The Crime of Love 1 Read online

  The first time he gave it to me? Is he serious? He just admitted to kidnapping me, and he’s mentioning sex?

  “A job? What line of employment are we talking about here?”

  “Can’t talk about it. Just relax.”

  Relax. Right. I was in a speeding truck on the highway heading away from everything familiar in my life. But I didn’t have much choice, did I?

  I tried to get comfortable, wrapping my arms around myself. The A/C was blasting and suddenly I wished I had thought to bring a sweater. Of course, when you think you’re going out to eat with a cute guy on a hot Dallas evening, you don’t really think a sweater is necessary. It made me think about how little I actually had with me.

  As if he’d seen me shiver, Mac leaned over and turned the A/C down to a more comfortable level. I gave him a small smile. Despite everything, it was easy to remember why I’d liked him so much, even if I was technically his captive at the moment. Looking at him made it hard to forget. The angular cut of his jaw, the dark hair curling at his nape, the blue eyes that looked like a summer sky...but there was more. Back at my house, I thought I’d responded to something genuine in him, something that didn’t have anything to do with his looks.

  “So you flirting with me was all just a little ruse to get me out of the house?” I asked.

  “I use any means necessary to get the job done,” he said. “But you are quite a spicy little thing so that seemed to be easiest.”

  “So much for our date.”

  I was still contemplating this when Mac reached out to turn off the radio. “That song drives me crazy,” he said with that adorable slanted grin. “Why don’t you take some of your clothes off instead to entertain me?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Just messing with you. Tell me something about yourself.”

  “Part of the job?”

  “Not really. Just curious.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “How about your favorite pizza?”

  “There’s a random question. Double cheese.”

  “Favorite movie?”

  “What is this, a survey?”

  “Just making conversation.”

  I grinned. “Titanic. Not one that guys like you watch.”

  He huffed out a laugh. “I did see it, actually. My girlfriend dragged me.”

  I raised an eyebrow and he shrugged. “Not exactly my cup of tea. At the time, I didn’t think too much of it.” He looked at me again, more seriously this time. “A couple of months after that, she was in a car accident.”

  “Did she…?”

  “I lost her.” Mac nodded. “The night we saw the movie was a really good night for us, and it’s become sort of special to me since then. Changed my perception of it. It’s weird how shit like that works.”

  I let the silence draw out for a minute, picturing a young woman like me dead far too soon. “My favorite part of Titanic is when Rose is about to climb the railing and Jack asks her if she trusts him and she says yes.”

  “Why that part?”

  “Don’t know. I guess trust is really important to me.”

  He nodded after a pause, and the warmth in his smile lit up something inside me that I was afraid to examine too closely.

  ~

  Mac had taken I287 out of Dallas, and we had driven for hours. Once in a while, I drifted off, my eyes fluttering shut as I stared out at the highway. It seemed endless, and the blur of oncoming headlights made me sleepy. I had no idea how Mac was still awake after so long focusing on the road.

  We passed through Wichita Falls, Childress, even Amarillo, before Mac started shifting in his seat. The landscape had changed in Amarillo, where we’d picked up Route 66, and the closer we got to Albuquerque, the more barren it became. The sky was huge and studded with stars, but Mac was beginning to rub his face restlessly.

  I laid a hand on his forearm. He might be my captor but I didn’t want him to doze off and run off the road. “Are we going to stop? I’m tired.”

  He sighed, and the determined set of his shoulders relaxed a little bit. “I wanted to get to Albuquerque, but I think we need to stop before we get there. Hungry?”

  I nodded, and we rode in silence until signs for Tucumcari started to appear. “I’ll find a motel,” Mac said gruffly.

  The idea of spending the night in a strange motel with a man I had known for less than twelve hours caused major reservations but also a thrill of excitement. Mac was intriguing, and earlier I’d thought he was sweet, too, beneath that bad boy charm, but even agreeing to go out to dinner with him had taken some thought. I wasn’t impulsive, I wasn’t reckless, and I usually played by the rules despite my rebellious nature. Suddenly I couldn’t imagine what to expect and I swallowed hard as he pulled into the flat, dry desert of Tucumcari.

