Eve woke up with a killer headache. She rolled over onto her stomach and groaned, burying her face into the pillow. The sunshine streaming in through the white curtains of the window was searing behind her closed eyelids. There was a pounding in her temples. It took her a while to find the will to move. She dragged herself slowly out of bed and gingerly walked out of her bedroom…
…only to discover that the one she had just come out of wasn’t her bedroom at all. This wasn’t her apartment.
Just like that, everything came rushing back. The Diamondbacks, Lind Addams, the drinks, the dare. The stupidity of it all. The story of the ambush. The night ride from Los Angeles to Pasadena, without even allowing her to stop by her place to pick up a few things. According to what Lind and Jacob said, they were protecting her. Eve wasn’t so sure.
She took a few minutes to walk through the apartment with an entirely sober brain back at her disposal. It was a small but comfortable place, a condo adorned with modern and yet cozy furniture. It had large windows that let in plenty of lights, and the bright sunshine did nothing but shed light on the absurdity of her current situation.
How had she ended up here? It seemed unreal.
Looking down at herself, Eve realized that she was wearing a man’s sweatshirt. She panicked for a moment, but then she realized that she would definitely remember it if she had (or were forced to have) sex with either of the two men from last night.
She needed more clarity. She ran a shower and let the hot stream hit her back, slapping some extra sharpness back into her mind. What was she supposed to do now? She certainly couldn’t stay here. No matter what Jacob or Lind said, Eve wasn’t about to let two strangers “take care of her” and keep her away from her life “until things blew over” (which, as far as she saw it, could mean just about anything from one week to one year).
Head still spinning with everything that had happened, Eve quickly put on the clothes she had been wearing the night before and packed her purse. It was just as she was about to zip it up that she realized that something had been pulled out. Her cell phone and wallet were nowhere to be found.
“Son of a bitch!” she hissed under her breath, heart beginning to pound in frustration and anxiety. She had the sudden, sinking feeling that she may be in way over her head.
She would need to do something about her cell phone and wallet, but chances were she wouldn’t be able to do anything while stuck in this apartment that wasn’t her own, in a town that wasn’t her own, in a life that wasn’t her own (that is, either one of her lives). She had to get out of there, and she had to do it fast—before they came back.
While she wasn’t all that surprised to find the door was locked when she went for it, Eve couldn’t help the rising wave of panic that overtook her then. She was completely isolated. She briefly considered banging on the walls for people in the neighboring apartments to hear her, but she quickly reconsidered.
Eve paced around the apartment like a caged wild animal, frantically looking for an exit that she knew just wasn’t there. She didn’t know how much time she spent wandering from room to room, looking out windows that were too far up for her to climb out of. She didn’t know how long it was before she heard the key turn in the lock, but when she did, she ran to the living room and waited for the door to open fully so that she could give those bastards a piece of her mind.
She may be trapped, but she would let them know that she was not helpless…even if that was exactly how she felt.
When Lind walked in, carrying a paper tray with two cups and a bag which Eve really hoped was a bacon-and-egg sandwich, she was hit with yet another wave of fury. How dare he? How dare he dump her into a situation so absurd that she felt like she didn’t know where was up and where was down anymore?
“That had better be my breakfast,” she said.
Lind looked at her—really looked at her. She saw how his still-impossibly-blue eyes ran over her figure. In turn, she couldn’t help but feel a shadow of the same thrill his gaze had given her the night before at the club when their eyes had met for the first time.
“It is,” he said. “I hope you like bacon-and-egg sandwiches.”
Eve didn’t bother to tell him that it was her favorite kind of breakfast; she was not going to give him the satisfaction.
She shrugged. “They’re all right.”
She followed him to the kitchen and reluctantly sat down at the table. She watched as he went to sit in front of her and took a hearty sip of his black coffee. They ate their breakfasts in silence for a while. Eve dug into her bacon-and-egg sandwich, and he, surprisingly, bit into a blueberry scone too large for comfort. She idly wondered what the twins would say if they found out that the Viper had a sweet tooth.
“So,” Lind eventually spoke, finally breaking the very uncomfortable silence. “Did you sleep okay?”
Eve stared incredulously at him from over the brim of her paper cup. “Are you shitting me?”
He had the good grace to look embarrassed. “I was just making conversation…”
“You want to make conversation?” Eve all but growled. She took a long swig from her vanilla latte to get some extra courage, and then she set her cup down and stared into the Viper’s face. “Fine. Where is my phone…and my wallet?”
Lind cringed. “I was hoping you wouldn’t notice that just yet.”
Eve arched an eyebrow. “Kind of hard not to.”
Lind rummaged in the inside pockets of his leather biker’s vest. “The wallet is right here,” he said, producing it and placing it on the table in front of her.
Eve picked it up and, without thinking, began to go through it. Nothing seemed amiss—from credit cards to cash to IDs.
Lind scowled. “We didn’t steal from you, you know.”
“Now I know,” Eve said, satisfied. She ignored Lind’s affronted snort and put the wallet down. “And my phone?”
“Your phone is gone.”
