by Carrie Elks
“I’m not sure I’ve been called a damsel before.” The corners of her lips twitched. “Should I be offended?”
He took another sip of beer and leaned his chin on a hand, his elbow propped up on the bar. He looked at her for a long moment, the intensity of his stare drawing her in, then slowly shook his head. “No, you shouldn’t be offended at all.” His voice was like honey on a hot day, so sweet and low she could almost taste it. She opened her mouth to respond, but the words didn’t come. Just an almost-breath, which escaped her lips with a sigh.
The snow was starting to fall harder, and the regulars were thinning fast. A cold wind blew in from the door as people left, white flakes flurrying and dancing in the halo of the outside lamp. Rachel started to worry whether Murphy was going to get home safely. Addison was a ten-mile drive across winding roads that filled fast with snow. The thought of him trying to navigate them in the dark with a stomach full of beer made her chest hitch.
His eyes had followed her all evening, his features defined by a curious expression. Every now and then their glances would meet—green on brown—and his face would register the same level of interest as before. It was like a battle was being waged in the murky depths of his eyes, and for a moment she wondered if he was married. Her avoidance of all personal questions meant she had no idea if he was in a relationship.
She glanced at Murphy’s left hand again. There was no ring, no light skin or depression where one used to be. Not that those indicators were foolproof—there were lots of men who never wore wedding rings, after all—but life had taught her to read people. Everything about this guy was screaming single, a dark, interested stranger with secrets he didn’t want to share.
That didn’t worry her—not one little bit. She had secrets too, and she was damned certain she wasn’t going to share them with him. She preferred to think about the way her thighs warmed whenever he caught her gaze, her body aching for his touch. For the first time in forever, she wanted to be with somebody. His constant stare told her maybe he felt the same.
When the clock hanging over the bar area hit midnight, Richie started to corral his boys outside, having a vested interest in making sure they all turned up for work the next morning. Murphy stayed seated, his scrutiny making Rachel feel light-headed and nervous. She worked around him, putting chairs on the tables and grabbing the broom from the closet.
“I think the lady is all ready to close up.” Richie walked over to the bar, brushing his hands down the front of his checked shirt. “It’s starting to snow, so if you gotta drive anywhere, I suggest you go now.”
Murphy kept his eyes dead on Rachel. His intense gaze made her heart stammer. He didn’t need to change his expression for her to know he was asking a question.
She was the first to articulate what they both seemed to be thinking. “It’s a long drive to Addison. I’ve got a couch if you want to stay.”
Murphy stared for a long minute, the silence punctuated by the rush of blood through her head. He licked his lips, opening them slowly to answer her. “Sure, that would be good.”
He wanted to stay. She didn’t know what she was offering, but the thought of being alone with him—if only for one night—was enough to make her feel giddy and hot.
A slow, easy grin formed on Murphy’s rugged face, the corners of his lips crinkling as the muscles grew tight. He stared right at her, a promise behind his eyes. Anticipation licked at her belly like a hungry cat.
“I guess I’ll see you around. Be careful, okay?” Richie pulled on his cap and gave her a pointed stare. She nodded back, her expression sincere. Careful should have been her middle name.
Okay, so she was taking a gamble, but the odds were good. Murphy had been around for a week, enough for her to weigh him up and work him out. She wasn’t expecting a relationship; it was the last thing on her mind, and she knew his business wouldn’t keep him here long. She liked the way he seemed a little sweet on her, and she felt a little sweet on him too, enough to put aside her fears and see where things went. Watching the door close behind Richie, knowing the last of the customers had left, she wondered if she was doing the right thing.
Ignoring the insistent knock of her heart as it pounded against her torso, she took a long breath, pulling the air deep into her lungs.
How much of a risk was one night with a new friend?
Chapter Three
The slow rumble of a distant engine told her Richie had reached the main road, leaving her alone with Murphy in the bar. She walked over to the main door and slid the deadbolts through their channels, hearing them clank as they eased into the locks. As she switched off the neon “Open” sign, she realized how isolated the bar was, nestled off the Lower Hillbrook Road, a good two miles out of town.
Her spine itched with the need to shiver as she wondered if she’d done the right thing. She reminded herself she’d only offered him a couch, something any Good Samaritan would do. She needed to stop thinking herself crazy.
She needed to pick up the empty glasses and clean the tables before she could call it a night, and she got to work. As she walked over to the middle of the room, it was hard not to feel Murphy following her every move. Her insecurities rose to the surface, making her wonder if her butt was jiggling too much and if her hips were a bit too wide. She’d put on a little weight since she’d moved to Hillbrook—a combination of lack of exercise and less than ideal nutrition making her jeans half a size too tight. If she’d known a tall, handsome stranger was coming to town, maybe she’d have eased off the cookie jar or refused an extra helping of Marianne’s apple pie. As it was, he was staring at her in all her 130-pound glory.
When she looked up at Murphy, catching his appraising gaze, she realized the extra inch didn’t matter at all. There was something about the way he stared which made the heat pool in her belly, warming and teasing her from the inside out. Being alone with him was enough to make her skin prickle.
