Captivated (Stranded) (2 page)

She was locked in.

Chapter 2

Laine looked at the clock behind reception. Not quite four. They were still here somewhere. They just wanted to be sure to go home in time for the holiday, that was all, and who could blame them?

She checked the ground-floor galleries again, and the basement archive. Mounting the stairs, she climbed past the ground floor to the upper level of the museum. Those galleries lay empty as well, except for the exhibits. She looked at a case full of oil lamps in the shape of Priapus. Their long cocks and eager expressions belied their being trapped in a plexiglass case.

Glad
you’re
having fun,
she thought.

Laine returned to the lobby. Rounding the reception desk, she picked up the phone receiver, only to hear the weird vacuum of sound only a dead line could emit. Feeling foolish, she tapped at the button on the cradle, hoping the line would magically reconnect. She tried the local emergency digits, to no avail. A quick check of the cord showed the phone was plugged in. Magda’s phone in the office screamed the same dead silence.

Beginning to feel dismay, Laine stepped back into the lobby and began scanning the doors and windows. The museum sat on a quiet side street—practically an alley. With no shops on the immediate block, she would likely see little foot traffic. Banging on the doors wasn’t going to do her much good.

Then she saw it.

Or saw it again—the door through which her mystery man had disappeared after delivering his note to Risa.

It stood at the far end of the main gallery, a white door in a white wall, painted that way, she supposed, so it wouldn’t distract visitors from the giant painting on the same wall, a florid modern depiction of a woman’s pussy. It had teeth.

Yeah,
she thought, rolling her eyes,
let’s keep
that
myth in the fore.

She pushed the door’s handle and had her first bit of luck. The door swung open into a dim maintenance stairwell, separate from the one she and other visitors used to access the museum’s levels. Laine pulled a chair from a stack inside and propped open the door.

The landing at this entrance seemed to serve as a staging area for cleaning supplies and special events signage. Late-day sun peeked through tiny windows ascending the stairs. A table next to the door held a pencil and notepad, which showed a list of items in square-ish letters, all crossed off. The list struck her as odd, and it took Laine a moment to realize why. It was written in English.

Had the mystery man been British this whole time? Or—ooh!—Scottish? As she looked down the stairwell to its dark basement terminus, she pictured him (well, the back of him) in a kilt.

Because all Scots wear kilts.

Hey, if she was going to spend three days having waking dreams about a certain well-formed ass, it was going to get draped in tartan. And then it was going get undraped.

She grinned as she climbed the industrial stairs, her sandals slapping on the concrete treads. Yes, a kilt. And while he was at it, he could hang a sporran on the front. She’d always gotten a nether-flutter at the way sporrans bounced against their wearers’ crotches, as if to say,
I’m not the only thing swinging freely, lassie.

The upstairs landing held nothing, but to Laine’s surprise, the staircase turned to continue up at least one more level. She tried to picture the outside of the building. Did it have an attic? Maybe it would have a fire escape or something. She hadn’t thought about that yet, the possibility of fire. Not likely to happen—she wasn’t a smoker, and she wasn’t likely to build a campfire. But still, the thought of being
trapped
-trapped propelled her up the steps to the next landing—the last one, it turned out, with a single door. She turned the handle.

She wasn’t prepared for the space beyond. She had thought she might find (at best) a small vestibule and an exterior roof door or (at worst) a supply closet. But this was no closet.

The space was bright, thanks to three large dormer windows whose blinds lay open. The sparse furnishings—a table, a chair, and a cot—and a high ceiling worked with the light to make the room feel airy. A kitchenette in one corner might have suggested this was a break room, but touches of lived-in-ness contradicted that idea. The pencil sketches tacked to the walls. The votive candle on the table. The pair of boots parked neatly next to the door.

The deep male voice humming in an adjoining room.

Laine knocked on the door frame where she stood, but got no answer. She tried again, adding a tentative, “Hello?”

The humming stopped. “Be right there.”

