Chapter 21
Chapter
Twenty-One
They’d been driving for about half an hour when Wade pulled onto a gravel road. Reese braced one hand against the metal wall and the other over her belly as the van bumped over the uneven terrain.
Her shoulder ached where she had hit the floor. Her hip throbbed. One wrist burned from Wade’s grip. The cargo area had no seats, no windows, and the handle was locked from the outside.
Finally, the van stopped.
Reese was breathing hard through her nose. The engine idled for a moment, then shut off. She heard Wade’s door open, and his boots hit the gravel outside.
She pushed herself up off the floor and checked the back and side doors again. They were still locked. Her heart hammered so hard it made her sick. The side door slid open while she was still yanking on it. Reese jerked back.
Daylight cut into the cargo area. Wade stood in front of her, calm and effortless, like nothing terrible had happened. Panic shook her whole body.
“Get out,” Wade said.
Reese shook her head and shoved herself farther back, wedging one shoulder against the metal wall and one foot against the ribbed floor. There was nowhere to go, but her body tried anyway.
“Don’t make this harder.” Wade sighed, calm as ever.
He reached for her. Reese kicked at his hand, then at his chest, then at any part of him close enough to hit.
Her heel struck his forearm. Wade caught her ankle and shoved it down.
She grabbed the floor ridge with one hand and tried to twist away, but her belly got in the way, and her bruised hip screamed.
“Stop fighting me,” Wade said.
He caught her arm and pulled. Reese screamed and grabbed for the door frame with her free hand.
Her fingers scraped metal. Wade peeled her loose and dragged her toward the opening.
She kicked again, but the angle was wrong, and she didn’t make contact.
He hauled her over the lip of the van and out into the open air.
Her knees hit the gravel, and pain shot up both legs. Reese caught herself on one hand and coughed. Wade still had a hold of her arm, and he pulled her to her feet. She looked around.
She was in a clearing, surrounded by dense trees. A weathered brown cabin sat off to one side, its logs darkened with age. Small windows reflected the trees around it. There were no other houses anywhere in sight. No one was close enough to hear her.
Wade pulled her against his side with one arm wrapped around her back, his hand clamped around her far bicep. His other hand closed around her wrist, keeping that arm pinned between them.
“Walk,” he said.
Reese walked because the bruising grip gave her no room to do anything else. Gravel shifted under her shoes. Her knees still hurt from the fall, and her hip pulled with every step. She kept her free hand over her belly and forced herself to look around instead of freezing.
The cabin sat ahead with a short set of front steps leading up to a covered porch and a single door. A propane tank stood beside one wall, and firewood was stacked under the same overhang.
She looked for somewhere to run. The gravel road disappeared back into the trees. The woods were thick and uneven, and Wade’s hands were tight around her arms. The cabin was the only open path, and he was walking her straight toward it.
At the foot of the steps, Reese planted her feet. Wade kept walking. Her shoes dragged over the gravel, then caught on the first wooden step. She leaned back hard, dropping her weight as much as she could with his arm locked around her. For one second, he had to stop.
“No,” she said.
Wade tightened his grip and pulled her up the steps. His hold wrenched her shoulder, and every step hurt the hip she had landed on in the van. She stumbled on the top step and went down to one knee before he hauled her upright again.
Reese twisted away from the threshold, but he held her close with one arm and turned the knob with the other.
“Inside,” he said.
“No.”
He shoved the door open and pushed her forward.
Reese tried to turn sideways in the frame, but Wade was behind her, stronger and already moving.
His hand pressed between her shoulder blades.
She stumbled over the threshold, lost her footing, and went down on her hands and knees just inside the door.
Reese pushed herself up with one hand over her belly and scrambled farther into the cabin. The front door was behind her, and Wade was still there.
The room opened straight ahead to a small kitchen along the back wall. A white refrigerator stood on one side, with a propane stove, a deep metal sink, and a window over the counter. To Reese’s left, a stone fireplace took up most of the wall. A set of fireplace tools stood beside it.
A brown plaid couch sat in the middle of the room facing the hearth, with her bags on the floor beside it. Past the couch, at the back right corner, a short hallway led deeper into the cabin.
The windows showed trees and the pale rectangle of the clearing. Reese turned to face Wade as he locked the front door.
“Sit down,” he said. “You need to calm down.”
She stayed where she was. Her hands shook, but she kept them in front of her, one over the baby and one loose at her side. She considered what she could use as a weapon as Wade took a step closer.
