Chapter 20
“Alternative arrangements?” Angie asked. “What the heck does that mean?”
Jared sighed. He was tired of sitting on the floor.
God, his head hurt. It was thumping in time with his pulse. But he was pretty certain that he didn’t have a concussion.
He hoped, anyway.
Setting Angie aside was extremely hard, but he forced himself to slowly let her go. When she didn’t immediately pounce on North, he let her go completely and stood, holding out a hand to her.
Christ.
She was in a state.
Angie slid her hand into his. It was small and cold. He frowned. It wasn’t that cold in here. In fact it was almost too warm.
“Why are you so cold?” he demanded. Was it due to being ill? Or something else? “Are you still feeling ill? You look exhausted.”
“Please, stop with the compliments,” she grumbled.
“Answer him,” North commanded.
“Oh, go suck on a chili,” she told North.
Really? Suck on a chili?
“Angie,” Jared warned.
“I have poor circulation,” she muttered, looking almost . . . ashamed? Embarrassed?
Why would she be ashamed of that? It made no sense.
“Why? Is there something wrong with you?” Jared demanded. “Do you have an illness? Why have I not been informed of this?”
“Um, maybe because you don’t have anything to do with my life?” she said, looking bewildered. “Why would you even care? I haven’t heard from you in years.”
He cared. That was the problem.
He really shouldn’t. He didn’t want to. But he cared so much that sometimes she was all that he could think about.
“Answer the question,” North told her. He was leaning against the wall; his arms crossed over his chest.
He looked relaxed, but Jared knew better. There was a slight tension in his shoulders.
North definitely wasn’t as uncaring about this whole thing as he liked to pretend to be.
She turned to glare at North, then pointed a finger at him. “You do not get to boss me around!”
Hmm.
She was either brave or stupid. Because North didn’t appreciate people glaring or pointing at him. Jared had known him to take quiet revenge with assholes who were rude to him when he was pretending to be mild-mannered and unassuming.
If they saw his real face they’d never make that mistake.
Except, apparently, for this girl.
Although she had told him to go suck on a chili. Which was pretty funny.
However, North just stared back at her. “I do.”
“Grr, you do not, North . . . North!”
“North-North?” Jared asked her.
“Well, I don’t know his last name. I do know that he doesn’t get to boss me around just because he kidnapped me. That’s less reason for me to do what he says.”
North stepped forward into her space. “If you had the sense that God gave a fly you’d know that it would make more sense to appease your kidnapper than rile them up.”
“But you’re not riled, are you?” she taunted. “Because you don’t feel feelings.”
“Feel feelings?”
“Yes, you’re an unfeeler!”
“And you’re a brat,” he said, getting in her face.
Jared was just about to intervene and save her from certain death when something occurred to him.
Something he should have realized before.
North was talking to her. Actually talking to her. Not polite chitchat that meant nothing, which he’d perfected in his role as Jared’s assistant.
And he wasn’t ignoring her.
What the hell was going on?
“Yeah? What you going to do about that?” she challenged.
Oh, he was leaning toward her being foolish. Didn’t she know how dangerous North was?
Jared stepped closer to her, giving North a warning look. North’s eyebrow twitched as he stared back at him.
“Oh, I’m not going to do anything. He is.” North nodded at Jared.
“Leave me out of your . . . whatever this is,” Jared told them.
“I’m starting to get annoyed because my questions aren’t being answered.
The two of you seem to be more interested in griping at each other instead.
So are you planning on answering me at any time?
” He kept his voice soft but knew they heard the threat in it when Angie winced and North took a step back, away from her.
“Angie, sit,” Jared commanded. He’d noticed her trembling. She was still recovering.
She glared but sat on the bed.
Jared sat on the only armchair in the room. Then he pointed at Angie. “You. Speak.”
“You know, manners go a long way,” she said.
He shot her a look and she swallowed nervously.
“You might want to start thinking before you speak,” North told her.
“I know that. It’s hard, all right?” Her shoulders slumped and she gave them both an exhausted look.
“After I got free of Fergus I promised myself that I wasn’t going to have to watch every word, every action.
It took me a long time not to measure out everything I was about to say in my head first.”
Fuck.
He didn’t like hearing that.
“I am not like my father,” Jared stated.
In no way did he ever want to be compared to that bastard.
She stared at him worriedly. “No, I know. I didn’t mean to say that you were.” She rubbed her forehead. “See what I mean? Out of practice.”
Jared crooked a finger at her. “Come here.”
He wanted her close, partially because he liked touching her, but also because she looked slightly broken.
Jared turned to North who seemed to be studying her as well.
She sighed but didn’t argue.
“Nice to see you can obey,” North said as she got up and moved toward Jared.
“Don’t get used to it.”
North just glanced away.
Yeah, there was something going on there.
Jared drew her between his open legs. Then he lifted her to sit on one thigh. “Listen to me. I am not my father. You don’t have to watch your every word or movement. I will never punish you for what you say to me.”
