by Ella James
It had to be.
An enormous mahogany bed spread out against the jade green wall, its headboard an immense dragon so intricately carved it seemed alive. Rolling wood flames spewed from its long-tongued mouth, climbing toward a cloud of gleaming mahogany smoke that stretched almost to the ceiling. Each of the bed’s four posts was a smaller dragon; together they supported a red silk canopy that arched over the bed and draped down both sides, an elaborate net with bright yellow tassels.
Beside the bed, a stool. Beside the stool, a dresser with a golden ship on top, its sails twinkling with diamond water drops. On the other side of the bed, a narrow, frame-topped table. Margo stepped across the soft carpet and bent to inspect the pictures: dark-haired girl in a ballroom gown, a doll in her small hands; Cindy with an elderly Chinese woman (Margo’s great-grandmother?); a small house in a rural village, most likely in China; the last, a yellow Labrador Retriever. For the longest time, she stood there staring at Cindy and the older Chinese woman who seemed to have Margo’s mouth. Her teeth felt chattery, her hands weak and damp.
Spurring herself on with the thought of getting caught here, she walked to a glass-topped desk and opened the top drawer. Empty. As was the second. The third held journals, black and leather bound. Margo’s hands shook as she opened the first. Nothing. They were all blank. She strode to a floor-to-ceiling bookcase, but nearly all of the titles were in Chinese. Margo turned a circle and noticed a mosaic door she’d originally mistaken for a piece of art. She closed her hand around the lion-shaped knob and pulled.
Wowzers. Cindy’s closet was bigger than Margo’s old room, and stocked like Bloomingdale’s. There must have been fifty rows of shelves and dozens of clothes rods, plus an entire wall of shoes and accessories.
She scanned Cindy’s wardrobe. Lots of reds and golds and greens. Vibrant. Rich. She stepped inside, feet sinking into fluffy white carpet, and touched the nearest garment: a purple sequined ballroom gown with fringed sleeves. She took another step, grabbing hold of a lipstick-colored pantsuit. She pulled it out, studied the creases in the pants. The thing was ironed to perfection.
Margo squeezed the suit back onto its rack, ran her hands along the row. She paused at a section of skirts. There was something…different about the wall behind them. She pushed the clothes aside and found herself staring at a bookcase with wall-colored, almost-invisible pivots. For a second, she couldn’t breathe. Here it was, her chance to learn more about her mother. She dropped down to her knees and traced the edges, looking for a keyhole or a doorknob or…
She moved some books around, knocking a little wooden cube into her lap, and found a teensie keypad embedded in a shelf. Oh. She shouldn’t be doing this. She dropped her head into her hands.
Numbers…
She knew from her mystery books that the most common codes for safes and alarms were birthdays. She figured it was pointless to try it, but she punched her own in anyway. Not the code. Of course not. She racked her brain for any number she might have read in relation to her mom. She remembered Cindy’s birthday. The date Cindy’s parents and brother died—the date she had inherited their fortune. The date Cindy earned her doctorate from Stanford.
None of them opened the safe.
Sighing, Margo put her head in her hands, and that’s when a long, wide shadow fell into the doorway. She felt a pair of eyes on her, felt the awful heavy beating of her heart. Oh, God. This was it. The terrorists had her.
Margo jumped up in the karate stance. “Aaah!”
She rushed forward, jumping at…a housekeeper? The woman’s hands flew to her cheeks and she tripped over her own feet. Margo rushed to her side, but she was already scrambling up. With a quick, “Sorry,” Margo dashed toward the door.
“You wait!”
Against her will, her feet stopped moving.
“What you do? You theft?”
“Theft?” she murmured, then felt a laugh rise in her throat. “Why would I need to steal? I’m her daughter, you know.”
“I tell Jana.”
“I wasn’t doing anything wrong. I came here looking for…this.” Margo thrust out a wooden cube she’d forgotten to drop. “It’s a…puzzle.”
It looked like one, anyway—one of those fold-out deals you played like a Rubik’s Cube.
“I gave it to her,” Margo blurted, realizing a beat too late that everyone here must know she and Cindy had only just met.
The housekeeper nodded, her dark eyes never leaving Margo’s own.
“Never again, you come up here.” She held her right hand up, thumb and pointer finger coming together.
“Yeah—okay.”
“You visit here. Then go home. This,” she said, arm sweeping at the massive room, “not yours.”
*
When she reached the first floor, Margo didn’t feel particularly upset. She didn’t really feel anything. So when she pushed through the foyer door and found herself bolting through the slushy lawn, toward the hangar, she felt surprised. And good. Oh so good to be running away from here. Here where she didn’t belong. Here where no one wanted her.
