Chapter 3 #2
We reach the back door, and I give Jim a look. “You’re storing our little captive outside?”
He slowly turns his head to look at me. “We’ve run out of sleepy juice.
We’ve been through two vials in the span of twelve hours.
King, I could stand by while she nagged about the ostentatiousness of my home, as that’s almost a compliment, but when she started in on my painting of Kenny—” He places his hand over his mouth and closes his eyes, unable to go on.
“You commissioned a ten-foot portrait of your bird holding a smoking handgun as busty parrots shove their feathered breasts toward him. What sort of reaction did you expect?”
He sucks in a deep breath and opens the door before charging outside. “It’s art!” he shouts over his shoulder.
“Birds don’t even have breasts, Jim!”
“Tell that to Colonel Sanders!”
If I roll my eyes again, I’ll get a headache.
I follow him down a rudimentary path that leads to a small boathouse tucked in the woods. Silence reaches us as we draw nearer, and we both stop walking.
“See?” Jim says, motioning to the wooden building. “She does this. Constantly. Ever since I refused to take her on the road trip.”
“But she’s going, isn’t she? Didn’t you say you retrofitted my RV with restraints?”
Jim squares his shoulders. “She doesn’t need to know that.”
“Just give her what she wants. Get the information and let her go on the road trip. She can ride with Eve.”
“She can’t ride with Eve. This girl is a redhead, and after that debacle at the Paris fashion show last month . . .”
He’s busy droning on about Eve’s run-in with another model, but I’m stuck back at the bit about her hair.
“A redhead?” I ask, interrupting him.
“Yes. Is that an issue?”
It might be, but I shake my head.
My weakness has always been a redhead, which is why I’ve steered clear of them. All but one, and she nearly did me in. It was shortly after Quinn’s mother’s death, and I almost lost myself for a second time, albeit for an entirely different reason. I swore off fiery hair of any shade after that.
No, if this girl is a redhead, she won’t be in my RV. That’s like setting a match next to a powder keg.
“Well, let’s get on with it,” I say, ushering Jim forward. “I’ll get the information out of her, and you’ll figure out who can take over my RV.”
“We’ll see,” he mutters.
I reach the door to the boathouse. Water laps against the boat inside, but aside from that, I hear nothing else.
“Are you sure she’s still in there?” I whisper.
Jim nods and holds his finger to his lips. “Dear girl, are you presently awake?”
Feet shuffle inside. “Grocky . . . ass fuck . . . but I defin-ly wake now.”
Her speech is slurred to hell and back, but I can just make out what she’s saying: Groggy as fuck, but I’m definitely awake now.
“How much ketamine did you give her, man?” I whisper. “She sounds as if she’s having a stroke.”
“I told you,” he whispers back. “Two vials.”
“At fucking once?”
Now it’s his turn to roll his eyes.
He steps forward and unfastens the padlock from the door.
Drugged and locked inside? Who is this woman?
Sunlight peeks into the wooden building as the doors open. Glints catch on the water near the walkway by the door, but shadows prevail deeper inside. A gleaming white speedboat bumps against the wooden dock.
“Where are you?” Jim peers into the darkness. “We placed your chair—”
“I wanted to . . . see the water.” Her voice sounds so tired and slow, but it’s less slurred.
“You can’t swim!” Jim shouts as he rushes toward her voice in the darkness.
“You drugged her and stuck her in a boathouse when she can’t swim?”
“Oh god,” she drawls. “Not a British guy. I fucking hate British guys.”
I stop in my tracks. “Well, that’s not very polite.”
“You assholes think you’re so hot stuff.”
“So hot stuff?” My eyebrow rises. “Don’t you mean such hot stuff?”
“That’s the shit I’m talking about,” she says, though it takes entirely too long. “Always correcting people. You think you know such much.”
Jim turns to face me. “See? She’s quite lovely. Now give me a hand?”
Against my better judgment, I help him wrestle the chair into the light. I keep my gaze far away from the little minx with that shade of hair that makes me see a different sort of red—the kind that runs out of veins and mixes with flesh between two willing and very eager bodies.
God, I cannot think about her right now.
She wasn’t the one who got away. She was the one I released for the betterment of society.
Together, we were just too explosive. We may have burned brightly, but it would only have been a matter of time before we set everything around us on fire.
I cared so much for her that I wanted to leave her with memories of the fireworks, not the smoky mess in their wake.
That, and I knew that if I stayed a second longer, I’d end up burning her and myself.
Once we’ve gotten her away from the water, I turn to face the boat so that I won’t be tempted to see how pretty her face might be. I am a man who enjoys beautiful things, but this is one beautiful thing I want no part of. Let someone else enjoy her.
“Have you changed your mind about the sloth?” Jim asks.
“Have you changed your mind about that dreadful smoking jacket?” she fires back, drugged but still sharp as a tack. “You look like Temu Hugh Hefner, bro. At least wear some underwear. I can hear your saggy balls slapping against your chicken thighs.”
Jim grabs the chair and starts rocking her toward the water.
“Steady, old man,” I say as I right the girl before she tips into the lake. The chair lands with a thud, the woman’s back facing me. “Let cooler heads prevail. If you drown her, she’ll never tell you where that sloth is.”
“Then you deal with her and her snide little mouth. I’m washing my hands!”
He goes to stomp away, and the tie comes loose from his robe.
The fabric billows open, exposing his manhood to the woodland creatures, and a peal of slow-motion laughter burbles out of the drugged girl.
I look down and see the tail of the robe’s belt in her hands, which are tied behind her and facing me.
She must have grabbed it when he was busy trying to hoist her into the lake.
“This one’s a regular velociraptor,” I say with a smirk. “Clever girl.”
“Jurassic Park references? You’re fucking lame. What are you, forty-something?”
I smirk and place my hands on the back of the chair. “Oh, an ageist, are we? Have something against the old guard? Let’s not forget that you understood the reference.”
“God, your accent is—"
“Sexy? I know. Hear it all the time.”
“I was about to say it’s grating on my last nerve,” she mutters, “but okay, Captain Cocksure.”
Now that draws a laugh out of me. “I’ll have you know it’s far worse than you feared. I’m well into my fifties.”
“Yeah, sorry. I don’t go for dudes who get the senior discount,” she says.
“I’m not a senior, but that’s just as well. I don’t fancy a woman who—”
“Ugh, please stop talking.”
I grip the chair and spin it around so that she can finally see exactly what this old man looks like. I don’t look down at her, though. Not yet. I give her a moment to take it all in as I gaze at the boat. My arms fold over my chest; I’m a damn dream in this suit. The tailor said so himself.
When I’ve given her just enough of my side profile, I turn my head and look down at her.
My heart stops.
Her jaw falls open.
Years tick backward, and I’m confronted with a history I’ve taken great pains to avoid repeating—both for my sake and hers. How is she here now?
I can’t stop the momentary sprig of joy from blooming in my gut and digging its root system deeper. I’ll inject myself with poison to claw the feelings out of me if I have to, but for this moment, I allow myself to smile and say two words to the woman I left five years ago.
“My beauty.”