Whoa. Even deeper when he spoke. Laine stepped back into the hall to wait. Checked the drape of her skirt, smoothed her blouse.
Idiot.
She hitched her bag higher on her shoulder.

The adjoining door opened and he stepped through, looking back at the handle as he closed it. He wore his uniform pants but had peeled down to a back-hugging white undershirt. His feet were bare. “All locked up?”

It was him. Her mystery—

He turned to her. His eyes grew wide before he jerked his face away, giving her a quarter view of his right ear and jaw. The hand that rested on the door handle flexed. He stood absolutely still but for the expansion and contraction of his rib cage.

And now she suspected she knew why he’d never shown his face. Half of it was conventionally handsome: strong jaw, straight eyebrow, full lashes. The other half—the left side—had the mottled, melted-wax appearance of extensive skin grafts and scar tissue. He had turned quickly, but not before she saw that his scars covered his neck, cheek, and temple, and that whatever had happened to him had taken most of his left eyebrow and eyelashes, some of the hair above that ear, and his earlobe. Now she noticed that his left shoulder and arm bore the kind of scarring.

As if he could feel her gaze there, he shifted his body to hide the arm.

He waited.

But she wasn’t just a visitor who had stumbled onto his living quarters. She couldn’t just apologize and leave.

All locked up?
he’d asked.

She swallowed and cleared her throat. “Locked in, actually.”

*

Locked in.

Evan stared at his hand, trying to make sense of the words, of
her
. In his apartment. With him, and the blinds wide open.

“I’m sorry to bother you, but I heard you humming.”

Damn, the collage. His hand flexed on the door handle.

“If you could just unlock the door downstairs, I’ll get out of your hair.”

Sure. Not enough that his dream woman was in his apartment, had just seen what she of all people was never meant to see, or that she’d come within fifteen feet of discovering his wall-sized obsession with her. No. She needed a
key
. Evan sent a mental double-fisted salute to the universe, which apparently was not done fucking with him.

Taking a deep breath, he turned enough to see her. “I can’t.”

“You can’t?”

“I don’t have keys to the building.”

She was quiet for a moment.

Shock? Disbelief? He didn’t risk looking at her.

“How can you not have a key?” she asked. “Aren’t you the janitor?”

His teeth ground at the word, but he was, wasn’t he? He’d chosen it. No shame in honest work. And she hadn’t said it with derision. But still. “Caretaker.”

“Okay…caretaker.” She jostled something. “You live here though, right?”

“Yes.” His voice sounded strained. Could she hear that?

“Without keys.”

“Yes.”

She was silent for a long moment. “I’ll need to call Magda then. Can you help me? The phones are offline.”

Right. The goddamn phones. “That’s the security system,” he said. “Shuts everything down when it comes on. Part of a new energy plan or something.”

“Oh.” She released a breath that could have been amusement but was probably frustration. “How about a window?”

He was looking at her before he realized it. He turned his face away, then gave up with a sigh and turned back. Her eyes struggled to focus on his—to not wander over his scars. “You want to climb out a window?”

She raised her shoulders.
What choice do I have?
the move said.

“You’re going to hate me,” he told her.

Her shoulders fell. “Why?”

“You could climb out,” he said, indicating the low window by the kitchen, “but there’s no access to the street.”

“Is that legal?” Her look of horror was almost funny. “What about fire? What about you?”

“I don’t set fires.”

She waved at his table. “You have a candle. You cook food. You could get—”

She bit off her words. She had caught herself scanning the evidence of his past collision with fire, or so she believed, he guessed, because she wrenched her eyes away.

“I can’t believe Magda doesn’t insist you have a key,” the woman said. “She’s…opinionated.”

Was she ever. He opened the closet and grabbed his shirt.

“And what about Risa?” the woman called from his front door.

“What about her?” he asked, fastening buttons as quickly as his fingers could manage.

“Doesn’t she worry about you?”

He closed the cuffs and returned to the main room, shutting the door behind him. “I doubt it.”

The woman cocked her head at that. “Isn’t…” She shifted on her feet. “I thought maybe you two were together.”

