She smiled at him with actual pleasure, and his heart did that funny little pinging thing again, seeming to slide sideways in his chest as he threw his leg over the bike. She looked exactly perfect standing there, her boots, jeans, and jacket easy on her body, her hair expertly tied back in the long leather thong. When she slid onto the bike behind him, she felt perfect as well, and there was nothing but open road ahead of them.
Jake turned out onto the side road, the lure of the highway tempting him more than it had in recent memory. He picked up speed, and Anna held on tight. Something seemed to snap inside him, a need flaring to life even as he pulled onto the highway, Anna’s head tucked securely against his back. She just felt so right. So good. So perfect on the back of his bike. She felt like she belonged there, not lost to a world of work that would do nothing but pull her away from him. He didn’t want to let her go.
He wouldn’t let her go, either. Couldn’t. Not now … not yet.
Without giving himself too much time to think about it, he opened up the throttle and leaned into the highway, shooting right past the exit to the Charleston airport.
Chapter 20
Anna couldn’t say when she became aware that they had been on the road longer than it reasonably should have taken to get to the airport. She lifted up her head and peered into traffic, surprised to see them on I-95. She hadn’t really looked at a map, so it was possible that the time was just passing differently, and—
Then she saw a sign for Richmond, Virginia.
She frowned, considering her options. Jake had to feel her shift on the back of the bike, but they hadn’t worked out a real communication process, and there was that helmet all around her face. How in the world was she going to ask him where they were going? What if she was having a stroke or a brain aneurism, and just lost track of time? Seriously, riding on the back of a motorcycle wasn’t exactly conducive to having a solid conversation.
“Jake!” she tried to scream, but the wind took the words from her mouth. In front of her, Jake leaned a little forward and she gasped, grabbing on to him with both hands and holding on for dear life. He wasn’t speeding, but he was certainly going the speed limit, and that was scary enough. Anna closed her eyes tight for what seemed like an eternity, just feeling the wind rush over her body. Where was he going? What was he doing? How was this even happening to her? She peeled her eyes open again eventually, watching the world fly by. She didn’t want to risk bothering him, poking or prodding him, but was he really doing what she thought he was doing?
Was he kidnapping her?
And … did she actually kind of like that idea?
At that moment, she saw Jake flick his wrist over one of the controls, and he shifted from the middle lane into the far right lane. Anna squinted into the wind and saw a food and services sign shoot by, and sure enough, Jake angled off at the next exit, where there was a knot of restaurants and gas stations clustered around the access road. He rolled the bike into the parking lot by a diner and cruised to a stop, tilting it immediately to allow her to rest her right leg on the ground. Anna paused for a moment, not at all sure she would be able to get off the bike, and Jake pulled his helmet off, half-turning around. “You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah. Wait.” Anna half-fell off the bike and stumbled a little to the side, surprised at how wobbly her legs were. Surely they hadn’t been on the road that long. She pulled off her own helmet and blinked, feeling like her face was covered in a thin layer of grime. “Where are we? What happened to the airport?”
“Well, about that,” Jake said. He set his helmet on his seat, and pulled out his phone. “Hang on a second, I need to make this call.”
“What?” Anna watched, her eyes widening as Jake connected with somebody named Willie and apologized for stealing his bike. Willie didn’t seem to have an issue with it, but she was having a hard time stringing thoughts together in her head.
“You actually kidnapped me?” she asked, when Jake hung up. “Really and truly?”
Jake grinned at her. “Yup.” He nodded to the restaurant, something with Roadhouse in its name. “You want something to eat? We can hang out here for a while.”
“But … but …” Anna blinked at him. “Our flights!”
“If we really rock it hard—and I mean hard, not a lot of fun for you on your first long ride—we can spend the night near Philly, I figure. Better to spend two nights on the road, though.” He glanced her way. “No way we’ll get all the way to Boston tonight, either way. And you’ve got your Japan call.”