“You want another beer?” She leaned over a table in the middle of the bar, picking up the last of the glasses the boys had left. One of the tumblers stuck to the wood, spilled beer acting like glue on its base. She pulled hard, hearing the crackle as the glass gave way and broke from the wood of the table.
Then her world came crashing down.
“No thanks, Lucy.” He spat the words out like they were a bitter pill, enough to chill her from head to toe. He didn’t sound like the Murphy she’d gotten to know, the soft-voiced guy who cleared the parking lot of snow and listened to her stories with a smile. This Murphy—the one with the edge in his voice and her old name on his tongue—was a stranger. One who scared her shitless. And he knew who she was?
Her feet were glued to the sticky wooden floor, her pulse racing. Hearing her real name was enough to remind her of long, dark nights spent in agony, her face pushed down into dirty tiles, hands bound behind her back. It made her remember pain and misery and a life not worth living, things she had buried for so long she thought they’d disappeared. As they rose to the surface, they brought with them the fear and terror she’d tried to suppress. They wrapped around her heart and squeezed it tight.
Survival instinct kicked in, along with a shot of adrenaline. Rachel turned around, quirking her trembling lips into a pale imitation of a smile. Her fingers shook, causing the tumblers in her hand to tap against each other, the light tinkling of glass cutting through the silence like a jagged knife. She sauntered back to the bar with a nonchalance she prayed would fool him. Her only option was to deny everything, make him think he’d got the wrong girl. She needed to act out the role of her life.
As she walked toward him, each footstep seemed to take forever, and fear exploded in her chest. Murphy watched her intently, his expression guarded, his head quirked to one side as if he was analyzing each action. The way his stare burned into her skin felt like an invasion, making her want to pull up the barriers, rebuild the wall she’d let him demolish. Nausea gripped her stomach when she forced herself to look at him.
; “Who’s Lucy?” She reminded herself not to flinch. She didn’t want him to see her react. Because he knew her name, her real name; the one she’d tried to bury back in Boston. Hearing it again for the first time in more than a year dragged her back to a past she was too petrified to remember. She thought she’d left it all behind, that she’d shrugged off her old persona like a snake slithers out of its old skin, leaving it on the ground like a relic of the past.
She should have known her escape was only temporary. She thought she’d been clever, choosing a town where nobody ever came, picking an area that technology hardly touched. She was a fool for thinking she could escape from a man whose obsession bordered on pathological. That’s if she’d been thinking at all. She didn’t even need to ask Murphy why he was there. She knew why—she knew who had sent him. What she didn’t know was whether she would make it out alive.
She sucked in some air between her gritted teeth and placed the dirty glasses on the countertop. She was still playing the part, trying to keep him guessing; she wouldn’t let him see her break down.
The edge of Murphy’s jaw twitched, and his earlier, soft gaze seemed ominous. He was a six-foot-three, dirty-blond devil, and it wasn’t her body he was after. It was her soul. It was enough to make her heart slam against her ribcage.
“I think you know who Lucy is.” Murphy’s tone was even and low. “Lucy Eversleigh, formerly of Beacon Hill, Boston, disappeared fourteen months ago, without a trace.”
She felt sick at the certainty of his words. It meant he knew, he really knew, who she was.
Her shaking fingers ached to feel the cool metal of her gun. She started to work through her options, trying to think the situation through, but panic kept clouding her thoughts. She reached out her hand to steady herself on the wooden counter. Murphy knew enough about her to be sure who she was, that much was clear. To keep denying it was futile; she needed to start planning how to get out of this situation instead.
“Did he send you?” she asked. Measured breaths kept her heartbeat even enough for her to seem unperturbed on the outside. On the inside, she was a mess of fear and horror.
“If by ‘he’ you mean your husband, then yes.” Damned if Murphy’s face didn’t look eager and satisfied, like a hunter who loved the thrill of the chase. There was an air of danger behind his words that chilled her to the bone. Rachel hid her hands behind her back, still not willing to let him see the way they trembled.
Maybe she was too proud to let him know how he’d affected her. Somewhere, buried deep beneath the fear, there was anger too. Not quite fury—that was too strong—but she was more than annoyed she’d let this handsome stranger pull the wool over her eyes. Angry at herself, at him. At David, too.
She’d thought better of herself than that, and she’d thought better of Murphy, too. Had she really got him so wrong?
Then terror overwhelmed her again as she remembered crawling on all fours out of the house she shared with her husband, her flesh bruised and battered. Every cell in her body screamed at the thought of ever going back there. Lucy Eversleigh was dead and gone, a persona Rachel had buried before she’d even left the city limits.
She didn’t want to think about those days, to remember the furious look in her husband’s eyes as he dragged a knife down her skin, or the way he used to press it against her until she started to bleed. She closed her eyes, trying to erase the memory of blood on the kitchen table, of wire cutting into her flesh until her body was webbed with scars.
Christ, she needed to focus, to pull herself out of her memories and back to the here and now. That’s where the real danger was.
