That fire had been palpable for as long as Jordynn had known her feeling went beyond friendship. Or maybe that was how she knew. It was really hard to say which came first. Either way, the burn hadn’t diminished at all.
Dono’s hands moved. One up to the back of her neck and the other down to her waist.
Their pose was intimate now. Probably too intimate for how much time had passed with no contact between them. But as quickly as the thought came to Jordynn’s mind, it slipped away again. The tips of Dono’s fingers dug into her hair and into the small of her back, sending tendrils of desire from each point.
Jordynn’s breath caught, and she trembled—not with fear or worry, but with want.
His mouth was just an inch away from hers. So close that she could feel its heat, anticipate its familiar soft but firm feel. The brief and gentle kiss that he’d given her at her house nowhere near satisfied the desire running through her now.
Her lids sunk down, and she tipped her face up eagerly.
God, I missed him. Missed this.
But as she leaned forward, tingling with anticipation, her feet caught on the ground and she nearly fell all over again. Dono grabbed her and pushed her back to an upright position.
“You all right?”
“Yes.” Her reply came out a little breathy, and she cleared her throat and forced a distinctly unnatural laugh and tried again. “I forgot I was tied up. For the second time.”
His face darkened, and he dropped down to his knees, his hands working swiftly and furiously to free her ankles.
Jordynn took a steadying breath, and reality came rushing back. She’d been about to kiss him. This man, who’d once been the boy she’d thought she’d marry. Who was now a stranger with an unknown past and a dangerous present and a questionable future. And not just in the surprised, unguarded way she’d kissed him back earlier, but with real fervor.
She shivered and shook her head. What was I thinking?
But she knew the answer. She hadn’t been thinking. Just acting on a remembered passion. One she needed to forget if she had any chance of coming out of this—whatever this was—unscathed.
At her feet, Dono finished his work, then stood. “Better?”
“Yes. Thanks.”
He took a little step toward her, then seemed to realize the spell had been broken, and moved back, putting a foot between them.
“We should go,” he said.
“Why?”
He frowned. “We need to be somewhere crowded. With cover.”
He reached out like he was going to take her hand, and Jordynn slid out of touching distance, her back squeaking against the car.
Subtle.
She steeled herself against the slight droop of Dono’s mouth. She couldn’t afford to care about his feelings. Not right now.
“I didn’t mean why do we need to go,” she said. “I meant why should I go with you? Or trust you? You let me think you were dead, Dono. And since the second you walked back into my life—which I have to point out was only a little over an hour ago—I’ve been threatened with a gun, tossed into the back of a car, and I committed grand theft auto. You haven’t offered me even a bit of an explanation.”
“Hon—Jordynn—”
“Tell me something. Anything. Please.”
“I didn’t leave because I wanted to.”
The simple statement hit Jordynn straight in the gut, and her resolve to feel no sympathy started to crumble.
* * *
Donovan sensed an opening. Jordynn was staring at him with that half hopeful, half guarded look she’d always had on her face before she’d finally figured out that she could really trust him. Not wanting to risk letting go of the potential opportunity, Donovan grabbed her hand. All he needed was a crack to slip through, and he’d jump on a second chance faster than she could blink.
“Come with me,” he said. “Just as far as our bridge.”
Her gaze clouded. “It’s gone.”
“Gone?”
“They pulled it out, salvaged what they could and mounted it in front of City Hall.”
“That’s...” He lifted a hand to his ear, unsure which word was the right one.
“Hard,” Jordynn filled in. “And sad.”
“I’m sorry.” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he sighed. “I keep saying that. I know it doesn’t even graze the surface of what I put you through.”
“Sometimes, I drive by it on purpose, just to look at it. Sometimes, I avoid Main Street for a whole month, just so I don’t have to look at it.” She shrugged. “I was glad, though, that the developers decided to keep it.”
Her last sentence made his throat go dry. “Who pulled it out, Jordynn?”
“Fryer Developments, I think they’re called?”
“Fryer?” It wasn’t the name he was expecting to hear.
She nodded. “They’ve got a big sign down there, mapping out the details of their project.”
“Show me.”
“What? Why? No. Never mind. You won’t tell me anyway.”
She sounded less annoyed than resigned, but that didn’t stop yet another stab of guilt from hitting Donovan as she started up the hill beside the bridge. He stared after her, wondering if he’d ever get a chance to make her understand. Her life was everything to him. Even if his decade-old actions seemed to say otherwise.
“You coming?” she called, and he blinked, realizing she’d already disappeared above the gray concrete.
“Jordynn?” he called, striding over the rocky ground.
Her voice carried back. “Up here.”
He caught up to her at the crest of the natural hill. She stood in front of a large sign, which advertised the future home of Greyside Estates, a mountain community. And she’d been right—the company building the elite-looking houses was Fryer Developments.
