on my side, unfamiliar sheets brushing against my bare skin. I thrust my mittened hands under the covers and realized I was naked. My body jerked into fetal position, and as my feet pulled up, I realized that they were wrapped as well, but the rest of me was naked under the covers. I was ashamed that someone had needed to tend to me like I was an infant, but the darkness was eating at the frayed edges of my nerves. “Hello?” I called out, my voice weak. I tried again. “Please turn on the light! Can you hear me?”
Footsteps hurried up a flight of stairs. A door opened, and light came on. I suspected it was dim, but it burned after the total darkness, and I covered my eyes with the crook of my arm.
“Sorry.” The man’s voice was barely a grunt. “How do you feel?”
I latched onto his voice like a drowning woman. “Where am I?” My lips hurt, and when I licked them, they were chapped and jagged.
“You’re safe. In my home.” He said this last bit with a measure of reluctance. “Do you know what happened to you?” When I didn’t answer, he continued, “You had an accident. I found you collapsed in the road.”
“I remember,” I whispered, turning away from the voice, my eyes still closed as if opening them would mean committing to this new reality of almost having died because of my stupidity. I knew I should face my mysterious savior, thank him for saving my life, but instead I found myself sobbing. I was ashamed that I’d needed rescue, relieved that someone had come along, and I was supremely disappointed in myself for having risked so much… ultimately for nothing.
“Gonna bring you some soup,” he said, and even in those five words I could hear his discomfort. His footsteps receded, and I cried even harder, all the while furious that I couldn’t get a grip already. Because I was alive, and what was the point of that if I was just going to cry like a baby?
Eventually, after a few false finishes and some shuddering gulps, the tears subsided for good. I rubbed my face dry on the pillow, and slowly opened my eyes, adjusting to the light.
I found myself in a rather nice bedroom: large bed, beautiful, solid furniture, original landscape paintings hanging on the walls. Everything had a slightly rustic flare. This was someone’s home, but I doubted my mystery benefactor was a farmer. Judging from the quality of the sheets against my skin, I guessed that I’d been rescued by one of the entrepreneurs who maintained vacation homes in the mountains. He probably decided to head up early to ski, get ahead of the powder chasers, and instead of spending his evening listening to jazz and drinking overpriced wine while anticipating a full day on the slopes, he’d gotten stuck playing rescuer.
A wave of guilt crashed through me, but I fought it back firmly as I heard his footfalls on the stairs. The least I could do was not embarrass him with another round of tears.
I dragged myself up to sitting and arranged the sheets to protect my modesty, then plastered what I hoped was a pleasantly grateful expression on my face.
My hero backed into the room, shoving the door open, and carrying food. I stared at him in shock. This wasn’t some middle-aged, paunchy optometrist on vacation. As he turned, his head was tilted down and his eyes were lowered as he focused his attention on the tray bearing a bowl of soup that spilled with every step, two thick slices of bread, and a mug of tea. I noticed his hands, large and strong. Capable hands that had saved my life. Inappropriately and unexpectedly, I wanted to feel them on me, chasing my worries away with slow and certain caresses.
He wore a tan flannel shirt—lumberjack style—but the shiny white snap buttons suggested that the shirt had been purchased in an expensive store. Dark-wash blue jeans molded to his solid legs. Boots, rugged but clean, like he only wore them inside. I was sure they’d also come out of an expensive store.
I raised my eyes back to his face and met shockingly electric blue-green eyes framed in sooty lashes.
The air sucked out of the room. The effect of his eyes was as disorienting as when I’d seen him in the store… more, even, because back then I didn’t have a clue who he was. Not to mention that I’d been dressed.
Blood pounded in my ears as I fumbled the sheets up even higher to disguise my sudden trembling. If he knew who I was…
“Are you cold?” His—Corbin’s—brow creased.
I shook my head, but he set the tray atop a dresser, went to another long, low dresser on the other side of the room and returned with another fluffy blanket. He covered me carefully, avoiding looking at my body even though I was already hidden. “Hope that’s better.”
My brain raced to make sense of my being here. It had to be a coincidence. Actually, it had to be. There wasn’t a criminal alive who would lift a finger to save a bounty hunter. Therefore he had no idea who I was.
“That better?” he asked in a sexy rumble. God, his eyes. They were the most amazing I’d ever seen. If they were contacts, I couldn’t discern the edges of the lenses. I knew his eyes were blue—it said so on the Most Wanted list. That list. Thank goodness I’d shoved it in the glovebox, because if my rescuer—wanted man and my would-be bounty—found it in my pocket, I’d likely be covered in snow somewhere.
He brought the tray over and placed it on my lap. I didn’t move. If I lowered my arms, the covers would slip down, and even though he’d clearly already seen me naked, at least I hadn’t had to see him see me.
I stared at him, stupidly hoping I was wrong, that this man wasn’t Lagos at all. “What’s your name?” My voice was hoarse. Even if he was Lagos, he surely used a pseudonym.
He stared at me evenly. “Corbin.”
I stopped breathing a moment, then started again with a choked cough.
