Unbound

by Lauren Hawkeye

  He wasn’t wrong. Pinching my lips together, I ignored the flush in my cheeks and looked down at my feet, clad in the dusty boots he’d retrieved from my room that morning.

  “You start shooting at one.” His massive bicep rippled—I swear it actually did—as he opened the glass door to the diner. “You need to eat something.”

  I might have argued, just as payback for bodily carting me out of Daly’s office, but the enticing scent of bacon and fries wafted from the open door, making my stomach growl. With a sidelong glance at the new dictator in my life, I stomped into the diner, sliding into the first empty booth I saw.

  Jasper took the seat across from me, and I couldn’t keep back a huff of laughter as he worked to fit his massive frame into the small space. Once settled, he looked around the place carefully, and I knew that, as always, he was logging details, assessing risks, memorizing faces.

  “Thank you for letting me stay last night.” I knew if I’d been on my own, I wouldn’t have slept at all. Warmed by Jasper’s heat, though, I hadn’t even rolled over until morning.

  “Wasn’t exactly a hardship for me.” He smirked, and I flushed, remembering. When I had woken up, something very large and very hard had been pressed against my back, telling me just how okay Jasper was with me sleeping in his bed.

  That I’d missed out on the pleasure that hardness had promised me was just another reason to be pissed at Daly.

  “So, you’re saying you want to do it again?” Dipping my head, I took a long gulp of cola, the syrupy sweetness coating my throat.

  Across from me, Jasper sat so still he could have been one of the artifacts we dug up, frozen in place for the rest of time. My pulse increased just enough to make me take a deep breath as I waited.

  It would have been nice if he showed emotion—any emotion. I figured he had a distinct advantage in this…whatever the hell it was between us, because I was the opposite, my feelings bubbling right on out of me like a fountain.

  “I’m saying you intrigue me.” He spoke carefully. I took a moment to assess, to scan all the tender feelings that I often had a hard time converting into action—Nolan being a prime example. It was a massive surprise to discover that Jasper’s words had set a flock of butterflies fluttering around inside of me.

  “I intrigue you?”

  Wordlessly, Jasper nodded. He took a bite of his food, chewed it slowly, and then surveyed me. “You just need to understand more.”

  I scoffed. “I have a doctorate,” I reminded him. “I’m good at understanding. Try me.”

  “You know why I don’t have girlfriends?” he asked. I shook my head. “It’s because most women can’t give me what I want. They can’t deal with what I want. What you saw last night? That was just the tip of the iceberg. There’s a lot more to it.”

  I chewed my lip for a moment while Jasper took another bite. “Things like what?”

  “Hmm?” Jasper swiped at his mouth with his napkin.

  “What can’t other girls deal with?”

  Jasper eyed me for a moment and then looked back down at his plate. “That’s kind of personal.”

  “I think we left that at the door last night.” The time for “private details” had passed, as far as I was concerned. We’d gotten to know each other inside and out—at this point, Jasper could tell me whatever he wanted, and I probably wouldn’t bat an eyelash.

  “I’d like to watch,” Jasper said. His voice was flat, but in it I heard a thread of something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Not nerves, exactly, but I understood that how I responded to this was important to him.

  “Watch what?”

  “You.” His green eyes zeroed in on mine, and for a minute I felt like he was looking right through me. “You, with another man.”

  Okay, so much for not batting an eyelash. I recoiled, blinked, and stared at Jasper. Part of me expected him to laugh and say “just kidding” or something like that, but he just scrutinized me. Somehow, I suspected I wasn’t the first woman to give him that reaction.

  “What? Why?”

  Without responding, Jasper went back to his food.

  “Why would you want to see me with another man?” I pressed. “I mean, most guys are totally against that. They’d pitch a fit to see a girl with another guy. It just doesn’t make any—”

  “I get off on being the best,” Jasper said, cutting me off mid-sentence. “I like knowing that while another man can give you pleasure, I’m the one in your bed after.”

