if you don’t mind. If it’s not weird. If it’s not—”
“Uncomfortable?” I finished with a grin of my own. “I mean, what would be uncomfortable? You’ve just kidnapped me, threatened my life, and almost handed me over to people who were going to do God-knows-what with me. What on earth would be uncomfortable about that?”
He straightened his shoulders as if he was somehow offended by something I’d just said. “Excuse me,” he said sternly. “I never threatened your life. I just… handcuffed you a little.”
“Just handcuffed me a little,” I murmured in response, not sure whether I wanted to laugh or cry about that.
Instead of doing either, I marched right over to the bed he’d made, took off the flip-flops I’d been wearing since I’d changed, and laid down on what I considered my side of the bed.
Then I turned on my side to face away from him, suddenly conscious of the thing I’d been blowing off up to this point. The fact that I was lying in a bed on a floor in some wreck outside of Reno. The fact that I’d just been involved in some crazy shoot-out with guys who were trying to kidnap me. Or rather… the guys who had already paid to have me kidnapped and were presumably going to be holding me in some unnamed, probably dark and scary location while they waited for my company to pay the ransom they were demanding.
The fact that the guy who had actually done the kidnapping—after posing as a guy who had picked me up in the rose garden and taken me out for drinks—was about to lay down next to me in this bed in the wreck outside of Reno.
The guy who I’d spent a whole lot of yesterday flirting with and then making out with. The guy who’d had me pressed against a wall, his tongue dancing with mine as his hips rocked against me. The guy who I’d absolutely been planning to sleep with before he slapped a set of handcuffs on me—and not in a sexy way.
The guy who I’d then spent the four-hour drive getting to know and almost respecting. The guy who had fed me a freaking cheeseburger with so much sex in his eyes that I’d almost melted into a puddle right in the seat of his stupid van.
The guy who was still mind-numbingly hot, even after he shoved me into that van and dragged me out of San Jose.
Shit. Admitting to a crush on the guy who kidnapped you was one thing. Finding yourself in a bed with him, under the stars, in a completely deserted location?
That was something completely different.
“Why didn’t you turn me over to them?” I asked about twenty minutes later, when I still wasn’t asleep and the amount of tossing and turning going on behind me told me that Jack wasn’t, either.
The tossing and turning suddenly stopped, and I could imagine Jack sinking into the sand below us with his stillness. When he didn’t answer, though, I turned on my back and stared up at where the ceiling should have been. It was a beautiful, clear night, the stars shining so brightly that they almost hurt to look at. In any other world—in any other situation—it would have been insanely romantic.
“You risked your own life to keep me,” I murmured. “Why?”
Another long pause, and then finally: “Because I could see how scared you were. And you were right. I couldn’t guarantee that they weren’t going to hurt you. And I couldn’t take that chance.”
I should have been embarrassed that he’d seen how scared I was. Some deep, feminist part of me should have been horrified at the thought that he’d decided he needed to protect me. The CEO in me should have been screaming that I could take care of myself, goddammit, and that I hadn’t needed him to stand in front of me like some caveman protecting his woman.
I didn’t feel any of that, though. Because I had been scared. And I was a big enough person to admit that—and to admit that I was glad he’d done what he’d done. Surprised… but also glad.
Which was why I reached down, slid my fingers in between his, and squeezed his hand.
“Thank you,” I said simply. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had anyone defend me like that. I… Thank you.”
And I left it at that.
Moments later, we started building a plan for what we were going to do come morning, as we stared up