“Don’t look so flattered.” She reached for another rock. “It’s not such a leap that I would act out of character around my kidnapper.”
“Maybe you act like the real you with me.”
She froze at that suggestion, clutching the rock in her hand. Could there be some truth to that? Had this scenario forced her to drop all her walls and just be who she truly was? Who even was that? It had been a long time since she did any self-examination. She had simply been living on autopilot. Her gaze narrowed on him, resenting that he was prompting such thoughts. It was tempting to fling that rock at him.
“And last time I checked, I’m not your kidnapper,” he added. “I didn’t abduct you.”
“Maybe not initially, but you can’t claim innocence. You’re holding me captive right now. You’re not letting me go.”
His lips flattened, and she knew he didn’t like the reminder. “I told you. You’ll get home, and I think you can give me a little bit of your trust since I was the one who protected your pretty little neck back there.”
Pretty little neck? A flush of heat washed over her. It was probably just an expression. Still, it felt intimate. She shifted where she sat, glancing around her.
A number of things had been said about Grace in recent (and not so recent) years. Her father had been in the public eye a long time. Even before the presidency. No one had ever described her as pretty. Even her grandmother had bemoaned that she lacked the Artigas beauty. The beauty that her mother possessed had come in very handy to catch her father. She had been a beauty queen. There wasn’t a pageant in South Florida she hadn’t won. The media still loved to flash pictures of the First Lady in a bikini with Miss Miami emblazoned across her chest. When your mother resembled Sofía Vergara it was enough to give you a complex.
She gave herself a swift mental kick. Hey, Stockholm-syndrome-freak-girl, stop getting off on his unlikely and unwanted interest in you. Her appearance didn’t matter. He’d established that she wasn’t his type. And he certainly wasn’t her type.
A sudden splash pulled her attention to the water.
“I got one!”
She jumped to her feet and pranced up and down along the bank excitedly. “What do I do? What do I do?”
“The net!” His biceps bulged as he worked to reel in the fish. For someone who knew nothing about fishing, she thought whatever was on the end of that line was big.
She hopped across the pond, haphazardly using the rocks he had used as a path, but not nearly as skillfully. She slipped several times, sinking to her knees in the freezing water. By the time she reached him, he was reeling in a gorgeous fish, shiny red on the back with a white belly.
“What kind is it?” she asked, as if that would hold any significance to her.
“Red drum, I think.”
It was big, bowing half of his rod. She anxiously stretched out the net. He lowered it inside with a triumphant shout, grinning in a way she had never seen from him. It was a grin of victory. He looked . . . happy, and she couldn’t tear her gaze from him. The grooves along the sides of his face actually looked like dimples.
“Eleven years,” he declared, “but I haven’t forgotten how it’s done.”
“Must be like riding a bike,” she laughed in turn, her cheeks starting to ache from the stretch of her smile as she adjusted her grip on the now heavy net.
He chuckled. “Or fucking.”
And just like that it got awkward.
Her smile melted. Nervous, she met his stare. He had stopped laughing. His eyes—sweet God, his eyes actually changed color—went from gold to green as they locked on her with laser-hot focus.
“Guess that’s true,” she hedged, floundering. Fucking. She bet with him that’s what it was. Sex wasn’t sex. It was fucking. Hot and messy and rough. She wouldn’t know anything about that.
They stood close together, but she didn’t take a step back. It would be like calling uncle—or being the first to blink in a staring contest. She didn’t want to be the one to capitulate.
“It’s the kind of thing you never forget how to do,” he added, his voice deep and thick, like the drag of soft fur against her skin.
She fought to swallow the boulder-size lump in her throat, nodding dumbly, still trying to act like everything was normal, like her pulse wasn’t racing and her breasts didn’t feel heavy and achy, straining inside her bra.
