Her eyes widened. The noise continued, coming closer. “More thunder?” She didn’t think she could bear the idea of more rain.
“No, a train,” he corrected, picking up pace. “Our train.”
She hurried to catch up to him. It didn’t take much. And, despite everything, it felt good to run. “What do you mean, our train?”
He focused on the road. His thigh suddenly felt as if it had burst into flames, but he gave no indication, refused to allow himself the distraction. “We’re taking the train to London.”
Keeping pace, she looked around. There were only trees, although she could make out some tracks up ahead. Where were they boarding the train? “There’s a train station out here in the middle of nowhere?”
He could feel perspiration forming at his temples, down his spine. “No.”
She was in no frame of mind for another one of his puzzles. “Then how are we supposed to get on the train?” she demanded.
He continued focusing on reaching where they needed to be in order to get on, shutting his mind to the pain that was shooting up and down his leg, begging him to stop. “It’s a freight train.”
For a man with a bad leg, he ran like a fox with a pack of hounds at his heels, she thought in amazement. She was beginning to breathe harder. “That still doesn’t answer my—” And then it hit her. “Oh, no. No. You can’t mean—” Her voice trailed off. Joshua made no attempt to refute anything, and she was forced to put her thoughts into words. “We’re not going to ‘hop a freight.’” Was that the proper term for it? “Are we?”
He clenched his hands into fists and pumped his arms, willing himself not to stumble. “That, Prudence Hill, is exactly what we’re going to do.”
Was he out of his mind? “Look, you might leap tall buildings in a single bound, but as for me, I run at a normal speed.” There was no way she could catch up to a train.
“You’re being modest.” He took a deep breath, letting it out again as evenly as he could. “I saw the clip of you jogging. You’re very fast.”
Did he think he was going to flatter her into running faster? She couldn’t, not even if she wanted to show him up. “Not as fast as a train.”
He realized that he’d forgotten to give her a crucial piece of information. “The train slows down just up ahead.”
For someone who avoided the countryside, he seemed to know an awful lot about the area. The operative word here was seemed and she wasn’t totally convinced that he knew what he was talking about. “And you know this how?”
He’d studied the terrain and key points, such as train lines, something he always did when he was going into a place. He made it a point never to go in without an exit plan. But he needed to save his breath, so he merely said, “There’s a sharp curve. Trust me.”
Right, easy for him to say. But then, she’d driven down an incline with him, had him shoot men who were trying to kill her and made love with him in a crumbling inn. She supposed if that didn’t inspire trust, nothing would.
“Lead on,” she told him.
They cut across a field and were just at the curve when the freight appeared in the distance, barreling down. “Run faster,” he ordered, barely getting the words out.
She did, but at the same time, she thought it was an exercise in futility. “We’re never going to get on that train.”
“Where’s your optimism?” Flagging, he fell back behind her. “Keep running,” he ordered. “Don’t look back. Get on the first car with open doors or a flatbed.”
In the end, he was right, the train did almost come to a stop because the curve was difficult to negotiate at top speed. Three cars went by before a flatbed car appeared. With a burst of energy, Joshua managed to get on just as the train reached its lowest speed.
“C’mon!” he cried, extending his hand to her. “You can do it. Where’s all that feministic pride?” he goaded her.
He knew what to say, what buttons to press. Cursing him, she ran faster, grabbed hold and was pulled aboard. She tumbled onto the wooden slats and lay there, gasping for air.
Continuing to curse him in her mind because she had no energy to push the words out.
Just like in the old movies, she thought, vowing never to watch one again.
Pru continued to lie there, the rumbling of the train vibrating through her entire body. After a few moments, she realized that Joshua was on his feet. Now what? Opening her eyes, she saw that he was standing over her.
“C’mon.”
She made no effort to sit up. “If you want me to run across the roofs, forget it.”
He laughed and took her hand. “No roofs, I promise. Just across a coupling.”
“Why?” she demanded. Wasn’t that dangerous? If the train lunged, they’d wind up on the tracks. He might have a death wish, but she didn’t.
He continued to hold his hand out to her. “Because we need to have walls and doors around us. I don’t want to stay out in the open like this.”
He was right, damn him. Grudgingly, she sat up and gave him her hand. He pulled her to her feet. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”
“Sunny day, beautiful woman, ride in the country, what’s not to enjoy?” he quipped.
“You are certifiable, you realize that.”
He saw no point in arguing. Anyone who faced death on a regular basis operated by a different set of rules. “Most likely.”
Very carefully, he picked his way across the coupling between the two cars and opened the door leading into the next, closed car. From the looks of it, it was hauling tractor parts. There was little room for maneuvering. Joshua found a space where they could sit.
Pru all but collapsed onto the floor. Sitting, she pulled up her knees and rested her head against them. She wondered if her pulse would ever get back to normal.
“What are you afraid of?”
The question broke the rhythmic rattle of the train as it made its way from the country to the city. She’d almost dozed off, she realized.
Now she raised her head and looked at him. It was an odd question, but then, everything since she’d met him had been odd. “Aside from ghosts and kidnappers popping up between the rails?”
