by Carrie Elks
She wasn’t sure she was ready for that.
There was a part of her that still wanted to make a run for it. Last night, she’d decided it wasn’t her first choice, but today, seeing him sleeping beside her, she began to second guess herself. It was hard to tell if she’d won him over, though God knew he’d managed to win her. She wanted to think he was going to look after her, and after everything that happened, he wasn’t going to give her up to David. The question was, did she trust him enough to believe in him? The sex had been amazing, and frightening, and completely destabilizing. She wasn’t sure she understood her own reactions. If she was sensible she would escape now, while he was asleep. She could grab some clothes and run, maybe to Buddy and Marianne’s or perhaps farther. Just hitch until she found herself somewhere new.
Somewhere David couldn’t find her.
She sighed heavily, the thought of leaving Murphy making her throat contract. She felt safe here, safer than she had for the past six years. If she had to leave the protection of this man, she needed to be pretty sure she was doing the right thing.
She had thought she was over it, that escaping from David was enough, but now the wound was gaping again. Her emotions were raw and made it hard for her to think. Her perceptions of Murphy were still wavering; one minute she saw him as her captor, the next as a protector.
Did she trust him enough to stay?
Did she trust herself enough not to run?
She’d made some bad decisions in her time. She had faith David would treat her like a gentleman, and that hadn’t turned out well. Last night, when she’d asked him to stay over, she’d trusted Murphy, right up to the moment he’d used her real name. Right up until he brought “Lucy” back to life.
So what was the right choice: stay or go?
Her decision was made before she had time to process her final thought. She knew she could make it out there alone if she was forced to. But this time, she didn’t have to do it on her own. The thought of having him help her was too good to ignore.
She reached out and shook his shoulder. “Murphy, wake up.”
He moaned in his sleep and rolled on to his side, his back to her. Rachel sat up, rolling to the other side of his body so she was facing him again.
“Hey, Murphy, wake up.” She slapped his cheek, gently at first, then harder until his eyelids flew open.
A furious expression pulled at his facial muscles. “What the—”
“It’s morning. We need to talk.”
“We talked last night.” He moaned and rolled onto his back, covering his eyes with his arm. “Let me sleep.”
“We fucked last night, and had a little chat. Now we need to talk.” She was firm, poking him in the cheek when he closed his eyes.
He groaned again, lifting his palms to his face, capturing her hand with his palm. She tried to withdraw but he tightened his grip. “Hey, are you busting my balls already?”
She clambered closer. “Next time it’s a jug of cold water. The day’s half gone already.”
“Shit.” Murphy dropped her hand and twisted his wrist to check his watch. He blinked a couple of times, as if he was trying to focus on the numbers. His eyes widened and he let out a sigh. “It’s six o’clock in the fucking morning. Practically dawn.”
“I get up this early every day.” Rachel replied. “Some of us have to work for a living.” She poked him again, this time in the stomach, and he pulled her hand up to his lips, pressing them against the inside of her wrist. She closed her eyes, feeling the gentle burn of his kiss against her tender flesh.
After a few moments, he sat up, the sleep leaving his face. Looking down at Rachel, a grin pulled at his lips. “Hey, you didn’t try to run.”
Rachel smiled back. “It’s only fun when you chase me.”
“You might regret saying that.”
“I hope so.” Had she made the right decision? It felt like she had. “What are your plans?”
A raise of his eyebrows. “They involve us getting the hell out of here.”
Rachel bit her lip. “I don’t want to leave. I like it here.” She was aware she sounded like a whining child, but she also knew they had to go.
“It’s not safe.” Murphy swung his legs from the bed and pulled his jeans on, standing up and jumping slightly to pull the waistband around his hips. “David knows where you are now.”
Rachel remained on the bed, watching the muscles in Murphy’s back flex against his skin as he bent down and picked up his t-shirt. She started to pick at the flesh around her nails, wondering where the hell she would end up this time.
“I don’t know where to go. I have no money, and I won’t have a job.” A bead of blood emerged from her finger. “Christ, I may as well go back to Boston. At least I’ll get a healthy divorce settlement.”
He whipped around, his face contorted in anger. “You want me to take you back?”
Rachel felt like she’d been slapped in the face, hot tears pooling in her eyes. Her nakedness bothered her suddenly, and she reached across and snatched the t-shirt out of Murphy’s hands and pulled it over her own head. She couldn’t trust him. She couldn’t trust anybody, least of all herself.
“Why wouldn’t you?” The tremors in her voice vibrated through the air. “You owe him money.” No matter how many times he told her she wasn’t going back, she still needed to hear it some more. She was like a dog biting at stitches, opening up old wounds, making them bleed.
He stared at her for a moment, his mouth slightly open as if he was going to continue shouting. Then he took a deep breath, running his fingers through his hair.
“I’m not taking you back there.” He sounded angry, like she’d really pissed him off.
“What do you think he’ll do to you? He’ll be fucking apoplectic if you don’t take me back.”
“You ask a lot of questions.” He tipped his head to the side and looked at her.