“Yeah,” she agreed nervously. As though she did in fact know. As though her relationship with Charles or her college boyfriends had taught her anything about fucking. She was ignorant when it came to that kind of thing. None of those guys had taught her anything about orgasms either. That remained the stuff of fairy tales.
They remained where they were, connected by the net she was holding with the fish in it that was still hooked to his line. She told herself that was the only thing linking them, the reason she couldn’t break away. The reason she couldn’t stop looking at him . . . stop her heart from pounding in her chest.
“Sometimes it’s even better than you remember,” he uttered, not looking at the fish. Looking only at her.
It didn’t feel like he was talking about the fish at all. Staring at her, she felt stripped naked. His gaze dropped. Was he looking at her mouth now? No, she had to be projecting. Imagining his gaze on her mouth. Imagining he was on the verge of stepping closer and kissing her like this was some old romantic comedy that would end with the two of them together. Nothing about this was funny. It was life and death and she was sitting here acting like she was Meg Ryan.
She broke eye contact and looked down at the fish flopping inside the net. “What do we do now?” She squeezed her eyes tight in a long blink. That, too, sounded like she could be talking about something else besides fishing. “With the fish, I mean. What do we do with the fish?”
He took his time answering, but when he did, his voice was carefully modulated and unaffected. “I clean it.” He took the net from her and moved to the bank. Bending, he grabbed a knife from the tackle box. She followed him and stood silently as he worked.
At least he didn’t require her help. There was no further conversation as he quickly gutted the fish and cut it into clean fillets. He worked so quickly and efficiently, like he did this every weekend and hadn’t been locked up for years.
“Where’d you learn to do that?”
“Clean a fish? My grandfather taught me, among other things.” A smile played around his mouth. “This was his place. He used to bring my brother and me here before he died. He was a good man. He tried to be there for us, you know . . . but my parents . . . Well, you’re stuck with the hand you’re dealt. You can’t do much about who your parents are, can you?”
Something about the way he said that made her chest ache. It was more what he didn’t say, what he left out about his parents that convinced her his childhood was not something out of a Norman Rockwell painting—no matter how quaint the cabin.
“No,” she agreed. “You can’t.”
He paused, not looking at her, but she felt as though her simple acknowledgment was telling him something about her, too. It reinforced her early point that they weren’t so totally unalike.
“When did he die?” she asked, before she could reconsider the wisdom of having a personal conversation with him.
“I was seventeen. He had a stroke. He went fast, which was good, I guess. His life wasn’t left for my mother to decide.” He snorted. “She couldn’t even take care of herself or her kids. My grandfather wouldn’t have wanted his fate left to her.” He chuckled, and the sound was lacking all humor. “She would have made a mess of that for damn sure.” He sent Grace a quick glance before looking back down at what he was doing. “I’ve only been back here a few times since then.” Another pause fell, in which she watched him. The afternoon sun glinted off his hair, casting it dark gold. “The place has a lot of good memories.”
“And now it has new memories. Of me. Your hostage.” She angled her head and sent him an arch look.
“Funny.”
>
Her mind worked, calculating. His grandfather died when he was seventeen. He had to have gone to prison soon after that. “How old are you?”
“Thirty-one.”
He went to prison when he was just twenty. So young. What had happened in the years between seventeen and twenty that charted him a course straight to prison?
Finished, he stood. “Come on.”
He stepped past her, his manner brusque again. Gone was the laughing guy who’d reeled in a fish. That brief flare of chemistry between them had vanished, too. If it had even existed at all. Maybe it was all one-sided. Just in her head . . . or long-ignored libido. Or something that was the result of their isolation together. Either way, it was a good thing that it was gone.
She followed him, trekking back to the house, water squishing out from her wet shoes. He stopped at the shed near the cabin, depositing his tackle box. She left the net there, too, and kept moving. At the porch, she stopped and looked back at him. Who was this guy who liked to fish and share stories of his grandfather?
