Billionaire For Ransom - Layla Valentine Page 0,29

go. And the time off he’d talked about? He spent that in the next city, learning everything he could about the way it worked… and how to get out of it as quickly as possible.

So he was literally running from one place to the next. Like, all the time.

“I don’t even know what it’s like to have a foundation, if you want to know the truth,” he’d said, his voice quiet and a bit shaky. “I’ve never had a home I really cared about. You could probably tell that I don’t bother to do much decorating.”

I’d pretended to be shocked at that one. “What? I don’t know what you’re talking about. The decor in your apartment was so…”

“Stark?” he’d joked. “Stripped down? Unfinished? Never started?”

I’d suppressed a smile, unable to stop myself, because by that time I’d started to see when he was making fun of himself—and why. “Charmingly minimalistic,” I’d replied, my tone teasing.

And he’d smiled, recognizing that tone, too—and knowing that I hadn’t meant any harm.

In short, during the four hours it took us to get from San Jose to Reno, we’d somehow become friends.

And I wasn’t sure you could call that Stockholm syndrome. Hell, I didn’t know what you would call it. What kidnapping victim was stupid enough to start to like the man who had torn her out of her life and was selling her to the highest bidder, more or less? What businesswoman was stupid enough to let her guard down with a man who had done that to her—and actually think she was starting to like him?

What kind of woman let the sort of man who would kidnap her into her heart at the drop of a hat like that?

The kind of woman who could see that the man in question wasn’t actually the person he was pretending to be, I realized suddenly. The kind of woman who could see the suffering in another human being—and who, against every rational bone in her body, wanted to save him.

Which was a thought that I should never, ever have had—and which I was going to have to work not to have again. Because it was certifiably insane. And I wasn’t ready to cross that particular bridge. Stockholm syndrome or not. Damaged man or not.

I might have been lonely in my life. Sure, I might have wanted some adventure and some romance. I might even have wanted a man to keep me warm at night and buy me breakfast in the morning. Cook late-night dinners with me when we both got home from work. Wake me up with coffee on the rare mornings when we got to sleep in.

That didn’t mean this man was the one. And I’d never have any of that if I didn’t figure out a way out of this mess before he dropped me off at the witching hour and I went from safe hands into hands that might well kill me if my company decided to play hard to get.

“Reno,” I said, gesturing to the next sign with my head. “Looks like we’re almost there, cowboy. So… what happens next?”

I watched his jaw flexing as he ground his teeth, the wheels obviously spinning in his head about how exactly he was going to answer that one. I already knew the answer, of course. I’d known it for some time now, because we’d been talking about it right from the start.

We got to some drop-off point. The bad guys met us there and he handed me over. To men that he had no control over.

To men that he thought would do the right thing. If my company paid the money. If everything went right.

If I was extremely lucky. Because I might not have been one of those women who was obsessed with serial killers, but I’d seen the reports about kidnappings that went wrong. People who paid the ransom but were too late. People who paid the ransom only to find that their loved one had been killed immediately after they’d been taken.

People who had been kidnapped and never got to come home, even when the person responsible for paying the money did everything right.

The thought had my heart racing, my pulse pounding in my temples as adrenaline flooded my body, and I fought to sit still. Because I’d been blowing it off up to this point, but the truth was that the thought of him handing me over to someone else…

Bad enough that I’d been kidnapped. But once we got to Reno,