soft brown gaze. “Am I free to leave this apartment, or are you keeping me a prisoner?”
* * * *
Promise asked the question and waited for an answer, wondering if Ivar would tell the truth. The bed was comfortable and the man very nice to look at. Her fingers still tingled from her exploration of his hard face. Logic proved that if he wished to harm her, he wouldn’t have wrapped himself around her and taken the brunt of the fall from the cliff. He also wouldn’t have somehow used one damaged arm to carry her safely into a helicopter.
But what was going on? Why did they need her specifically? “Ivar? I’d appreciate an answer.”
“I’m trying to think of an answer you’d like, Missy,” he said, his breath minty with a hint of Scotch.
Oh, he didn’t get to use her nickname, one she’d always wanted, to charm her. He still smelled lightly of the ocean, salty and woodsy mixed together. She inhaled his scent. “Do you know why my head hurts when those people are in close proximity to me?” she asked.
“Yes. We think we’ve figured it out.” He brushed her hair back from her face again, watching his fingers play with a spiral. The rain pattered against the window, lending a sense of safe intimacy to the room. “Of all the disciplines you could’ve studied, why did you focus on dark matter, the cosmology of extra dimensions, and cosmological inflation?”
“Those subjects were of interest to me,” she said calmly. If he wasn’t going to share, neither was she. Her crazy childhood dreams of traveling to other worlds were better left back with the Easter bunny. Not that she’d been allowed to believe in any mythology. “Now answer my question. Am I free to leave or not?”
He exhaled and dropped his hand away from her hair. “No.”
That’s what she’d concluded. “Your attempt at kidnapping is finally successful.”
He grinned. “Took me several tries and a helicopter, but hey.”
She was not amused. Yet, she did like the sense of safety, and the conflicting feelings were bewildering. She tried to drum up some anger, but her energy levels were depleted. “I have to teach tomorrow.” It had to be Sunday morning by now. Nobody would know she was missing all of Sunday until she didn’t show for her freshman seminar particle physics class Monday morning. “So the kidnapping must end by nine tomorrow morning.” Logic would have to rule since she couldn’t find anger.
“Can anybody cover your class for you?” he asked.
“No. It’s my last lecture before their first test, which causes a great deal of angst. I need to teach that class.” She gave him her sternest expression. So far, he’d at least listened to her.
He nodded. “All right. We’ll figure something out.”
“Good.” A sense rose in her, a surprising one, that she wanted to out-maneuver him, and it had nothing to do with safety. How odd.
He glanced around the bedroom, tension rolling from him. The rather heated kind. “For now, we’re in bed. Didn’t we have plans?”
“I don’t have my pocket rocket,” she snapped, feeling the walls close in.
“You won’t need it,” he returned, his jaw tightening just enough to show he also had a temper.
Her breath caught in the same way it had earlier. She was having a physical reaction to his show of—what was that? Blatant masculinity? She’d read about that phenomenon in a magazine at the dentist’s office. There was a connection between bravado and female sexual response, based on years of biology and the necessity of survival as a species. Even so, butterflies swarmed throughout her abdomen. However, she refused to engage in sex with him until she solved the mysteries suddenly surrounding her. “We no longer have a plan,” she said, gritting her teeth together.
“I assumed as much, but it never hurts to ask.” He rolled off the bed, leaving a chill around her. “Faith and Ronan are in an apartment down the way, but the rest of the building is vacant. We bought the entire thing, and Mercy hasn’t had time to squeeze money out of it yet.”
So she only had to get by him. “Where did everyone else go?”
“Different safe houses,” he returned. “This one is temporary. I don’t like being in the middle of town like this, and we’ll move after dawn, when the sun is high and bright. Or at least up there shining down enough to illuminate the earth somewhat.”
What an odd thing to say. She enjoyed being confused even less