I could have pushed the sleeping-on-the-couch business but I feared a wrestling match and he’d already gotten a nether-region-quiver. I’d never survive a wrestling match.

I crawled across the bed and stationed myself at the far edge, pulling the sheet up over me.

I felt the bed move as Lee got in and the light went out.

Then I was hauled across the bed and positioned in the half spoon/half pin he was so good at carrying off.

I didn’t struggle, I was doing pretty good at the silent treatment so I just stayed tense and used my body to communicate that all was not forgiven. The Silent Treatment/Cold Shoulder was a perfectly honed weapon in my arsenal and I was not afraid to use it.

Apropos of nothing, Lee told the back of my head, “The last time I remember feelin’ fear was during survival training. I thought if the good guys could think up that shit for training, what were the bad guys gonna do?”

Um.

Yikes!

It was apparently story time for bad little girls.

“Then I realized I might not be able to control what they were doing, but I could control my reaction. Fear breaks your focus, makes you lose control, makes you weak. It gives the enemy the edge. That was the last time I felt fear and the last time I lost control.”

I was still tense but now for a different reason, waiting to hear what he was going to say next.

“Tonight Ally called and told me you’d been taken. I left you there and they came to Tom’s f**king front door and grabbed you. When I heard that, I lost control.”

Holy shit.

What did that mean?

What was he saying?

Was he scared?

About me and the idea of maybe losing me?

Oh… my… God.

I waited for him to say more, to explain, but he didn’t.

So I waited some more.

Nothing.

“What does that mean, you lost control?” I whispered.

More nothing.

After awhile, his fingers brushed my hair aside and his lips touched my nape.

I let it go at that and listened to his steady breathing. I knew he wasn’t asleep and I also knew our talk was over. No way was Liam Nightingale going to admit, out loud, to being scared. That was as good as I was going to get.

And it was all I needed.

I let the tension go out of my body and settled into him, wriggling my bottom into his groin.

There was a time to hold a grudge, this wasn’t that time.

Chapter Twelve

I Did My Duty to the Pot

I woke up when I felt the sheet go down my hip and a hand go up it.

I turned bleary eyes to Lee, who was sitting, from what I could tell in the dawns early light, fully-clothed on the side of the bed.

“I need coffee,” I mumbled.

“You don’t have to get up, I’m just sayin’ good-bye,” he answered.

I blinked in the semi-darkness.

“Where are you going?”

But I’d lost his attention, he was looking in the vicinity of my hips.

“Do you always wear underwear like this, or is it for me?”

I rolled to my back and pulled the sheet to my waist.

“It isn’t for you, I’ve been wearing underwear like this since Gram gave me my first Frederick’s of Hollywood box on my sixteenth birthday. Now, I owe Victoria’s Secret my first-born child.”

Before speaking again, Lee waited several seconds that can only be described as “loaded silence”. While this silence was going on, he pulled the sheet back down.

“You’re tellin’ me that since you were sixteen you’ve been sittin’ next to me every year at Christmas Dinner wearin’ underwear like this?”

I was having trouble processing all that was happening, seeing as it was oh-dark-hundred, Lee was dressed and leaving and we were talking about my underwear.

Had I sat beside him at Christmas Dinner every year?

I had. At first because I finagled it, the last ten years by a cruel twist of fate.

“I didn’t sit by you,” I kind of lied.

“No, I sat by you.”

At that unbelievable announcement, I got up on my two elbows and winced. Another learning experience, rolling around in bushes with your arms cuffed behind your back made you ache.

I glanced at the clock, five after five.

“It’s five after five! Where are you going?”

He leaned forward and brushed my lips with his.

“Hunting.”

The way he said it made me fear for all the furry little creatures in the woods. Then I realized that Lee didn’t hunt, at least not furry little creatures.

Yikes.

I considered what to say and settled on, “Be careful.”

An arm went around me and he pulled me to him. I was not a big fan of morning kisses before brushing your teeth, especially if tongue was involved.

His kiss was so fine, I made an exception and kissed him back.

He dragged me across his lap and deepened the kiss. If the kiss got any deeper, my lovely sage green satin undies with smoky gray lace were going to spontaneously combust.

When he lifted his head, he said, “Call Hank if you go anywhere, I need my men working. Hank’s gonna watch you today.”

Since I didn’t want to get kidnapped again and yesterday had beaten out the day I called the ticket line and found out Pearl Jam was sold out as the worst day of my life, I said, “Okay.”

He kissed me quickly, deposited me back in bed and then he was gone.

* * * * *

I slept more, got up, drank coffee, sucked down some ibuprofen and called Hank to come and get me. I didn’t know what I intended to do that day but I was too wired by recent events to sit around all day in Lee’s condo.

I surveyed myself in Lee’s bathroom mirror. The semi-shiner was fading but still there.

I looked down at my body.

I had added bruises on my wrists, biceps and thighs as well as some small scratches on my arms and legs.

Very attractive.

To make myself feel better about this situation, I turned to my MAC cosmetics. MAC never let me down. I put on some dewy blush, eye shadow that really had no color but was mostly sparkles, that white under-mascara-base-coat that makes our eyelashes look a mile long and a double-coat of mascara. I donned my Lynyrd Skynryd t-shirt, jeans, black woven belt with the big, square, silver buckle stamped with tiny roses and black cowboy boots.

I’d just tugged on the second boot when my cell rang.

“We have a problem,” Duke’s gravelly, Sam Elliott voice crunched in my ear.