The Groom's Stand-In (Special Edition) Read online

  Before she could ask for clarification, the doorknob turned and the door opened. Instinctively, Chloe moved closer to Donovan—though she couldn’t have said whether it was to seek protection or to offer it.

  The man who walked in was the smallest of the three who had blindsided them. Dark-haired, dark-eyed, his narrow face half covered with a sparse, patchy beard, he walked with a hunch-shouldered shuffle and spoke with a smoker’s raspiness. “Y’all need some water or something?”

  “We need the keys to these cuffs,” Donovan retorted, rattling his restraints.

  Their captor gave him a remonstrative look. “Let’s not waste time with irrelevancies.”

  “I would say letting us go is very relevant to your welfare.”

  Though it was exactly what she had expected, Chloe wished Donovan wouldn’t challenge the other man quite so aggressively. It wasn’t as if he could defend himself in his current position. Fortunately—at least in her opinion—the other man didn’t allow himself to be baited. He looked instead at Chloe, pointedly ignoring Donovan. “Are you comfortable? Is there anything you need?”

  “Comfortable?” She looked at the handcuffs. “Hardly.”

  “Sorry about the restraints. I’m sure you can understand the need for them.”

  Donovan made a sound of disgust. The other man flicked him a look and then turned back to Chloe. “I can bring you some water, if you like.”

  “No.” She almost added an automatic thank you, stopping herself just in time. She wasn’t about to thank her kidnapper for anything short of letting her go.

  He nodded. “Call out if you need anything.”

  With that, he turned and left the room, closing the door firmly behind him.

  Donovan muttered an expletive beneath his breath, bring her attention back to him.

  “I’m surprised you didn’t ask him any questions,” she commented. “Like what they want, how long they plan to keep us, what their next step is.”

  “Questions weren’t necessary,” he murmured, his gaze still fixed on the door. “I know exactly what’s going on.”

  She frowned. “You learned something from him just now?”

  He nodded.

  After a moment, she prodded. “Well?”

  “Find that hairpin for me, will you?” he requested, instead of explaining.

  “Donovan…”

  “Let’s save the conversation for later.”

  Something about his tone gave her a renewed sense of urgency. Biting her lower lip, she ran her left hand through his hair until she found the hairpin he’d hidden. He winced a little when she pulled it out. “I’m sorry. Did I pull your hair?”

  “Doesn’t matter. Put the pin in my right hand.”

  She did so, then sat back again while he fumbled with the pin and the cuffs. He dropped the hairpin once, which caused him to curse and her almost to panic until she was able to find the pin on the mattress beneath his hands. They both breathed sighs of relief when she gave it back to him.

  “If I could just see what I’m doing,” he grumbled, starting again.

  “Have you done this before? Picked a lock with a hairpin, I mean.”

  “Once or twice,” he answered distractedly, his concentration focused on what he was doing above his head.

  Chloe had a feeling there were some interesting stories behind that reply, but this, of course, wasn’t the time to ask. For one thing, she didn’t want to distract him, possibly causing him to drop the hairpin again.

  She didn’t know how much time passed while she sat there watching him, listening to him mutter beneath his breath in frustration. Once they heard something crash in another part of the cabin, and they both froze, their heads whipping in the direction of the door. After a moment, Donovan went back to work on the lock.

  It was getting darker outside, and their captor hadn’t turned on the overhead light when he’d left them. Long shadows filled the room now. The fierce determination in Donovan’s eyes made them seem to gleam like a cat’s eyes in the gloom.

  The lock opened with a muted click. Such a quiet and anticlimactic sound that Chloe almost didn’t realize its import. When she did, she caught her breath. “You got it?”

  He freed his left hand, lowering it to his side and flexing it to restore the circulation. His right wrist was still shackled, but he unhooked the cuffs from the headboard and levered himself into a sitting position. He swayed. Chloe reached out with her left hand to steady him. For just a moment, he leaned against her for support.

  “The sedative must still be affecting you,” she murmured, her free arm around him. “Are you okay?”