He turned to her and put the door key in his pocket. “I know this looks bad right now,” he said, opening his hands.
“You kidnapped me.”
Wade’s expression tightened. “No. I came to get my wife.”
There was a red scratch on his cheek where she had caught him, and he had not wiped the blood away.
“How did you find me?” she said, her throat ragged.
“I found your current location on a people-search site. I’d been looking since you left, but I hadn’t found you listed anywhere except Spokane until two days ago.”
Her stomach dropped. Wade had found the new listing.
“As soon as I knew where you were, I made a plan to get you back. I booked this place before I left Spokane. We needed somewhere private to talk things through. Finding you broken down on the highway only made it easier for me to get you here.”
Reese kept one hand over her belly. Her other hand fisted at her side.
“You planned this.”
“Of course. This marriage needed a reset.”
“This isn’t a reset,” Reese said. “It’s a kidnapping.”
Wade’s face changed in a small, tired way, like she had disappointed him by choosing the wrong word again.
“I rescued you,” he said. “You were stranded on the side of the road in a dead car. No help for miles. What was I supposed to do? Leave you there?”
“You chased me through a field and locked me in your van.”
“You ran from me.” His voice stayed calm. That was the worst part. He sounded like he was explaining something simple to someone determined not to understand it. “You were scared and upset, and you ran. I stopped you before you hurt yourself.”
Reese’s hand tightened over her belly.
Wade saw it. His eyes dropped there and stayed. The room went quieter around the look.
“And when I got my hands on you,” he said more softly, “that’s when I realized.”
Reese stopped breathing.
“You’re pregnant.” He looked back at her face. “So no, Reese, I wasn’t going to leave you on the shoulder of some highway. I wasn’t going to leave you alone on the side of the road, carrying my child.”
Reese said nothing.
There was no safe response. If she denied it, he would do the math. If she admitted it, he would hear permission. Wade had always been good at turning her words into something he could use against her.
His eyes stayed on her stomach. “You had no right to keep that from me.” His voice stayed calm, but the calm had hardened around the edges. “No right to run off with my baby.”
Reese looked at the door behind him, then back at his face.
“I decided to bring you here so you could settle down and start thinking clearly. Now I know that was the right choice. Sit down.”
Reese stayed on her feet.
He watched her for a moment, then walked past her into the kitchen like her refusal was temporary. He opened one cabinet, then another, until he found two mugs.
“Do you still drink tea with cream?” he asked.
“I don’t want anything from you.”
“You need to drink something.” He set the mugs on the counter and filled the stainless-steel kettle at the sink. The water hit the metal in a loud, hollow rush. Reese looked at the door while his back was turned. It was locked. Then she looked at the fire iron by the fireplace.
Wade set the kettle on the stove and turned the burner on. Then he turned back to her.
“I said sit down.”
“No.”
He charged toward her and took her by the arm. Reese jerked once, but there was nowhere for her to go. Wade walked her backward until her legs hit the couch, then pressed down on her shoulder. She sat because falling would be worse.
“There,” he said. “Better.”
Reese cupped her belly with both hands.
“You need to stop fighting me before you hurt yourself.” His eyes dropped to her stomach again. “Or my child.”
Her throat closed.
The kettle started to rattle on the stove. Wade watched her a moment longer, then went back to the kitchen. He moved like the cabin belonged to him now. Like she belonged in it because he had decided she did. He took a box of tea from one of the cabinets.
When the kettle whistled, Wade poured the water, added a splash of cream to one mug, and carried it over. He set it on the coffee table near her.
“I don’t want it,” she said.
“Drink it.” He took the other mug to the square kitchen table and sat down. From there, he could see her, the door, and the front windows. He took a careful sip, then set the mug down. “You can refuse me all you want, but I know you’ll come around. Like you always do.”
Reese kept both hands over her belly. “What happens if I don’t?”
Wade looked at her over the rim of the mug. “We’ll stay here until you do.”
The words landed quietly. That made them worse.
“I rented this place for three weeks,” he said. “If we need more time, I’ll extend it.”
He stood and opened the refrigerator. It was stocked with groceries. Meat wrapped in butcher paper, eggs, milk, vegetables, bread.
Then he took the cast-iron pan off the wall and started making dinner.
Reese sat on the couch with steam rising from the mug he had put in front of her. Wade was not trying to win tonight. He had bought enough time to force her into submission.