Paula Graves - Fugitive Bride

Owen turned toward her, cupping her face between his hands. His fingers were cool, but the look in his eyes was scalding hot. “I know you’re scared. I know wisecracking and complaining is how you show it. And you’re right. We haven’t heard those guys recently. I don’t think they were eager to spend the rest of their day hunting you down in the woods when they know who you are and can take a chance on grabbing you another time.”

She stared up at him. “You really think they’ll try this again?”

“You said they asked for you by name.”

“But why? I’m not rich. Robert’s not even rich, not really. Not enough to warrant a risky daylight abduction.”

“I know. But even if you can’t think of a reason, they clearly had one.” He dropped his hands to his sides. “It’s time to make a run for it. You ready?”

“Born ready.” She flashed him a cheeky grin, even if she felt like crying. It earned her one of Owen’s deliciously sexy smiles in return, and he touched her face again. His fingers were cold, but heat seemed to radiate through her from his touch.

He grabbed her hand and started running, pulling her behind him.

Even though she’d convinced herself that their captors had given up and made their escape, every muscle in Tara’s body tensed as she zigzagged behind Owen, her heart in her throat. Every twig that snapped beneath her feet sounded as thunderous as a gunshot, even through the masking hiss of the falling rain.

Two hundred yards to the cabin, Owen had said. Surely they’d run two hundred yards by now. That was two football fields, wasn’t it?

Owen jerked sideways suddenly, nearly flinging her off her feet. He grabbed her around the waist as she started to slide across the muddy ground and kept her upright. “There,” he said, satisfaction coloring his voice.

Tara followed his gaze and saw what looked to be a ramshackle wooden porch peeking out from the overgrowth about twenty yards away.

“You have got to be kidding me,” she muttered.

His lips pressed to a thin line. “Shelter is shelter, Tara.” He let go of her hand and started toward the wooden structure with a brisk, determined stride.

She stood watching him for a moment, feeling terrible. The man had saved her life, and she’d been nothing but a whining ingrate.

Lighting flashed overhead, followed quickly by a bone-rattling boom of thunder that shook her out of her misery and sent her dashing through the muddy undergrowth as fast as her ruined pumps would carry her. She skidded to a stop at the edge of the porch and stared at what Owen had called a cabin.

It was tiny. She didn’t have any idea how Owen and his fellow Boy Scouts had managed to squeeze themselves inside the place. The three shallow steps leading up to the porch looked rickety and dangerous, though apparently they’d managed to hold Owen’s weight, for he was already on the porch, peering inside the darkened doorway of the small structure.

“I remember it as being bigger,” he said quietly.

“You were eleven.” She made herself risk the steps. They were sturdier than they looked, though the rain had left them slick. At least the stair railing didn’t wiggle too much as she climbed to the porch and joined Owen in the doorway.

Years had clearly passed since any Boy Scouts had darkened the door of this cabin. What she could see in the gloom looked damp and dilapidated. The musty smell of age and disuse filled Tara’s lungs as she took a shaky breath. “The roof leaks, doesn’t it?”

Owen took a step inside. Almost immediately, he jerked back, bumping into Tara. She had to grab him around the waist to keep from falling.

Something small and gray scuttled out the door past them, scampered off the porch and disappeared into the undergrowth.

“Possum,” Owen said.

Tara grimaced. “So that’s what I’m smelling.”

He whipped around to look at her. “I’m sorry I’ve disappointed you. Again.”

She grabbed his hand. “You saved me. I wouldn’t have gotten out of there without you.”

He gave her hand a little squeeze before letting go. “If it weren’t for you, I’d have never gotten loose from that duct tape.”

And he’d never have been in trouble if she hadn’t called him to share her doubts about the wedding. Which maybe she wouldn’t be having if she didn’t still find Owen so darn attractive.

They could play this game forever, going all the way back to sixth grade when she saved Owen from a bully and he’d helped her pass math.

They were darn near symbiotic at this point.

“You’re thinking again,” Owen murmured.

“I am,” she said. “I’m thinking if we’re planning on hunkering down here until the rain passes, I’d like to make sure there’s no possum surprises waiting for me in there. Any chance we could find a candle or two in this godforsaken place?”

“Maybe.” Owen entered the dark cabin. A moment later, she heard more than saw him scrabbling around in a drawer. “Ha.” He reached into the pocket of his tuxedo pants and pulled out something. A second later, a small light flickered in the darkness.

“You had a lighter in your pants pocket?”

“I wanted to be sure your candle lighting at the wedding went off without a hitch.” He shot her a sheepish grin. “I take my man-of-honor duties seriously.”

Her insides melted, and she crossed to where he stood, wrapping her arms around his waist and pressing her face to his chest. “You’re the best man of honor ever.”

He rubbed his free hand down her arm. “Oh, Tara, you’re freezing. You really need to get out of those wet clothes.”

“And into what?” she asked, her voice coming out softer and sultrier than she’d intended.

He stared back at her, wordless, his eyes smoldering as strongly as the flickering candle in his hand. The moment stretched between them, electric and fraught with danger.

And forbidden desires...

A loud thud sounded outside the door, and in a flash, Owen extinguished the candle and pulled Tara behind him.

There was another thud. Slow. Deliberate.

Someone was outside the cabin.

Chapter Three

Owen tucked Tara more fully behind him, squaring his shoulders in an attempt to look larger than he was. What he wouldn’t give to have the pecs and deltoids of Mike Strong, who’d instructed him in hand-to-hand combat during his first grueling weeks of probationary training at Campbell Cove Security Services. Strong had insisted that Owen’s lean, wiry build didn’t mean he couldn’t hold his own in a fight, but until today, he’d never had a reason to test that theory.

And given how badly his attempt to save Tara outside the church had gone, he wasn’t confident that Strong would be proven right this time, either.

He could hear his father’s voice, a mean whisper in his ear. “You’re weak, Owen. Life ain’t kind to the weak.”

Grimly shutting out that voice, he searched the shadowy interior of the cabin for something he could use as a weapon, but the place had been stripped mostly bare a long time ago, from the looks of it. There was a rickety camp bed left in one corner, and the mattress of another lying on the floor nearby, but that was all. What he wouldn’t give for one of those cheap little bow and arrow sets he and the other Scouts had learned to use that summer twenty years ago.

Not that he’d remember how to use it.

The footsteps on the porch moved closer, the steps careful. Deliberate. There was an oddly light touch to the sounds that didn’t remind him much of the hulking men who’d shoved him into the side of the van earlier that day. These footfalls sounded almost—

A face peered around the edge of the door. Small, pale, freckled and terrified.