  “A little nauseous, but it’s passing.”

  Drawing a deep breath, he straightened and reached for her cuffed wrist. “Let me see if I can get this open.”

  Another distant sound made her heart beat faster. “What are you going to do if he catches you doing this?”

  “My hands are free now. I won’t be taken without a fight this time.”

  “He’s the one who had the gun earlier. What if he still has it on him?”

  Instead of answering, Donovan bent his head closer to her wrist. Even with his hands free—though the cuff still dangled from his right wrist—and with her in front of him, he couldn’t immediately free her. Chloe was beginning to worry that this was taking too long, that the dark man would return and catch them.

  She kept picturing him holding that gun to Donovan’s head while Donovan had been unconscious and vulnerable. She’d had no doubt then that he would pull the trigger if she refused to cooperate, just as she had little doubt that he would shoot them now if he caught them trying to escape—no matter how solicitous of her welfare he’d pretended to be earlier.

  Of the three men who had ambushed them, she’d gotten the impression that the small, dark man hadn’t been in charge, but he’d been the most dangerous.

  “Maybe you had better go without me,” she urged in a whisper, as if their captor had his ear pressed to the other side of the door. “You can bring the police back…”

  “I’m not going anywhere without you.” Donovan’s tone was pure steel, making it clear that he expected no argument.

  She might have argued anyway, had the lock not given way at that moment. Relief flooded through her when he removed the cuff from her wrist. She shook her hand vigorously. The bracelet hadn’t been overly tight, but just being restrained had made it feel as though it were squeezing her.

  “Okay?” Donovan asked.

  “Yes. Thank you. What do we do now?”

  Donovan slid off the bed, his movements steady now, and reached a hand out to Chloe. “We get the hell out of here.”

  His fingers closed firmly around Chloe’s when she took his hand and climbed as silently as possible off the bed. The bed frame creaked when she moved off it, causing her heart to stop for a moment, but Donovan was already moving toward the window. Their stockinged feet made no sound on the wooden floor.

  “Damn it.”

  Chloe had been looking anxiously over her shoulder toward the door. Donovan’s mutter brought her head back around. “What? Is the window locked?”

  “Nailed shut. There’s no way I’ll get it open without being heard.”

  She bit her lip, swallowed, then asked quietly, “Now what?”

  In a seemingly automatic gesture, he reached out to run the knuckles of his left hand along her jaw line. “I’m still going to get you out of here.”

  The brief but oddly intimate contact caught her off guard, causing her to freeze for a moment. Motioning her to stay where she was, Donovan moved silently across the room to the door. With his left hand resting on the doorknob, he listened through the wood for a moment, then tried the knob. It wasn’t locked.

  “They weren’t expecting us to get free,” he murmured.

  “So what do we do?” Her voice was barely loud enough to reach her own ears.

  Holding up his left hand in a silencing gesture, he opened the door a bit wider and peek
ed carefully out. The handcuff still dangled from his right wrist, but he tried to keep it quiet.

  Holding her breath, Chloe tiptoed a bit closer to him, peering over his shoulder into the short, dark hallway outside the room. A gleam of light at the far end indicated where their captor waited. She heard the faint strains of music coming from that direction. A radio, perhaps?

  She imagined him sitting in the main room, reading and listening, patiently killing time until his cohorts rejoined him. And then what?

  Donovan must have heard something she didn’t. He eased the door closed again and put a hand on her forearm. “Back to the bed,” he murmured. “Get in the same position you were in before.”

  “But…”

  “Hurry.” He almost pushed her back to the bed. Once she was kneeling there, he handed her the closed cuff he had removed from her right wrist. “Hold this at your side,” he ordered. “Keep your arm down, as if you’re still wearing the cuff.”

  He was already stretching into the position he’d been in earlier, flat on his back, hands above his head, gripping the empty end of his own cuffs so that it wasn’t immediately apparent that he wasn’t restrained.

  Chloe heard footsteps coming down the hallway now. “What do you want me to do?” she whispered, her heart in her throat.