  “Um.” I didn’t really know what to say to that. I wasn’t sure I could have said anything, actually, with my head full of wicked images sparked by Jasper’s words.

  Him. Me. And someone else.

  My skin was hot. I caught him looking at me, and where I would have expected him to smirk, he just seemed to be watching, waiting.

  We ate in silence for a moment. I slurped my drink through my straw and waited for Jasper to make the next move. I felt like there was a pink elephant hanging in the room above us, but if Jasper felt the same way, he didn’t show it. He sucked down his soda.

  “So, tell me about you,” he said finally.

  I cocked my head. “What about me?”

  “Whatever’s important.”

  I chuckled. “That’s kind of vague. What, am I supposed to tell you my life story?”

  “Sure. Tell me your life story. Start at the beginning.”

  I shook my head gently. “I’m not telling you my life story…”

  Jasper shrugged one shoulder. “Fair enough. I know the bullet points, though. Dr. Cari Dunn, grew up in the suburbs of D.C. in a middle-to-upper class family. Decent childhood, never wanted for much, spent most of your time playing with dinosaurs instead of with Barbies—”

  “Ugh,” I said, shaking my head. “When you tell it like that, you make me sound like some two-dimensional everyman. Or everywoman, I guess you would say.”

  “So? Tell me something I don’t already know. Dig deep.”

  I thought about it for a minute. “Well, I’m a perfectionist.”

  “You think?” He snorted. “Yeah, I can tell. The doctorate was the first clue. You dropped a couple of hints last night, too.”

  I scowled. “How so? What hints did I drop?”

  “Moving on.” There was the smirk I’d been waiting for. “I know you’re a perfectionist. That’s not new information. I want to know something I didn’t already know.”

  I leaned back in the seat, draping my arm over the backrest. “Well, how about you? Why don’t you tell me something I don’t know?”

  “No.”

  “Okay, well, I guess that settles that.” I leaned forward again, plucking a French fry from my plate and popping it in my mouth. Another awkward silence ensued.

  “Fine,” I said eventually. “I like knowing what I want.”

  “You like knowing what you want.”

  I nodded. “Yeah. I like to be able to see the finish line. Or, at least, I like knowing that there’s a finish line to be found. I don’t like drifting. I like to have a goal in mind, something to reach. If I’m not doing something—if I don’t have a target to shoot for—I go out of my mind.”

  “Go on.”

  “I don’t know. There’s not much else. I mean, I see people sitting in front of televisions, and I can’t understand how they can live with themselves, just idling. Or the beach—I’ve never been able to go to the beach. I can’t stand to just lie there doing nothing. I have to be doing something. Even when I was a kid and I’d go to the lake with my parents, I had to be doing something, like building a sandcastle or trying to hang a tire swing. I can’t stand to idle.”

  “You like goals.”

  “Right.”

  An invisible hook tugged the edge of Jasper’s mouth upward. “Am I one of your goals?”

  I lifted an eyebrow at him. “Maybe,” I said.

  “Your funeral. I’m not the kind of guy you’ll ever be able to just ‘check off your list.’”

  I started
to respond but bit back the words, choosing instead to push more French fries into my mouth. That was another thing I could have told him—that I eat when I’m nervous—but based on what I knew about Jasper, he’d already figured that out.

  The rest of the meal proceeded in silence. I watched Jasper and he watched, well, everyone. The main entrance to the diner was over my left shoulder, and every time it opened, Jasper glanced up to see who was coming in, and he watched everyone leave. It occurred to me that this seating arrangement, with Jasper facing the door, his back to the wall, probably wasn’t an accident. He’d sat there specifically to keep an eye on things.

  We finished our meal and stood. Jasper reached for his wallet.

  “My treat,” I said.

  Jasper snorted. “No chance.”

  I frowned. “I’m sure I make more than you. Let me treat you.”

  Jasper grunted his defiance and headed for the counter, handing a couple of twenties to the girl behind the register and then leaning on the counter to survey the diner.