“You probably caused some minor irritation to your throat,” he said easily as he sat on the edge of the bed. There was nothing menacing in his actions, but I wanted to run out of there, away from him. The only thing that kept me immobile was the certainty that as far as he knew, I was just some unlucky motorist. I doubted he recognized me from earlier. After all, I had been staring, but he’d only looked at me for the merest fraction of a second.
He dipped a spoon into the soup and raised it to my lips. It was some kind of minestrone, and heavens, it smelled good, all warm tomatoes and peppery. My stomach clenched painfully at the aroma and growled audibly. But I shook my head.
He raised a dark eyebrow. “You will eat,” he said simply. His tone left no room for argument, but I didn’t respond to pushy people, and I hated being told what to do by anyone, especially the man who I’d come to arrest but who now held me in his goddamn debt, so I clamped my jaw shut.
He drifted in close, smelling of spicy aftershave and healthy male, and I held my breath. A fire lit deep inside me. Great. I’d clearly sustained brain damage because some sick part of me wanted him to kiss me, to
peel away the sheets and prove to me that I was still alive and that everything was ok.
But instead he ladled up a spoonful of broth and sipped it. “Yum,” he said. “If I’d known it was this good, I wouldn’t have bothered trying to feed it to you.” He winked, then took another bite.
I watched, my hunger turning ravenous.
“This is delicious,” he said.
“I’m not a child.” I wasn’t able to imbue it with the condescension that the situation called for. In fact, I sounded exactly like a child. A petulant, spoiled one.
“You don’t have to tell me that.” One corner of Corbin’s mouth twitched, and I knew with absolute certainty that he was thinking about my naked body. I felt my face go red.
I opened my mouth to tell him to go screw himself, but he spoke first. “A child doesn’t need to be coerced into eating after fifteen hours.” Corbin slurped another spoonful.
“Fifteen hours?” I whispered.
“Almost ran you over fifteen hours ago. You’re lucky I wasn’t looking at my phone or fiddling with the music.” He carefully set the bowl of soup on the table next to the bed, picked up the tray and stood. “I’ll get your clothes.”
“You didn’t need to undress me, Corbin,” I spat.
“I did.” He gave me a funny look, not unlike the one the waitress had given me earlier. One that said you’re used to being ignored by men, girl. “Your clothes were soaked and needed washing, and there isn’t anyone else around for miles.” He left and returned a moment later, tossed my clothes at the bed. They landed on my knees, though I barely felt it through the layers of blankets. “You’re welcome,” he said, and went out, closing the door firmly behind him.
After a moment, I whispered, “Thank you.” Because even if the man was a wanted criminal, he’d done at least one good thing. By which I meant bringing me somewhere warm. The washing my clothes didn’t count because for all I knew, he’d filmed me naked and uploaded it.
Because Corbin was a bad man, and bad men did bad things. Sure as eggs is eggs. I concentrated, trying to ascertain if he’d done anything untoward while I was passed out. No, it seemed he’d been a gentleman. He was wanted for “various crimes,” and now I wished I knew exactly what that meant. In the store, he’d mentioned agents and had threatened to get that woman’s boyfriend sent to jail. Organized crime, maybe. Or embezzling from rich people and threatening to snitch on his co-thieves? You could kill a poor person and warrant only a small bounty, but steal from a rich person, or a corporation, and the world would turn inside out to find you. Lady Justice would weep blood.
He spoke well and sounded educated. He wasn’t a gang member, and I didn’t see him holding up a bank and shooting innocent people. But maybe I was way off base. I resolved to buy a smart phone in the near future, cost be damned.
I managed to secure the bowl between my encumbered hands and raise it to my mouth. The soup was even more delicious than it smelled, and I drank it down, not caring that it burned my tongue. When the bowl was empty, I buried my face in it and lapped up every last drop, then wiped the bridge of my nose dry, regretting that he hadn’t left the bread and tea.
My hunger was far more than fifteen hours’ worth; my body had probably burned an insane amount of calories keeping warm the night before.
The bandages on my hands were secure, the ends knotted. Impossible to pull them loose. I turned my attention to getting dressed. By skipping my bra, I managed to reunite with my shirt, and my panties—technically underwear in the grandmotherly, I can’t believe someone saw them, sense of the word—by wiggling into them and using the bed as a point of contact, but the jeans were another problem entirely. They were too tight… especially after a tumble in the dryer. No matter what I tried, I couldn’t get them up over my thighs without either opposable thumbs or fingers to hook through the belt loops.
Frustrated, I sat heavily on the mattress. I had two options. I could walk around with a sheet around my waist. The only problem was that I needed to get away from the house as soon as possible, liberate my car from its snowy ditch, and make good use of my handcuffs. Corbin was still a wanted man, and I needed that bounty. His saving my life hadn’t changed the equation.
Because included on the side of the equation that was me, Audrey Stroop, was the nasty little fact that Corbin would have left me there if he’d known what I was. I wasn’t going to overlook that reality simply because I happened to possess more information than Corbin did.