“Oh God, the Japan call!” Anna stared at him, the implications finally beginning to filter through her brain. She would have to make the call from some hotel room, instead of her room at home with all of her files and paperwork. Of course, she wasn’t really accomplishing much other than placating Todd’s ego—Todd! Another thread of panic shot through her. “They’re expecting me back in the office tomorrow,” she said, her eyes rounding as a sick dread settled in her stomach. “That’s Monday, Jake, not Tuesday afternoon sometime. I’ll never make it back in time.”
“You got meetings stacked up?” Jake asked, watching her closely. “You can’t take sick leave or whatever?”
“I’m not sick.” She shook her head. “Meetings aren’t the problem. I mean, they are the problem, but that’s not a big deal. It’s just—there’s work to be done. I’m still new on this assignment. We’ve got this big project and there’s a mountain of paperwork to get through. I thought—but I can’t. This is not cool, Jake. They’re expecting me—”
“Todd’s expecting you, you mean.” Jake shrugged, but his words were clipped. “And you do everything he says, don’t you? So that’s the real problem.”
Anna frowned at him, anger rushing to the fore. “Since when did you become the douche bag?”
“Ah, ah, ah.” Jake’s grin was wolfish. “A potty mouth is not part of your corporate brand, remember?”
“But you can’t just—” Anna glanced around, realizing she was drawing stares. “You can’t just kidnap me, Jake,” she finished more quietly. “I have responsibilities. I have a job. And I haven’t been on that job for so long that they’ll look kindly on me randomly not showing up for two whole days—or being so crippled when I do that I can’t even walk.”
“Jesus, Anna, will you listen to yourself?” Now it was Jake’s turn to show a little frustration. “We’re talking two days. Two days in the middle of the summer, when I bet you haven’t taken time off for yourself in, what, the entire first year that you’ve worked there? Have you taken any vacation at all?”
“I’ve been on assignment!”
“Well, you’re on assignment now.” Jake jabbed a thumb at the door. “We’re going in there and getting some coffee. You’re going to stretch your legs. We’re staying tonight in Richmond, and if you want to catch a flight tomorrow morning, then you can. You’ll be in Boston before noon, and can carry on doing whatever it is you do that’s so goddamned important that you can’t even take a detour for a single day.”
“Jake!” Anna said.
“I’ll be inside. Walk off a little of the road before you come in. You’re going to need breaks every couple of hours, and you’re going to want to use them.”
And with that he stalked off.
Anna stared at his retreating back, overrun with emotions. How dare he! And how dare he insinuate that she was somehow to blame here! She wasn’t the one who decided to go off on a motorcycle junket when there was a perfectly good airplane waiting for them. She wasn’t the one who kidnapped someone else for … for—
Anna frowned. Why had he kidnapped her? That actually made no sense at all. Jake probably hadn’t expected to spend more nights away from Boston, and even if he didn’t have any schedule to follow, he would have to make arrangements to get his friend’s bike back to him. For all of his freewheeling ways, she didn’t think he generally took off with women without asking them first. So, why had he done it? And why with her?
She pulled
her phone out of her jacket, dutifully turning away from the bike to stretch her legs. Jake was right. They’d been on the road maybe an hour, and she was already a little wobbly. How messed up would her legs be after a full day? And what would it be like spending another night with Jake, like some sort of wandering spirit, rolling along the highways as if she didn’t have a care in the world?
Only she did have a care in the world. The call tonight could be handled. Todd didn’t need to know where she was. But tomorrow, tomorrow …
Anna keyed in Lacey’s number, but the phone just went straight to voice mail. Frowning, she glanced down, then realized it was Sunday. Lacey was probably on a flight right now, or already in London with the band. She wasn’t there to talk Anna down from this, but still, someone needed to know where she was, what she was doing. She keyed in a new number, and Erin picked up after the second ring.
“Anna!” Erin said, sounding a little dazed. “I didn’t expect to hear from you until later today! Is everything okay with your flight?”
