Into His Lap
Miriam / Emma
I couldn’t catch my breath. My heart pounded in my ears and my lungs kept heaving, breathing in short, gasping bursts. I felt dizzy and stars swam in my vision.
Ryan put a steadying hand on my shoulder. “Easy now. You’re hyperventilating.” Panicked as I was, his hand on me felt good, reassuring. “Just take a deep breath, like this,” he drew in a huge lungful of air, and I tried to follow his lead. I only partially succeeded. “And blow it out like this,” he continued. “Now do it again.”
After he led me through the cycle a few more times, my vision was clear and my breathing slowed to something like its normal tempo.
But I was still freaking out.
How did they find me? That was the burning question. I was hidden. I was safe. This shouldn’t have happened.
And oh, god, now I’d gotten Ryan involved in my mess, and we were both in danger. He hadn’t done anything to deserve the kinds of things that could happen to him if he stayed near me.
Why hadn’t he just stayed out of the diner? Why had I gone out with him in the first place? I should have followed the rules.
He glanced at me, checking to see if I was under control.
“Who the fuck were those guys?”
I shook my head. I didn’t want to look at him, so I just stared out the somewhat dirty windshield as we turned off a side street and onto the frontage road.
“I don’t know.”
He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “Bullshit. Five minutes ago you told me there were ‘normally only two’ of them. You know who they are. So who?”
The floorboard vibrated as we merged onto Interstate 20.
“I can’t tell you.”
Now he turned fully toward me, his face drawing tight with anger.
“I just saved your ass—”
“I saved you, too!” I said, getting angry myself. My pulse pounded in my ears, and some detached part of my mind wondered if my face was getting as red as Ryan’s.
He seemed taken aback by that. I could see him considering the truth behind my words.
“Fair enough,” he said finally. “You saved my ass.” He waved a finger my way. “But my ass wouldn’t have needed saving if I hadn’t already been trying to save your ass.”
How could he be so infuriating even now? I looked around the cab of the truck.
“What are you looking for?”
“Something to hit you with, you prick!”
“I’m a prick? I’m not the guy that was trying to abduct you, or whatever the hell those guys were doing. But I’m the prick.”
There was something wounded in his voice that made me sorry I had said it. And he was right. He had taken on the guy in the diner as soon as he saw my danger, without a moment’s hesitation. I couldn’t help remembering the look on his face as he went after the guy. He didn’t have the expression of a man facing down a large, dangerous opponent. He had looked like a lion as it attacked a zebra: confident and swift, assured of victory.
Of course, he hadn’t quite achieved that victory. But the visual was still sexy as hell.
And I almost told him. Very nearly just spilled the truth behind everything that had just happened.
I shook my head. It would be selfish. He had already gotten too involved, seen too much. I had to get rid of him as quickly as I could, or Ryan Calder would most likely wind up dead. The thought of him lying bleeding on the ground somewhere made my throat hurt.
I needed to make a phone call, and I realized that I had left my phone under the counter at The Lazy Spoon. “Fuck.”
“What’s the matter, Oh Miss Ingratitude?”
Great. “I’m not ungrateful, I just—”
He raised his eyebrows. “Yes?” He exited the freeway and we were back on a side road.
“I need to borrow your phone.”
He blew out a long breath. It sounded like a sigh that turned into a barked laugh at the end.
“I left mine at my work.” He glanced over. “Don’t tell me. You did too.”
I nodded.
He turned the wheel hard, swerving through an intersection. It threw me almost into his lap.
“What are you doing?” I said.
He looked at me as if I was the crazy one. “I’m taking you to a phone.”
“Do you mind if we both survive to make it there?”
We were in a commercial area. Bakeries and boutiques flashed by outside my window. In another time, in another life, I would have loved to stop and explore the shops. But now I just wanted to find a hole and hide.
Ryan’s voice was tight. “You know, you were pretty bitchy to me this morning.”
I had been.
“I didn’t deserve that.”
He didn’t.
“Funny thing is, in the end, that probably saved your life. I was only coming back to tell you off about it.” The turn signal started clicking and we turned onto an alley. He parked behind a brick building.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
He pushed open his door. “Whatever.”
I couldn’t think of anything else to say, so I got out silently and followed him up a flight of stairs built onto the back of the building. It took a moment for me to recognize that we were at his apartment. The last time I had been here had been at night, and I had been paying much more attention to his fine ass than to the location.
“We shouldn’t be here,” I said.
He unlocked the door and stepped inside. “Well, this is the closest place I know that’s safe. And I have a landline.” He tossed me a cordless phone from the kitchen counter. “Make your phone call.”
“Do you have some place I can talk…privately?”
“More secrets? Cool.” His tone said it was anything but cool. He jerked his chin. “Bedroom’s that way.”
I was somewhat uncomfortable going into the bedroom. The last time I was here, the circumstances were much different. That time had been exciting, but not in a being-hunted-by-mobsters kind of way. Now I was anxious and didn’t want to think about that bed, or Ryan’s thick shoulders, or running my fingernails over his incredible abs, or about his—
I dialed the number I had memorized. The line clicked open on the second ring.
“Castillo here.”
“This is Miriam Everett. They found me.”