  Jasper was starting to be a real pain in the butt for me. One minute, we were tangled up in each other’s arms tighter than a sailor’s knot. The next I could barely talk to him and felt a million miles away. We weren’t dating, or even close to it, and yet Jasper insisted on paying for my meal like we’d been together for years.

  Dammit. I was in trouble.

  Chapter Three

  “Cut!”

  I’d been halfway through my line when Mike called it. Taken aback, I hesitated for a moment, unsure of what to make of the situation. I felt like I was suddenly detached from the shoot as the crew got to work resetting the stage. I approached Mike. “What’s going on?” I asked. “We were doing great!”

  “You’re off,” Mike said.

  I frowned, bristling. “I’m off? I feel fine. We were doing fantastic.”

  Mike shook his head. “No, something’s off,” he said. “Listen, maybe you’re just upset about all this excitement over the last few days. Why don’t you take the day off? We have some B-reel to shoot, anyway. We’ll get caught up.”

  “You did B-reel the day before yesterday,” I pressed. “How are you behind?”

  “Just take the day off, Cari,” Mike said sharply before turning away.

  Planting my hands on my hips, I looked around. Something wasn’t right, I was sure of it. Wiping my brow, I headed to the refreshment tent for a bottle of water. As I leaned against the table and considered what I would do for the rest of the day, someone caught my eye. I stopped drinking mid-gulp and examined him.

  I’d seen him before. Part of the reason I’d noticed him was that he seemed out of place, standing at the edge of the set with his hands in his pockets. All around him, people were buzzing like frantic bumblebees, but the guy seemed Stiff. Watchful. That wasn’t something you usually saw, at least not on this set.

  His clothes seemed out of place, too. We’d been shooting in the sand for a while now, so most of the crew had gotten the hint and started showing up to work in older clothes, the kind that you wouldn’t mind getting dirty. This guy was wearing a pair of jeans that seemed to have been bought recently—that looked as though they’d been ironed, actually—and a plain white T-shirt. Again, the shirt looked brand new. Who would wear a white T-shirt to an archaeological dig? That would be like wearing a three-piece suit while trying to eat spare ribs—an accident waiting to happen.

  It wasn’t just his outfit that bugged me, either. I’d never seen him before, but I felt like I had—

  At Daly’s office!

  The man’s face clicked. I’d seen him at Daly’s office, in the lobby, only then he’d been in uniform.

  Why? What was he doing here at the set?

  Did it have to do with me?

  I sipped my water. That was probably it. That was why I’d gotten the afternoon off. Mike was cooperating with the police to get this whole situation resolved. Obviously, they wanted to do it without me getting caught in the crossfire, so Mike was “clearing the area” so the police could move in. Sure, they might be shooting B-reel today, but that wasn’t the reason I was going home. They were sweeping me under the carpet in case all hell broke loose.

  I finished off the water and chucked it in the trash. Part of me thought about going back to Mike and giving him hell. I wasn’t some cute little damsel-in-distress that needed to be stuffed away so the great big strong men could take care of the problem. I didn’t need to be cocooned in bubble wrap and tucked under a bed somewhere. No, if something was going to happen, I could take care of myself!

  What was the use? Even if I managed to convince Mike otherwise, the cops would want me gone. They were probably the ones that had arranged for me to be out of the way. And even if I somehow managed to convince the cops to let me stick around, there was no way in hell Jasper would, not if he saw an opportunity for the police to put an end to this once and for all.

  So much for the show staying on schedule. Never once in five years had an episode been delayed, and I hated that the tight rein I held on things was now out of my hands.

  Sighing, I threw up my hands. I guess it was time for me to head back to the motel room—my new one, since the old one currently had a piece of plastic taped over what used to be its window. What the hell else was there to do?

  …

  The old saying “the world passing you by” never made as much sense to me as when I found myself in my new room, staring out through the slatted blinds at the traffic passing on the highway in the distance. It was the middle of the afternoon, and here I was, stuck in my room like a caged animal.

  I’d tried to leave earlier, just to go grab a cola from the machine in the lobby. I’d run into Margot, who had insisted on getting it for me before nudging me back into my room to “rest.”