“What if she’s saying negative comments about herself,” North suggested.
Hmm. That was surprising. He hadn’t thought that North would care if she said anything negative about herself.
“That’s different,” Jared allowed. “That’s against the rules.”
“I don’t have any rules,” she stated. “Because I don’t live here. I’ve been kidnapped. So you can’t make rules for me and you can’t punish me if I break them. Well, I guess you can, but it will be without my consent. Not that North seems to care about consent that much, anyway.”
North shrugged. “I don’t.”
Jared inwardly sighed. This wasn’t going well. And he still didn’t have his answers.
Plus, she was right. They didn’t have a right to make and enforce rules for her.
Because she didn’t belong to them.
But that wasn’t going to actually stop him from doing it.
You’re not keeping her, though, are you?
Jared took hold of her hands, warming them between his. “Why are your hands cold?”
“I told you.” She couldn’t look at him, her gaze roaming around the room. Which told him that she was uncomfortable.
That she didn’t want to answer.
“Angie. Tell me.”
“I have poor circulation because . . . because your father used to beat me. Sometimes brutally. Over time that affected my nervous system. It’s left me with all sorts of lovely things that I now have to live with.”
Mother. Fucker.
God, he wished that he’d been the one to end that fucker’s life.
“What does that mean? What do you need?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“What other repercussions are you living with?”
She pressed her lips together, staring down at her hands.
Fine. She didn’t want to answer? He’d figure it out. Even if he had to get North to hack into her medical files.
“North, find her a blanket.”
“I don’t need a blanket,” she protested, trying to tug her hands from his. But he continued to hold her gently, not ready to let her go.
“North.”
“Here.” North held out a blanket and Jared wrapped it around her.
“What is happening right now?” she whispered.
What was happening was that he was losing his mind. He wasn’t supposed to let her close . . . to want her.
He should be calling Zander right now to come get her.
And yet he couldn’t do it.
“What’s happening is that we are going to bathe you, get you dressed in some clean clothes, which I’m certain that North has arranged, and feed you. Because you look like a stiff wind would knock you over.”
“Why do people keep saying that to me?” she grumbled.
“Perhaps it’s because you’re too thin,” North said.
“North,” Jared reprimanded, sending him a look to let him know that he meant it.
And if North kept pushing, he would punish him. It had already been days since he’d come . . . which was probably the reason why he was also in such a mood.
Wait. Was Angie the woman he’d come home smelling of? She had to be.
Fuck, all of this explained so much.
“Were you eating before you grew ill?” Jared asked.
“Not much,” North told him when she didn’t reply.
“Why weren’t you taking better care of her?” he demanded.
“I tried,” North replied. “She makes it very . . . difficult. She is very difficult.”
“Only to people who kidnap me,” she fired back.
Lord, she smelled. She really needed to shower and wash her hair.
“So you’re not going to be difficult for me, then, are you?” Jared murmured.
“That depends,” she said.
He didn’t know why her resistance and fire lit something inside him. Generally, he preferred obedience and subservience.
Although look who you are with . . .
North was obedient only when it suited him. And only in the bedroom.
But sometimes Jared did want more. Someone he could coddle and smother in protection. Someone who needed more care than North was willing to accept.
However, did he really want more responsibility? Could he keep her safe? Especially since they hadn’t found Beltran yet? If he got hold of her . . .
No! That wouldn’t happen. Jared wouldn’t lose anyone else.
“You took care of me, didn’t you?” she asked Jared. “While I was sick.”
“I did.”
“You guys stabbed me!”
They stared at her in shock and she held out her arm.
“We put in an IV line,” North said dryly. “Trust me, if I stabbed you, I wouldn’t bandage you up after.”
Jared shot him a look.
“You need to keep your fluids up.” Jared pinched the top of her hand.
“Hey! Rude!”
“She’s still dehydrated. I think we should give her another bag of fluid.”
North nodded.
“No,” she said. “I want to go home. Now. Keira and the others will be worried about me.”
“Zander is on the warpath, trying to figure out what happened to you,” Jared told her.
She winced. “Crap. I’m going to be stuck living in his bunker until I’m eighty.”
“You don’t like living there?” Jared asked. “Why? Do they mistreat you?”
“Of course not! They’ve all been really good to me. I just never felt like I belonged there. Like I was an intruder . . . you know what? It doesn’t matter. I need to get back there. I need to call Keira. She’ll be really stressed and that’s not good when she’s pregnant.”
“She’s pregnant?” North asked. “I wasn’t aware of that.”
“We’ll get you on the phone to her soon,” Jared said. “Once you’ve had another IV and some food.”
“I don’t need looking after. I can take care of myself.”
“I don’t believe that’s true,” Jared said. “And North should have been taking better care of you. Like ensuring you bathed and ate.”
“I don’t think kidnappers really care about the state of their prisoners,” she said, squirming on his lap. “If I stink too much, you can put me down.”
He really should put her down.
But he just couldn’t do it.