syndrome, Stockholm syndrome, she warned herself. He was a lowlife, nothing else.
A lowlife with a temper.
“Are you out of your mind?” he hissed angrily.
She squirmed and wriggled against him, trying to get free, alarmed at the sensations that were swiftly and dramatically telegraphing themselves through her body. Alarmed, too, at the rather sensual curve of his mouth as he looked up at her.
Prudence gathered her indignation to her like an invisible, invincible cloak. She was not about to succumb to this. They were not going to keep her docile and inline with this cheap ploy. She didn’t care how hard his chest, or other parts of him for that matter, were.
“If you think that I’m just going to lie here and let you attack me, you less than worthless sack of horse manure, then—”
“Attack you?” he echoed incredulously, his hands still very tightly wrapped around her wrists where they would remain until he was confident that she wasn’t going to take a swing at him. “I’m here to rescue you.”
For a moment, still sprawled out on top of him, Pru wavered. Rescue her? She was being rescued? Her father had actually managed to find where she was being held? The man deserved more credit than she’d been giving him lately.
And then suspicion crept in between the lines.
“Where are the others?” she wanted to know.
“There are no others,” he told her.
Her eyes widened. “You’re it?”
“Yup. Lucky me,” the man commented dryly. “Now, not that I wouldn’t find this position interesting at any other time—” he opened his hands, releasing her wrists “—but I think that we’d better get the hell out of here before one of those Neanderthals comes to investigate the noise.”
Pru scrambled to her feet, managing to have more than just marginal contact with all parts of him. “Just who the hell are you?” she demanded hotly, her cheeks burning.
A smile twisted the man’s lips as he motioned her over to the same window he’d just used to get in. “At the moment,” he told her, “your savior.”
Chapter 4
If Pru was going to respond to the information this bare-chested, unmasked avenger had just flippantly tossed at her, the opportunity was snatched from her.
She heard a noise behind her but before she could turn around to see what was happening, the man with the washboard abs was grabbing her by the wrist again and yanking her so that she was suddenly behind him. The snub-nosed weapon was in his hand so quickly, she didn’t even see where it had come from. All she knew was that it was there, being aimed at the man who had just walked into the bedroom.
The next moment, the man had fallen to his knees, a single hole very neatly placed in the center of his forehead.
Shock and wonder vibrated all through her. “You killed him,” she cried.
“That’s the idea.” And then the stranger was pushing her toward the open window. “Let’s go!” he ordered in a voice that would have made a marine drill sergeant proud.
Ever since she could remember, Pru had always hated being ordered around. Hated being rendered to the state of an inanimate object, thought unable to think for herself.
But there was no arguing with the wisdom behind the soggy Adonis’s command.
Later she’d take him to task for his irreverent manhandling of her. Right now, all she wanted to do was put an infinite amount of distance between herself and the men she knew in her heart were going to kill her whenever they decided that she’d ceased to be useful to them.
Pru was drenched half a second after she’d exited through the window.
The ground was soft and muddy, the sky completely covered with black, ominous clouds that were relentlessly draining themselves over the land. She was about to ask which way to run, assuming that this man had an escape plan mapped out, when he grabbed her wrist for a third time and, in a dead run, began to drag her in his wake. Prudence had no doubt that if she fell, this man would just drag her behind him in the mud like some broken, dysfunctional pull toy.
She glared at the back of his soaked, dark head. If he was her rescuer, or her savior as he claimed, he certainly had never been to knight-in-shiningarmor school.
Behind them, the rest of her kidnappers must have rushed into the back room, drawn by the sound of the single gunshot. Making an immediate assessment, they’d run to the window and began firing.
Bullets were flying at them like lethal mosquitoes on steroids.
“You should have used a silencer!” Prudence shouted at the back of her rescuer’s head, raising her voice to be heard above the gunfire, the thunder and whatever else nature in its perverse capriciousness had decided to throw at them.
“I’ll have to remember that for next time,” he shouted back.
They reached what must be his vehicle and Pru’s “savior” threw open the passenger door and shoved her in, then slid across the hood to get to the driver’s side. He seemed to stumble and clutched his leg, but then jumped in the car.
“What are you, a Dukes of Hazard wannabe?” she asked incredulously. “Never mind,” Pru retorted when her remark earned her a puzzled scowl, adding urgently, “Get this thing started.”
“That’s what I’m doing,” he told her as he turned the key in the ignition. After one false cough, the car came to life.
“Hurry, get us out of here,” Pru cried, craning her neck to look back toward the farmhouse.
One of the men was tumbling out the window, head first. The other was already out and racing across the field toward the van. Prudence sucked in her breath as she saw the man whom she took to be the ringleader get into the van. He’d been the one who was driving yesterday morning when they’d dragged her off the path.
Her stomach twisted into a knot even though she refused to give in to panic. “Oh, God, they’re coming after us.”
“What did you expect?” her rescuer asked. Tires squealed as he hit the road.
Only then did she remember to buckle up. She pushed the metal tongue into its slot. “A S.W.A.T. team, not a half-naked man.”
“Sorry,” he told her. “The realm is fresh out of S.W.A.T. teams at the moment.” Stepping on the gas, he slanted a quick glance in her direction. “What part do you object to? That I’m half-naked or half-dressed?”
Oh, God, heaven spare her. Another man with an ego. “I object to the fact that my father sent a Neanderthal to rescue me.”
His mouth curved in a smile that remained exclusively on his lips and nowhere else. “Sorry, James Bond was busy dallying with a woman who knew that you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar.”
Restrained by the seat belt, she still twisted around in her seat, looking