She’d run track in Napa, and as she moved now, she felt her legs and feet slipping into position. Heel down, follow through, spring up, lunge forward, now push from the thighs, girls… She could hear her old coach’s coarse, alto cheers. She could see herself running alongside childhood friends, see them popping Starbursts into their mouths as they practiced on the hot, green track. Sugar high! She could hear their laughter, see her father on the bleachers in his khaki shorts and neat white polo. Her father had come to every meet. Every one. Even during campaign season.
That particular memory made her feel like she couldn’t get a good breath, and in the midst of her stupid little breakdown she remembered some lines from a scene in that old movie Forrest Gump.
Dear God, make me a bird, so I can fly far, far, far away from here.
Except what did she want to fly away from? Oooh, mommy didn’t love her. She heard a classmate’s whisper—Harriet Sampson, who attended Kerrigan on scholarship. I don’t know why she acts so put-out all the time. Maybe got her mommy’s money shoved too far up her flat little ass.
So that’s what she was thinking about as she plunged into the dripping pine grove: My ass isn’t flat. It’s not really little either.
Then a hand shot out and grabbed her upper arm, the shock of it stalling her momentum so she spun in place. Something hard and cold struck her temple.
“Aaaaaa!” It was a straight-up shriek. She flinched away and mimed a jumping bean, the way she usually did when a bug got too close for comfort. “Aaah!” She should be FLEEING!
Before she could, two hands grabbed her shoulders, squeezing tight enough to bruise. Her eyes adjusted, showing her a tall man holding a HUGE GUN. Margo shrieked, and her self-defense training kicked in.
If you kick him there, you better not miss…
She didn’t. She made her mark, and the man sank down to one knee, moaning so painfully she wanted to cheer. Instead, she turned to run. No, wait! She spun around, lunging for the machine gun—MACHINE GUN?!?—in the mud. She grabbed the heavy thing, hoisting it awkwardly and pointing it at…
LOGAN?
“Aaugh.” He cursed and curled his broad shoulders inward.
“Logan?” Logan was a terrorist? “What the hell?”
“Right back at ya…” He croaked.
She tottered back a step. “What the shit are you doing here!”
He had straightened a little, and he was holding his arm out in a stance that might be used to approach a skittish horse.
“I’m serious!” She backed up, pointing the gun at his chest, wondering frantically if she had the nerve to pull the trigger. Shit! She didn’t even have her finger on the trigger!
“I’m serious, too.” He looked and sounded surprisingly calm. “Why don’t you put that down and let me explain.”
“No way! I’m getting away!” She started walking backward, big, sloppy steps that had her trip
ping over roots and fallen branches.
As Logan advanced, she scuttled more quickly, so when she fell, she fell so fast she didn’t know she had until she heard a round of gunfire straight out of the movies. She tossed the gun, then wriggled in the mud like a spastic cat.
She got up running. Logan took her down a second later. She found him on top of her, his head framed by a black sky filled with ridiculously bright stars. He pressed her wrists into the mud and straddled her waist.
She shrieked again. “Stop it! Stop! Let me go!”
Logan shook her wrists. “I was holding Juan’s spot! He’s a guard!”
“A guard?”
“There are guards here, Margo. About two-dozen of them.” Logan moved off her, and Margo felt a sharp, quick ache inside her chest.
“There are?” She rubbed her pounding head, realizing that her hair was wet.
“There sure are.” The syllables were stretched like putty.
“You’re drawling,” she pointed out.
“You got me, city girl.”
She sat up, and Logan’s hand swung down to pull her to her feet.
There was a moment—just a fleeting second—where the two of them were standing face-to-face, just starting at each other. To her surprise, it felt…good. Then Logan dropped her hand. His face turned hard.
“You must be wanting trouble.” He turned away.
“What?” she breathed.
“Don’t leave the casa at night.”
She stood there, feeling electric and empty all at once.
8
The “gift” she’d taken from her Cindy’s closet was definitely a puzzle. The lines between pieces were well-disguised, but Margo was able to trace them with her fingernail. It was annoying how the pieces wouldn’t budge at all, no matter how she prodded it, but Margo was grateful for the stupid thing. It was a decent distraction.
She dropped the cube into her lap and took a bite out of her pimento cheese sandwich. Oscar had made it for her, but only on the condition that she try the peanut butter and banana fold-over that was still untouched on the other side of the plate. She’d taken it up to her room and noticed immediately that Logan had been there. The bathroom door was open, and… yes, he’d had a shower. He had not slept in the room the previous night, or the night before. And he had not been at breakfast the morning after their encounter, or the one after. But he had sneaked in at some point, so clearly he was avoiding her.
Margo polished off her sandwich and got up from the desk, formulating a plan as she crossed the room.
She shut the door, locking it this time, and wiggled into her skin-tight crimson breeches. She pulled a white tank-top over her head, then fixed her hair so it fell in loose curls down her back. She dabbed some gloss on her lips, smiled weakly at the mirror, and set off.