He’d broken out of prison for a reason, and she wasn’t certain it was to rejoin his old criminal network. Nor did she think he was trying to forge a life of freedom for himself. If that were his goal, he wouldn’t be holding her hostage. He’d be headed to Mexico. He was this close to the border, after all. He’d told her he was going to end up back in prison. That didn’t sound like a guy trying to start over clean.
He wanted to meet with this Sullivan person. She’d heard him insist on that with the others when they were leaving yesterday. That was his goal . . . she just didn’t know why. He was an enigma.
Shaking her head, Grace turned and stepped inside the house, putting him out of her sight. For the time being at least. She knew she couldn’t avoid him forever. Still, she shouldn’t be spending so much time trying to figure him out. He didn’t matter. Not his hotness or how dimples had appeared when he smiled and made him look younger. More approachable. Not how fun it was to learn to fish with him. Not his background or his motivations. She didn’t want to know him.
She needed, instead, to figure out how to land herself out of this mess. One thing was for certain. His goal was this Sullivan guy. Not her well-being. Not getting her home. No, that was entirely up to her.
Thirteen
Grace had the cabin to herself for most of the day. Reid started a fire in the fireplace. It crackled enticingly, but she didn’t want to position herself in the main room where she would risk further interaction with him.
Instead, she sequestered herself in the bedroom where she found an old beat up copy of The Hobbit on the nightstand. She burrowed on the bed beneath the heavy Aztec-patterned blanket, appreciating the warmth and telling herself the book would distract her. She smiled, thinking of Reid’s grandfather reading from the epic fantasy. A good man, Reid had called him. A man with depths, she also suspected.
Cold seeped in from outside, penetrating the skin and bones of the house. Winter was coming. She pulled the blanket to her chin, looking up from the well-read book to the frosted windowpanes, gazing out at the distant mountaintops, a few already capped in snow.
Reid stayed outside most of the day, only coming in once or twice, the thud of his boots alerting her and making her heart stop hard before picking up again.
She emerged to eat a lunch of peanut butter crackers and orange juice—something she could grab quickly and then dive back into her bedroom to (hopefully) avoid Reid.
Once before ducking back into the room she crept cautiously toward the front window. The fire popped and a log crumbled in the fireplace as she munched a cracker and peered outside.
He was there. She watched for some moments. He didn’t drift from the front of the house. She was certain that was deliberate. Not so she could spy on him, as it were, but so he could keep an eye on the front door. He did not trust her to stay put.
Grace leaned against the doorjamb, watching him secretly from her vantage point. He buried himself under the hood of the van for a short while, his strong arms flexing as he worked, using tools whose names she didn’t know. He was seemingly indifferent to the cold, not even bothering to don a jacket, leaving her to observe the way the muscles in his broad back played beneath the thin fabric of his shirt.
Slamming the hood shut, he moved into the shed, pulling out an old motorcycle that looked like it hadn’t seen action in years. After several failed attempts to get it started, he set to work on it. Like he was just any guy spending an afternoon working on his bike. Like he wasn’t a wanted man with a hostage that every law enforcement agency in the country was hunting.
Turning away, she picked up her plate and disappeared inside the bedroom, where she spent the next few hours reading and rereading the same pages, trying not to think about Reid and reflect too much on the idea that a boy with a good grandfather who taught him to fish couldn’t be all bad.
Later, she returned to the kitchen with her plate and took another look outside. He was still at work on that motorcycle. She watched him for a while, marveling at what kind of escaped-con/kidnapper/career criminal he was before shuffling back into her bedroom.
Inside the deceptive safety of her room, she gave up on reading and explored, searching all the drawers, looking into the closet and finding only more clothes. The nightstand beside the bed had a single drawer containing a Bible and a few papers. She opened the Bible and saw a name written inside. Jeremiah Hollister. Reid’s grandfather? Of course, he read the Bible. And Tolkien.
