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She ignored him and went to her knees righting the table, picking up the lamp and fussing with the fallen paperwork, trying to work out what it meant.
“I mess everything up,” she said from her knees. Shoving the top page into her pants pocket. The way it crinkled should’ve alerted him, but he was moving around behind her in a fit of anger.
“You have no self-discipline. You’re a petulant child. You’ll go back to your corner in the kitchen. You will have this baby and it will be raised by the other women. You will bond with whoever I choose for you, as often as I choose. You will have no say in this. There will be no special treatment for you and none for your children. I will never look at you again.”
The words were Orrin’s true colors; the numbers looked like a financial forecast.
There was a knock at the door. It opened at Orrin’s command as he dragged her to her feet by her arm.
In the doorway was Daniel the Brute, another goon and Zeke.
They locked eyes. Zeke was bearded and filthy, his hair flopped over one eye. He smiled at her as if there was only the two of them in the room, in the world, and she wasn’t being held by Orrin, and Zeke didn’t have his hands pinned behind his back.
“Hi Rosie. I missed you,” he said, before he was forced to his knees with a punch to the gut that made her scream.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Even the best laid plans could knock you off your feet.
This was not how Zeke wanted his reunion with Rory to go and all because helping Mike had proven more of a risk than anticipated. Mike had been too weak to drive the prime mover through the gate so sucker that he was, Zeke did it for him.
With his hands tied, he couldn’t signal Rory to tell her everything was fine, and it took a moment to catch his breath from the punch and then another to remember how to breathe when he was this close to her.
In full fury she was even more incredible; if he had use of his hands, he’d applaud.
She wrenched out of Orrin’s grip and turned on him. “Why is he tied up? Why did your goon hit him? Let him go right now.” And then she came for Daniel, who was a lumbering bear to her attack dog. He didn’t stand a chance. “Unless you want me to bounce you like a bad check, untie him.”
Even from his knees, Zeke felt Daniel flinch. “You know she means it, man,” he said, getting a foot underneath him and coming to stand. “You know she can do it.”
“Enough,” Orrin said. “What’s this about?”
“Not until you free him,” Rory said, and when no one moved, she pulled some kind of farm tool from her pocket, glared at Daniel until he stepped aside and freed Zeke’s wrists herself. He tried to grip her hand briefly as the cable tie fell away, but his fingers had gone numb and it was more of a fumble.
“There’s been an incident at the front gate,” Daniel said.
“What he means is, I drove through it in a truck,” Zeke said.
“You needed Starbucks that bad,” Rory said.
He groaned. “I wish.”
“Enough of this nonsense,” Orrin roared. He pointed at Daniel. “What happened?”
“He drove a prime mover through the gate. There was a car waiting. It took Mike away. We’re repairing the gate.”
Orrin was clearly shocked. “Mike Mellor?”
“His cancer is back. He needed to get treatment,” Zeke said.
“So instead of coming to me like any rational adult would, you drove through our security gate.”
Zeke opened his mouth to make that sound less insane, because put that way, it didn’t make what he’d done seem the least bit rational. Orrin cut him off.
“This one is stupid and violent,” he pointed at Zeke and then at Rory, “And this one is a conniving bitch.”
Zeke raised a brow at Rory. “He thinks I’m a slut for being pregnant,” she said.
He nearly went to his knees a second time for the momentary brain freeze that caused. Rory pregnant. There was a rush of blood that made his limbs tingle. God, for a child of hers to be his too, he would drive through time itself.
