a sweatshirt, plus some flip-flops. Good driving clothes. No idea if they’ll fit or not.”
Because I’d seen her picture. I hadn’t seen her in person. So I hadn’t known how tiny she actually was. Not until I’d been surprised to see her leaving her office building several hours earlier than expected, from my parking spot across the street. Not until I’d tailed her to the Heritage Rose Gardens, ready to engineer our fateful meeting.
I could feel her staring at me, but refused to look at her—partially because I knew it would drive her crazy.
And it worked. After several long minutes of just staring at me, Alice jerked herself out of her seat and headed into the back of the van. I heard the zipper on the bag and then a breath of laughter.
“Mediums?” she said. “I’m going to be swimming in these. I hope you brought a belt. Or suspenders.”
“No one told me what size you wore!” I protested. “I figured I’d go with the most middle choice, just to be safe.”
There was another long pause, and then she asked, “Do you buy traveling clothes for everyone you kidnap?”
“What makes you think I do this often?” I asked, instead of answering her question—because the answer was no. I still didn’t know why I’d broken my own rules for this one. Before I’d even met her.
I did know, though, that I should stop doing it. Because it was going to get me in trouble.
“The fact that you said you’ve done it before, mainly,” she shot back.
Oh. Right.
“Do they fit?” I asked, still avoiding her initial question.
I finally saw the onramp for the freeway and turned onto it, my gaze flitting to the signs ahead of me, my fingers busy with my phone and the GPS program that would get us through the drive and to the meeting spot.
“I don’t have them on yet, believe it or not,” she replied.
I heard the sound of a struggle behind me, and suddenly tensed. What was she doing back there? Was she trying to escape? Figuring out how to strangle me with her pantyhose?
“What are you doing?” I asked, starting to turn around—despite the fact that I was still driving. “What’s all that scuffling?”
A hand shot out and shoved my face back toward the road.
“Don’t look!” she shouted. “God! You’d think you didn’t know you had a woman trying to change clothes back here.” Another sound of scuffling, and some heavy breathing. “A man could never understand how hard it is to get out of one of these freaking skirts. I can’t even get the damn thing unzipped.”
I stifled a smile at that—and then stifled the image that accompanied what she’d said, because we might have spent at least half an hour making out like high-schoolers in my apartment, but that didn’t mean I needed to think about what it would be like to undress her.
I mean, not anymore. I’d been thinking about that nonstop when she’d had her hands all over me. But that part of the night was over. And I needed to remember that.
Or I was going to find myself in big trouble. This woman was only mine for the next four hours or so. After that, I’d be turning her over—and her fate would officially no longer be in my hands. Which meant that at that point, I had to forget her entirely. Forget she existed, forget that she might be in danger.
Getting too attached, or letting myself even think about being attracted to her, would just make it that much more difficult.
Chapter 10
Alice
By the time I’d finally managed to get out of that damn skirt and into the sweats Jack had bought—too big, as I’d suspected, but also better than being in that skirt—I was sweating and incredibly frustrated.
I was also starting to consider a full-on campaign against any woman wearing pencil skirts again. The things were menaces. Not only were they uncomfortable to sit in and restrictive when it came to trying to kick any attacker, they also tended to have zippers that stuck—something that I had dealt with in the past—which could make taking them off by yourself a real pain in the ass.
And that didn’t even have to apply to being kidnapped. Say you’re a single girl who doesn’t have anyone at home to help you get out of overly restrictive clothing. Say it’s been a really hard day and you’ve maybe even had one or two glasses of wine. You’re trying to get ready for bed,