  A squat, pink motel with a flashing neon sign was just a few miles off the highway, and Mac pulled into the parking lot. Cutting the headlights and the engine, he shifted in his seat to look at me.

  “We’re going to go in and get a room, sweetheart,” he said, eyes trained on my face. “Now, you’re with me for your own protection. No funny shit. Think you can handle that?”

  I shook my head. My heart was pounding like a drum again. I hadn’t really thought about screaming for help, but now I wondered what would happen if I did. It didn’t sound like something I wanted to find out. As comfortable as Mac had tried to make me, I didn’t really know anything about him.

  “You’ll do exactly as I say,” he said with another glance at me as he unlocked the car doors.

  I nodded again, not trusting my voice, and got out of the SUV.

  Mac held my hand as we walked into the office, just firm enough that I knew it was there as a reminder and not a friendly sign of affection. At the desk, a middle-aged man with a bad comb-over and bloodshot eyes looked up from a magazine when the bell over the door jangled.

  “Evening,” Mac said smoothly, pulling something out of his pocket with his free hand. “We need a room.” He laid a driver’s license and a credit card on the counter, and I could just make out the names on them: Eric Hill.

  “You two are out late.” The clerk rifled through a drawer and came up with a registration form that looked like it had been in use last in the 1970s. “Where you heading?”

  “Montana,” Mac said as he filled out the form. He’d let go of my hand, but he’d hooked his left foot behind my right ankle, keeping us in contact. “Thinking about buying some property up there.”

  “Oh, that’s pretty country,” the clerk said. He squinted at the form and the cards for a minute and then looked up with a smile. “Room 16. Let me get you that key.”

  Mac pocketed the ID and credit card, and I watched as the man behind the desk fumbled a room key off a pegboard behind the desk. In another minute, Mac would lead me down the sidewalk to the room, where we would be alone together all night. This was my last chance—if I was going to try to signal that I was in trouble, this was it.

  But the clerk had already turned his attention back to his magazine, and Mac had placed his hand square on the small of my back, steering me firmly toward the door. “Good night now,” he said as he pushed the door open, and I followed him without a word. The desert night was cold now, and I shivered in my useless summer dress as I walked along beside him.

  Inside, the room was everything I’d expected from a place called The Sunset View Motel—not much. A king-sized bed was pushed up against the wall, dressed in a worn bedspread that had probably been fashionable twenty years ago. The air in the room was stale and slightly bitter, and I didn’t want to look very closely at the rust-colored shag carpet.

  Mac closed and locked the door behind us while I stood in the center of the room awkwardly. There was no way I was sharing that bed with him, but I couldn’t imagine sleeping on that carpet, either. I was about to say so when Mac held out his hand. “Your bag?”

  I stiffened. “What about it?”

  “Hand it over, Paige. Now.�
� He looked weary now, the skin beneath his eyes shadowed and a dark scruff on his jaw. “Don’t want you to do anything stupid.”

  My bag was all I had left—my ID, my debit card. Without it, I was completely defenseless. But as I stood there desperately searching my brain for a way to keep it, Mac simply walked over and pulled it from my shoulder. For a moment, I thought about fighting, but that really would be stupid—Mac had more than six inches on me, and one look at his body was all the proof of strength anyone needed. I gritted my teeth, seethed with frustration, and I let him take it.

  He tucked it under his arm and smiled sort of sadly at me. “It’s going to be all right. Relax and we can both get some sleep.”

  I raised an eyebrow, cutting my glance at the single bed pointedly, but he just laughed.

  “I just drove half the night. Not sleeping on the floor.”

  And then, without another word, he turned and walked into the bathroom, my bag still tucked under his arm. The door closed and I stood staring at it for a moment before I realized this was my chance. If I was going to find out what was going on from anyone but him, I needed to do it now. There was something about his story that seemed a bit farfetched and even though we were attracted to one another, I wanted to make sure I wouldn’t end up wrapped in a body bag in some dumpster by sunrise.

