Captivated (Stranded)

by Mia West

  He picked up the sheet and draped it around her, hands shaking. “It’s not like that.”

  She turned on him, and the sheet fell again. “It’s not?”

  “No, it’s a portrait,” he said, hearing the gears whine as he backpedaled.

  “In the closet?” Her eyes challenged him to hold her gaze.

  “You’re mad because it’s not in the apartment?” Please let that be the reason.

  “If this was something you were proud of, it wouldn’t be in here.”

  “It’s in here because I work with a bunch of busybodies!”

  She flinched.

  He stepped back and lowered his voice. “I’m sorry. It’s a portrait, Laine. I couldn’t capture you on paper, so I tried to do it in collage.”

  “Capture me,” she whispered. Her eyes narrowed at him. “Did you lock me in?”

  “No!” He held out his hands. “No, I swear. God, I’m sorry, I didn’t know you’d be so upset.”

  “Didn’t know?” She pointed at the door. “You’ve kept this room shut tight. Right before you showed me, you said you were about to lose your nerve.”

  “But I did show you. I knew I had to. I wanted you to know.”

  She closed her eyes.

  He wanted badly to touch her but knew he couldn’t. “I’ll take it down. It’s just…you’re only here for so long, Laine, and you’re so pretty—”

  “Don’t.”

  “I wanted something beautiful to look at for a change.”

  “Stop it!” she shouted, her voice shocking in the narrow space. “Talk about pity. You’re not some monster who has to hide in the attic!” She stepped up to him and, miraculously, touched him, her hands gripping his shoulders. “You’re a good man, Evan, a good, generous, talented, gorgeous man.” She lowered her head and growled, frustrated. Then she smoothed a thumb over the scar tissue on his left cheek. “I’m sorry if some people have made you think otherwise, but you owe it yourself not to buy their bullshit.”

  He stood stunned as she bent to scoop up the sheet, then one of his blankets.

  “I’m going to sleep downstairs.”

  “No, I will.”

  She held up her hands. “Please. I’m going to the archive. Don’t follow me.”

  “Laine. How can I make this right?”

  “Go back a month and say hi instead?” She shook her head, helpless. “I’m feeling a lot of scary shit right now—no, stay there. I want to be alone, okay?”

  He felt as if two big fists were wringing him out. He bent and picked up the second blanket, handed it to her. “It’s cold down there,” he said, hating himself. He’d scared her, and he was giving her a blanket? Useless.

  “Evan.” She looked like she might cry, but turned away before he could respond. A few seconds later the apartment door clicked shut behind her, and then he was alone.

  Fuck.

  Chapter 10

  Laine lay on the floor, surrounded by Evan. His scent, stronger in these bedclothes than hers, wrapped her up. When it got to be too much, she threw them off, only to grow chilled and have to pull them back over her. She even tried breathing through her mouth to avoid him but gave up with a sigh. He wasn’t just in the sheets. He was all around her, in the keeping of this place.

  This place she had thought was safe.

  Oh don’t be so fucking dramatic, she told herself. He hadn’t locked her in, and hadn’t known it was going to happen. She knew that. She knew him well enough to feel sure of it.

  But that collage. It had come as a shock.

  Actually, that wasn’t quite right either, if she was completely honest with herself (and who else did she have to be honest with, shutting herself in the basement). At first, it had seemed only a jumble of colors. A nice jumble, well-coordinated, but with no shapes putting themselves forward for her eye to discern. But then she’d unfocused her gaze a bit and seen a woman in quarter profile.

  And it had been beautiful. His lines, his color choices, even the angle of the subject, had filled her with a wonder she only felt when she saw a piece that truly resonated with her.

  But then she had made out the glasses. Her glasses.

  And then what?

  Then…if she was being completely, totally honest…she had felt amazed, in a good way. In the best way—in the way of someone who has been given a thoughtful birthday gift by a person who doesn’t give gifts.

  But then something dark had crept into her mind and soured the good feelings. Its hidden location. Its placement across from his bed. Yes, a bed he’d made to accommodate her presence, but he’d said he slept on the floor a lot, hadn’t he? And it had been too easy to imagine him sitting there, staring at her face for hours, beating off.

  God, don’t flatter yourself. Hours?

  Fine, not hours. But more than once, he’d said so.

  But how many times had she dragged his figment into a bathroom stall with her? Or not even into a stall because she couldn’t wait to sprawl on the tile and rub one out with him behind her eyelids?

  And she had admitted as much to him.

  He had been flattered.

  Was she wrong to feel anything other than flattered as well?

  She had been pure fantasy to him, even more than he had been to her, because she would have spoken to him given half a chance. He, on the other hand, had been protecting her from himself. And yes, protecting himself from possible rejection. But he’d had even less intention of initiating anything with her than she’d had toward him. He’d kept his infatuation to himself with no idea that anything might ever come of it but a soggy tissue.

  And the look on his face when he found her on his doorstep. Now that she knew his face better, she knew that expression had fallen somewhere between panic and terror.

  Okay, terror was a bit dramatic, too, but he had not expected to come face to face with her, that much had been obvious, and when face to face for him was often a deal breaker.