“Are you okay?” Anna asked, not yet ready to explain. “You sound completely out of it.”
“Oh! Sorry.” Erin laughed. “I had my music blaring, trying to get these paintings moved along for the gallery. Working there is great, but it might be nice if I actually had some of my own work to show, you know? And with you gone, Lacey gone, and Dani finally out of here for the day, I thought I should probably get on it.”
“How’s it going?” Anna gripped the phone harder, turning to walk back to the bike. Jake apparently had no concern about anyone dismantling their saddlebags or rifling through them, but her laptop was in there. And yes, the bags were locked, but she still felt like they were oddly exposed on the motorcycle. Unsafe.
“Eh, it’s going. Dani took up half my morning demanding to see everything I was working on, then yelling at me for not selling it on eBay. She means well, but everything has a price tag to her.”
“Well, if Dani is telling you your stuff could go for a lot, listen to her,” Anna said. If Dani thought Erin’s work could fetch real money, she was probably right. Their streetwise housemate had a particular knack for identifying things of value. It was probably everything Dani could do not to take Erin’s paintings herself and smuggle them into a gallery, just to prove her point. “This is your dream, Erin, and you’re really good at what you do. It matters.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Erin said, and Anna could almost see her friend shaking her head, waving off Anna’s compliments self-consciously. “But I suspect you didn’t call me to ask about my workload. What’s up? Is everything going well with your trip?”
“About that.” Anna bit her lip. She didn’t know Erin that well, but Erin knew Jake. Or at least, Erin knew Jake’s family. And the two of them had talked, at least a little. “Things have gotten a little confusing. Jake and I decided to road-trip up the coast a bit, but I should be back tomorrow, I think. Or, worst case, Tuesday.”
“Really! How fun!” Erin said, and Anna winced. This wasn’t fun. This was … upsetting. Disconcerting. Potentially career damaging. But not fun. “Are you guys just coming up I-95 then? Did you rent a car?”
“Something like that,” Anna said. “But I was wondering, how well did you know Jake’s grandmother? I mean, have I just consigned myself to sixty-seven Happy Meal stops with a guy from a family of deranged killers?”
“Ha! Hardly,” Erin said. Anna could hear her moving around her studio, dropping paintbrushes into jars and propping canvases against walls. Erin’s studio on the top floor of their brownstone was the stuff of legends. Untidy to the point of needing an intervention, it was strewn with half-finished canvases and discarded sketch paper, paint-stained rags and half-empty tubes of paint. Over all of it hung the permanent smell of linseed oil and turpentine, which lingered despite Erin’s attic fan and the tall, wide windows, which were almost always open to the elements when she was painting. But just as Anna was beginning to think Erin had forgotten her, she started speaking again. “Jake’s grandmother has lived in that brownstone her whole life, I think. Or at least she had, up until she moved to her daughter’s late last year. It was just supposed to be for an extended holiday, I think, but once the kids realized how wonderful it was to have her to themselves, and of course with all of those great-grandchildren, they all ganged up on her and convinced her to stay permanently. She held on to the brownstone, of course, I think still planning to come back to it, but the months passed, and the place began to look a little abandoned. That’s when Jake showed up.”
“I remember,” Anna said, and she did. Jake had blasted into their quiet Boston street on his motorcycle right after New Year’s, and the house had been lit up for a full night and day as he cleaned out the garage first. Anna’d thought he’d maintain his same frenetic pace, but no, he’d merely needed a place to store his bike. After that, the pace of his work had slowed considerably, as bikes began to show up at odd hours of the day and night. And then she’d caught him noticing her one day as she’d walked past his garage and, well …
“I’d met him before, when he was younger, you know,” Erin was now saying. “I must have been, what, five? All of the kids would come up to Grandma’s—the place was crawling with them. They were very loud, funny, a good time. Jake looked just like he does now, only not as hot, of course. I mean, he’d get into fights, I remember, but he always had good reasons, you know?”