  So nervous my hands were shaking, I tiptoed to the door and turned the deadbolt as quietly as I could. I’d seen a pay phone in the parking lot—I hoped it was still possible to place a collect call. Opening the door to the room just widely enough to shimmy out sideways, I closed it gently behind me, and ran into the parking lot.

  I stopped next to Mac’s truck, thinking. I couldn’t use it to get away, obviously, but if I could attract attention to it somehow, maybe he’d get pulled over. Glancing back over my shoulder at the door to the room, I took off one sandal and swung it at a taillight. After three swings, it cracked wide enough for me to pull apart the plastic casing and grab the bulb. I dropped it on the pavement and crushed with my other foot, kicking the broken shards under the SUV. It wasn’t much, but at least I felt like I wasn’t completely at his mercy.

  The pay phone was situated just past the office, next to the ice machine and an ancient soda machine that looked like it hadn’t been serviced in years. I was still shoving my bare foot into my sandal as I hopped down the sidewalk, but I didn’t want to waste time. Mac wouldn’t be in the bathroom forever.

  The receiver was cold when I picked it up and cradled it between my ear and my shoulder. But picking it up had revealed a peeling sticker—slapped on nearly sideways, it advertised something called 1-800-Collect. I sighed with relief and dialed the number, rattling off my father’s name and number when the operator picked up.

  It seemed to take forever, and I kept my eyes trained on the door to the room while I waited for my father to be connected. I was shivering in the chilly night air, and terrified that Mac would burst out of the room any second, but the moment I heard dad’s voice accepting the charges, all the tension drained out of me. He was alive, he was at home, and he could finally tell me what the hell was happening to me.

  “Paige?”

  “Hey, it’s me,” I whispered into the phone. I knew I was rushing, scrambling my words, but I couldn’t help it. “I want you to tell me right now what the hell is going on. A camera network security guy was at the house and he asked me out to eat, but then he kept driving, and now he says you’re in danger and you paid him to take me somewhere safe, and I don’t—”

  “Wait, what? You’re cutting out.”

  “I’m with the guy you sent to take me to L.A. because your life’s in danger.”

  “Paige.” He sounded worried now, and I heard him swallow hard over the phone line. “My life’s not in danger and I never sent anyone for you,” he said, his voice trembling.

  Chapter Three

  I didn’t even have time to react before the phone was ripped out of my hand and slammed down. I whirled to find Mac glaring at me.

  “I knew it,” I blurted out as I shook all over. “Liar!”

  “What the fuck did I tell you about staying put?” Mac growled.

  I wrapped my arms around myself—he was intimidating when he was angry. I didn’t know what to say to him either. We stood there faced off, me shivering, and Mac glaring.

  I couldn’t read his face. Maybe I didn’t know him well enough, maybe I was imagining things, but behind the frustrated anger on his face there was a depth in his blue eyes, a slant to his furrowed eyebrows that made him look more guilty than furious. Who was this guy, really?

  In a split second, I made my decision—I bolted, sandals slapping the dry pavement as I crossed the parking lot. I had no idea where I was going or what I was going to do, but I wanted out. I couldn’t sit by obediently while a strange man took me across the country, even one as mysterious as Mac.

  It felt good, blood pumping, leg muscles screaming at the sudden effort, but it was no contest either—within seconds, Mac was behind me, his hand closing around my arm and dragging me close.

  He was so big, more than six feet of solid muscle and bone, warm and strong. He grabbed my other arm, turning me to face him, chest to chest, and I caught my breath. Pinned in place by his grasp on my arms, my breasts pressed to his pecs, his face so close I could feel the heat of his breath, and for a moment I was frozen. The scent of him was all clean male sweat and sun-warmed cotton, and I couldn’t stop the dizzying twist of lust deep inside. In another situation, pressed against him like this, we’d be kissing. But all I felt was fear and deep, deep hatred for him at that moment.

