Burn

Darkness engulfed them, and Jenner stared upward in shock. Damn him, he’d handcuffed her to him! Now what?

Chapter Fourteen

SHE WAS TOO TIRED NOT TO SLEEP, BUT SHE DIDN’T sleep well. Being handcuffed to someone wasn’t comfortable, especially when that someone outweighed her by about a hundred pounds, and every time he moved he pulled her with him. The same wasn’t true when she moved, though, mainly because of that hundred pounds. She couldn’t budge him.

In the restless doze that was the best she could manage, she drifted in and out of awareness. Sometimes she half-dreamed she was in the bar again, in those moments before she realized who he was, feeling the heat of his body when he leaned in so close to her, feeling tension coil and knot deep in her belly at her first startled look into those blue, blue eyes. She hadn’t let a man get to her in a long time, but there’d been something in his deep, smooth voice and the look in those eyes that had tempted her.

Acknowledging that she’d been tempted pissed her off enough to wake her up. She lay there for a few minutes, blinking at the ceiling. He was lying only inches away and she could feel his body heat; she hated to admit it, but that heat felt good. Somehow the blanket and coverlet had gotten kicked away. Somehow? Like there was more than one candidate for kicking blankets off the bed? In her world, blankets were for wrapping up in, not kicking away. Even though she was wearing pajamas and was still covered by the sheet, she was cold. For one thing, the tank style of the top left her arms completely bare – and those bare arms were also completely uncovered.

Grumpily, barely awake, she tried to tug the sheet higher around her neck, but the fabric was securely tucked under his heavy arm and wasn’t going anywhere. Annoyance brought her the rest of the way awake, and she turned her head to glare at him, for all the good that did, given how dark the room was.

She was lying on her back, her right arm raised up and back, with her hand tucked almost under his chin, because that was where his left hand was. And where his left hand went, her right hand also went, whether she wanted it to or not. Even more annoying, she could feel the warm puffs of his breath on her hand.

She took another moment to orient herself. The heavy curtains blocked out most of the ambient light, so the bedroom was very dark. Only the slight lessening of darkness ahead and to the right indicated where the open door to the living room was. His breathing was slow and deep; he was asleep, damn him. After everything he’d put her through, it wasn’t right that he should be able to sleep while she couldn’t, especially when it was his fault that she couldn’t sleep. Though, come to think of it, she’d rather he be asleep than awake.

But – damn it, her shoulder hurt with her arm twisted up and back in that position. She shifted a little onto her right side, trying to ease the strain but at the same time not get any closer to him, but that pulled the sheet even farther down and she couldn’t use her right hand to pull it up again. Awkwardly she fumbled with her left hand, but the angle was wrong and she needed an extra joint in her arm to get the sheet where she wanted it.

Dilemma: She could either freeze, or she could wake him up.

It was his fault she was freezing. It was his fault her shoulder was hurting. But if he was asleep, then she didn’t have to be scared of him and fighting for all she was worth to keep him from realizing that.

She hated being frightened, but she was. She was terrified for both Sydney and herself, because she didn’t know what was going to happen and maybe she’d be even more terrified if she did. Just because she did everything they wanted her to do – whatever that was – didn’t mean that at the end of this she and Syd would walk away unharmed. Letting either of them go would be sheer stupidity and so far none of these people struck her as being stupid.

If she knew what was going on, what they wanted, maybe she could reason with them. They weren’t after money – both she and Sydney were rich – and if money were the object then they didn’t need her, they could simply have grabbed Syd and demanded a ransom. True, with her added in that would have doubled the money, but she didn’t have any family they could bargain with for the ransom. She didn’t know where Jerry was, hadn’t heard from him at all in the seven years since he’d stolen twenty-five thousand from her, and even if he had been in a position to pay a ransom for her … good luck with that was all she could say. She doubted her father would have paid even a hundred bucks to keep her alive.

So … money didn’t come into the equation, especially when she factored in what she’d seen tonight, after Cael had brought her back to the suite. He’d drilled a hole in the wall, threaded some wires through the hole, checked a monitor and some sort of recording device. And he’d ignored her the entire time he was working, no matter what she said. His concentration on the task at hand had been impressive, because she’d worked hard at getting his goat.

Were they spies? Whether a real spy spy or industrial-type spy, Cael was definitely doing some spying.

She felt her scalp prickle with alarm. The whole thing seemed too James Bondish, but they had to be. Nothing else made sense. There were too many of them, and they had too many apparent resources. The pertinent questions were: Who did they work for, on whom were they spying, what did they want, and, the most pertinent question of all, were they supposed to kill anyone who got in their way or threatened the success of their operation?

If she knew who was staying in the suite next door, at least one of those questions would be answered, but probably knowing who had hired these guys would tell her a lot about how far they would go. So far, everyone she’d met was either American or had received enough extensive training to pass for one. If they were government spies, that meant they weren’t likely to kill either her or Syd … she hoped. A lot of different factors came into play with industrial spies, though, such as how much money was on the table, because she doubted they’d get paid if they didn’t deliver the goods. Put enough money in front of some people, and what moral boundaries they had seemed to melt away. Probably no one got into the business of being an industrial spy if his moral boundaries were very sturdy, anyway.