She bit her lip, wondering where this was going. “Well, I’m still waiting for the answers.”
“Maybe I don’t have them.”
She reached out to touch his arm. “I need to know I can trust you. Tell me why you’re not taking me back.”
Murphy stared at her, his torso taut with muscle, the belt on his jeans hanging loose. His chest rose and fell with rapid breaths. “I don’t work for wife-abusers.” The pain in his eyes made Rachel’s eyes sting.
“But your debt …”
“I’ll work it out.” He pulled his sweater on over his bare chest, allowing Rachel to keep his t-shirt. “Let’s get out of here, okay?”
“Where will we go?” Rachel glanced down at the carpet, her eyes following the brown patterned swirls that crossed the beige.
He ignored her question. “Go get your clothes on and pack a few things. Keep it light, and make it fast. I need to make a couple of calls.”
She watched him leave the room, hearing his feet thud against the stairs as he descended. He was a man in a hurry, ready to get the hell out of Dodge and back on the road to God knew where. Rachel crossed the room, stopping to look at herself in the mirror, somehow liking the pink-skinned woman who was staring back. She’d come so far in the past year and wondered if she was ready to leave this place and put her faith in somebody else.
For the first time, she thought maybe she was.
Getting down on her knees, she pulled a bag from under her bed and started to fill it with panties and bras, tops and jeans, and whatever cosmetics she could get her hands on. She was a little giddy, like a child on Christmas Eve.
She kept his t-shirt on, liking the way it smelled like him, and pulled on her jeans and sneakers. For some reason she felt the need to make the bed, pulling the wrinkled sheets taut across the mattress, smoothing the garish coverlet over the top. She knew by the time Buddy got here she’d be gone, and she didn’t want to cause him any extra work. It was the least she could do.
When she walked out of her bedroom, Rachel could hear Murphy talking into the phone.
“Yeah, I told you I had her. We got delayed by a snowstorm is all. It’s gonna take a day to drive back, so we’ll get there sometime early tomorrow.”
Her legs started to shake. Oh God, was he talking to David?
Then he looked up and caught her eye, winking at her.
“I don’t know. I’ve gagged her.” He was still answering questions. Rachel couldn’t help but feel sick at the thought of her husband on the other end of the line. Any connection between David and her, no matter how tenuous, was too much to contemplate.
“I’ll have to drag her over. I’ve tied her up good.” Murphy looked like he was enjoying this a little too much. He beckoned her over with his hand, and she reluctantly walked down the stairs. Each step felt like it was too far.
As soon as she was close, he reached out and pulled her against him. He put his hand over the mouthpiece, and leaned down to whisper in her ear. “You think you can talk to him?”
She shook her head rapidly, the fear clutching at her gut as she tried not to think about David. To hear his voice would make her want to scream. Murphy’s eyes softened as they caught her gaze, acknowledging her angst with a worried smile.
“She’s struggling a little too much. It won’t be long before you can tell her face to face. I need to get out of here, though—the town’s starting to wake up.”
Murphy pulled the receiver away from his ear as David shouted a tirade of abuse down the wire. Holding the phone as far away from Rachel as possible, he leaned down to kiss her, his lips soft at first, then firmer as his tongue pushing against hers. She dropped the bag, reached her arms up until they were locked around his neck, her nipples already hard at the sensation of his touch.
David was already forgotten.
“Yeah, I’ll call you from the road. Bye.” He didn’t even try to talk into the phone, just mumbled it against her lips, and then hung up before he turned to give her his full attention. His fingers tangled into her hair, and his tongue pushed into her mouth; Rachel found herself submitting to his insistence. The sensation of his hard cock against her stomach was making her want to beg.
“Jesus, you do it to me every time.” He thrust his hips against her. “Just when I think I can’t fuck anymore, I touch you and get hard.”
“Didn’t seem to work last week. I couldn’t tell if you liked me or not.”
“I was suffering a professional dilemma,” he protested. His hands moved down to brush against her nipples, making something flare between her legs. “I was there to work, yet all I wanted to do was bend you over the bar.”
“Now I’m disappointed we’ll never get to try that.”
“Doesn’t have to be this bar.” He lifted her up, making her wrap her legs around his hips. His cock was rubbing against her clit enough to drive her mad.
“But it could be …” She ran her lips from his mouth, down the line of stubble to his jaw. “You could fuck me so good here.”
“Sweetheart, I could fuck you so good anywhere. Next time, I plan to take a while. I’m not taking you over the bar for a quick knee trembler.”
He said there would be a next time; why did it make her heart stutter?
Maybe because she suspected there wouldn’t be another time. Not for them.
He placed her back on the floor and picked up her bag, and together they walked into the bar. Rachel flushed when she saw the torn up remnants of her sweater next to her hastily discarded jeans. Somehow, in the heat of last night, the bastard had managed to keep his own clothes on while hers were flung left and right. While she picked up the remains, Murphy searched through the trash can, his nose turning up when he fished out the discarded condom.
It made her want to gag.
She turned to look at him with a grimace, wondering why the hell he was taking the dirty thing out with him. Was he some kind of pervert?