  A heart breaker.

  She stared at the ceiling and brought the blankets to her nose. What was he doing right now?

  She had thrown a lot of accusations at him and in really ugly ways. She cringed to remember them. Had she been justified to feel threatened?

  Yes.

  She thought about that for a long time, watching a wedge of moonlight ease across the floor.

  Yes, she’d had every reason to feel unsafe in that moment. She was trapped, for all intents and purposes, with a man she had met two days ago.

  But now. Now that she was snug in her basement (and he in his attic, what a fucking pair they were), she just couldn’t believe she was in any danger. Not from Evan.

  If she had been, she would have run to the kitchen balcony and started screaming, wouldn’t she? That was one thing Drew had done for her. When she got the job at school, he had insisted she take a self-defense course, worried that someone on campus might try to hurt her. She had never had to use the more vocal techniques, like shouting for help, but she liked to think they were ingrained, that she would have called for help, regardless of Evan’s protests.

  Or maybe she was making excuses for them both.

  Which put her right back at the beginning.

  Frustrated, Laine closed her eyes and tucked the blanket under her chin. Sleep would help her think more clearly.

  The only problem with closing her eyes was that images of Evan poured into her mind. Cooking breakfast, standing naked in the pool, looking shamed and horrified in the closet. As quickly as she shoved each one away, another came on: Evan cleaning the toaster oven, glaring at the rogue coffee filter, lying on top of her on Magda’s desk.

  Then one stuck. Evan, lying next to her on the rooftop grass, his shoulder pressed to hers, his hand resting on her belly.

  She waited to see if it would flit away, because she didn’t want to push it out.

  There’s your answer.

  We’ll see, she told herself.

  Eventually, she slept.

  When she rose from the flo
or the next morning, stiff and creaky (how did he do it?), she found a short, neat stack of clothes outside the archive doors. Boxers and a t-shirt, soft and well-worn. She put them on against her bare skin and sat on the blankets for a long time. The fabric of his clothes soothed her skin. Comfort, she thought. Safety.

  She left the library.

  He wasn’t on the ground floor. She found a sponge and bucket under the office sink and carefully cleaned the chocolate mess from Magda’s work space. Had she been insane with this prank? She couldn’t believe Evan hadn’t told her right then that she had to sleep in the basement. And let’s be honest, she’d only done it to get him between her legs, leaning into her. And let’s be even more honest and point out that he hadn’t picked up on her signals, or that if he had, he’d been man enough not to act on them. Or just scared of her crazy shit.

  “Right. Time to fix this.”

  She put Magda’s desk to rights and then crossed the lobby at a jog. She ran up the maintenance stairs to his door. It stood open.

  That was different.

  So was the noise coming from the closet. Not humming but a low rumble.

  She crossed to the closet door and knocked.

  Chapter 11

  Had he heard a thump? Evan switched off the belt sander and balanced on the ladder, listening.

  Then it came again, knocks on the closet door.

  He sighed. She’d come to say she was going to spend the rest of the weekend in the archive, and would he please leave her alone and stop being a creep? He’d been dreading it since he’d given up on sleep at dawn and started sanding. Glad to have something to grip in his hand, he kicked the cord of the belt sander aside and descended the ladder. “Come in.”

  The door swung inward, and he nearly missed the bottom rung. She wore his clothes and, if his eyes weren’t lying to him, only his clothes. She didn’t notice his gomer move, though. She was staring at the wall.

  “You got rid of it?”

  “Figured you’d be more comfortable if I did.” He set the sander on a shelf. Did she seem disappointed?

  She frowned and turned to him. “I’m sorry, Evan.”

  He braced his feet and focused on breathing normally.

  She stepped toward him. “For what I said. And how I said it.” Her hands gripped each other before her.

  He ignored how it pushed her breasts together. Under his shirt. Ignored it.

  “And I’m sorry you felt you had to destroy the collage. It was beautiful.”

  “Pale imitation,” he managed.

  She gave him a small smile, but her eyes weren’t in it.

  Too soon, dumbass.

  “I decided I don’t have any reason to feel threatened or whatever I was reacting to last night. You’ve been nothing but kind to me, and a gentleman.”

  “Not really.”

  “Yes, really. Don’t get me wrong; I like it when you’re dirty and demanding.” She smiled for real, and something in his chest unraveled.

  I like it when, she’d said, as in present tense, as in things that happen now or happen often or might continue to happen.

  “But you were never a danger to me,” she was saying. “I just had to work that out.”

  “Okay,” he said and groaned inside at how lame it sounded.

  “Can you forgive me?”

  “Forgive you?” He stared at her. “I scared you.”

  “You surprised me,” she said, stepping closer. “But how can I be upset that the collage aroused you, when I used fantasy versions of you for myself? That’s a prudish double standard, and it’s not fair to you.” She took his hand. “Will you? Forgive me?”

  “Of course.” He gripped her, hard. “Will you forgive me?”

  “For what?

  “For not telling you the first day,” he said. “For making it in the first place.”

  “Don’t apologize for making it. I’m amazed anyone would think of me like that.”