  “Just stay out of my way.”

  The door opened as the words left Donovan’s mouth. The dark man entered, carrying two small plastic cups of water in his left hand. He looked distracted, which Chloe hoped was a good sign. “I brought water,” he said. “You’ll get something to eat later, when my partners return.”

  Chloe didn’t want to think about his partners returning just yet.

  Donovan glared at him. “I hope you’re planning to unlock these cuffs. I can’t drink lying flat on my back.”

  “Yeah, nice try, Chance. But don’t worry, I won’t let you drown.”

  The dark man walked closer to the bed, extending one of the cups toward Chloe. Suddenly terrified that he would notice the empty bracelet in her hand, she looked quickly at Donovan.

  A muscle flexed in his cheek. It was the only warning of his intentions. A heartbeat later, he made his move, coming off the mattress in one smooth, powerful motion. The dangling handcuff clattered against the iron headboard, and the bed frame squeaked loudly. The two cups of water flew, splashing all of them.

  Caught completely off guard, the dark man was engaged in a fight almost before he realized what was happening. He stumbled and went down, hitting the wooden floor with a crack.

  The scuffle didn’t last long. Using his fists and the heavy handcuff bracelet, Donovan efficiently rendered the other man unconscious. Even though she acknowledged the necessity for it, Chloe was a bit taken aback by the cold, controlled violence of Donovan’s actions.

  She’d thought once before that he looked dangerous dressed in black. Now she knew that he was dangerous—no matter what he wore.

  He stood and wiped a trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth with the back of his left hand. Apparently, his opponent had gotten in a few defensive blows. “You said you saw this man with a gun?”

  Chloe took a tentative step forward. “Yes. He was the only one I saw with one earlier.”

  “He doesn’t have one on him now. It must be in the other room.”

  A flash of light through the window made Chloe gasp. “That’s a car. The others are coming back.”

  “We’ll go out the back. Come on.”

  He caught her hand, almost pulling her with him as he moved rapidly toward the door. She didn’t take time to look around the shabby cabin as they rushed through it. She just wanted out.

  A swinging door at the back of the sparsely furnished main room led to a cramped kitchen. Still half-dragging Chloe behind him, Donovan turned the doorknob, shoved the door open and barreled through it.

  The cabin was obviously remote. There were no lights to guide their way across the small clearing that lay behind it. They stumbled several times before plunging into the dense forest that crowded around the clearing.

  Trying to force her eyes to adjust to the darkness, Chloe looked up at the sky. Tree limbs just leafing out for summer partially blocked the pale moon from her sight. The faint illumination it provided gave them little assistance in making their way across the rocky, uneven ground. Donovan’s black clothes made him blend perfectly into the darkness. She was painfully aware that her light khaki pants, denim shirt and coral T-shirt were all too visible.

  Already, her thin socks were torn, and she was sure there was a fairly deep cut on her right foot. Afraid that their captors could be right behind them—with shoes, flashlights and guns—she tried to ignore her discomfort and keep moving forward, but she couldn’t help stumbling several times. She might have fallen more than once if Donovan had not provided support.

  She couldn’t help wondering why it seemed easier for him. Was he more accustomed to walking almost barefoot across rocky ground?

  “Do you think they’re chasing us?” she asked breathlessly.

  He helped her over a fallen log. “They won’t just let us go. We have to keep moving.”

  “Can we—” She winced when her foot fell on a spiny pinecone. “Can we get to the road?”

  He didn’t slow down as he answered in a low voice, “They’ll be patrolling the road. Our best bet now is to get as far away from them as possible. They can’t know which direction we’ve gone, so it won’t be easy for them to follow.”

  “But—”

  “Chloe.” He put a hand at the small of her back, the gesture both supporting her and urging her forward. “Don’t talk. Move.”

  Biting her lip, she made a grim effort to comply.

  It was a nightmarish journey. Rocks, fallen branches, pinecones and other debris stabbed into the soles of her feet. Tree branches slashed at her face. Deep holes and sheer limestone bluffs made their passage even more treacherous.