Donovan gave his ear a tug. He couldn’t decide if he was relieved, or just puzzled. He stared down at the treetops below, discomfort hanging over him. It wasn’t just the woods themselves, though they certainly held their own dark place in his mind. A place his didn’t want to revisit.
Seems inevitable now, doesn’t it?
A light touch on his arm brought his attention back to Jordynn.
“What’s the matter?” she asked.
He glanced down at her concerned face, then rolled his shoulders, trying to ease some of the tension. “I don’t know yet. Something about this isn’t right.”
“The development? I don’t like the idea of houses up here, either.” She shrugged. “But I guess it’s just progress.”
His eyes strayed back to the sign. Twelve homes nestled into the mountainside. Access to the city below, steps away from the river and the hiking trails. It seemed idyllic. So why did it fill him with such a terrible sense of foreboding?
“Has Fryer developed here before?” he wanted to know.
Jordynn shook her head. “I don’t think so. Usually it’s the Haven Corporation buying everything up. They’re the ones who built all the new communities and redeveloped the old part of downtown. I think they even redid the block where I work.”
“Right,” Donovan muttered, his unease growing.
Haven.
The name made his guts churn.
“I think we should get off the mountain.”
The vehemence of the statement startled even Donovan himself, and it made Jordynn’s eyes widen, too. Shaking his head, he grabbed her hand and moved quickly down the hill. When they reached the car, he lifted his face toward the road, half expecting to see Ivan turn the corner. It remained quiet and empty.
“Dono?”
“Yeah, honey?”
She didn’t brush off the endearment this time. “What’s going on?”
He opened his mouth to respond, but before he could speak, the distant screech of tires on pavement carried through the quiet morning air and cut him off.
Jordynn met his eyes, a silent wave of understanding flowing between them.
Someone was coming up the mountain at breakneck speed. Someone who didn’t know the curve at the bottom well enough to have braked ahead of time. Or...someone who was in so much of a hurry that he didn’t care.
As Donovan grabbed Jordynn’s hand and forced her gently to the other side of the sedan, he wasn’t sure if the sound of the approaching car was the metaphorical “saved by the bell” or if it was a missed opportunity he’d never get back. He couldn’t tell her the full truth without endangering her even more. He couldn’t divulge the details of the hell he’d spent on the run, or of the emotional hell he’d barely been able to climb out of. Not unless he wanted to go spiraling back.
But she deserves something. As he swung open the passenger-side door and eased her into the seat, he met her scared gaze and corrected himself. No. She deserves everything.
Which was the nobler reason he’d left her behind. Even if he’d been able to take her with him and manage to keep her alive, there was no way he could’ve given her a life that came close to normal. Frustrated by the renewed feeling of helplessness, he slammed the door, then strode purposefully to the other side and climbed in.
“Buckle up,” he ordered gruffly.
She didn’t move. “It might not even be them.”
“Not a chance I’m willing to take.”
“How would they even have found us?”
“GPS in the car? Intuition? Doesn’t matter. The result is the same.”
She still didn’t reach for her seat belt. “If it is them, we aren’t going to be able to just drive past them unnoticed.”
“We can try.”
She shook her head. “You know we’d fail. Think about it. The road is too narrow to go past each other without slowing down. They’ll see us before we get close, and all they’ll have to do to make us stop is turn their car and block the road. We’ll just trap ourselves.”
He opened his mouth, then closed it. She was right. He’d spent enough time on the side of this mountain to know it was a no-win situation.
Dammit.
What they hell were they supposed to do? There was nowhere to go but straight into the mountains, and the sedan was hardly the vehicle for cutting through the trees.
“The old tunnel,” Jordynn said softly, answering his unspoken question.
“What about it?”
“We could park the car there, go through and use the hiking path to get down the mountain on foot.”
He shook his head. “Too dangerous.”
“More dangerous than getting caught?”
Donovan honestly wasn’t sure. Ten years ago, he would’ve called the graffiti-covered tunnel hazardous. In fact, he was sure that even calling it a tunnel was an exaggeration. To be accurate, it was a partially dug project. A big hole in the hillside. Dynamite blasts had rendered the whole thing unstable, and the builders had abandoned it shortly after its beginnings, in favor of the bridge.
“C’mon,” Jordynn urged, sounding impatient now. “What other option do we have? It’s the perfect solution. We can go through the workers’ exit at the back, head toward the upper parking lot, then see if we can get to one of the ATVs in the rescue station. And it has the added bonus of being a place only locals know about.”
“That doesn’t rule these guys out,” he admitted.
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing. Just—” He stopped, rubbed his forehead, then tried again. “Trust me. These guys have enough local connections that they’ll know about the tunnel.”
Jordynn’s brows knit together. “They’re local? They didn’t follow you from...wherever you came back from?”
“It’s complicated, honey.”
She looked unimpressed by the banal dismissal. “No kidding.”
Donovan sighed, and his eyes slid past her to the overgrown bushes, seeking the path that led to the sign that announced the proposed development. His jaw clenched.