“Excuse me?”
“We took out the battery, crushed both pieces, burned the SIM card, and chucked it all.”
There was the hint of a smirk on his lips, suggesting that he was only going into so much detail in order to unnerve her. It was working.
“Why would you do that?” she asked, appalled.
“We can’t risk someone contacting you or tracking you down,” he said, as if it were the most normal thing in the world to say.
Eve swallowed. Fear was rapidly taking over and surpassing anger in its intensity. “What do you plan to do with me?”
Lind frowned. “I thought we talked about it last night. Were you still so drunk that you don’t remember?”
“You said you wanted me to stay here and lay low,” Eve said quietly. “You said you needed me to help you find whoever it is that set you up last night.”
“Exactly.”
“What happens after?”
Lind shrugged. “We all go back to our lives.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.” Lind stared at her. “We don’t kill women, Eve.”
Eve bit her bottom lip so savagely that she almost tasted blood. There was just something in his eyes that told her she could trust him. Still…better safe than sorry.
He reached out across the table and took her hand in his, squeezing reassuringly. “I promise, we’ll keep you safe.”
In spite of her best efforts, Eve found herself squeezing back. His hold was strong, warm, and soothing. She wanted nothing more than to give in to his reassurances, but something held her back.
“I’m basically your prisoner,” she said. “You’ve locked me in here.”
“For your own safety.”
“‘For my own safety,’ my ass,” Eve snapped, abruptly taking her hand away. “What if someone came after me? What if I needed to run?”
“I’m going to give you a copy of the keys now,” Lind said. “I didn’t do it before because I knew if I did before we had a talk, you would try to run away.” He leaned across the table and all but impaled her with his baby blues. “But you’re not going to run away, are you, Eve?”
Eve swallowed. “I’ve got a job to go back to…” she protested weakly. “A daytime job, I mean.”
“Oh, I know.”
She blinked, taken aback. “What do you mean, you know?”
Lind sat back in his chair. He nodded to the wallet on the table. “We spied your IDs and ran a few background checks.”
“You did what?” If she had felt violated in her freedom before, this was even worse.
“You can’t really expect us to take risks for a complete stranger,” Lind said. “Besides, the more we know, the easier it will be to protect you. Jacob called in to your job earlier today. He posed as your uncle and faked a big family emergency. They’ll be saving your seat for you.”
Eve stared at him. “They bought it?”
“Jacob is a really good actor.”
She wasn’t sure what she was more impressed with—Lind and Jacob’s resources, or her bosses’ stupidity.
“What about my family?” she said after a moment. “They’ll look for me.”
“I’ve got the feeling a nightclub in the outskirts of L.A. will be the last place they’ll look,” Lind said.
Eve realized then that this man truly knew all that there was to know about her. “You know who my father is, don’t you?”
“Yep,” Lind said. “Harold Robinson, big-time entrepreneur. He’ll probably have a SWAT team out looking for you in no time.”
“And you don’t think he’ll find me?”
“Sweetheart, I really don’t think he will. And neither will that fiancé of yours, what’s his name?”
Eve scowled. “Alan,” she offered reluctantly.
“Right. Alan Sutherland. Your daddy’s right-hand man, the heir to his professional empire. Honestly, it’s all so cliché I almost want to throw up.”
Eve glared at him. “My personal life is none of your concerns.”
“Except that it is,” Lind said. “If you want me to protect you, that is.”
“You know, I’m not sure I do.”
Lind shrugged. “Tough. Now, I will give you the keys if you promise you won’t do anything stupid. I mean this, Eve. You’re a smart woman, but it’s all too glaringly obvious that you come from another world. One wrong move, and this could end very badly for you.”
“Is that a threat?”
“No, it’s a fact. I’m not the enemy here, okay? I’m trying to help you out…although why the hell I’m doing it is beyond me.”
“You’re doing it so I’ll give you insights on the club.”
“Well, that’s something that’ll help both of us,” Lind admitted easily.
“We’re in Pasadena, right?” Eve asked after a few more minutes of silence. She remembered something about Jacob saying how this apartment used to be his grandfather’s, and how nobody in the club even knew he had it.
“Yes,” Lind confirmed. “No one will ever think of looking for you here.”
“So, I can go out and about as I please?”
“Well…sort of. I would like you to be very careful and limit your going outs as much as possible.”
Eve scowled. “I can’t very well live like a recluse for God knows how long.”
“Think what you want,” Lind said. “But the less anybody sees of you, the better. Besides, it’s not like you won’t have company.” He grinned.
Eve looked at him uncomprehendingly for a moment before she caught on to what he meant. “You mean you’ll be staying here?”
“For as long as you are, darling.” He winked.
She tried to ignore the pang in her stomach at that gesture and forced herself to focus solely on the unpleasantness of her predicament. “Terrific,” she said sarcastically.
Lind glared at her. “Listen, sweetheart, I don’t like this either. Let’s just try not to kill each other, right?”
“Fine by me,” Eve said, mock-toasting him with her almost-empty paper cup. “So what’s the plan here?”