“What are you going to do to me?” She kept her voice even and low, trying to disguise her alarm. It was the hardest question of all to ask—mostly because there was no answer she wanted to hear. She was still rational enough to know a guy like Murphy didn’t come all the way down from Boston to West Virginia to pass on a message.
Not unless the message involved pain. Intense, agonizing pain. The sort of message David was best at.
Murphy raised an eyebrow. “I’m going to do what I’m being paid to do. I’m going to take you back to Boston and give you to your husband. He wants his money back.” She didn’t want to look at him. The silver-white scar on his face, the one she’d wanted to run her lips along, didn’t seem so attractive anymore. It was a sign he was used to violence, used to pain. Maybe he even thrived on it.
“What money?” She shook her head. When she’d crawled out of David’s house, she hadn’t a dime to her name. She couldn’t work out what Murphy was talking about.
He laughed, short and hard. “You’re getting good at this. I almost believe your act. Your husband wants the two hundred thousand you stole.”
She felt as if she’d been slapped in the face. It wasn’t enough that David had found her and sent somebody to do his dirty work for him. He’d lied too, enough to make Murphy stare at her like she was little more than a week-old piece of shit clinging to the bottom of his shoe. It made her feel guilty, even though she’d done nothing wrong.
She couldn’t work out why this bothered her so much.
“I didn’t steal anything.” Tears stung her eyes. “He lied to you.”
Of course, it sounded like something David would do. Make himself look like the wronged party, the one who had been sinned against. She wondered if that was the story he’d told their friends when she disappeared without a trace. Given the circumstances in front of her, though, did she even care?
“You can stop lying now. There’s no point.” Murphy said the words like they were his final verdict. The sense of despair that washed over her felt like acid on her skin. “Let’s do this thing… take you home. You give him back the money, and I get my cut.”
Rachel shook her head slowly. She couldn’t let him take her back.
“He’ll kill me—don’t you understand?” She wanted to punch the words into his skull. “I was nearly dead when I left.”
Murphy kept his eyes fixed to her. “I’m not paid to think about what he’ll do. My work is done when I hand you over.”
Though he sounded strong, there was the tiniest hint of softness in his expression, a questioning behind his eyes. She wondered if he was wavering, even just a little bit. It was something to cling to—the only thing. God knew she needed something. It sickened her when she thought of returning to Boston, to the torture chamber disguised as a house on Beacon Hill. It made the blood freeze in her veins like a river in winter. It had taken everything she had to find enough courage to leave, and the thought of returning made her want to scream. She wanted to beat her hands against the wall until her knuckles were raw.
She promised herself one thing. The only way she’d be going back to Boston would be in a body bag. If Rachel had to choose between dying and going back to her husband, then she chose death.
Every time.
“When do we leave?” She held her back straight as a rod and looked him in the eye; she’d make the bastard work for his money. The thought almost made her laugh—there was no goddamned money. David had promised him a cut of a bounty which didn’t exist. She wasn’t sure who the biggest fool was: herself for getting caught, or Murphy for believing a word David said.
“In a minute. I don’t want to give you enough time to plan an escape.” His smile was anything but friendly. It was sour and contrived, reminding her of the way David used to look at her.
She started clutching at straws. “You’ve been drinking. Are you able to drive?”
“You’re worrying about my driving?” He let out a short laugh. “Oh, baby, we’re going to have so much fun.”
The inanity of her own words hit her, making her want to laugh along with him. Hell, she even believed him about the fun bit. She’d spent the whole week flirting with this guy, and until ten minutes ago she’d been considering fucking his brains out. Knowing he wanted to take her back to David didn’t eliminate the frisson of attraction between them.
“You want
to use the restroom before we leave?” Murphy offered, finally standing up. He towered above her. His hard, muscled frame made her feel petite and exposed. She could see the strong muscles of his chest defined against his tight t-shirt and the ripples where his flat stomach lead down to lean hips. There was something about him that still made her breath stutter, even if she wanted to smack that handsome face of his until her words sunk in.
Violence wasn’t the answer here. She was never going to overpower him.
“Yes, please.” A moment alone to think things through was too good to turn down. Even if it was crammed inside a leaky stall. The words “beggars can’t be choosers” never seemed so apt.
Murphy grabbed her arm, his fingers digging into the soft flesh surrounding her bicep. Pulling her across the bar to the public restroom, he kicked open the door with the toe of his boot. “You know I’m gonna watch, right?”
Rachel rearranged her features, trying to hide her embarrassment. “Can I at least have a little privacy?” When his body didn’t move an inch, she added, “I’m on my period.”
She was lying, but she needed time. Enough to sit on the lid and think things through clearly and work out what her next move should be. The thought of his dark eyes staring at her as she did her business made her cheeks burn with discomfiture. She really didn’t want him watching.
“I’ve seen it all before, sweetheart, so go ahead and do your thing.” She almost expected him to wink.
“Fuck you.” The words escaped her mouth before she could swallow them down, sounding strange to her ears. She knew she needed to control her anger, but it felt so much better than fear.
“Maybe later.” He scanned her body with amused eyes. “For now I’ll settle for watching you go.”