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Sid smirks. “But you wouldn’t have been able to talk to her without us.”
“Man, pay attention. I would have kept trying. With or without your help.” He spins around. I can see the determination in his eyes when he looks down at me. “And I will keep trying, Princess. Until you accept my apology and we can start over.”
“Start over?” Shit. My question came out all squeaky. I clear my voice. “Start over?”
He grabs my hand and pulls me back to our table. He helps me into my seat before sitting down across from me.
“I’m sorry. I want a second chance. I realize I screwed up big time. But the way I felt for you scared me shitless.”
Geez. Are we in a romance novel? How effing cliché. “Come on, you can do better than that.”
“You’re married and your husband hired me to watch over you and here I was kissing you and having all kinds of feelings for you. I don’t mix business and pleasure. But one look at you and all my rules flew out the window.”
There’s one problem with what’s he saying. “I’m not married.”
“Honey, you are.” I hiss. “I know you don’t want to be. Trust me, after investigating your asshat of a husband, I understand. But you’re not divorced yet.”
“But his wife, Phoebe Abbot, is dead. He’s a widower. Phoebe Adams is not married.”
“Okay.” He nods. “I’ll concede Phoebe Adams is not married. But you weren’t Phoebe Adams to me before. You were Phoebe Abbot.”
“A target,” I hiss.
Ryker’s eyes flash with pain and he flinches. “I’m sorry. Fuck. You will never know how sorry I am. But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t take you back to him.”
Couldn’t take me back to him? Has he suffered from brain damage causing amnesia? “Don’t lie to me. We were in a motel on a highway on our way to California. You were taking me back to him.”
“No, I wasn’t.”
I grab my coat and get to my feet. “This is a waste of time. Your lying to me will get you nowhere.”
He grabs my hand to stop me. His thumb smooths over my inner wrist and my body warms and my stomach flip flops. Why does one simple, innocent touch from him feel better than anything I’ve felt from a man before? It’s not right. He betrayed me.
“Please. Let me explain.”
I tug my hand away and plop down. “Explain. Explain how we weren’t on the way to California.”
“Did you not look at where we were?”
Is he serious? “Um, no. Strange as it may seem I didn’t pay attention to what direction we were traveling in when I was drugged out of my mind.”
“Shit. I’m sorry.” He runs a hand through his hair and pulls on the ends. “I knew Theodore hired at least one other bounty hunter to find you. I needed to make our escape look real.”
“Our escape? You have a funny way of describing a kidnapping. And funny as in strange, not funny as in haha.”
He ignores me and finally explains. “I wasn’t taking you back to Theodore. Even before I learned about the baby issue, I knew something was wrong with the situation.”
“We’ll get back to the part about you not taking me to Theodore in a minute. First, I want to know why you didn’t say anything?”
“I should have. I realize my mistake now. I should have told the uncles and got them on my side.”
“Here! Here!” the uncles shout from the other side of the room. I ignore them.
“Prove it. Prove you weren’t taking me back to Theodore.” Because Phoebe 2.0 is no naïve fool who believes everything a man tells her. No, she needs cold, hard facts. I kind of like Phoebe 2.0. Phoebe 1.0 should have gotten an upgrade much sooner.
“We weren’t on our way to California. Ask the uncles. We were on 1-94 on our way to Montana. If we had been heading for California, I would have taken I-80 to Omaha.”
I look over at the uncles who nod their heads. “Okay, say I believe we were going to Montana, why Montana?”