  “So much for behaving,” Mac hissed, and I stuck my chin out stubbornly.

  “So much for telling me the truth,” I countered, wriggling against his grasp.

  Whatever he was going to say was interrupted by the sudden glare of headlights swinging into the parking lot, accompanied by the low purr of an engine. We both squinted until the car turned into a space, the engine cutting off with a few cooling pings. It was an old Lincoln, the size of a boat, and as we stood there staring, the driver’s side door opened. A slightly crooked little man who had to be close to eighty climbed out, frowning at us.

  I frowned back without realizing it—it was long after midnight, and a senior citizen was the last person I’d expected to see pulling into a cheap motel right off the highway. His wife got out of the passenger side, smoothing her white hair back nervously.

  Before I could say a word, her husband croaked out, “What the hell is going on here?”

  Mac didn’t miss a beat, answering so smoothly no one would have guessed he’d been chasing me across the parking lot minutes earlier. “Newlywed jitters.”

  The elderly couple exchanged glances, and even in the dark I could see color heat the woman’s cheeks when Mac wound his arm around me possessively and dropped a kiss on the top of my wind-blown head. I tried to give her a genuine smile—they were sweet, and they definitely weren’t the right people to ask for help.

  “As long as you’re sure, miss,” the man said gravely, and I forced myself to nod that I was okay. Mac’s arm tightened around my waist a little bit and I almost let out a low whimper.

  “Let them be, Harry,” his wife said, smiling back at me with a startlingly coy expression. “Let’s go wake up that desk clerk.”

  Harry waited for her as she rounded the car, and she slipped her arm through his as they proceeded down the sidewalk, both a little crooked, both a bit slow, but very clearly together. A sudden surge of wistfulness choked my throat.

  I thought of my own parents, at each other’s throats every possible moment, with Teddy and me between them like pawns, and my heart ached, although I didn’t completely understand why.

  I didn’t have time to dwell on that, though. Mac was steering me back to the room, none too gently, either. I tried to fight him but there was no use. And to think, I was flirting with this jerk when I first met him. He still looked hot; I couldn’t deny it. But the thou
ght made me even angrier inside. And yet, his smile had somehow managed to be disarmingly sweet and temptingly wicked at the same time. I told myself that he wouldn’t hurt me and pushed my fear way down. If I fell apart, I would be useless.

  I needed to know what he was up to. No matter what, I had to try. I’d heard that you should keep the abductor talking, and that’s exactly what I planned to do.

  Mac seemed to have other ideas, though. As soon as we were inside, he closed the door and locked it, and staved off any conversation by holding his hand up when I opened my mouth.

  “Save it,” he said.

  He raked a hand through his hair, and turned around to strip off his shirt. My mouth fell open —his back was dark gold, sleek muscles rippling as he rummaged for a clean T-shirt from his bag. He was perfectly sculpted, the urge to run my hands all over him was overpowering. For one wild moment I could imagine what it would be like to be naked underneath him, all that glorious masculine strength mine to touch. When he turned around again and found me staring, I blushed fiercely. Before I could say or do anything, he took a step toward me, his eyes trained on my face, and it was clear that he knew exactly how he affected me. With a ragged breath, I bolted into the bathroom and came back to the reality of the situation. I leaned against the locked door and took a few deep breaths. Bending my knees, I placed my shaky hands on my thighs and willed myself to calm down.

  There was no window, so escape was out. I grimaced at myself in the mirror, barely taking in my ragged, wind-blown ponytail and the shadows under my eyes. “Think, Paige,” I whispered fiercely, but there was nothing. I was in an eight-by-eight room without a window. I looked at the ceiling at a convenient air-conditioning vent. Not that I’d have any idea what to do if I got myself into one anyway.

  I swore softly and went to the bathroom, taking my time washing my hands and face afterwards. It wasn’t much, but it made me feel a little bit better.