“DNA,” he replied to her unasked question. “Just in case the police get involved.”
She stuffed her own dirty clothes in her bag. “Can we at least drop in and tell Buddy I’m going?” she pleaded. “He’ll be devastated if I up and leave.”
Murphy turned, and she hated the look of sympathy which covered his face. “Rachel… Lucy? Jesus, I don’t even know what to call you.” He took a deep breath. “If we stop and talk to Buddy and give him any information about where we’re going, then whoever David sends up here next is going to squeeze it out of him ... and when I say squeeze, I think you know I’m meaning something much worse.”
Tears stung at her eyes at the thought of Buddy getting hurt. He was nearly seventy years old, for fuck’s sake, and wouldn’t hurt a fly. When she was at her lowest, he was the one who offered her a roof over her head and some money to buy food. As much as it hurt her to leave without a word, it would hurt her more if she left Buddy exposed.
It was another reason to hate David Eversleigh.
“Hey, c’mere.” Murphy pulled her to him, letting her hot tears moisten his sweater. “You know, one day, when things are safe, you’ll come back and have a drink here. You can tell Buddy all about it then.”
Rachel nodded wordlessly, trying not to think that by the time she’d return, Bud would probably have died, and Marianne would have sold off the bar, or shut it up for good. That sort of reasoning would do her nothing but harm.
“Rachel, babe, we need to go now.” He tipped her head up with his finger and brushed away her tears. “Let’s get on the road and get some breakfast somewhere. Is there a diner somewhere on the road?”
“Depends whether you want to go east or west. It’s about a half hour if we’re going eastward.”
“Then that’s where we’ll go.”
“And after that?” She liked the sound of we way too much. She reminded herself he wasn’t her boyfriend. He was the man sent to kidnap her.
Murphy bent to pick up their bags, swinging them over his right shoulder as he pulled her toward him with his other hand. “Let’s see where we end up, okay? We’ll talk about it over breakfast. I need some energy.”
“Okay.” She walked ahead of him and unlocked the door. The bright white landscape blinded her momentarily when she pulled it open. With everything that had happened last night, she’d somehow forgotten the reason they’d stayed. She supposed she should be grateful for the snow. If it hadn’t landed so thick and fast, she’d be halfway to Boston by now, and Murphy would still be planning on handing her over to David.
What a difference a few hours had made.
Wrapping her thin jacket around her, she stepped aside to let him past, pulling the door closed behind him. He grabbed her hand and led her over to his SUV, opening the trunk to throw their luggage inside. Rachel stared at the footprints they’d made in the virgin snow and wondered what the hell Buddy would think when he saw them. Would he know she’d gone willingly, from the way they were clear and defined, and not drag marks across the white? Or would that only make him worry more?
Would the prints even be there when Buddy arrived?
Murphy pulled the car door open and helped her in. He climbed behind the wheel.
“You ready?” he questioned, and she nodded in silent assent. He shifted the stick into drive, pressing his foot gingerly down on the gas. The car slowly moved forward, carving out tracks in the fresh snow. Rachel craned her head, allowing herself a final glance back, trying to memorize the faded sign and the peeling paint on the wall. Snow glistened as it stuck to the dirty windows of the bar, making her eyes sting from the bright whiteness of it all.
Murphy turned onto the main Hillbrook Road, keeping his speed even and steady, feeling confident enough to hold the wheel with one hand as he reached down to squeeze her thigh with the other.
Rachel let a small smile tug at her lips. They were driving through Main Street, and the snow on the roofs lent the buildings a fairy tale edge. It was early morning after a storm, and the only evidence of life in the streets were the tiny footprints of critters in search of somewhere safe to hide.
Just like her.
She missed his eyes already.
A sudden thought overtook her. “I haven’t got any money with me. I’m not sure I can even pay for my breakfast.”
Murphy grunted. “My treat.”
Rachel wanted to laugh. In another time and another place, this would be like the drive of shame—the morning after, when a one night stand blurs into an embarrassed breakfast. Part of her liked the thought that, despite the crazy way they’d hooked up, there was still something a little traditional about the way they behaved.
Normal.
She liked the word too much.
“I eat a lot. Just so you know.” She glanced sideways at him, noticing the way his lips curled up.
“You don’t look like you do.” He ran a finger down her thigh and made her shiver. “All that food and not an inch of spare fat.”
What a sweet-talking liar he was.
She tried to catch her breath, looking out of the window at the snow-laden trees lining the road. They were driving east toward Mayville, the last town before the highway, and each turn of the wheel made her feel more apprehensive. She picked at the skin around her thumb, wondering what happened after breakfast and where he was planning to go.
Was he planning on taking her with him?
They sat in silence, broken only by the thrum of the engine and the banging sound of wind against the car. Her breathing was sounding ragged to her own ears.
“I need a fucking coffee.” Murphy’s mutter came out of nowhere. It made her want to laugh.
“You’re a caffeine addict?” Rachel bit down a laugh. She wasn’t so hooked, could take or leave it. Hearing him articulate his craving was cute.