Chapter 131: Please...
The cozy wooden, glass house nestled in the mountain’s snowy landscape. The house, with its warm brown hue, stood out against the pale moon.
Inside the cozy house, the mouthwatering aroma of steak sizzling on a grill lured Mia away from her deep sleep. Dimly aware that the huge bed on which she slept was too big to be her own bed at ho, she opened her eyes and rolled onto her back, completely confused and lost as she was t with an alarming darkness.
Blinking in the inky darkness of the unfamiliar room, she turned her face the opposite direction, searching for the pale source of illumination spilling through what turned out to be a narrow parting of the draperies on the wall. Moonlight. She realized with her forehead creased into a frown. For a few blissful monts, she thought she was in a luxuriously large hotel room sowhere on vacation.
Did she finally decide to go on the holiday vacation Rayne had suggested months ago? She wondered, recalling Rayne had once spoken about a cozy vacation island.
Mia glanced at the digital clock on the nightstand. Wherever she was, the local ti was 9:10 P.M. And it was chilly in the room—the kind of deep chill that made her sleepily realize she wasn’t in Mirage sa nor in Zen. It hit her then that hotel rooms were never fragrant with the aroma of cooking food. She was in a house sowhere, not a hotel, and there were footsteps in the next room close to hers.
Heavy, masculine footsteps...
Awareness hit her like a punch in the stomach and she sat bolt upright in bed, already throwing the covers off and standing up in a haste, hitting her toe against the nightstand in the process.
"Ouch!" She cried out in pain while limply walking towards the one-sided glass wall in the room, her mind working quickly to process everything that had happened and how she’d ended up in here. Outside the glass wall, all she could see was snow and dark mountains in the distance, along with the distant echo of... wolves!
Goose bumps lifted on her bare legs, and she looked down in shivering disbelief at what she was wearing...a man’s T-shirt!
Mia had started to panic when everything began to make sense. She’d taken a shower, having nothing to wear, she’d grabbed any random clothes from a dresser drawer and wore it. Neil’s warning ca back to her along with the realization that she wasn’t on a vacation;
’There are no other houses on this mountain except this one. I have your car keys, so your only ans of leaving would be on foot, but you’d freeze to death long before reaching the highway.’
"Relax," Mia told herself aloud, but she was rested now and fully alert, and her mind was tumbling over itself with possible escape solutions, none of which were even remotely possible. On top of that she was starving. Food first, she decided, then she’d try to think of a way out of here.
From her suitcase, she pulled out a blue jogger pant, as it was the only casual attire she had in her suitcase; everything else were formal attires because she hadn’t planned on staying in Novaria for long. She’d washed out her underwear after her shower, but it was still soaking wet. Pulling on her jogger pants, she went into the large walk-in closet and looked at the heavy n’s sweaters neatly folded on the shelves.
longing for sothing clean and cozy to wear. She took out a bulky black knitted sweater and held it up to herself. It hung down to her knees. Deciding with a shrug that she didn’t care how she looked, and the thick sweater would hide the fact that she wasn’t wearing a bra, she put it on.
She’d washed her hair and blown it dry before she went to bed, so there was nothing to do but brush it. Automatically, she bent over, brushing her back-length hair and styled it just as she always did whenever she was at ho, finding an odd comfort in following this one small, familiar routine.
Finished, she straightened up, gave her hair a few more brush strokes, then brushed it back off her forehead, letting it fall into natural waves at the sides. She reached for her purse to put on lipgloss then she changed her mind. Looking nice for an escape convict was not only completely unnecessary but probably a major mistake, considering that kiss in the snow she’d participated in at dawn this morning.
That kiss... It seed like weeks in her mind, not rely hours since he’d kissed her, and now that she was well rested and alert, Mia felt reasonably sure his only interest in her was only to ensure his safety and nothing else.
Nothing sexual.
Definitely nothing sexual.
Please, Heaven. Not sexual.
She glanced at the mirrors on the bathroom walls and felt reassured. For the past years, she’d always been too busy and preoccupied with her work to worry much about her appearance lately.
Whenever she took ti to study her face, she always felt she had a rather odd face filled with startling features that were too prominent for an adult woman’s good, like her eyes and chin and that absurd dent in her cheeks that deepened whenever she smiled or ate.
Now, however, she was sohow thrilled with her looks. In a jogger pants and an oversized sweater, with her hair like this and no makeup on, she wouldn’t appeal sexually to any man. She would appear boring and plain to them, particularly one who’d no doubt been to bed with hundreds of gorgeous, glamorous won in the past. He was the infamous Neil Wayner, won must have begged to warm his bed.
He had, no doubt only put up a show when he took the disguise of a professor in the past.
His interest in her would definitely not be sexual if he were to see her in such boring attire, Mia decided with absolute confidence.
Drawing in a long, steadying breath, she reached for the door handle and turned it, reluctant but ready to face her kidnapper_and hopefully a delicious al, that was, if he knew how to cook.
The bedroom door wasn’t locked. Mia realized as she turned the doorknob and it opened. She distinctly rembered locking the door when she went to bed. Did he creep in on her when she was asleep...!
Silently, she opened the door and stepped down the stairs into the main room of the house. For a split second, the inviting beauty of the scene she t made her feel completely confused and astonished.