One side of his mouth rose in a half smile. “Aside from that.”
She took a deep breath and then tossed her head. “Nothing.”
He wasn’t buying it. “Don’t give me that. Back at the inn, you had this look in your eyes when I said ‘that’s my girl,’ like we were suddenly on opposite sides of the fence and you were about to pick up your broadsword.”
She looked away from him, annoyed. So now he was going to add analyst to his list of accomplishments? “I haven’t got the faintest idea what you’re talking about, Secret Agent Man.”
“Yes, you do.” His voice was almost gentle. It put her on her guard. “Somebody hurt you, Pru?”
Where did he get off, asking her something like that? It was far more personal than making love. He was asking to look into her soul. “I’d have to care for someone to hurt me.”
He’d struck a nerve, he thought. “Yes,” he agreed, “you would. Did he?”
She forgot to be tired. Only angry. “There is no ‘he,’ Secret Agent Man. There’s never been a ‘he.’”
Instead of arguing, the way she expected him to, he nodded. “So your dossier indicated, I thought that maybe you were just exceptional at hiding the identity of a significant other. ‘She’ then, although I have to say that after last night, if there was a ‘she,’ it’s a horrible waste of talent.”
The man just didn’t stop, did he? Just because he’d saved her life once—twice, she amended—didn’t give him the right to pry like this. “No, no ‘she,’ no ‘he.’” Maybe this would shut him up. “I know better than to get close to people.”
For a second, it sounded as if she’d taken a page out of his book. He knew why he was the way he was, but that didn’t answer his questions about her.
“Oh? Why?”
She blew out a breath, cl
early annoyed. The answer she gave came from between clenched teeth. “Because when you get close to people, you get used to seeing them there. Expect to see them there. And when they’re suddenly not there, it hurts.” She waved her hand dismissively. “I don’t have time to be hurt.”
“But you were.” The look in her eyes confirmed it. “Your mother? Father?”
“No.”
She’d said that too fiercely. “You’re lying, Prudence.” He took a stab at it. “Your mother died and that made you feel abandoned. But your father needed support, so you quickly retooled yourself to accommodate him. If you were busy, you couldn’t think. Besides, you were needed.” He watched her eyes as he spoke. “You became the perfect little hostess. Your father’s right hand even though you hated all that travel, all that uprooting. And then suddenly, he got married. There was someone else to take over all the public duties, all the private talks. You were out in the cold—”
Damn him, for two cents, she’d push him off the train. “I get along perfectly well with my stepmother,” she informed him angrily.
“I never said you didn’t.” She was, after all, despite the tabloid stories, a fair person. She didn’t hate merely to hate. “But it wasn’t the same, was it? The dynamics of your family changed and you were odd girl out.”
She rose to her feet, wanting to be anywhere but near him. There was no place to go, no place to move. “You make me sound pathetic.”
He rose to stand beside her. “You’re not pathetic, Prudence. You’re human. Anyone would feel the sting. Is that when you started to act out? Right after your father got married, you started bashing photographers over the head.”
Damn, was she ever going to outlive that story? “Photographer,” she corrected heatedly. “It was only one photographer and he wouldn’t take his camera out of my face. Worse, he was trying to get photographs of my stepmother and her baby.”
He’d read the story. Like all yellow journalism, there’d been a thread of truth in it. “Your half brother.”
She hated that term. “Brett,” Pru told him. “And he’s not half of anything. I don’t do things by halves, Lazlo. He’s my brother. And Alexis is my sister and Gerald’s my brother,” she added, referring to her stepmother’s children.
His eyes didn’t leave hers. “And they’re all part of your father’s new family.”
What did he want from her? “Look, what is your point? Why are you harping on this? You’re worse than a tabloid photographer,” she told him, wishing there was somewhere to go in this claustrophobic freight car, somewhere where she didn’t have to look at him.
Part of him wondered why he was bothering. The other part knew, which worried him somewhat. Caring about someone seriously blunted his edge.
“My point is that it’s all right to let people in, Pru. It’s all right to feel.”
She laughed shortly. There was no humor in her eyes. “Well, if you say so, Secret Agent Man, I guess it must be true.”
He smiled, touching her cheek. Watching something come into her eyes. Feeling it stir him. “Now you’re getting the hang of it.”
Chapter 13
Mayday.
The single word telegraphed itself through Pru’s brain, putting every single fiber of her being on high alert. She felt as if the swaying floor beneath her feet was about to open up, allowing her to drop down onto the tracks to be run over.
Nothing felt solid.
Except for the feel of his arms as they wound around her.
Time stood still. Then evaporated completely as he lowered his mouth to hers.
He was kissing her. Kissing her and making her forget every single word she’d just uttered in protest of attachments, taking great pains to point out the reason a rational person shouldn’t feel anything for anyone. She could no longer hide behind that. Because, damn it, she was feeling, feeling things for him even when she didn’t want to.