An involuntary laugh barked out of him. “Me and Risa?”

She blushed and shifted again. “I saw your note. The one you gave her this morning. I just thought…”

“That was Magda’s note,” he said, then got curious. “What’d it say?”

“‘Today.’”

Today? “Why would—” He rocked back on his feet. So Magdalena the Matchmaker had help. He looked at the ceiling and shook his head.

“What?”

Might as well tell her; they were in it now. “You’re here on purpose,” he said and closed the nearest window blind.

“No, I promise—”

He turned to her, halfway. “They locked you in.”

She had no expression at all for a long moment, and then her eyes grew wide, and she looked behind her as if Risa might pop out of the stairwell and yell,
Surprise!
To his relief, when she turned back to him she looked more bemused than upset. “Why would they do that?”

“Because,” he said, cranking the next set of blinds, “they’re a couple of busybodies who think they know what’s best for everyone.”

She processed that, her hand flexing on the strap of her bag. “They don’t even know me.”

“Nope,” he said and moved to the kitchen window.

He glanced at her in time to see realization smooth the lines on her forehead. A slow smile curled her lips. “But they know you.”

He turned away to shutter the window. “They think they do.”

“And they thought…”

“Long holiday weekend…”

“Brother.”

The room was as dim as it was going to get. He faced her.

Goddamn, she was beautiful. Head on, the straight frames of her glasses almost hid the slight slant of her eyes. He nearly (not quite but nearly) regretted closing the blinds because her hair had settled to a nondescript light brown, a far cry from its radiance when sunlight hit it through the archive windows. (Seriously, dude. Stalker.) “I’m really sorry.”

“Don’t be.” She shrugged again and held out her hand. “My name’s Laine.”

Man, he was a lucky son of a bitch that she wasn’t freaking the fuck out right now. He stepped forward, gave her his good hand. Hers felt cool and damp. Good. Maybe she wouldn’t notice his was sweating too. “Evan.” He let go after one pump.

“Evan,” she said, almost under her breath. The sound of it raced down his spine.

“Come in,” he said and gestured to the table. “I’ll be right back.” With a quick glance to make sure the closet door was latched, he jogged down to the main landing and grabbed a chair from the stack there. As he climbed the steps again, he went over his food supply in his mind and decided it should last the weekend. Wouldn’t be fancy, but they wouldn’t go hungry.

When he stepped back into his apartment, Laine was looking at one of his sketches.

“Did you make this?”

He nodded, setting the chair across the table from his.

“You’re really good.”

Heat spread up the right side of his neck. “Thanks.”

“When did you do it?”

He looked at the drawing and then at her. The sketch showed one of the distinctive spiral columns at Park Güell, and he could see the question in her eyes. If he let himself be locked in on weekends, when did he go out? “When I first got here.”

He could see more questions forming behind the first, and he wasn’t about to face them on an empty stomach. “I was about to make dinner. Hungry?”

“Starving, suddenly.”

“Good, because it’s just rice and vegetables.”

“Sounds perfect.”

He pointed to the small wine rack on the counter. “Pick one?”

She followed his finger to the rack. “Sure.” She set her bag aside and reached for a bottle. The bottom hem of her shirt rode up, showing skin that looked soft in the muted afternoon light. Below that, the curve of her butt pressed against her skirt, pulling the fabric snug. She held the bottle close to her eyes and absently tucked the stray (not deliberate, he decided) wisp of hair behind her ear.

Three days,
he thought, rooted in place.

Three days with that skin and that skirt and that sneaky little wisp of hair.

He forced himself toward the kitchen.

Magda was going to pay for this.

Chapter 3

She kept standing on his bad side.

It wasn’t her fault, Evan knew. That stretch of counter held the wine rack, and the bottle opener and the cutting board, where she was gamely trying to slice vegetables, though she clearly didn’t handle a knife very often. The thought of her chopping off a finger gave him the perfect excuse to move her.

“Want to do the rice?”

She looked up, or so he guessed; he was busy measuring rice. “Sure.”