Total pages in book: 156
Estimated words: 160192 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 801(@200wpm)___ 641(@250wpm)___ 534(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 160192 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 801(@200wpm)___ 641(@250wpm)___ 534(@300wpm)
“Do you always ask so many questions?” he asked. “It’s very tiresome.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she replied sarcastically. “I can ask a lot more. In fact I think I might start. What’s your favorite color? What sort of music do you like to listen to? What was your favorite pet? Do you even like animals? How do you keep your face from moving? Do you have regular Botox? Are you even human?”
He continued to simply stare at her.
Hmm. Seemed she was going to have to do better if she wanted to provoke some emotion from him.
But do you really? What are you hoping to achieve? For him to explode and hurt you?
She guessed he hadn’t done that at least.
Yet.
Are you listening to yourself? Oh, he hasn’t hurt me so he can’t be that bad of a guy.
Maybe she hadn’t had enough therapy. Because her criteria for someone who wasn’t a bad person was warped.
“You’re here because Jared wants you.”
She swallowed heavily. Right. So Jared had ordered North to kidnap her.
Angie didn’t know why that struck her so hard. It wasn’t like Jared Bartolli was a good person. He wasn’t a secret knight in shining armor whose main aim in life was to protect and take care of her.
She hadn’t even seen him in years.
No phone calls, no postcards, not even a smoke signal to show that he cared in any way about her.
So you shouldn’t care about him.
Logically, she knew that.
Emotionally, it was more difficult. Because she thought he might be the sexiest man she’d ever met. . .
No. Nope.
Not going there.
8
“Jared ordered you to kidnap me? Why? Why would he want me here? Wherever here is. I haven’t heard from him in years.”
“But do you miss him?” North asked.
“Why would I miss Jared? I barely knew him. And he was the son of my abuser. Not exactly the start to a good relationship.”
“Ahh, so you want a relationship with him,” North said.
“I didn’t say that,” she replied hastily. “I don’t want him. All I was saying was that I barely know him so I don’t get why I’m here. If he wanted to talk to me then he could have chosen a different option besides kidnapping me and holding me prisoner. With a maniac jailor.”
Shit.
Was she protesting too much? Was she making it obvious how much she thought about Jared? How sexy she thought he was. Her body reacted to him in ways it had never reacted to anyone else.
“I’m the maniac jailor, I suppose,” North said dryly, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Well, this is hardly the Ritz and you’re not exactly a sexy waiter bringing me champagne. Really, is it too much to ask that the next time someone kidnaps me that I get to wake up in a fancy hotel with someone bringing me piles of chocolate covered strawberries with all the romance books my heart desires?” she grumbled.
She really didn’t think it was.
“The next time you’re kidnapped?” He gave her an incredulous look. “You’re planning on getting kidnapped again?”
She gave him a strange look. “I don’t think anyone ever plans on getting kidnapped. It just happens. But if it should happen again I’d like to end up somewhere that I can get a foot rub, maybe a full-body massage. I’ve never had a full-body massage before, have you?”
“No, I have not. How did this conversation get onto massages?” he asked.
“Beats me.” She shrugged.
“You’re doing this deliberately, aren’t you?” he asked slowly.
“Doing what?”
“Trying to confuse me. To make me irritated with you so I . . . what? Get rid of you? If you think that annoying me with all your questions is going to make me let you go, you should think again. I very rarely get annoyed. I rarely feel anything.”
Well, she hadn’t thought of that.
Because if she’d ever annoyed Fergus, he’d just beat her and laugh. It always put him in a good mood.
Come to think of it, he’d been an evil, asshole, bastard dictator . . . who could laugh.
This guy, who couldn’t seem to laugh or really feel much, hadn’t yet hurt her . . .
Again, are you forgetting that he kidnapped you?
It was kind of an important fact to remember. She didn’t know why her stupid brain kept trying to turn him into a good guy.
Maybe because you find him sexy.
No. Nope.
She did not find him sexy.
There was truly something twisted inside her. Wrong and weird.
Because she shouldn’t be attracted to her kidnapper.
Nor to his sexy boss, who had also once been her stepson. Gross.
God. Being twisted up didn’t even cover this. And this sort of shit wasn’t something she could ever tell her therapist.
“Why are you muttering about therapists and sexy bosses? Are you attracted to your therapist? You need a female therapist.”
Excuse her?
“You are not going to tell me what sort of therapist to see.”