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“Knox,” he says.
I nod. “Okay. I’m Heidi.”
“I know,” he says, his eyes still piercing mine.
We both hear the rustling sound coming from outside the cabin at the same time. My heart leaps as Knox’s attention snaps toward the cabin’s front door. I watch as he stalks over to the door and looks through the peephole.
“Just a deer,” he says.
But he stands there for a while longer anyway, monitoring the woods to make sure. My heartbeat doesn’t quiet down until he turns away from the door. Okay, maybe I’m more than a little bit comforted by him being here to keep me safe. That feels fucked up to say, but if there truly is a serious threat against my life, I feel safer being here with him than alone in my apartment.
“Did I hurt you?” Knox asks.
He’s standing right in front of me now, looking me up and down. I can feel his gaze trailing over me, and it makes a strange, new sensation bloom in my stomach.
“You mean when you kidnapped me?” I ask tightly. “No. But you didn’t have to be so rough about it.”
“Time was of the essence.”
“That’s a lame excuse.”
Knox stares at me. “You don’t seem to grasp the seriousness of this situation, Heidi.”
“No, I do,” I say. “I get it. My dad pissed off the wrong people, and now I’m the one who might have to pay for it. This”—I wave my hands at our surroundings—“is a necessary measure. But that doesn’t give you the right to be an asshole.”
Knox answers with a guttural sound in his throat. Then he frowns at me and takes a step closer. I draw in a breath, my whole body tensing as he towers over me.
“Goddamn it,” he says, his big paw of a hand reaching up to touch my jaw. “I did hurt you. You’re bleeding.” He drops his hand and looks down at his clothes with furrowed brows. “Something on me must’ve scratched you.”
I reach up to touch the spot he was just looking at. When I peer at my finger, it’s smeared with blood. And even though it’s such a small amount, it’s enough to make me feel faint. I’ve always been like this—one drop of blood and I’m a mess.
Usually, I can power through it and breathe through the lightheaded feeling that washes over me. But right now, my life is anything but usual. The next thing I know, everything is going black.
3
HEIDI
When I wake up, I’m lying on top of a bed with a thick blanket draped over me. I blink a few times, my mind full of fuzziness. It takes me a few seconds to remember where I am.
Then it all comes rushing back: the bodyguard, the blood, the fainting. I cringe, embarrassed about my extreme reaction to such a minor thing. Knox probably thinks I’m pathetic.
Not that it matters what he thinks about me.
I sit up in the bed, the blanket falling off me. I lift a hand to my face and feel a small bandage covering my cut. Well, that was good of him to do that. It was thoughtful of him to lay me on the bed and put this blanket over me, too. Maybe there’s a caring side to that beast of a man, after all.
The smell of food teases my nostrils, and I perk up a little more. Even though this cabin is a single room, the bed is tucked into a recess and there’s a half-wall blocking my view of the kitchen, so I can’t see Knox. But I can hear him moving around over there, and whatever he’s cooking sure smells good.
I slide out of bed and my bare feet touch the hardwood floor. The floor is no longer cold; in fact, the whole cabin feels warm now. I pad around the half-wall and step into the middle of the cabin. Knox’s hulking back is turned toward me as he stands at the stove, stirring something.
“Sit down,” he says without looking over at me. “I’ll bring some over to you.”
I don’t like how bossy he is, but I do as he tells me. I take a seat at the wooden table that’s between the kitchen and the living room area. As I wait, I watch Knox as he moves over to the cutting board, chops up something else, and adds it to the steaming pot on the stove.
Then, to my surprise, he opens up the oven door and pulls out a large cast iron pot. From that, he lifts out a loaf of bread. He then dishes out whatever is in the pot on the stove into a bowl, tears off a chunk of the bread, and brings the food over to me.
I gape at the meal that he sets down in front of me. Did the man who mercilessly dragged me from my apartment really just make me stew and freshly baked bread?
“Wow,” I say. “Thank you.”