That damned sign...
No. He didn’t have time to think about it right now. They’d already waited too long to make a decision.
“Dono?”
“Fine.” His agreement was grim. “The tunnel.”
At the very least, it would give them a head start.
He put the car into Reverse, then angled it to face the narrow, barely there path that led to the hollowed-out mountainside. The sedan bumped along unsteadily over the uneven terrain, protesting heavily at the abuse. Beside him, Jordynn gripped the sides of her seat and pressed her lips together.
Tough and stubborn as ever, Donovan thought.
He wished he could smile about it, but the tunnel was in view now, and it looked even worse than he remembered. A pile of crumbled stones blocked the entrance, and several wild-looking bushes had grown down from above, nearly masking the entrance.
Evidence of Mother Nature’s attempt at reclamation.
Donovan slowed the car to a crawl, but Jordynn’s soft hand landed on his forearm.
“We have to keep going,” she said.
He sped up again, ignoring the unpleasant screech that came from below as rocks and sticks scraped the underside. He pushed down the pedal, forcing the tires to spin over the final crest, then lifted his foot and let the sedan coast to a stop inside the tunnel. The vine-like plants closed behind them, and they were immediately cloaked in darkness, and when Donovan cut the engine, the only sound was their synched inhales and exhales. Jordynn still held his arm, and he was keenly aware of the skin-to-skin heat. And loath to break it.
No choice.
He eased himself away and spoke at a near whisper. “Ready?”
“In a relative way. Yes.”
“All right. Let’s do this, then. Before the tunnel decides to collapse.”
He eased open the door, wincing at the way it groaned loudly in the dark. Jordynn’s exit was far less cautious. She swung the passenger side wide, then hopped out and scurried through the tunnel, disappearing into the blackness.
“You coming?” she called, her voice already sounding farther away than Donovan liked.
He squinted. “Yeah. Trying to. Where are you?”
“Look up.”
He could just barely see her silhouette. She’d already stepped onto the steep path that would lead them to the other end of the unfinished tunnel. Then out and—hopefully—to safety. Donovan pushed himself to his feet and moved toward her. The going was slower than he liked, and he bumped his toes several times before he finally reached her side.
“Sorry,” he said. “I seem to have left my night vision goggles elsewhere.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll guide us. My sense of direction was always better than yours anyway.”
“You think so?”
“I know so.”
Then—unexpectedly—her hand snaked out to grasp his. Donovan fought an urge to use the contact to pull her closer, and made himself let her pull him along in the dark instead. For several minutes, they walked along wordlessly, her steps as sure as his were uncertain. She slowed once to guide him around a deep dip in the ground.
Finally, he broke the silence. “You really do remember the way.”
“I remember a lot of things.”
The statement seemed to have an edge to it—or maybe he just heard it that way—and it made Donovan want to spit out a long, stumbling apology. Before he could even start, though, she was already speaking again, her toner lighter.
“I’m not really surprised you don’t remember the way through,” she said.
“Why’s that?”
“Because you were always
afraid of the dark.”
“Me? Afraid of the dark?”
There was a smile in her reply. “As I recall it, there was an incident. You. Me. A so-called demon.”
“Ha, ha. That was one little misunderstanding. And in my defense, the dog was enormous. And evil.”
“It was a Pomeranian.”
“It bit me.”
“I think it was trying to lick your face.”
“Cut me some slack. I was eight.”
“You were twelve.”
Donovan grinned. “Either way. It was a long time ago.”
“It was all a long time ago, now.”
The edge was back, this time for sure, and Donovan’s smile slipped. He knew a hard conversation was coming, and he wondered if it would be easier to have it now. Here, in the dark, where he didn’t have to see the hurt on her face.
Coward.
He shoved down the self-directed insult. Apt or not, it wasn’t constructive.
“Do you remember what I did when I thought that dog was a demon?” he asked. “When he came flying out that gate in the pitch black, snarling and slobbering, and dived straight at you?”
“You jumped in front of him.”
“I jumped between him and you,” Donovan corrected.
“Yes.” The one-word acknowledgment was a wistful sigh.
“I didn’t know it was a Pomeranian, honey.” He shrugged even though he was sure she couldn’t see it. “I’m not saying I really believed it was a demon, but the important thing is the intention behind it.”
“To save me?”
“To keep you safe. To make sure you stayed out of the line of fire no matter what. It’s the same reason I had to leave.”
“The same reason you’d rather have me believe you were dead?”
He could hear the anguish, disbelief and anger in her voice, and he couldn’t help but react defensively. “Yeah, Jordynn. That’s the exact reason.”
“Forgive me if I think that sounds insane.”
She yanked her hand away and sped up. Donovan started to call her back, a yet again inadequate apology on his lip, then stopped as he realized he could see her again. At least a little. A thin beam of light illuminated the path just in front of the spot where she’d stopped.
Last Chance Hero Page 7
