raised since he was so obviously not the kind of guy to tolerate a short leash.
Which was why the prudent thing for her to do would be to remain at the cabin and take some time considering her next move.
The alternative—that she’d taken off for good—was unacceptable.
Because, damn it, he’d already searched every inch of space he could reach and hadn’t found a thing he could use to pick the lock on the handcuffs. Just as he’d tested each chain link as well as the bed frame for weakness and scored a big fat zero.
So if Bowen didn’t come back, short of gnawing his hand off he’d have no choice but to wait to be rescued.
The mere thought of that set a nerve ticking in his jaw. And not just because of the obvious humiliation factor. Or that his brothers were guaranteed to give him serious grief the second they learned he’d let an amateur—and a woman at that, for God’s sake—get the drop on him. Or even because he’d be forced to start the hunt for a certain annoying little brunette all over again.
No, what was really going to rankle was that he’d have no one to blame for her decision to run but himself.
So what if he had a monster headache? So what if the past three months had been beyond frustrating? Who gave a rip that being at someone else’s mercy seriously teed him off? Or that it was a well-known fact, at least in his portion of the universe, that he sucked at charming chitchat.
Only a freaking idiot would antagonize his jailer without a specific goal or a damn good reason.
Yeah, but that’s precisely what you did, Ace. And you might as well admit that what really pushed you over the edge was Bowen herself. Face it. There’s just something about her that rubs you the wrong way.
The ache in his head ratcheted up a notch and with a stab of impatience he realized every muscle in his body was as tightly strung as a trip wire. More than a little exasperated—control, after all, was his middle name—he blew out a pent-up breath and ordered himself to get a grip.
Okay, so being around her made him feel…itchy. As if his skin was too small for his body. And for some inexplicable reason, probably because the blow to his head had temporarily disconnected a wire, he kept getting unwanted flashes of the way she’d felt against him, all small and soft and perfectly curved, when they’d wrestled in the snow earlier.
It didn’t excuse the fact that he’d screwed up. That he’d flat-out failed the first rule of Hostage 101, which was to make your captor see you as a fellow human being. Worse, he’d let his mouth get ahead of his brain and gone out of his way to antagonize her.
And now all he could do was wait—and reflect on his numerous and varied mistakes.
So that when Bowen did return—and she would, by God—he’d be ready to make nice, to channel some of his brothers’ winning ways with women and try to forge a bond between them, however slight.
But then, slight was all he needed. His goal, after all, wasn’t to become her best friend or her lover. It was simply to get her to stick around long enough for him to regain control of the situation. To regain control of her.
He didn’t have a doubt in the world he could do it. God knew, he’d faced far tougher situations doing recon missions in Afghanistan. And while the make-friends, play-nice-with-others thing wasn’t going to be easy, nothing that mattered ever was.
Besides, it wasn’t as if he had to share his life story with her. Or talk about anything he cared about. Like being banished as a kid to Blackhurst. Or the disaster at Zari Pass, which had put an end to his military career—and been the last time he’d allowed anyone to call him J. T.
No, his personal private business could, and would, remain just that. Personal and private.
All he had to do was be nominally civil. To offer Bowen—no, Genevieve, he admonished himself—the proverbial olive branch until either she lowered her guard enough for him to get the drop on her or he figured out how to free himself. As for payback…he’d see to that later.
For now, all he needed, all he wanted, he thought, finally giving in to the hammering in his head and letting his eyes drift shut against the fading light, was for this frigging headache to take a one-way hike.
And for Genevieve to be predictable for once and walk back through the door.
Nighttime fell like a heavy ebony cape.
Caught midway along the track that led to the cabin, Genevieve slowed the pickup to allow her eyes time to adjust to the swift slide from hazy dusk to inky darkness.
Despite the choppy rumble of the engine, she could hear the wind as it surged restlessly through the towering evergreens around her, making the snow-shrouded trees sway like uneasy ghosts. Overhead, a pack of marauding clouds took ever bigger bites out of the sky, obliterating the moon and swallowing stars a constellation at a time.
A shiver skated down her spine. She tried telling herself she was just chilled—she hadn’t been kidding earlier when she’d told Taggart the truck’s heater didn’t work, and in the past ten minutes her fingers, nose and toes had started to go numb—but she knew that wasn’t all it was. There was simply something spooky, a sort of bone-deep dread, that came with being alone in the dark, surrounded by an untamed wilderness, with the threat of a storm lurking in the wind.
Add to the cold and the declining weather the fact that she was tired, as much from the stressful events of the day as the three-mile hike through the snow she’d made to complete her errand, and it was no wonder she was ready to get back to the cabin.
Even if that meant having to share space with one John Taggart Steele. Whose complete name she now knew courtesy of the registration in his rig, which she’d confirmed by finally taking a look at the ID in his wallet, which she’d liberated when he’d been unconscious.
Not, she told herself hastily, that she cared what he called himself. Except for a mild curiosity about his aversion to being referred to as J. T, which, as it turned out, really were his initials, it was no skin off her nose if he went by Bozo the Clown.
What did matter was her discovery that he and the firm he worked for carried the same name. It might not be a hundred percent proof-positive, but when factored in with his relentless, self-assured personality, it made her strongly suspect that he was a principal in the enterprise rather than simply an employee.
If that was true, it was good news for her since it meant he had not just power but autonomy, and that made it a lot less likely anyone would be checking up on him anytime soon or expecting him to report in regularly.
It wouldn’t be smart to count on it, however, she reflected as the truck shuddered over the last rise and the cabin came into sight. Grateful that she’d had the foresight to switch on the stove and porch lights before she left, she drove down the shallow hill and parked, muscled open the badly dented driver’s-side door and headed inside, his lightweight pack slung over her shoulder.
No, she was a firm believer in hoping for the best but doing whatever was within her power to make things go her way. Which was why, she thought, as she climbed the cabin steps, retrieved the distributor cap from her pocket and dropped it with a satisfying thunk behind the wood pile, Taggart was going to have to make a trip to the auto parts store in the near future if he wanted his big black SUV to run. Of course, first he’d have to find it in the abandoned barn where she’d hidden it.