Grace closed the book and started to put it back in the drawer when a sheet of paper fluttered out. She bent to pick up the folded page from the floor. There was a child’s drawing on the slightly yellowed page. Though rudimentary, she could see that it was an illustration of this very cabin. A bright sun overhead, the orb yellow with happy orange rays. A gray, bearded man with a slashing red curve for his lips stood on the porch. It was sweet in its simplicity. Large blocky letters scrawled across the top. I love you, Grandpa. At the bottom was a single name. Reid.
He had drawn this picture and his grandfather had thought to keep it . . . slipped inside the pages of his Bible. Jeremiah Hollister had clearly treasured it.
Reid had called his grandfather a good person. Well, he wasn’t the only one. Reid had been good, too. An innocent boy. He could have led a different life. Maybe if his grandfather had lived he wouldn’t have ended up in prison.
For some reason, her eyes burned as she thought about the little boy who drew this picture growing into a man who lived in a cell.
Grace blinked her stinging eyes, refolded the page and stuck it back inside the Bible, then slammed it inside the drawer. Out of sight. There was definitely something wrong with her if she was starting to feel sorry for him.
Dusk tinged the air outside the windowpanes. She grabbed fresh clothes and ducked back into the bathroom, suddenly restless and eager to take a shower.
In the tiny bathroom, she stood under the spray of water and used the shampoo that smelled faintly astringent. The water started to run cold and she shut it off. Instantly the cold air hit her and she grabbed for a towel, shivering as she rubbed her chilled skin and sopping wet hair. Dressed again, she wrapped her head in the towel, sniffing at the air. Something delicious and buttery wove its way around her. She unwrapped the towel from around her head and attacked the wet snarls with a brush, longing for her conditioner. She slid on a pair of thick men’s stocks to combat the chill and stepped out from the bathroom.
Reid stood before the stove in the kitchen, his back to her. She watched him for a moment, noting that he seemed to consume all the space in the tiny kitchen. She edged closer, enjoying the heat flowing from the crackling fireplace. He’d added more logs and it burned with gusto.
He glanced over his shoulder at her. “Hungry?”
“Starving,” she admitted. And she was. It had been several hours since those crackers and juice.
“It’ll be ready soon.”
She stood on her tiptoes, eye
ing the fish in a large black skillet. “You get to cook much in prison?”
“No. Never had kitchen duty.”
“One of the many things your grandfather taught you, then?”
He grunted. “We cooked whatever we caught the very same day. Doubt you ever had fish this fresh, princess. Even in your fancy restaurants.”
It was always there—that gulf separating them. As there should be.
“Take a seat.” He nodded to the table.
Grace sank down in one of the four chairs at the small square table, tucking her hands between her thighs and the chair. She watched as he scooped the fish from the pan onto waiting plates.
He set a fork on each plate and carried them to the table, tendrils of steam floating above them. “Want a drink?” He moved back to the fridge and pulled a beer out. He waved a second bottle at her.
“Water, please.”
Shrugging, he grabbed a glass from a cabinet, moved to the faucet and poured her water from the tap. She wrinkled his nose as he sat it in front of her. It was decidedly not transparent. There was a hue of rustiness to the liquid.
“It’s well water,” he volunteered. “Might not taste like what you’re used to but it’s okay to drink.”
“Guessing you don’t have any coconut water in the refrigerator?”
She was only partially kidding. He stared at her and she registered that he had never even heard of coconut water. Of course. There were probably a lot of things that were part of her everyday world that he had never heard of.
“Maybe I’ll have that beer,” she murmured, trying not to feel foolish. “I’ll get it.” Rising, she grabbed a bottle out of the fridge.
He was sitting before his plate when she slid back into her chair. He picked up his fork and started eating. She followed suit, forking up a flaky bit of fish.
It was good. Simple. Pepper and salt with a hint of lemon. Pan-fried in butter. He’d served it with some canned peas on the side.
“This is good.”
“You sound surprised.”