Her body leaned into his, whether through centrifugal force or because she was seeking the comfort that came from complete contact, she didn’t know. All she knew was that one moment, there was a micron of space between them, the next they were closer than two pages in a book stashed beneath an anvil.
Heat, tension and yearning all built up to a dangerous level, threatening to burn her, to consume her.
And then, just as unexpectedly as he’d kissed her, he drew back. Her heart was hammering in her throat, making swallowing a challenging feat.
Joshua leaned his forehead against the top of her head. His voice was incredibly seductive when he asked, “Hungry?”
Yes, God help her, she was. Hungry with such intensity that she hardly recognized herself. Hungry to make love with him again despite all her rhetoric this morning about how the lovemaking they’d shared the night before hadn’t meant anything.
It had.
It did.
And she wanted him again. So badly that her body ached and felt as if it was on the verge of disintegrating without him. Still, a shred of common sense managed to prevail.
“We can’t do it here,” she protested, dropping her arms and stepping back.
Distance, she needed distance. Distance from him, from the tempting scent of his breath, the arousing scent of his body. But there was no distance to be had, unless she felt like climbing up into the cab of the crane that was being transported in this car.
He looked at her curiously, clearly puzzled. Good, she thought, his turn for a change. “Why not?”
How could he ask that? Didn’t surrounding conditions factor into this at all for him? Was he raised in a barn? “Because it’s crammed and dirty. We’d have to do it standing up.”
He still looked as if he didn’t follow her. “What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing,” she heard herself saying. If he couldn’t figure it out, she wasn’t about to try to explain it to him. “Not a damn thing.” But as she began to put her arms around his neck again, Joshua surprised her by stepping back and producing a granola bar out of his back pocket. She stared at it. “What’s this?”
“Breakfast.” Neither one of them had time to get anything to eat before they fled the inn. “I grabbed it from the basket when we checked in at Robin’s Nest,” he added when she looked at him in confusion.
“Oh.” She hadn’t seen the food. Not when they went in and certainly not when they left. She had been moving too fast to be on the lookout for anything other than would-be abductors materializing out of thin air like the skeleton army in the Greek myth, Jason and the Golden Fleece.
“You said you were hungry.” He looked at her as if he still didn’t understand what she was thinking.
“I am.” To prove it, she quickly took the granola bar from him and ripped off the wrapper. “I just thought you meant—never mind.”
It was better that he didn’t know what she meant, she thought. He’d probably think she was over-sexed—or had succumbed to his fatal charm.
Well, haven’t you? a little voice whispered in her head. She did her best to ignore it, giving her full attention to the swiftly disappearing honey, nut and caramel bar.
And then it obviously dawned on him. He grinned broadly, tickled. “You thought I was talking about another kind of hunger.”
“No,” she retorted sharply, her mouth still filled with peanuts.
He gave her a look that said he saw right through her. “Prudence, we’ve been through too much for you to lie to me now.”
He’d probably lie to her in a heartbeat, she thought. And never blink an eye. “All right. Here’s a truth for you: I hate being called Prudence.”
He let the other matter drop. For now. “What shall I call you?” he wanted to know. It was, after all, her name. “Sam?”
“Whatever.” She focused her attention on the granola bar. It was easier than trying to talk her way out of an embarrassing mistake. She had a hunch that the more she talked, the worse it would get. It was only after she’d devoured almost the entire bar that she realized Joshua wasn’t eating anythi
ng. “Where’s your granola bar?”
The shrug was indifferent. He was accustomed to going long periods without food. Part of the training. “I was only able to get one.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?” Damn, she felt like a glutton, even though the bar had been small. “I would have broken it in half. Here.” She offered him the smattering of nuts and the smallest of crumbs that were still in her hand.
He laughed, pushing her hand back. “That’s okay, you can finish it. I’m not hungry.”
The hell he wasn’t. “The can of oil fill you up, Tin Man?”
“Just about,” he deadpanned back. He smiled as she dusted one hand against the other, getting rid of the last of the crumbs.
She had a feeling that he was looking right through her. And seeing things she didn’t want him to see. “What?”
“Now,” he said quietly, running his knuckles lightly along her cheek, “about that other hunger.”
Heat instantly rose up through her body. What was it about this man that made her feel like an awkward, simpering adolescent? She absolutely hated not feeling in control of things and ever since Joshua had come into her life, everything had been out of control. “What about it?”
His eyes held hers. Damn, but she was pulling him in. The worst thing in the world for a man in his position, for a man of his predisposition. But it was as if he were on the outside, watching himself do this. “I’d like to do something about that, too.”
“A mercy lovemaking session?” she asked sarcastically.
His initial instinct brought denial to his lips. “I won’t die without it.” But then he relented. “But if you prefer thinking of it that way…” His voice trailed off.
She’d meant the bit about the mercy lovemaking session to refer to her, not him. His take on it surprised her. It also made him more human. “You’re saying that you want it, too?”
He framed one side of her face with his hand. “I never do anything I don’t want to do.”
She thought of his comment when he’d appeared on the scene in the farmhouse. He’d seemed reluctant, despite the paid assignment. “Even rescuing me?”
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