Dani sat on the floor in the middle of the room and concentrated on the wordless sounds. It was a meditation she’d learned in Paris from a man who swore he’d studied with the Dalai Lama himself. He’d turned out to be a charlatan, something Dani hadn’t discovered until he showed up one day and tried to grope her.

In return, Dani taught him Kenpo. One move. He wouldn’t be able to grope anyone for a month. Maybe more.

The meditation technique, however, was solid. He’d actually gotten it from a yoga class. She’d been able to use the mediation many times successfully. Sadly, this wasn’t one of those times. She spun from the lotus position to her side, pounded the floor once, and jumped to her feet with a snarl.

Damn, damn, and damn him again! Dani didn’t even care who “him” was. She paced—again. The carpet in her room was showing definite signs of wear in a circle around the edge. Recently she’d been pacing a lot.

She couldn’t get out of the room. She couldn’t go jogging. She couldn’t even go the gym in the house. As of a few days ago, she couldn’t go anywhere. There were two armed men at the door who had the limiting career of keeping her prisoner. They came and went in shifts, as she was under 24-hour watch. These nameless doormen were the first of a lengthy list to be damned.

In normal circumstances, she might have tried something. There were only two of them, after all; she’d taken on worse odds. Besides, she was fast, and she was deadly. She knew that as academically as she knew she was blonde. It was a fact, not a boast.

But they worked for her Uncle Benny. The next in the list of men to be eternally damned. Benny was ruthless and scheming. The selfsame man she’d grown up idolizing, the one who always carried a chocolate bar for his little niece, the man she’d thought of as a second daddy—was holding her hostage. The reason? As a lure to her father, the principle man to be forever damned back to town after his shameful abandonment of his children. Maybe if he hadn’t taken off with millions of dollars that once belonged to Uncle Benny, Uncle Benny wouldn’t have been quite so mad.

That was the problem with her father. He’d always been greedy.

Dani’s pacing grew faster and faster as she ran through the list of men to be damned. Benny figured her deadbeat, useless father would return to attend to Dani’s wedding. Dani thought that was very unlikely, as the jackass had never shown any interest in her at all. But Benny had his heart set on a big wedding with Luke McConnell, which seemed stupid since everyone in the house knew the whole thing was a farce. Or at least suspected it was a farce.

Okay, so maybe Dani had come up with the idea in the first place, but she’d been trying to save his skin.

Him. Luke. The next name on the list.

Of course, if Benny ever found out Luke was a cop, he’d have him killed. Which is what led to the whole wedding idea in the first place. Dani had been trying to get him out of the house before something terrible happened. That something terrible had met them at the door with enough henchmen to back them both into a corner. Literally. That this confrontation had come hard on the heels of another one had placed Dani and Luke between the proverbial rock and hard place.

So far that’s where they still were. Stuck. Him in one part of the house. Her in another.

The whole thing was incredibly pointless.

Dani jogged in a circle, forcing her knees high so she would bound along the floor. It was probably ineffective, but her father’s office—now Benny’s office—was directly beneath her room, and she was hoping the noise and vibration would piss him off.

It was small and petty, but it was about all she had.

She shook her head and returned to her list. Luke was being held hostage as well, a few rooms down from hers. The men on his door alternated on hers, so she didn’t have to waste room on her list for them. Luke could take their slots.

So, he was cute. Okay, beyond cute. Drop-dead handsome in that rugged, pencil-pusher, Clark- Kent kind of way that had a definite Superman lurking beneath the surface. Yes, she discovered she was in love with him. So what? Was that any reason to marry? Certainly, he didn’t want her. He’d done nothing but bitch and complain the entire time they’d been engaged. At least the few times she’d been allowed to see him. Granted, he was being held against his will, but marriage was a bad idea under any circumstances as far as she was concerned. She didn’t know why no one else seemed to see that. Hadn’t her parents been enough proof of that?

But just because she didn’t want to marry him didn’t mean she wanted terrible things to happen to him. If Dani had tried to fight her way out past the door guards, his guards, the men patrolling the grounds of the house, Benny, all of them would take that out on Luke.

