Rising to her elbows, she studied him anxiously. “Is it your leg? Have you twisted it?”
“My leg is fine.” It hurt like hell, of course, now that his attention had been called to it, but he welcomed the pain. It gave him something to concentrate on besides the throbbing ache in his groin.
She reached out to brush her fingertips through the lock of hair that habitually tumbled onto his forehead, being careful to avoid the swollen bump at his temple. “You’re being macho again, aren’t you? I know your leg is hurting.”
He pulled away from her gentle touch, sliding to the other end of the couch. He wasn’t quite ready to stand. “I’ll take some more painkillers. Why don’t you go lie down for a while? I want to look around for a way to get us out of here.”
“And after we get out?” she asked, keeping her gaze locked on his face.
After that, he thought, they would go their separate ways. She would get over this danger-induced crush she seemed to have developed for him, and she would probably marry Bryan. And he would have to figure out how to spend the rest of his life avoiding his best friend’s wife. The woman who was everything he could have wanted—had things been different. Had he been different.
“Get some rest, Chloe,” he said again, refusing to meet her eyes. “By tomorrow you’ll be home.”
“Home,” she murmured. “Where is home for you, Donovan? I don’t even know.”
“I don’t have a home.” He had an apartment, of course, but he thought of it as a place to sleep, a place to store his stuff. Not home. “I haven’t wanted one.”
“Everyone wants a home.”
“Not everyone.” He finally stood, balancing his weight carefully on his left leg. “Go to bed. We’re both tired and keyed up. Things will look different tomorrow.”
“Not that different. Not to me. You don’t give me much credit, do you?”
He heard the irritation in her voice as she also rose. He knew she didn’t like his repeated assurances that her feelings for him were being unduly influenced by what they had been through together—but eventually she would realize that he was right.
He was afraid she was going to argue more. But it seemed even Chloe’s impressive courage had limits. “I’ll lie down for a while in the small bedroom,” she said, turning toward the door. “Let me know if you find anything interesting.”
“I will.”
He watched her leave. There was wounded pride in the angle of her shoulders when she stepped into the hallway. Maybe she was already getting over her crush, he mused. Maybe she was beginning to remember now why she hadn’t much liked him before they’d been forced to spend so much time together.
Picturing the condition of her feet, he grimaced, almost feeling the pain she must have endured. She hadn’t deserved any of what she had been through the past few days. He was convinced that Bryan would do everything he could to make certain she would never have to suffer fear or pain again. Chloe deserved to live in luxury.
Donovan still believed Bryan would charm her into marrying him. Bryan had recognized immediately what a special woman she was—perhaps even more quickly than Donovan had. A fitting match for an extraordinary man like Bryan Falcon.
As for himself—well, he was merely ordinary. From his dysfunctional childhood to his occasionally disreputable adulthood, he’d been nobody until Bryan had given him a job—and, more than that, a future.
A future that included her only as his best friend’s wife.
He closed his eyes and gave himself a moment to deal with that pain. And then he shoved his feelings aside and turned away from the hallway into which she had disappeared. He had to figure out a way to get them out of here. The sooner, the better.
Chloe was tired, but not sleepy. Lying on top of the quilt that served as a spread on the twin bed in the smaller of the trailer’s two bedrooms, she stared at the ceiling and wondered what the next day would bring—as she had been doing for the past half hour or so since she had left Donovan in the living room.
By this time tomorrow, if not before, she could well be back in her own apartment, reunited with her sister, back to her “normal” life. Perhaps trying desperately to pretend that she was still the same person she had been before three greedy and unscrupulous men had ordered her into a van just four days earlier.
She had a bad feeling about the way Donovan had just shut her out after kissing her until she hadn’t been able to think of anything but him. About how badly she wanted him. And how hard she had fallen for him.
She knew he still didn’t trust their feelings, still felt torn by his loyalty to Bryan, but she was afraid if they didn’t talk while they had the chance, they never would. She would break things off with Bryan, and then Donovan would disappear from her life forever.
She couldn’t
allow that to happen without even making an effort to stop it. If there was one thing she had learned from this ordeal, it was that sometimes she had to forge ahead despite fear, despite risk, despite the possibility of pain.
She was trying to decide how to confront him about his feelings for her when she heard the outside door to the trailer open and close rather forcefully. Donovan?
She rolled off the bed and hurried toward the main room again.
Donovan was standing just inside the front door to the trailer. His hair was wind-tossed, he was still wearing the ill-fitting flannel shirt and jeans, and he’d found a pair of slip-on canvas shoes that looked a good two sizes too big for him. Anyone else might have looked a bit silly in that garb, she mused, taking a moment to study him. Donovan looked devastatingly sexy—but then, she’d thought the same when he’d been unshaven and dirty and dressed in his ripped black clothes.