5 #3
“Let’s look in here,” she said, turning into an alcove on their left.
The low shelves were filled with children’s toys from years past—plastic rotary phones, stiff-legged army men and carved wooden animals.
Finally, in the back behind a faded teddy bear, Olivia saw it: a brightly painted smile.
“I found one!” she crowed, more excited than she’d expected to be.
It was like stumbling across the proverbial needle in the haystack.
She reached past a few cobwebs and retrieved the doll.
Its unnaturally blue eyes did in fact seem to follow her as she turned it from side to side, and its whole body needed a good cleaning, but since its only current purpose was to freak Conner out, it was perfect.
“Hey, do you see any more?” she asked. She turned around but was surprised to find herself alone.
“Campbell?” she called loudly. “Where’d you go? ”
“Where’d you go?” asked a muffled voice. It was somewhere off to the left, but when Olivia poked her head back into the main walkway, she saw there was more than one branch stretching off in that direction.
She tucked the doll under one arm and cupped both hands around her mouth. “Marco!” she yelled.
“Polo!”
She stepped carefully along the hall and peered into each little nook as she passed. “Marco!” she shouted again.
“Polo!” came a second response, but now it seemed to be behind her.
“Stop moving!” she ordered.
“ You stop moving!”
Olivia huffed out an agitated breath. They could play this game for months and never find each other.
“Campbell, I will leave you in here if I have to!” she threatened.
She started walking toward where she’d last heard his voice, retracing her steps down the hall and making another turn.
But it seemed like the dust itself had absorbed all the ambient sound.
She stopped and listened hard, straining to pick up any footsteps in her vicinity. There was nothing.
“Campbell?” she shouted.
No answer.
The eerie silence made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up of their own accord. “Noah?” she called again, though it came out softer this time. Maybe he’d been swallowed up by a wardrobe or something equally outrageous.
Then, there was a sound. A quiet sort of thud that she couldn’t attribute to anything in particular. She turned on the spot and peered down the dimly lit aisleway behind her, but it was empty.
“No—AH!” She screamed the last syllable as something grabbed her from behind. The doll she’d been holding hit the floor and rolled several feet away, and whatever had attacked her started to cackle. “Noah Campbell, I hate you!” she yelled, turning as the arms released her.
He doubled over, bracing one hand on a low table as he laughed. When he straightened again, she could see the shine of moisture in his eyes. “That was perfect!” he wheezed. “When you turned around...”
“You’re an idiot,” she grumbled, and she pressed one hand against where her heart was running wild inside her chest. “I found what we needed, by the way. Now we can look for a way out.” She turned to retrieve the doll where it lay on the floor but paused when Noah’s warm hand closed around her wrist.
“Umm, no, you mean I can look for the way out. You’re staying right here,” he said. Then, in the time it took Olivia to turn her head, something hard and cold joined his fingers—and clicked.
She looked down at the silver bracelet in shock.
Her eyes found the short chain on one side before following it to a second bracelet, which Noah still held in his hand.
Before she could process what was happening, he’d latched the metal ring onto a heavy clothing rack. Then he flashed her a blinding grin.
Olivia yanked on her arm and watched as the chain on the handcuffs snapped taut, stopping her movement in midair. She felt her mouth fall open. “Where did you get this?”
“Over there.” He gestured along the hall in the direction she’d been going.
“You found the keys, too, right?” she demanded, shaking her wrist inside the bracelet.
Noah scoffed and crouched to grab the doll, which thankfully didn’t seem to be broken. “ Of course I found the keys! I do have a brain, you know.”
“Okay, then take it off,” she ordered.
He stood and stubbornly shook his head. “No.”
“No? What do you mean no ?!”
“I mean no. You’re the one who got lost, and then you threatened to leave me behind! This feels like appropriate punishment.”
“Appropriate pun—”
“And,” he went on, raising his voice to talk over her, “you haven’t told me I look pretty tonight or anything! Terrible date behavior. I believe you owe me an apology.” He stuck his bottom lip out in an exaggerated pout.
Olivia gaped, torn between laughing and trying to hit him. “This is not a date!” she said instead, blurting out the only thing that came to mind.