A fire was roaring in the fireplace, the lights on the chandelier high above were dimd, and candles were lit on the coffee table, flickering on the crystal wine glasses he’d probably set out beside a thick rug. It might have been the wine glasses and candles that suddenly made Mia feel as if she was walking into a seduction scene, or perhaps it was the dimd lights or the soft music playing on the voice-activated speakers.
Trying to inject a firm, businesslike tone into her voice, she headed toward Neil Wayner, who was standing in the kitchen, his back to her, taking sothing out of the oven.
"Are we expecting any guests?" She asked.
He turned and looked at her, an unexplainable, lazy smile sweeping over his face as he surveyed her from head to foot. Mia had the staggering, and impossible, impression that he actually liked what he saw, an impression that was confird by the way he lifted his wine glass to her in the gesture of a toast and said,
"Sohow, you look adorable in my sweater."
Suddenly realizing that after five years in prison, any woman would probably appeal to him, Mia took a cautious step backward to avoid his gaze. "The last thing I want to do is look nice for you. In fact, I’d rather wear my own clothes, even if they’re not suitable for a house attire," she said, turning on her heels, heading back upstairs.
"Mia!" he snapped, all the amusent gone from his voice.
Mia stopped, turned around, amazed and alard by the dangerous swiftness of his mood swings. He was unpredictable and very temperantal to the point it always sent cold shivers down her spine. She took another cautious step backward as he began to advance toward her, a wine glass in each of his hands. "Have sothing to drink," he ordered, pushing a long-stemd glass toward her.
Mia glanced at the glass but made no attempt in taking it.
"Take it, damn it!" He made a visible effort to soften his tone. "It’ll help you relax."
"Why should I relax?" she countered stubbornly.
Despite the stubborn lift of her chin and her rebellious tone, there was a tiny quaver of fear in her voice, and when Neil heard it, his annoyance with her disappeared imdiately. She’d shown so much courage during the last twenty-four hours; she’d fought him so relentlessly that he’d actually believed she wasn’t very frightened most of the ti.
Now, however, as he looked at her upturned face, he saw that the trouble he’d put her through had left faint dark smudges beneath her glorious eyes, and her smooth skin was abnormally pale. She was amazing, he thought—courageous, kind, and brave as hell. Perhaps if he didn’t like her—genuinely like her—it wouldn’t have mattered to him that she was watching him as if he were a dangerous animal.
The thought that she viewed him as a monster, seed to hurt him more than the fact that the world viewed him that way. He’d realized that he liked her before he was sent to prison, and he knew she liked him, too, then. But now...
Wisely suppressing the urge to put his hand against her cheek and try to reassure her, which would undoubtedly panic her, or to offer an apology for kidnapping her, which she’d definitely find hypocritical, he did sothing he’d promised himself he’d never bother to do again: He tried to convince her of his innocence.
"A mont ago, I asked you to relax, and_" he began, but she interrupted him.
"You ordered
to relax, you didn’t ask." Her firm reprimand brought a reluctant smile to his lips.
"Now I am asking."
Thrown completely off balance by what sounded like gentleness in his voice, Mia took the glass from him and took a sip of her wine, stalling for ti, steadying her confused senses, while he stood only two feet away, towering over her, his broad shoulders blocking out her view of anything but him. It was then that she realized he’d evidently showered, shaved, and changed clothes while she slept...
And that, in a pair of charcoal trousers and a black sweater, Neil Wayner looked no different from how she rembered; he was far more handso than the faint mories of him she had in her mind. His gray eyes...were as beautiful, srizing as they were in the past.
As she was regarding him with what looked like captivated eyes, he lifted his hand and braced it against the wall beside her shoulder, and when he spoke again, his deep voice had that sa strange, compellingly gentle quality.
"On the way here, you asked
if I was innocent of the cri I was sent to prison for, and I gave you a flippant answer the first ti and a grudging answer the next. Now I’m going to tell you the truth simply and voluntarily..."
Mia tore her gaze from his face and stared into the ruby wine in her glass, suddenly afraid that in her state of weak weariness, she might actually believe the lies she sensed he was about to tell her.
"Look at , Mia." He whispered softly.
With a mixture of dread and helpless anticipation, she lifted her eyes and t his steady silver gaze.
"I didn’t kill or plot to kill your mom or anyone else. Nor did I purposely allow the bomb to explode in that mall years ago. I was frad by soone and sent to prison for the cris I didn’t commit. I’d like you to at least believe there’s a possibility I’m telling you the truth."
Uncertainly, she stared into his silver eyes, but in her mind she suddenly saw the scene of her mother’s lifeless body laying in the pool of her blood, however, the scene was quick to change to the one in the frozen river.
Instead of insisting she drive across the river with him, he had let her get out of the car and then he had given her blankets to keep warm in case the ice collapsed, in case he drowned when the car plunged into that deep, icy river. She rembered the harsh desperation in his voice when he kissed her in the snow, pleading with her to go along with the ploy, so the truck driver wouldn’t be hurt. He’d had a gun in his pocket, but he’d not attempted to use it. And then she rembered his kiss—that urgent, hard kiss that had gentled suddenly and then beco soft and insistent and sensual.
Since dawn that morning, she’d been forcibly trying to forget the mory of that kiss, but now it ca back_vibrant and alive and dangerously exciting. Those recollections combined seductively with the rich timbre of his deep voice as he added, "This is the first normal night I’ve had in over five years. If the military are close behind on my trail, it will be my last one. I’d like to enjoy it if you’ll cooperate....please."
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