Or David. The final member of the eternally damned choir. Her brother had lost it, completely. He rarely even made sense anymore. It was he who’d kidnapped Luke... and yes, he did have him beat up a little. But Luke was really overreacting about that. Ironically, David was the one person in all of this who wasn’t being held prisoner by Uncle Benny. He was free to come and go as he pleased. It was a shame that there was nowhere to go that pleased him. Like the police.

Dani always knew her father was in some shady business, which was why she’d left as soon as she could and joined the military. But in her flight, she’d left David here with her father and wasn’t able to protect him anymore. David was her brother and she needed to protect him now, even if only from himself.

By this point, Dani was jumping up and down as hard as she could, hoping to push through the floor, to loosen the ceiling tiles over Benny’s head and hurt him.

Damn it! She knew Luke was mad at her, she knew he hated her now, but he didn’t understand. He could only see that she’d betrayed him for her little brother. But she’d had no choice; it was the only way she could think of to save Luke’s life. David was mad, she could see that, but she could save him. Of course she could. He was her little brother. Big sisters took care of their little brothers. It was as simple as that. And since she’d made a mess of things by leaving him with her father like that, now she needed more than ever to make that right.

But first she just needed to get the HELL OUT OF THIS ROOM!

She landed in the middle of the room, breathing hard, but not even sweating. She hadn’t had a good workout in over a week, and isometrics would only go so far. She had no idea if her theatrics were at all effective. She was probably just amusing the guards.

She’d torn the room apart, knocked over bookcases, upturned the bed, broken the mirror that was perched over the dresser. The next day, she had to put it all back together again because, quite simply, no one cared. A part of her mind understood that she was behaving like the little girl who’d grown up in this room, not the mature fighter she’d become. But there was something about coming home to family issues and familiar surroundings that made a person revert to childish ways.

No one came. No one said a word about the slamming she’d done to the floor. No matter what she did it made no difference, and that pissed her off even more. Nothing she did seemed to matter, and being ineffectual was worse than being a prisoner.

David came to her the first few days she was locked away. She had tried to talk to him, but he only ever fixated on that damn USB stick, what he insisted on calling a ‘memory stick.’ She still hadn’t told him that she’d found it and given it to Luke. What he’d done with it she couldn’t guess; they hadn’t had time to discuss it.

But David was blaming their father. He’d assumed the old man simply didn’t leave it where he said he would. David wouldn’t say what was on the stick, but he seemed to have lost his admittedly fragile grip on sanity when he realized it was gone.

And it was all her father’s fault. The thief had waited until David was through with school and set him up to take over the company, and then left him holding the bag. He’d betrayed his own son just like he’d betrayed everyone one he ever encountered. Like Dani. Like Dani’s mother.

He hadn’t met Luke. She stopped with that thought. She checked her watch. She had a precious opportunity to get out of her room for a brief time; Benny was taking this sham of a marriage to heart and was not only going through with the whole thing, but he was doing it in style. Like it was the real thing. She and Luke were to go to the hotel where the ballroom had been rented for the ceremony and the reception. They were supposed to sample foods for the menu, and discuss things civilly with the caterer, as though nothing strange was going on. As if they were any loving couple planning their wedding. Uncle Benny had insisted that things look normal on the outside. It was all part of the trap.

As though every loving couple met with the caterer dragging along an entourage that included an aging mobster, and a dozen goons straight out of The Godfather.

She stomped her foot one more time for good measure and headed to the shower. There was a petty thought that she should go with hairy legs, not having showered for several days, but appearing like that in front of Luke seemed horrifying.

Even after their shared ordeal, she wanted to impress him. So... shower, shave, careful selection of just the right clothing. Maybe a short dress? Really short, as in make-Luke-uncomfortable short.

She shook her head at her own vanity. The truth was that, regardless of the fact that he was angry with her, despite the fact that she didn’t trust him, and past the issue of being held prisoner, she felt what she felt. She might not like him. She might not even trust him. But the heart feels what it feels, and she was going to primp and preen because she was a woman in love.

Driving him crazy was just a bonus.