“Okay, well, in that case, it won’t be bad form for me to leave you here,” he said, and he turned on his heel and started down the gloomy corridor .
Olivia waited for him to turn around, waited for the punch line to come, but then he turned a corner at the end of the aisle and disappeared from sight.
She groaned and rubbed her free hand across her forehead.
“Campbell,” she called, hardly believing she was giving in. “I’m sorry I said I’d leave you.”
A few seconds passed, and then she dimly saw the outline of his head and shoulders pop from beyond a bookshelf. “Is that all?” he asked.
Olivia rolled her lips together and tried not to smile. “And you look pretty tonight!” she shouted. “Now get back here and turn me loose!”
The rest of Noah’s body appeared in her line of sight, and he sauntered back to where she stood.
He put the doll on a table before crossing his arms over his chest in a pose that made his muscles more prominent, even in the half-light.
“Turn you loose, huh?” he drawled. He took another step, and his eyes sparkled with the kind of mischief that could get a girl into a lot of trouble.
Olivia nodded, refusing to back away as he moved even closer.
He held her gaze without speaking, and she felt one warm hand slide down her arm and close around her bound wrist. Then he gently moved it behind her.
Her confusion was immediately remedied when he held his free hand up and shook it, rattling the single, silver key that hung from a tiny ring.
Of course he would choose the most difficult way possible to do as she’d asked.
The hand holding the key settled on the curve of her waist before gliding back to join the first at the small of her back. His attention darted down toward her mouth, now only inches from his as he leaned closer .
“Don’t kiss me,” she warned, though the words were much softer than she’d intended. Something about his proximity made it hard to breathe.
“I wouldn’t dream of it, Pix,” he murmured, but the way his eyes darkened from gray to denim gave him away. He was, in fact, dreaming of it at that very moment, and Olivia struggled to remember why it was a bad idea.
Try as she might, all she could process was him: the unfairly long lashes that ringed his eyes, the afternoon stubble along the line of his jaw, the way his body heat radiated through the front of her sweater.
For a second, he seemed to breathe her in, and then she felt his hands begin to move behind her—first spinning the handcuff around her wrist and then tracing the metal circle until he found the keyhole.
Seconds later, there was a faint click, and the bracelet came free.
“Besides,” he said, his voice now impossibly breezy, “I don’t kiss on the first date.” All at once, he stepped away as if nothing at all had just passed between them, and Olivia felt every inch as an unexpected loss.
Her brain screeched to a halt before speeding up again, as if fast-forwarding to their current moment. “What?” she asked.
Noah bit his lip and looked down at her, and the impish look in his eyes said he knew exactly what he’d done. “I don’t kiss on the first date,” he repeated. “What kind of guy do you think I am?”
Olivia realized her mouth was half open, and she shut it with a snap. Her cheeks grew hot in a rare flush, and the delight on Noah’s face was obvious.
“You seem upset, Pix!” he crowed, doing a horrible job of concealing his glee—if he was even trying. “Have you changed your mind?” Then he picked up the porcelain doll and started walking away without waiting for an answer.
Olivia took a deep breath and willed her heart to slow down. There was no way she’d admit what she was really thinking, which actually wasn’t words at all but one long disappointed sound.
Disappointed?!
No. Absolutely not. Indignant was more like it. Who did he think he was?
“No, I have not changed my mind!” she spluttered at last, finally putting her feet into motion. “The answer is, and always will be, no!” She caught up with him at the end of the hall, and he turned to face her again.
“Not even one? Just to get it out of your system?” he asked.
“You aren’t in my system! You aren’t even my type!”
His quirked eyebrow only infuriated her further.
“You’re not !” she insisted.
Humor danced behind his eyes, and he stared down at her without speaking. Then, finally, he shrugged. “Alright.”
His sudden change of tune knocked Olivia a little off-balance. “Alright?” she repeated.
“Yeah. Tell yourself whatever you need to, Pix; I know denial when I see it.”
Olivia let out a huff that was almost a growl before pushing past him, leading the way back in the only direction that made any sense.
The sooner they found their way out of there, the better.