  Plan “Keep Cari Safe” was in full swing.

  I appreciated it, even as I chafed under it.

  My phone stared at me from its perch on the edge of the desk. I tore myself from the window to check it for the hundredth time. No missed calls. No voicemails from the cops, saying they’d had a major breakthrough and I could go back to living my life normally instead of cowering in a motel room for hours on end. No texts from Jasper saying he’d put down my stalker like a rabid dog and it was time for me to get back to the set and start rolling on the show.

  I sat on the edge of the bed. Stood up. Looked out the window. Returned to the bed, turned on the TV, flipped through the channels, turned it off again. I drank my cola, then killed ten minutes trying to crush the can with my bare hands.

  Ugh.

  While I was checking my phone for the hundred-and-first time, a knock at the door snapped me out of my self-pity. The door rattled, but I’d locked it as per Jasper’s instructions. I wandered to the tiny corridor in front of the door. “Who is it?”

  “Jasper,” came the gruff response. “Open up.”

  I crossed my arms. “No.”

  “What?”

  “You wanted me here, all safe and padded. So I’m staying here, all safe and padded.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I know you had something to do with me being kicked off the set earlier!” I shot back. “I’m no idiot. I saw the plainclothes cop at the set, and Mike is better at directing than he is acting. I saw right through what he was trying to do. They were trying to get me out of the way. And I guarantee you had something to say about it.”

  “Cari, open the door.”

  “Nope. I’m staying in here, and I’m not letting anyone in. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? I’ll stay here and go fucking stir-crazy just like everyone wants. Hey, why go out and face the problem head-on when I can sit in here watching soap operas and game shows and hope it goes away on its own? Scram, Jasper. I have some daytime television to get caught up on. These Spanish telenovelas are addictive once you get into them.”

  No response from Jasper. Shrugging, I turned on my heel and headed back to the bed. I’d been lying about the
telenovela. There was no way in hell I was watching—

  I heard the lock disengage seconds before the door opened. Jasper strode in as calmly as if he were entering his own room, and his nonchalance made my temper rise.

  “We’re doing something special tonight,” Jasper said. “Dress classy. Forget the panties.”

  “What?” Heat pooled instantly between my thighs at the promise in his voice. “What are we doing?”

  “Did I stutter? Be ready in two hours.” He looked me up and down in a way that made my toes curl. “Oh, and pack a bag. You’ll be gone overnight.”

  With that, he stalked off, leaving me to stare, awestruck, at where he’d just been.

  Okay, okay, calm down. Jasper wanted me to dress classy. What did that mean? Did it mean dress sexy? Yeah, he had to mean sexy because he didn’t want me wearing panties. So I’d wear something sexy, something short. But not too short. Unless he wanted me to wear something short?

  I shook my head to rattle my brain back into the present moment. Okay, never mind. I needed to do some grooming.

  I tiptoed over the remnants of my door and speed-walked to the front desk.

  “Hi,” I said to the girl behind the counter. “Do you have extra towels?”

  “Sure,” the girl said.

  Taking a cue from Jasper, I leaned with one elbow on the counter to survey the lobby so nobody could get the jump on me. Nobody else there, though, except for Jasper and the manager, who looked like he might pee his pants under the bigger man’s unyielding stare. I met my bodyguard’s gaze, and he motioned me back to my room with just the slightest nod.

  The girl returned with the towels.

  “Thanks,” I said, spinning around.

  Rounding the corner, I walked headlong into Nolan. We collided, the towels nearly tumbling from my arms in the process.

  “Oh! Sorry,” I said. “Hi, Nolan.”

  “Hi, Cari,” Nolan said. He grinned at me. “You’re in a hurry.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’m on a deadline.”

  “I stopped by your room. I think there’s something wrong with your door.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, I noticed.”

  “Listen, now that I have you—you want to hang out tonight?” He punctuated the question with a smile, the sexy one that had drawn me to him in the first place. I couldn’t help but smile back.