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Of course, all of this happens in a split second, and then I’m back to my chief concern: this guy getting me the hell out of here. His eyes return to the rope around my torso, not binding my wrists or ankles together, instead making my spine like the smaller, softer, but scrappier twin to the tree’s thick, worn, jaded trunk.
He goes straight for ripping this rope off me with his bare hands again. This guy has no time to be messing around with knots. He isn’t me, two hours ago, trying to delicately untangle the chain of my moonstone necklace I was hell-bent on wearing tonight.
He’s a ferocious beast, clawing at my threads and igniting a fire far more powerful than anything made with some mere tree branches and leaves.
“Thank you,” I whisper as my gaze meets his. I kick away the fragments of rope and shake off the ones still loose on my arms. I start to turn away when he grabs my hand and pulls me back.
“No,” he says as his eyes focus on mine. There’s clarity in them that’s so much more powerful than the fire. “You’re coming with me.”
“I don’t even know you!” I yell as I back away.
“I am a doctor,” he says, putting his hands on his knees. We’re face to face now. I could run, I could scream, I could race after the people who put me in this situation—or I could accept help from this beautiful man.
“Are you a doctor every other night of the year, or just for Halloween?” I say as I look him up and down.
If he’s a real doctor, he’d know how to make it look like my death was an accident. If he’s not a real doctor, he’ll know how to make it look like I was never here.
“I’m wearing a tux, miss,” he says. “This is clearly not a costume.”
“So you aren’t a real doctor??”
He huffs and pulls an ID card out of his pocket.
There’s his picture. It has the name of a hospital on it. He’s the real deal.
“Okay,” I whisper as I look up at my savior.
“Okay.”
Without emotion, without ceremony, the man lifts me into his arms. My heart is still pounding. I put my hand on his chest. His heartbeat is as steady as a metronome.
He pushes his way through the trees again until we get to a set of stairs. They are steep and modern and contour to the shape of the hill, leading up to the balcony of the house. He carries me every step of the way.
He sets me down on a plush chair on the porch, and I wince, stroking my scratched wrists.
The man crouches down in front of me and takes my face in his hands, his earnest, dark green eyes scanning my face as his jaw ticks.
“You are not doing anything like that ever again.”
His thumb caresses my cheek, and my lips part. All of the pain and sting on my pulse points seems to fade away.
I nod my head slowly.
It’s an everlasting, eternal vow.
To a man I don’t even know.
Chapter Three
Emma
The house isbig and open and brown, soft touches among clean lines with double-high ceilings and windows everywhere, some with their slated blinds open to allow the view of the majestic, rolling black-red hills, and other blinds closed, casting shadows and light in alternating beams across the room.
He carries me through the house until we get to a bathroom at the end of a dark, wide hallway.
“Please,” he says, guiding me to the edge of the tub. “Sit.”
“Do they hurt?” he asks, looking at my wrists that are a little scraped up. He pulls a pair of glasses from his shirt pocket. He puts them on and rotates my hands, turning them face up and then face down.
