The Getaway Bride

“You’re welcome. Blake?”

“Fear,” Blake said promptly. “They’ve done or seen something they shouldn’t, and they’re afraid of retribution. The witness-protection scenario.”

Gabe frowned and swung his head toward Page. That explanation was a more reasonable one, he decided. “Page? Is that it? Are you afraid for your life?”

“No,” she said, looking him straight in the eye as she answered. “I have no fear for my life.”

He was torn between relief and disappointment at the sincerity of her tone. While he was glad that she didn’t seem to be in physical danger, at least it would have been an answer he could understand.

“There’s another possibility,” Blake remarked. “Blackmail.”

Gabe was still watching Page; he saw the ripple of unease cross her face in response to the word.

“What on earth could you have done that anyone could blackmail you about?” he asked, perplexed. “And what would anyone hope to gain? You don’t have a lot of money, and God knows I didn’t when you left me.”

She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue.

The automatic action reminded him forcibly of her sweet taste. He pushed the thought aside, finding it too painful to deal with at the moment. Too distracting.

“Talk to me, Page. Did blackmail have anything to do with you leaving me? And if so, why? Surely you knew even then that there was nothing anyone could have told me that would have changed the way I felt about you.”

She seemed to flinch, then to draw more deeply into herself. “I’ve told you why I

left,” she said tonelessly. “I made a mistake. I wanted out. I didn’t want to be married to you anymore.”

Gabe sighed and glanced at Blake, who was watching him for a reaction to her cutting reply. “You see what I’ve been dealing with?” he asked wearily. “She gives me the same line of bull every time my questions hit too close to home.”

“I agree,” Blake said with a nod. “She’s hiding something. There’s more to it than what she’s telling you.”

“So how am I going to get the truth without her help?”

“You have no right—”

Ignoring Page’s angry protest, just as Gabe was.doing, Blake considered the question.

“Well,” he said. “Looks like you’re just going to have to keep digging. If you have no moral objection, you can start by going through her personal things.”

Gabe followed Blake’s glance toward Page’s purse. “I have no objection to that at all,” he said flatly.

He reached for the purse just as Page made a lunge for it. “Don’t you dare!”

Gabe was faster. He had the purse in his hand before her grasping fingers could close around the strap.

Page jumped to her feet, her face flushed with fury. “Damn it, Gabe, you can’t do this! I can’t believe the way you’ve been treating me. You’ve been arrogant and overbearing and tyrannical, and that’s not the Gabe Conroy I knew. What has happened to that man?”

“You happened to him,” he snarled. “The Gabe Conroy you knew was a stupid, lovesick fool who naively trusted his wife to honor her marriage vows. He came home one day and found a moronic note in her place. And then he went out of his mind, searching for her, worrying about her, missing her, asking himself over and over what he’d done to drive her away.”

Page had gone very still, her face pale, her eyes locked on his face. Blake cleared his throat, looking rather uncomfortable with the painfully personal turn the conversation had suddenly taken.

“This Gabe Conroy,” Gabe continued evenly, “is tired of hurting, and tired of spending night after night lying awake, wondering what the hell went wrong. This Gabe Conroy is willing to break rules, bend laws, kidnap you, intimidate you, invade your privacy... anything short of physically harming you. I have to know, Page. Now that I’ve found you, I can’t just walk away without the truth.”

There was a long, taut moment of silence. Both Gabe and Blake were motionless, looking at Page, waiting for her response. She seemed frozen in indecision, her expression tortured, fine tremors running visibly through her.

“Please, Gabe,” she whispered finally, the words hardly loud enough for him to hear. “You must believe that I know what I’m doing. It would be best for everyone if you were to go back to Austin and forget you ever saw me again. Please. Give me my things and let me go.”

He waited a heartbeat, then deliberately opened her purse and dumped the contents onto the coffee table.

Page moved as if to stop him, but Blake cleared his throat in warning. She sighed in angry resignation and returned to her chair, her face expressionless again.