Life, Liberty and Pursuit of a Honeybun

CHAPTER TWO-2

PLEASANCE LEANED DOWN and glanced in the window. She gasped as she saw the familiar head of red hair and almost stepped away. Fighting the urge to run, Pleasance reached in and placed her hand in front of the man’s nose. Soft puffs of air fluttered against her hand.

“Still alive,” she muttered. Pleasance glanced longingly back to her car, which was idling quietly beside the road. She briefly considered leaving him where he was and getting the heck out of there. But the smell of gasoline worried her. She looked at the steam pouring out of the battered front end and bit her lip. It would only take one spark and the handsome man hanging upside down behind the wheel of the H2 would become a human toastie.

“He wanted to hurt me.” Pleasance reminded herself. But she knew she wouldn’t be able to live with herself if she let him die a fiery death.

Sighing, Pleasance reached for the handle of the door, expecting it to be wedged shut, and was surprised to find it unlocked and wedge-free. With a little muscle she was able to pull the door wide.

She realized suddenly that she would have to reach over the seemingly unconscious man to release his seat belt.

She frowned, thinking a killer who fastened his seat belt was very strange.

Pleasance forced back her misgivings and knelt beside the Hummer. She had to slide under him in order to reach the seatbelt latch. In that position she couldn’t help noticing how good he smelled.

Focus, Pleasance! She scolded herself. This man is a murderer! But her instincts, usually very acute, were screaming at her that there had been some misunderstanding. The man she was currently climbing underneath just didn’t seem like a stone cold killer.

It might have had something to do with the thick arc of long, dark red lashes on his pale cheeks. Or the fact that he’d nearly killed himself to avoid hitting a couple of Coyotes for god sakes!

The man groaned and Pleasance gasped and jumped. When she looked up at his handsome face a slightly dazed pair of blue eyes were staring in her direction.

She started to shift out from under him. “I am so outa here.”

But then the front end of the H2 burst into flame with a terrifying whoosh and Pleasance squealed, pressed the latch on the seatbelt, and then said “umph!” as he landed on her.

She smacked him on the shoulder until he rolled himself out of the fire engulfed car and she scrambled out after him.

Pleasance leapt to her feet and took off, but she didn’t get far. A large hand clasped her upper arm and she was jerked to a stop. She spun angrily to face him and found herself looking into the prettiest blue eyes she’d ever seen.

“You!” he said in a husky whisper.

That was all Pleasance needed to hear. She jerked her arm from his grasp and turned, running as fast as she could toward her waiting car. She heard him plowing through the tall, dry grass behind her and tried to run faster. But she was hampered by her dang shoes. She managed to kick one off as she ran but the impossibly narrow heel of the second shoe got caught in a tuft of grass and she went down hard, face first in the dry grass. An explosion filled the quiet night and something landed on top of her. At first she thought she’d been hit with a large chunk of whatever had blown up. But then she realized the object pressing down on her was warm and relatively pliant. She cranked her head around and found herself looking at the handsome profile of the red-headed killer.

“Crap!” Pleasance tried to lever herself up just as a hunk of flaming metal landed close by. Her assailant, incredibly, pushed her head into the grass and kept his hands over it, as if he was protecting her from the flying debris.

A moment later he rolled off her and she leapt to her feet.

Turning toward her car again, she fully intended to make a run for it. But her eyes widened at the smoldering lump sitting where her car had been.

That was when a deep, smoky voice intruded on her jangled thoughts. “Looks like Raia has decided you’re too much of a liability.”

Pleasance looked at him and frowned. “Raia? Why would he...?”

In the distance a Coyote yipped a warning and was answered almost immediately by other feral voices close by. Very close. Pleasance shivered, looking around with terror-filled eyes. Suddenly a warm coat was on her shoulders and a lightly-calloused hand was grabbing hers.

“Come on. We need to get out of here. His men will be nearby. They’ll want to make sure we’re dead.”

Pleasance shook her head, her mind refusing to wrap around the reality of her flame-engulfed car and the total ridiculousness of his speculations about Raia. But the words she wanted to utter wouldn’t come out through her clenched lips. And her body had succumbed to such a violent bout of shivering that she wasn’t sure she could even walk.

She wasn’t exactly given a choice. Her erstwhile abductor dragged her forward with ruthless efficiency, toward the distant tree line, and away from everything and everyone who could protect her.

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