“Something tells me that’s nothing new for you,” she teased gently, supporting him with her shoulder.
Gabe found them that way, Blake’s good arm around Page’s shoulders, hers wrapped around his bare waist, their heads close together. Gabe’s ferocious scowl made Page sigh. Just how far did his distrust of her extend?
“Dizzy spell,” Blake explained quickly to Gabe, obviously seeing the same signs of masculine possessiveness Page had noticed. “Stood too fast.”
Gabe stepped forward quickly to relieve Page of Blake’s weight. “I’ll help you into the kitchen,” he said a bit brusquely. “You could p
robably use some food to build your strength. I warmed some soup.”
Page stepped out of the way. “He could use a couple of painkillers, but he refused to take any,” she said.
“They’d make me groggy. I need to stay alert,” Blake explained, as he had the first time she’d offered the potent pills she carried in her purse for emergencies.
His precautions worried her as much this time as they had before. “You said he couldn’t find us here.”
She saw the look Gabe and Blake exchanged before Blake murmured, “I like to be prepared.”
Shaking off Gabe’s assistance, Blake lifted his chin and braced his feet, demonstrating that he could stand without support. Gabe gave him a clean blue chambray shirt to wear over the bandages. The shirt was a bit large on Blake, who had a slighter build than Gabe’s muscular frame, but he buttoned it without comment. And without help. And then he managed to get to the kitchen on his own strength.
Vaguely annoyed at the entire male gender, Page followed.
“Let’s assume that it is Phillip Wingate,” Blake proposed a few minutes later, seated behind a steaming bowl of canned vegetable beef soup. “We know he’s young and intelligent. And obviously insane.”
“Where’s he been living the past couple of years?” Gabe asked. “How’s he been supporting himself?”
Blake shrugged. “I’d bet he’s basically homeless. A drifter, trailing Page from place to place, begging or stealing to get by. Maybe even following her lead and taking odd jobs from time to time. That would fit the profile of an obsessed stalker. As for the photographs, he’s either made a few side trips to snap them, or hired someone to take them for him. My money would be on him taking them himself. He’s too much of a loner to work with a partner, even on a limited basis.”
“He’s consumed with thoughts of Page,” Gabe muttered, staring into his bowl as though hoping to find a solution there. “Making her miserable has been his only goal these past thirty-odd months.”
Blake nodded. “Which is why he didn’t hurt her. Without her to torment, he basically has nothing to live for.”
“Which means,” Page interrupted, refusing to be left out of the discussion, “that I’m relatively safe. If I go away and make sure he believes that neither of you know where I am, he’ll leave you both alone.”
“Forget it.” Gabe’s voice was flat. His eyes bored into her, daring her to argue.
“It wouldn’t help, Page.” Blake agreed with Gabe. “Even if you were willing to spend the rest of your life running from him—and that’s not something Gabe and I can accept—it wouldn’t guarantee anyone’s safety, including your own. The guy’s crazy. He hates Gabe and he hates me, just because we’re on your side.”
Gratitude and fear warred equally inside her. “But—”
“It’s not an option, Page,” Gabe insisted. “You aren’t leaving again, not if I have to handcuff you to my own wrist. Is that clear?”
“I make my own decisions,” she snapped, irked by his uncompromising tone.
“Not when they’re made on my behalf,” he retorted, his jaw stubbornly set.
Their eyes locked. Held. Page could almost feel the sparks fly between them as stubborn willfulness clashed with inflexible determination.
“Soupspoons at twenty paces?” Blake asked whimsically, breaking the tension. “Loser has to eat the rest of this delightful swill.”
Gabe cleared his throat and dipped unenthusiastically into his soup. Page bit her lower lip and turned her attention to the rest of her own unappetizing meal.
For a moment a taut silence reigned in the rustic cabin kitchen.
Again it was Blake who lightened the mood. “So,” he said. “Since there’s nothing else we can do about finding Wingate for the moment, why don’t we get to know each other better. If you were a Pop-Tart, what flavor would you be?”
She was startled into a quick laugh. “That’s a stupid question.”
“Yeah, but you have to admit it’s original,” he quipped.