“Good reasons like what?”
“Oh, you name it. When you’re a kid, there’s always someone bigger and meaner than you. Jake was always up in some neighborhood boy’s face, telling him to leave the little kids alone, as if he wasn’t one of the little kids himself. He took everything on as his personal cause, and he never even thought about the danger of putting himself into the line of fire. Used to drive his gran crazy.”
“Sounds like he hasn’t changed much, then,” Anna said, ending the words almost on a sigh as she realized she’d dawdled long enough. “Well, I’ll check in tomorrow and let you know where I am. I may be home as soon as tomorrow morning, but if so, I will only swing by the house long enough to get changed.”
“Eh, take your time,” Erin said. “You have to live life in color, you know?”
Anna paused just a beat. “Erin, sometimes I worry about you. You’re just a little weird.”
“And you’re just a little too much of a workaholic,” Erin said, laughing. “I figure that makes us even.”
Anna hung up and stowed her phone, then turned toward the restaurant. The Virginia Roadhouse looked about as tired as she felt, but Jake was in there, waiting for her to come in and … what? Chew his head off? Throw a fit?
As her steps took her closer and closer to him, Anna began to get an entirely different idea.
Chapter 21
Jake watched Anna enter the restaurant and stop to talk to the hostess. She hit the restroom first, giving him a few more minutes’ reprieve. At least she was still here. She’d been outside so long that he’d wondered if she’d hitched a ride with a trucker. Not that he would have blamed her, necessarily.
What had he been thinking?
He’d asked himself the question too many times to count already. Having her on the back of his bike as they’d sped through the open countryside had felt so right. Even after she’d become aware that they weren’t heading to the airport anymore. Even after she’d figured out he was pretty much abducting her. When she’d gotten off the bike, her expression had slid between horror and outrage and outright fear so many times he’d lost count. None of those looks had sat well on her face, and even now his gut twisted, remembering it. Had he lost his mind?
He certainly hadn’t been making his decisions based on any sort of logic. He’d just wanted to keep ahold of Anna a little longer.
And now he had her all right, only she was completely freaked out. He was bracing for the meltdown of the century. He didn’t even have the right to get mad at her if that happened. Because what was done, was done. So now he needed to pull his
shit together and come up with an excuse as to why he’d carried her off. Should he keep up the act that it was just to give her the perfect weekend? Tell her the truth about what he was feeling? And how in fuck’s name would he come up with the words to explain that?
He was out of his depth, here. Royally screwed.
He watched as Anna emerged from the restaurant bathroom, her jacket now over her arm, her soft pink T-shirt and jeans and boots fitting her body just right. She was the prettiest girl in the room, even with her hair a little wild and her face a little windburned. She didn’t notice the men turning to take a second look, but he did. And it didn’t do his mood any good, for the record.
“Oh, thank you,” Anna said for no reason he could figure out as she slid into the booth opposite him. Then she fell on the glass of water he’d ordered for her and took a long drink. When she set it down, her smile was sweet and determined.
Wait. Sweet and determined? Jake blinked, suddenly off kilter. “Um … how’re you feeling?” he asked. “That’s probably the longest you’ve been on a bike.”
“I’m a little sore,” she said. “But I guess that’s something I should be prepared for, yes? How far do you usually ride in a day when you’re traveling?”
Jake shrugged, glad for the conversational gambit. Anything to put off the inevitable. “Four or five hundred miles a day is usually my target, unless I’m in a hurry. That’s just enough to feel like you’re riding, versus visiting, but not so hard that you have no desire to do anything but fall into bed at night.”
“And four hundred or so, that will get us to Richmond?”
He eyed her cautiously. “It will.”
“Good,” she said. The waitress arrived, and they put in their orders. Anna, to his surprise, ordered a cheeseburger and fries right along with him. “What?” she asked when he lifted his brows. “It’s a long ride ahead, and I don’t know when you’re going to stop again.”
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