The alternative to walking around in a sheet was to ask Corbin to help dress me. I was loath to do it for obvious reasons… and maybe some not-so-obvious reasons, like the fact that I was, for some horrible reason, extremely attracted to him. Probably misguided gratitude, a perverted horniness for my unlikely savior. The precursor to Stockholm Syndrome or something. Last thing I needed was him close to me, my hormones scrambling my brains.
I sat there a long time, unsure what to do. The soup gurgled in my stomach, and I wondered if he had poisoned me. No, of course not; he’d eaten some of it, too. Nope, I was just still hungry.
A knock on the door had me lunging for the covers. “Come in,” I said.
Corbin leaned in. “You’re dressed. Good. Please come downstairs.”
“Why?”
The look on his face said that he wished he’d never found me. “So I can examine you,” he said flatly.
Despite his tone, the words filled my brain with all sorts of porny, play-doctor images. I shook my head. “I’m thinking I should be on my way. I need to be looked at by a doctor, and my family’s probably worried.”
He uttered a sharp bark of a laugh and slouched against the doorway, his arms crossed over his chest. I couldn’t help but notice the smooth flexing of his muscles as he shifted position. “I would enjoy nothing more than handing you over to someone else, but you’re not going anywhere. The roads are impassible, and the snow hasn’t let up. Like it or not, you’re stuck with me.”
“Stuck?” We stared at each other. I could tell that Corbin wouldn’t be the first to look away, so I swallowed nervously and stared at the lumps of my knees under the covers. “Can’t you examine me up here?”
“The light is much better downstairs.”
“But I’m comfortable here. Anyway, you’re not a doctor, so no thanks to the exam.”
The expression on his face went from amused to angry, and I got a glimpse of the Corbin I’d spied on in the greeting card store. It wasn’t until that moment that I realized that I’d been thinking of him as a criminal in the abstract, like it was an academic exercise. Now the reality shone through. This man was dangerous.
He took a step toward me. “I’ll carry you, then,” he growled.
My eyes went wide. “You’ll do no such thing.”
He ripped away the blanket, so fast that I couldn’t stop him or even put up a good fight, not with my hands bandaged. He took one look at me in my granny panties and my jeans around my knees, and burst out laughing. His deep, hearty voice filled the room. “I’m sorry,” he said between laughs. “I should have realized…”
Before I had the chance to refuse his help, he was roughly pulling my pants over my hips. He pulled up my zipper and fastened the button. His movements were fast, workmanlike, and respectful. I was relieved, and maybe a little insulted that he seemed so thoroughly uninterested. But then, a man who looked like Corbin, with that tousled black hair and those hypnotic eyes, a man who clearly made a lot of money in his illegal enterprises, whatever they were, sure as hell didn’t sleep with women who looked like me.
But there was still another problem.
“I need to use your bathroom,” I said, my voice little more than a whisper. This was, without a doubt, the most humiliating experience of my life. If Corbin laughed again, I would have punched him with one of my stumpy hands.
He pressed his lips together—though with that amused twinkle in his eyes—and picked up my empty bowl. He tilted it. “Did you lick it clean?”
My face bur
ned.
“I would have brought you more,” he said gently. “This way.”
Standing made me momentarily lightheaded. Corbin’s hands wrapped around my shoulders. “I’m fine,” I said, and he stepped away. I followed him through the doorway into the most beautiful house I’d ever been in. We were on the second floor, and the hallway wrapped around a large open space. A gigantic skylight poured bright light into the center of the house. I immediately loved the blonde wood floor and the rustic reds that threaded through the rugs in the space below. The soothing color scheme was repeated in pillows on the enormous sofa, a wraparound affair that likely cost more than my entire year’s salary.
“Walking doesn’t hurt?” Corbin asked.
I shook my head. “My feet feel fine.”
“You were in much better shape than I would have guessed,” he said. “If I’d found you even ten minutes later, you might not have this happy ending.”
I inhaled sharply and fought back an unexpected wave of emotion at the memory of my ill-fated walk. I’d probably be having nightmares for months or even years to come.
Corbin cleared his throat. “Probably won’t have any lasting damage, but I won’t know until I take a look.”
The stairway was unlike anything I’d seen before. It comprised four steps down, then a landing and a turn, then more steps down, then a landing, then steps the rest of the way. I glanced up at the skylight. This house was the exact opposite of my cramped, lightless rat’s nest. Actually a muddy pit would have been an improvement on my apartment, especially if it didn’t have an ant problem in the summer.
Corbin stayed close, a steadying hand at the ready, as I descended the stairs, wobbly on my lumpily bandaged feet. “This way.” He led me to a large but warm kitchen. An assortment of first-aid supplies was spread out on the sturdy table.
“Sit there.” Corbin indicated a wooden chair. I sat and looked around. The kitchen was every bit as nice as the rest of the house, and the stovetop, ovens (three of them, two of them stacked) and other appliances were, by my guess, top-of-the-line. Apparently crime paid, and well. For a fleeting moment, I entertained the ridiculous fantasy that maybe Corbin would trade me the house in exchange for giving him a 24-hour head start. As a bounty hunter, I wasn’t bound by the same code of ethics as a police officer, but none of the lowlifes I’d tracked down had ever made an offer that was remotely tempting.
Trapped by a Dangerous Man Page 3