  Staying very close to Donovan, Chloe locked her jaws and pressed onward. She was winded, exhausted and in pain, but she refused to given in to her weaknesses in front of Donovan. She would keep going as long as he did—or die trying.

  The latter seemed more likely, she thought, a ragged gasp escaping from her when her ankle twisted excruciatingly on a rough patch of ground. She limped after that, but she didn’t stop.

  By the time Donovan tugged her to a stop, she had entered a zone—moving without thinking, without feeling, without looking from side to side. Swaying on her feet, she blinked at him, barely able to focus on his deeply shadowed features. She concentrated on his eyes, which reflected the faint glow of the moon as he studied her intently.

  “Are you all right?” His voice sounded odd—muffled, hollow, distant.

  “I’m fine,” she answered automatically, her own voice sounding like a stranger’s.

  “You have to rest. I think it’s safe to do so now.”

  “I can keep going,” she insisted, exerting an effort to lift her chin.

  “Then I need a rest.” Still holding her arm, he looked around for a moment, then nudged her toward a large tree. “We’ll sit here for a while.”

  They settled carefully on the ground beneath the tree. The rock-, leaf-and twig-covered ground didn’t make a particularly comfortable seat, but it was such a relief to be off her feet that Chloe didn’t even think about complaining. She leaned back against the rough bark of the tree with a weary sigh.

  The sigh changed almost immediately to a gasp of pain.

  Donovan turned quickly toward her. “What’s wrong?”

  “My feet,” she gasped. Spears of pain stabbed upward from the soles of her feet through her legs, up her back, all the way to the base of her neck. There wasn’t an inch of her that didn’t hurt, but the pain was especially concentrated in her abused feet.

  Donovan scooted around to take her right foot in his hands. He had no light to examine her closely, but he ran his fingertips lightly over the bottoms of her torn and filthy socks. As light
as his touch was, she winced when she brushed a deep cut. He set her right foot down very gently, then repeated the motions with her left.

  “You’re bleeding from several cuts. They probably have dirt, maybe even tiny pieces of gravel embedded in them. You’ve also got some bad bruises and scrapes. It’s no wonder you’re hurting.”

  “Aren’t you? You aren’t wearing shoes, either.”

  “I have a few cuts, but not as many. The bottoms of my feet are more callused than yours.”

  Of course they were. Her head back against the tree, Chloe closed her eyes and swallowed a moan. She hated looking so weak in front of this tough, strong and very self-sufficient male, but she had just about reached her limit.

  “Anybody ever tell you that you’re tougher than you look?” Donovan asked as he set her feet carefully on the ground.

  A single tear escaped from her right eye. “There’s no need to try to flatter me now.”

  “I don’t flatter. I just state facts.” He scooted around until he was sitting beside her again and then he pulled her against his shoulder. “Get some rest,” he said gruffly. “We’re safe for now.”

  Safe? They were sitting in an unknown forest in pitch darkness while three armed kidnappers searched for them. They had no lights, no food or water, no way to call for help—not even any shoes. They were hardly safe.

  And yet she found herself relaxing against Donovan’s side, her breath escaping in a long, tired sigh. Allowing herself to float on waves of pain, she closed her eyes and tried to turn off her thoughts.

  She would be strong again later. For now, she simply had to rest.

  Chapter Six

  Donovan didn’t know if Chloe was sleeping or just drifting. Her breathing was deep and even, her body warm and limp against his. Remembering the condition of her feet—at least from what he could tell in the dark—he wouldn’t blame her if she were whimpering at this point.

  Definitely tougher than she looked.

  Sitting very still so he wouldn’t disturb her, he took a quick assessment of his own physical condition. His face was a little sore from close contact with the other guy’s fist. The heavy, skin-chafing handcuff was still clasped around his right wrist, the closed left bracelet still dangling. He’d lost the hairpin back at the cabin, but the annoying weight around his wrist was the least of his problems at the moment.