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Chapter One
Holidays sucked. Especially when it snowed. And you had no one to share them with.
Elise knew that life lesson all too well. Terminally single. Forever alone. Cursed.
Okay, enough with the feeling sorry for herself routine. She was not a defect or a blight on humankind, as she so often considered herself to be. She was just…unlucky. Unlucky in life and in love. It didn’t mean the universe hated her, which she had accused it of doing quite a lot as of late. Why? Because she was sick of being alone and unloved. It wasn’t as if she had the plague, for Christ’s sake. Where were all the men? Oh, that’s right. They were taken—at least the ones worth her time.
Maybe she was just too damn picky, her standards too high. The problem with that theory was that she’d already lowered them—considerably. She was down to the nitty gritty of requiring a job, unmarried, and with a functioning libido. She seriously couldn’t get any lower unless the guy was dead. Which, at this point, might be her only option.
Christ, she reeked of desperation.
Eying the shelves of wine, Elise selected a cheap white and made her way to the checkout. She tried to ignore the knowing look from the cashier as he rang up the wine, frozen dinner, and packages of egg-shaped Reese’s that screamed single female, while she sized him up for a potential matehood: shaggy brunette hair, slightly too big nose, thin lips, beady eyes, and waaaaaay too young. Since going to jail wasn’t a part of her life plan, she dismissed the idea and accepted his mandatory “Have a nice day” with a solemn nod.
Could her day get any more pathetic?
The moment she stepped through the automatic door, the icy splash of slush that splattered her from knee to ankle shocked the holy hell out of her, making her nearly drop her bags as she screeched and jumped to avoid the unavoidable.
“Thanks a lot, asshole!” she shouted at the careless driver. Looking down at the dark, wet stain on her previously pristine white jeans, she cursed. Apparently, she could be more pathetic.
The trudge to her car was nothing short of painful; the cold made even more so by her current state of soaking wet. A problem made even worse when she pressed the button on her key fob to trigger the trunk release only to realize that it wasn’t responding. That could only mean one thing…
“No, please God,” she begged, her breath fogging in front of her. Out of sheer desperation, she jammed on that button, nearly depressing it permanently, but nothing. No flash of the tail lights, no beep of the alarm. Not a damn thing.
She wanted to cry. Right there in the middle of the parking lot, surrounded by puddles of slush and snowflakes floating down around her, she wanted to drop to the cold, hard, unforgiving asphalt. But she did no such thing. Instead, Elise lifted her chin. She’d been through tough times before. No reason to break down now when she’d always found a way to pull herself up and power through the piles of shit life threw at her.
Thankfully, she had a cell phone. She’d even remembered to charge it this morning—hallelujah! At least she had that going for her. She could wait in the car while she called for a tow truck. And she could use the money she’d saved from the 401K she’d received after she’d been let go from the printing press when they’d lost too much business to keep the doors open any longer. Silver lining. Always look for the silver lining. No matter how damn thin it was.
Forcing herself to stay upbeat, Elise marched toward her car with renewed purpose, but that didn’t last long. About five seconds, give or take.
That’s when she heard the car coming up behind her, the ominous sound of the engine gaining speed, the splash of tires through puddles of ice and snow. She didn’t have time enough to process what was happening before the squeal of brakes followed by the metallic slide of the door registered an instant before a pair of strong male arms banded around her middle and sent her pitching sideways as her feet were lifted out from under her.
Elise was screaming before she knew what she was screaming about. She was operating on pure animal instinct, all her receptors telling her that this was not a drill! Holy Christ, was she being kidnapped? As she was dragged into the waiting van, falling back against a hard chest, and heard the deep, frantic voice beside her ear shout, “Go, go, go!” she thought, yes, yes, she was. Just her luck, being kidnapped on Easter morning. Silver lining: at least she didn’t have anywhere else to be. No one waiting for her to return home. Which also meant there was no one around to miss her.
And the most pathetic part of all of this? She was actually thrilled to finally have a little excitement in her life.
Chapter Two
Candlelight.Check.
A crackling fire in the hearth.Check.
Bottle of wine and a box of chocolates.Check and check.
Blindfold to heighten the senses and the romance.Check.
Crazy kidnapper.Double check.
Elise sat on a somewhat comfortable piece of furniture of indeterminate origin in an unknown location with her hands and ankles bound by a length of rope that made her skin itch. She couldn’t see a thing thanks to the damn strap of cloth her captors had tied around her head, blocking her vision. What she could surmise? There were two men, they were on the run, and they’d brought her someplace remote. From the length of the drive and the rough path they’d traveled, coupled with the dank, musty scent of the room she was in and the sounds of nature nearby, she was going with the whole cabin in the woods cliché. Which made her laugh.
“What’s so fuckin’ funny, lady?”
Aside from the sharp turn her life had taken? Not a damn thing. The harsh rasp of the man’s voice—the driver, she thought—shut her right up. She didn’t dare move or even breathe for fear of what he’d do to her.
Her silence had the opposite effect though. Rather than forget she existed, she felt the air stir and the tension rise as the sound of his heavy footsteps rapidly approached. His tight grip on her upper arm made Elise wince, but he didn’t seem to notice. Or care.
“I said what’s so funny?”
The sneer was evident in the tightness of his voice, and Elise decided she didn’t like this guy one bit. Out of the two, she knew this one was the driver of the kidnapping van by the slight Boston accent she detected. But he either hid it well or he’d been away from the area for long enough to water it down considerably. His buddy, the one with the grabby hands and the voice that sounded like river rock, hard but smooth, was straight Yankee, by her guess—no accent whatsoever, which meant he was probably from around these parts just like her.
