shook his head slowly. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way, sweetheart. It’s your choice.”
She didn’t know what he meant by this, but she had no intention of doing anything with this jerk. She let her body go slack and turned her head away, as if she were acquiescing to him.
“All right.” She dragged in a shuddering, pathetic breath. “I guess we’ll do it—” her knee came up hard and fast and right on target “—the hard way.”
Ian sucked in his breath as the first blast of pain ripped through the lower half of his body. Stars exploded in front of his eyes as a wave of nausea washed over him. Her voice had sounded so weak and frightened that he’d let his guard down for one, sympathetic moment. A moment he was now paying for dearly.
“Now get off me!,” he heard the woman yell through the sea of agony he was drowning in.
He’d collapsed on top of her, and she shoved furiously at his chest. Even if he’d wanted to, he hadn’t the strength to move. He’d been annoyed before, but now he was downright mad. She was definitely going to pay for this, and so was Jordan. Big-time.
He gulped in a deep lungful of air, swore heatedly on the exhale. Her clawed fingers were plowing toward his face when he caught her wrists just in time. Using one hand, he pinned her hands over her head again. With his other hand he reached behind him and pulled out the rope he’d tucked into the waistband of his jeans before he’d left the cabin.
Her big green eyes widened at the sight of the rope, and for the first time he saw fear there. He’d been careful not to hurt her before, but that was before she set the rules between them, or rather, eliminated the rules. He wasn’t taking any more chances with this one, and if she got roughed up, that was her choice.
She bucked under him like a crazed bronco.
“Did I ever tell you I spent six months working a cattle ranch?” He had her hands wrapped and tied in two seconds, then moved to her kicking feet. Two more seconds and they were bound, as well. “They called me Flash.”
Her eyes spit green fire while she called him a few names of her own. Lightning punctuated one especially rude exclamation she shot at him; thunder drowned out the next. If nothing else, Ian noted, she certainly was creative with her expletives.
With another loud crack of thunder, the sky opened up on them.
The cattails bowed under the driving force of the hot rain; the lake turned gray and frothy. Lifting his head, Ian cursed at the sky; the rain blasted him with the force of liquid bullets.
Dammit, dammit, dammit.
He swiped at his face and stared back at the hog-tied woman. He’d planned on leaving her out here to stew for a while, but in this weather, she’d end up shish-kebab if a lightning bolt zapped her. When the heel of her boot caught his knee he grunted sharply, considered dumping her into the lake, then swore again as he bent and flung her over his shoulder. She gave a loud ommph, and he was momentarily blessed with her silence while she gasped for breath.
Her wiggling body was slender but firm under her overalls, her legs long and powerful. Any other time, any other place, he would have appreciated those attributes in a woman. Her knee caught his chin and slammed his teeth together, reminding him this was definitely not any other time or place. He stilled her thrashing with a none-toogentle grip around her knees.
“I believe a little gratitude is in order here, Blondie.” He quickly scooped up her backpack before she could knee him again. “If I left you out here, you’d either be a crispy critter or drowned, probably both.”
She expressed her gratitude with a fresh and imaginative onslaught of opinions of him and what she intended to do to him at the first opportunity. He winced at one especially descriptive suggestion and decided he had better make certain she never had the chance.
Lightning speared a tree fifty feet away, exploding a huge branch. The woman miraculously ceased struggling. The air crackled with electricity and the scent of burned pine.
“Would you quit lollygagging and get us inside?” she yelled over the storm and kicked him, only this time he knew it was to hurry him up. Annoyed, but just as eager as she was to get out of the storm, he ran back around the lake, bouncing her the entire way. It wasn’t an easy ride, but it was a fast one.
They were both soaking wet by the time he kicked the cabin door shut behind him. He dumped the woman unceremoniously on the hardwood floor in front of the unlit rock fireplace and stood over her. With her ponytail plastered to her head and her drenched overalls, the term drowned rat came to mind. She sat in a spreading pool of water, fury darkening her moss-green eyes.
He glared at her. She glared right back.
“Untie me,” she demanded.
“‘Fraid not.” He dragged his hands through his dripping wet hair, then scraped the rain off his face. “Not until I get some answers.”
“Mrs. Patterson is going to hear about this,” she sputtered at him through the water dripping down her face.
“Mrs. Patterson?” He lifted one brow. “As in Beverly Patterson at the real estate office?”
“That’s right. When she rented me the cabin next to yours she said I’d be safe up here, and that you were a fine boy I could trust. She obviously doesn’t know you like to tie women up for sport and kidnap them.”
“For a woman who’s been tied up and kidnapped,” he said dryly, “you’ve got quite a mouth on you. Maybe you like that sort of thing.”
She swung her heavy boot out at him, and he yelped when she made contact with his shin. He jumped away as she drew back for a second blow. Narrowing his eyes to fierce slits, he rubbed at his leg and growled at her. “I had no intention of hurting you. At least, I didn’t, but you certainly know how to change a man’s mind.”
When she lifted her chin and pointed it indignantly at him, Ian couldn’t help but notice the delicate shape of her face; her cheekbones were high, her skin smooth, her lips wide and lush. Too bad that gorgeous mouth of hers didn’t know when to quit.
“You don’t scare me.” She tossed back her head. “I have four brothers, every one of them mean as a rattlesnake and big as a Mack truck. They’ll hunt you down, and when they’re done with you, folks will be calling you Jigsaw instead of Flash.”
In spite of himself, he almost laughed. He had to admire her spunk, especially considering which side of those ropes she was on. He wasn’t sure if she was lying about the brothers, but he was damn certain she was fibbing about why she was up here in the mountains.
He picked up her backpack that he’d dropped on the floor beside her. “Well now, what have we here.” He smiled at her. “Let’s have a look, shall we?”
“That’s my personal property, and if you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay out of it,” she threatened, but he caught the edge of distress in her voice.
“Blondie, if I knew what was good for me, I’d have left you tied up in the cattails.”
As if to punctuate his statement, thunder rattled the cabin’s windows and rain pounded the roof. They’d brought the scent of the storm in with them, and the air inside the