Although the hottest part of the day was over, it was still amazingly hot outside. The ground was steaming, the air so humid she was sweating as soon as she set off, trying to ignore the guards who followed her, watching covertly from the trees. Her heart was hammering by the time she came out of the woods—on the side of the forest opposite the runway—and spotted the big brown barn. It sat in the middle of a pasture, alone except for a few scraggly trees.
Margo followed the pebble path around a final cluster of pines, and all of a sudden there he was—Logan, spraying the barn with a hose. Seeing him again jolted her, like putting a 9-volt battery against her tongue. An uncomfortable flush swept her from head to toe, lingering longest in her cheeks.
His pale blue t-shirt clung to him like a second skin, so she could see every flicker of his heavy muscles. He was a big guy, with powerful thighs and a large, rangy frame, but compared to the bulk of his shoulders, his hips seemed slim.
Stupid girl. So what if he’s pretty?
She marched toward him like a warrior charging an enemy, every inch of her tight and ready to spring. One glance was all he was handing out, so she prepared to talk to the side of his head. She was almost surprised when he lowered his arm and turned to look at her, bored and expectant all at once.
“I’m here for a tour of the stables. You know, the one you promised.”
“Not now.” He squeezed the nozzle and water spurted, directed from her to the wall at the last second. “Martinez is in the south pasture, checking on the bulls. And I’m doing this.”
“Spraying the barn?”
“Come back this afternoon.”
“Look,” she said, sticking one hand on her hip. “All I need is for someone to show me where you keep the gear. I can do the rest on my own. Like I told you, I know how to ride.”
His blue eyes flicked over her. “All the same, you better wait for Martinez to get back.”
“Because you’re busy,” she said slowly.
“Because I think you need to get the tour from him.” He clenched the hose handle tighter after that, shifting his body and attention back to the barn.
Margo put her other hand on her hip. “You know what? You’re a prick.”
His eyes narrowed and he opened his mouth, but she shook her head. “You don’t have to like me, but we’re both stuck on this island, and let me tell you this: I don’t like rude Southerners any more than you like…me. And I’m not impressed that you’re smart and science-y, or that you stand around with guns and take care of horses.”
She turned and stalked around the barn, not caring where she was going. All she knew was that she had to get away. She had been wrong to think she could smooth the prickling feelings she had for him. She couldn’t make them taper off or disappear. Her desire sloshed and boiled and steamed inside her chest, bubbling like water on a stove. Her response to him was mortifying, made ten times worse because she didn’t seem to be able to do anything about it—and it was getting worse. Every time she saw him, it got worse.
She walked down a wide, stall-lined hall and pushed, without thinking, through a worn wood door. A massive Arabian stallion snorted at her. Spotting the tack room beyond some boards to her right, Margo let out a tight laugh. She stood on her tip-toes and stroked the horse’s muzzle.
*
Logan raised his arms above his head, spraying the side of the barn with no real focus. It didn’t matter if the damn thing was clean or not. He’d only grabbed the hose after Margo came out of the woods.
He had to be doing something when she came, because there was no way he was spending any time with her. Every shift of her weight in those ass-tight pants made him ache.
Stay Away.
And he would. He had to.
Dr. Zhu was investing in him. Grooming him. She paid his tuition, let him earn enough money to support his mom and sister, introduced him to the right people. He was one of several candidates competing for the same prize: leadership of her company’s first deep-space mission.
His life was about getting it. The shuttle wouldn’t launch for a decade at least, but the board at Equirria Enterprises wanted astronauts picked early.
He was a desirable candidate. An 18-year-old MIT junior with a weighted 4.0 GPA and honors in ROTC. He would finish his degree in astrophysics and microbiology in a year, then join the Air Force. They’d foot the bill for a medical degree. He’d finish in three years with a specialty in space medicine, and after spending time flying F-22s, he’d do a little test piloting. It was the old-school way of getting onto a space mission, but Logan thought it was important that he have real experience, in addition to the stuff on his curriculum vitae.
This—being here for the summer—was huge. He had an opportunity none of the other candidates had: to work in Cindy Zhu’s observatory. He did not—DID NOT—need to screw things up by getting too close to her daughter.
He pointed the hose up and sprayed. The breeze broke up the larger droplets, so what landed on Logan was a fine, cooling mist.
Still he remembered the way Margo’s eyes had flashed and her shoulders had trembled when she told him off. It made him feel restless, itchy.
He dropped the hos
e and scrubbed his hands through his damp hair. He couldn’t focus on a thing but her! The interest he’d never been able to give to any of his girlfriends burst the reservoir for her, and damn if he knew why.
He sighed. Maybe he did. The fact that she didn’t seem to have anybody… Logan could relate. And the resiliency, the attitude in the face of it. It felt trite to even think, but there was just something about her…
She was also hot, so that helped.
He turned around to see how far she’d gone, but he couldn’t spot her. He shaded his eyes with one hand, looking further, in the trees. He spotted a guard, but no Margo.