  “How could they not?”

  She shook her head and stepped into him.

  He brought his arms up around her, and then hers were wrapped around him, tight. He closed his eyes at the solid warmth of her body against his. She let her weight fall against him, and he hugged her closer, drawing in the scent of her hair. “Orange blossoms.”

  She lifted her head. “You like it?”

  “It’s you to me.”

  She wiped something from his face and kissed his cheek. Then she laughed. “You should see yourself.”

  Paper scraps and dust coated the drop-clothed space like dirty snow. He was covered, too, from t-shirt to jeans to boots. His arms looked exactly alike. He stared at them.

  Then her hands were on him, brushing the dust from his bad arm. When his scars reappeared she nodded. “I like this better.”

  “That makes one person.”

  Her smile slid away. “About that. I realized something last night.”

  “What?”

  “You told me why you didn’t go home once you were discharged, and I get. But you haven’t said why you ask Magda to lock you in here after hours.”

  Now he was doubly glad for the paper grime covering his skin. But it didn’t shield his eyes, and Laine was determined to read them like one of her research texts. “People don’t like seeing me.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “They’ve told me.”

  Her mouth fell open. “When?”

  “More than once,” he said, knowing he sounded evasive.

  “What did they say?”

  He took a deep breath and let it out in a sharp exhale that carried a small cloud of dust. “I don’t really want to repeat it. But it started happening as soon as I left Landstuhl. Sometimes I couldn’t understand them because I didn’t speak the language, but other times someone would see my fatigues and give me an English translation. I stopped wearing any army gear—threw it away, actually. Bought new clothes when I got to Italy, and it helped some. But then I got here.”

  He had to look away from her because he knew what he was about to see, and that she wouldn’t be able to help it.

  “I’d been here about two weeks, staying in a hostel. I spent most of my time sketching the city. It was something I could do from quiet corners, and with my head down I didn’t bug too many people. But this one day, I went to a market—one of those open-air weekend things. I sketched for a while, but then I started to get hungry. There was a little food stand across the way, so I packed my stuff and waited until the line went down. When I got in line there was just one lady ahead of me.”

  He could still see the back of her head, the way her glossy black hair had shone in the sun.

  “I waited behind her. She was holding a baby to her shoulder, and it was smiling at me. It’d been so long since anyone had done that, that I didn’t think. I just started making faces back to get it to laugh. Except then the lady finished paying and turned around. I scared her so bad she almost dropped her baby.”

  Laine’s hands flew to her mouth.

  He looked at her. “That’s what she did, only she screamed, too. I caught the baby before it fell, but then she was beating on me, and the guy in the food stall was yelling, and people in the market were starting to freak out, so I handed back the baby and ran. I didn’t know where I was going, just kept turning corners onto smaller and smaller streets. I ended up on the back step of somebody’s house. When she came home she found me holding on to her cat for dear life.” He smiled at the memory. “It was Magda.”

  Laine smiled with him.

  “She took me in. Pulled some strings to get me this job. She doesn’t like locking me in. I think you can imagine she has a few things to say about that?”

  Laine laughed.

  “Yeah. But she does it anyway. She won’t bring me stuff. If I need groceries, there’s a little place around the corner. I slip over there during business hours and come right back.”

  “You don’t go into the city any more?”

  He studied her frown.
“You must think I’m such a coward.”

  “I think you had a bad scare.”

  He couldn’t deny that.

  “I also think you underestimate people, starting with yourself.”

  “Nobody wants this, Laine.” Not him or his damage.

  “Why not?” she challenged him.

  “Because,” he said, “this shit’s broken.”

  She touched him again, catching his left hand between hers. She kissed his thumb, then bit the tip. “Maybe I can convince you otherwise.”

  Chapter 12

  Convince you. With her curves rounding out his t-shirt, and her hair up and her glasses back on, and the way one eyebrow was arching above her frames, she was currently convincing him that the closet had exceeded its capacity for sexy. More than that, she had convinced him she was caring and genuine and really fucking smart. He wanted her. And he needed her to want him. “I hope you can,” he said.

  She let go of his hand and backed toward the doorway. “If I told you I was going to the roof to get this shirt soaking wet, would you be interested in something like that?”

  He shook his head, dislodging a fall of dust. “I’m sorry, what?”

  Her mouth curled in a smug smile. “Thought so.” She started walking toward the kitchen window. “I was thinking, once I’m up there, I won’t need the boxers at all.”

  He jogged toward her.

  “Towel,” she said.

  He pulled a U-turn back into the closet and, like the lucky dumbshit he was, found a clean towel. She was halfway up the balcony stairs by the time he tripped out the window.

  Fuck, such a doofus.

  She was still climbing, but he was pretty sure her cheek was rounded by a smirk. He shucked his boots, admiring the way her butt filled out his shorts.

  She stepped onto the roof. “Last one in, first one naked.”

  He shot up the stairs and tossed her the towel as he passed.

  He had come back up last night and drained the pool but hadn’t expected to be up here again so soon. “This’ll take a moment,” he said, crossing to the tank and opening the feed valve. “And it’s going to be chilly.”