Perfect (Second Opportunities 2)

Julie glared at him open-mouthed, then snapped her jaws together and said irately, "I'm not on a vacation! I'm a hostage, and don't expect me to forget it!"

In answer, he gave her a long-suffering look, as if she were being impossibly difficult, so she jerked her gaze from his and marched into the house. Inside, the mountain retreat was both rustic and startlingly luxurious, built around a gigantic center room shaped like a hexagon, with three doors opening off of it into bedroom suites. Soaring wood ceilings were supported by gigantic crossbeams of rough-hewn cedar, and a winding staircase led up to a loft that was lined with handsome bookcases. Four of the six walls were made entirely of glass, offering a view of the mountains that Julie knew would be breathtaking on a clear day. The fifth wall was built of native stone with an enormous fireplace carved into the center above a raised hearth. Facing the fireplace was a long L-shaped sofa upholstered in a butter soft silvery leather. Opposite the sofa and facing the windows were two overstuffed chairs and ottomans upholstered in silver and green stripes that blended with the fat throw pillows on the sofa and raised hearth. A thick carpet with the same design as the throw pillows sculpted into the border covered part of the gleaming wooden floor in front of the fireplace. Two more pairs of chairs were positioned invitingly near two of the windows and a desk was tucked into an angle created by the glass walls. At any other time, Julie would have been awed and intrigued by what was the most unique and beautiful place she'd ever seen, but she was too upset and too hungry to give it more than passing notice. Turning, she wandered into the kitchen area, an efficient, modernistic galley-type affair that stretched across the back wall of the house and was divided from the living room by a high counter with six leather stools in front of it. Her stomach growled as she looked at the oak cabinets and oak-fronted built-in refrigerator, but her appetite was already losing the battle with exhaustion. Feeling like a sneak thief, she opened a cabinet that contained dishes and glassware, then another that contained—luckily—a wide variety of canned goods. Deciding to make a sandwich and then go to bed, she was reaching timidly for a can of albacore tuna fish when Zack opened the back door and saw her. "Dare I hope," he said, kicking snow off his boots, "that this means you're domestically inclined?"

"Do you mean, can I cook?"

"Yes."

"Not for you." Julie put the can of tuna back and closed the cabinet door just as her stomach let out an audible growl of protest.

"Jesus, you are stubborn!" Chafing his hands against the cold, he walked over to the thermostat on the wall and turned up the heat, then he headed for the refrigerator and opened the freezer door. Julie peeked around him and spied dozens of thick steaks and pork chops, huge roasts, some packages wrapped in white freezer paper, and boxes and boxes of vegetables, some raw and others prepared. It was a display that would do justice to any gourmet market. Her mouth began to water as he reached for a steak that was an inch and a half thick, but exhaustion was already overwhelming her. Her relief at being in a warm house instead of the car and at having arrived at a destination after an endless, nerve-wracking drive was suddenly making her feel limp, and she realized she wanted a hot shower and long nap a great deal more than food. "I have to get some sleep," she said, scarcely able to muster the strength to sound cool and authoritative any more. "Please. Where?"

Something in her pale face and heavy eyes made him respond without argument. "The bedroom is this way," he said, already turning on his heel and heading for a doorway that opened off the living room. When he flipped on the light switch, Julie found herself in an enormous bedroom suite with a fireplace and an adjoining bathroom of black marble with mirrored walls. She spotted the telephone on the nightstand beside the king-size bed at the same moment he did. "It has its own bath," he told her unnecessarily as he walked over to the nightstand and briskly unplugged the telephone, tucking it under his arm.

"But no telephone, I see," she added with bitter resignation as she headed back into the living room to get her suitcase.

Behind her, he checked the doors to the bathroom and bedroom, then he caught her arm as she bent over in the living room to pick up her suitcase. "Look," he said, "we might as well get the rules established. Here's the situation: There are no other houses on this mountain. I have the car keys, so the only way you can leave here would be on foot, in which case you'll freeze to death long before you ever get near the highway. The bedroom door and the bathroom door both have those useless little locks in the door handle that anyone can open from the other side with a hairpin, so I don't recommend that you try to barricade yourself in there, because it would be a waste of time, not to mention unnecessarily confining for you. Are you following me, so far?"

Julie tried unsuccessfully to jerk her arm free. "I'm not a moron."

"Good. Then you should already have realized you can have the run of the house—"

"The run of the house? Just like a trained beagle, is that it?"

"Not exactly," Zack said, his mouth quirking in a smile as he let his admiring glance rove over her thick, wavy chestnut hair and slim, restless figure. "More like a skittish Irish Setter," he corrected.

Julie opened her mouth to give him the biting retort he deserved, but she couldn't get words out before she yawned again.

Chapter 23

The mouthwatering aroma of steak sizzling on a grill lured her from a deep sleep. Dimly aware that the huge bed on which she slept was too big to be her own bed, she rolled onto her back, completely disoriented. Blinking in the inky darkness of an unfamiliar room, she turned her face the opposite direction, searching for the pale source of illumination spilling through what turned out to be a narrow parting of the draperies on the wall. Moonlight. For a few blissful moments, she imagined she was in a luxuriously large hotel room somewhere on vacation.

She glanced at the digital clock on the nightstand. Wherever she was, the local time was 8:20 P.M. And it was chilly in the room—the kind of deep chill that made her sleepily rule out California or Florida as her possible whereabouts. It hit her then that hotel rooms were never redolent with the aroma of cooking food. She was in a house somewhere, not a hotel, and there were footsteps in the next room.

Heavy, masculine footsteps…

Awareness hit her like a punch in the stomach and she sat bolt upright in bed, already throwing the covers off and standing up, adrenalin pumping. She took a quick step toward the window, her mind's escape mechanism working before her logic caught up. Goose bumps lifted on her bare legs, and she looked down in shivering disbelief at what she was wearing—a man's T-shirt she'd removed from a dresser drawer after her shower. Her captor's warning came back to her: "I have the car keys and there are no other houses on this mountain… You'll freeze to death if you try to escape on foot… The door locks can be opened easily… You have the run of the house."