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Her parents had hovered over their children with an oppressive measure of protectiveness. Every scraped knee or runny nose had been treated like a national emergency. Trips to the hospital had been frequent and mostly unwarranted. Her brothers had been allowed a certain amount of freedom -– they were boys after all—but she had been the baby of the family. A fact they never let her forget.
Predictably, in her late teens, she’d rebelled. Late night parties, boys. One night, she’d missed hermediaevalcurfew because she’d had the audacity to meet a boy at a party, gotten drunk, and had a great time. Her parents had called the police, and when she’d been found and returned home, disgraced and humiliated, her father hadn’t spoken to her for four solid days. In defiance, she’d done it again the next week and the next. Thefirst signs of the bold woman coming into her own that Xavier knew so well.
Then things had started to go wrong. She began hanging with a bad crowd in open defiance to her parents. Bad people do bad things. In the space of one horrific night, she’d been threatened with rape, someone at the party had been shot, and she’d been thrown in the back of a police wagon when the party had been raided. The stark fear on her father’s face at the police station had been burned into her memory. She’d never rebelled again.
Since then, whenever she went somewhere, one of her brothers would accompany her like some brooding Edwardian chaperone. No chance of a boyfriend with the tyrannical fog of her family hovering about her. She’d endured it. Worn it like a cloak of penance for what she’d done.
Hope’s job working with her father at his law firm was part of that leash. Though her parents and her brothers had never again spoken a word about her brief dalliance with freedom, they hadn’t ever trusted her to make responsible choices, either.
The night she’d met Xavier, she had been in New York with her eldest brother. A treat for her twenty-fifth birthday. Something to take her mind off the passing of her mother. Ironically, it had been exactly that which had given her the courage to try and break free. On her death bed, her mother had encouraged her to live while she still could.
“Don’t turn into a fuddy-duddy like your daddy,” she’d said with a rare smile.
The night she’d met Xavier had been her first night without a guardian in a long time. The first night she could let herself be free. She’d intended to escape only for the night, but one thing had led to another. Xavier had been present for the rest.
When she finished her sorry tale, Xavier could only blink at the highway before him. It was quite the story. He knew there were gaps, like why her family hadneededto keep her close andprotected, but he was oddly relieved to know this much more about his mysterious companion. It could have been worse. She could have been a serial killer.
Way to keep your perspective, bro.Even so, he hated to think what his mates back home would say about all this. If he was right in guessing, they’d probably say the amount of crazy a guy should put up with was directly proportionate to how hot the woman was. This was onehellof a hot woman. Crazy he could handle.
Hope ran her hands through her naturally dark hair before gathering it in an untidy bun on the top of her head. The lack of wig today highlighted her vulnerability. As she held her breath, she seemed to steel herself. Eventually she let out a defeated sigh. “So, that’s my story.”
Like the night at the graveyard, Xavier wasn’t sure what he was supposed to say. He blurted out the first thing that came to mind.
“Not as bad as I thought.”
“What?” she shrieked.
“I was expecting you to be an escaped convict or a murderer or something.”
“You think I’m capable of that?”
“No, but five hours is a long time to come up with some harebrained ideas.”
“Obviously, if I was going to chop you up and eat you, I’d have done it back in Boston.”
He turned to see her beautiful smirk.
Xavier tried to process the new information. It was a lot to take in and so much he still didn’t know.
“Why did they think I kidnapped you?”
“A mistake. I left them a note. When I went home to get my clothes, remember? It was on the back of a receipt. Only, one of the maids must have thought it was rubbish and thrown it out.”
“One of? How bloody rich are you?”
Hope didn’t answer, just nibbled on her thumbnail.
A thought struck Xavier, and he didn’t care for it. “The wigs, the costumes, all this time, you were hiding? I thought you were hiding from me, but you were hiding from them. You’ve been on the run?”
Cross-country fantasies were one thing, but it turned out his sexy companion had officially been a missing person.
Hope’s face twisted towards the window. “I thought we were done with Xavier’s pop psychology.”
“Your freak out about the cop in Charlotte. That was because you knew your family would be looking for you, wasn’t it?”
“I thought they’d want to find me. I never thought they’d assume I’d been kidnapped by an Australian lifesaver. The note was meant to prevent that. I’m sorry for dragging you into my screwed-up life like this. I’ll completely understand if you want out. I would.”
“Jesus, fuck. You need to call your family back, Emily.”
