Murphy stared for a long minute, the silence punctuated by the rush of blood through her head. He licked his lips, opening them slowly to answer her. “Sure, that would be good.”
He wanted to stay. She didn’t know what she was offering, but the thought of being alone with him—if only for one night—was enough to make her feel giddy and hot.
A slow, easy grin formed on Murphy’s rugged face, the corners of his lips crinkling as the muscles grew tight. He stared right at her, a promise behind his eyes. Anticipation licked at her belly like a hungry cat.
“I guess I’ll see you around. Be careful, okay?” Richie pulled on his cap and gave her a pointed stare. She nodded back, her expression sincere. Careful should have been her middle name.
Okay, so she was taking a gamble, but the odds were good. Murphy had been around for a week, enough for her to weigh him up and work him out. She wasn’t expecting a relationship; it was the last thing on her mind, and she knew his business wouldn’t keep him here long. She liked the way he seemed a little sweet on her, and she felt a little sweet on him too, enough to put aside her fears and see where things went. Watching the door close behind Richie, knowing the last of the customers had left, she wondered if she was doing the right thing.
Ignoring the insistent knock of her heart as it pounded against her torso, she took a long breath, pulling the air deep into her lungs.
How much of a risk was one night with a new friend?
Chapter Three
The slow rumble of a distant engine told her Richie had reached the main road, leaving her alone with Murphy in the bar. She walked over to the main door and slid the deadbolts through their channels, hearing them clank as they eased into the locks. As she switched off the neon “Open” sign, she realized how isolated the bar was, nestled off the Lower Hillbrook Road, a good two miles out of town.
Her spine itched with the need to shiver as she wondered if she’d done the right thing. She reminded herself she’d only offered him a couch, something any Good Samaritan would do. She needed to stop thinking herself crazy.
She needed to pick up the empty glasses and clean the tables before she could call it a night, and she got to work. As she walked over to the middle of the room, it was hard not to feel Murphy following her every move. Her insecurities rose to the surface, making her wonder if her butt was jiggling too much and if her hips were a bit too wide. She’d put on a little weight since she’d moved to Hillbrook—a combination of lack of exercise and less than ideal nutrition making her jeans half a size too tight. If she’d known a tall, handsome stranger was coming to town, maybe she’d have eased off the cookie jar or refused an extra helping of Marianne’s apple pie. As it was, he was staring at her in all her 130-pound glory.
When she looked up at Murphy, catching his appraising gaze, she realized the extra inch didn’t matter at all. There was something about the way he stared which made the heat pool in her belly, warming and teasing her from the inside out. Being alone with him was enough to make her skin prickle.
“You want another beer?” She leaned over a table in the middle of the bar, picking up the last of the glasses the boys had left. One of the tumblers stuck to the wood, spilled beer acting like glue on its base. She pulled hard, hearing the crackle as the glass gave way and broke from the wood of the table.
Then her world came crashing down.
“No thanks, Lucy.” He spat the words out like they were a bitter pill, enough to chill her from head to toe. He didn’t sound like the Murphy she’d gotten to know, the soft-voiced guy who cleared the parking lot of snow and listened to her stories with a smile. This Murphy—the one with the edge in his voice and her old name on his tongue—was a stranger. One who scared her shitless. And he knew who she was?
Her feet were glued to the sticky wooden floor, her pulse racing. Hearing her real name was enough to remind her of long, dark nights spent in agony, her face pushed down into dirty tiles, hands bound behind her back. It made her remember pain and misery and a life not worth living, things she had buried for so long she thought they’d disappeared. As they rose to the surface, they brought with them the fear and terror she’d tried to suppress. They wrapped around her heart and squeezed it tight.
Survival instinct kicked in, along with a shot of adrenaline. Rachel turned around, quirking her trembling lips into a pale imitation of a smile. Her fingers shook, causing the tumblers in her hand to tap against each other, the light tinkling of glass cutting through the silence like a jagged knife. She sauntered back to the bar with a nonchalance she prayed would fool him. Her only option was to deny everything, make him think he’d got the wrong girl. She needed to act out the role of her life.
As she walked toward him, each footstep seemed to take forever, and fear exploded in her chest. Murphy watched her intently, his expression guarded, his head quirked to one side as if he was analyzing each action. The way his stare burned into her skin felt like an invasion, making her want to pull up the barriers, rebuild the wall she’d let him demolish. Nausea gripped her stomach when she forced herself to look at him.
; “Who’s Lucy?” She reminded herself not to flinch. She didn’t want him to see her react. Because he knew her name, her real name; the one she’d tried to bury back in Boston. Hearing it again for the first time in more than a year dragged her back to a past she was too petrified to remember. She thought she’d left it all behind, that she’d shrugged off her old persona like a snake slithers out of its old skin, leaving it on the ground like a relic of the past.
She should have known her escape was only temporary. She thought she’d been clever, choosing a town where nobody ever came, picking an area that technology hardly touched. She was a fool for thinking she could escape from a man whose obsession bordered on pathological. That’s if she’d been thinking at all. She didn’t even need to ask Murphy why he was there. She knew why—she knew who had sent him. What she didn’t know was whether she would make it out alive.
She sucked in some air between her gritted teeth and placed the dirty glasses on the countertop. She was still playing the part, trying to keep him guessing; she wouldn’t let him see her break down.
The edge of Murphy’s jaw twitched, and his earlier, soft gaze seemed ominous. He was a six-foot-three, dirty-blond devil, and it wasn’t her body he was after. It was her soul. It was enough to make her heart slam against her ribcage.
“I think you know who Lucy is.” Murphy’s tone was even and low. “Lucy Eversleigh, formerly of Beacon Hill, Boston, disappeared fourteen months ago, without a trace.”
She felt sick at the certainty of his words. It meant he knew, he really knew, who she was.
Her shaking fingers ached to feel the cool metal of her gun. She started to work through her options, trying to think the situation through, but panic kept clouding her thoughts. She reached out her hand to steady herself on the wooden counter. Murphy knew enough about her to be sure who she was, that much was clear. To keep denying it was futile; she needed to start planning how to get out of this situation instead.
“Did he send you?” she asked. Measured breaths kept her heartbeat even enough for her to seem unperturbed on the outside. On the inside, she was a mess of fear and horror.
“If by ‘he’ you mean your husband, then yes.” Damned if Murphy’s face didn’t look eager and satisfied, like a hunter who loved the thrill of the chase. There was an air of danger behind his words that chilled her to the bone. Rachel hid her hands behind her back, still not willing to let him see the way they trembled.
Maybe she was too proud to let him know how he’d affected her. Somewhere, buried deep beneath the fear, there was anger too. Not quite fury—that was too strong—but she was more than annoyed she’d let this handsome stranger pull the wool over her eyes. Angry at herself, at him. At David, too.
She’d thought better of herself than that, and she’d thought better of Murphy, too. Had she really got him so wrong?