Souls of Fire (19 page)

“That’s a long drop,” I said, shivering slightly remembering the descent through the dark narrow shaft. “I’m amazed he didn’t damage the ladder.”

“Lucky for us, or we would have had to jump,” Aaron said, only half-joking about the part about jumping, by the sound of it.

“So, what do we do now?” I asked Aaron, my shoulders raised in an inquisitive manner. I wanted to hear anything, any solution he could come up with, but one: that we stay there for the night. The sight of the bed covered in furs had my insides in a tight knot.

There was no way I was going to be comfortable letting him sleep on the cold stone floor. But the idea of sleeping in the same bed, so close to him, made me break out in a cold sweat.

I was terrified ― and I longed for it.

“We need to get out of here as fast as we can,” Aaron answered, seemingly just as anxious as I was to get out of a situation involving a cozy little nest with just one mattress.

I was equally relieved and disappointed, but generally glad I didn’t have to go through any more emotional struggles that night.

“Okay,” I said, “how do we get out?”

“Good point,” Aaron admitted, turning in several directions, looking for a way out of the cave that didn’t involve climbing the wooden ladder back up to a room possibly filled with assassins by now. There was no visible passage leading out of the circular cave.

“Do you think there might be another hidden doorway somewhere?” I asked.

“Hmm … there very likely
could
be one,” Aaron suggested. “I can’t imagine Adam would go through all of this trouble to set something like this up and not have an escape route leading from this cave. I don’t think he would have liked the idea of becoming a sitting duck in this dank place.”

“I agree,” I answered, “that doesn’t seem likely.”

“We should split up and look around very carefully,” Aaron suggested, already heading off in one direction, his hand placed on the stone wall while walking alongside it.

I took off in the opposite direction along the same side of the wall, walking slowly, my eyes glued to the stone, the palm of my hand being scraped slightly by the rough edges along the way.

After a couple of minutes my eyes already started to show signs of strain from covering a long stretch of almost identical looking stone.

There were only slight variations in the way the wall was curved. Other than that, I couldn’t detect anything out of the ordinary. Not one section of the wall looked like it didn’t belong. Of course, I thought, that was the whole point behind hidden doorways, wasn’t it. You weren’t supposed to spot them.

When Aaron and I finally met face to face at a stretch of the wall, having completed the circle, neither of us had found anything.

“Okay … so what now?” I asked, fearing the worst.

“We rest here and … think about other options,” Aaron answered, obviously having no clue whatsoever about what to do.

And there it was, the worst, I thought. Rest … where? There was only the mattress, nothing else.

“What other options?” I asked instead.

“Well,” Aaron started hesitantly, “we could just wait a while and then climb back up the ladder and listen for voices. I mean, it’s possible they’ll have cleared out in a couple of hours. If we’re careful enough, we could leave the way we came.”

I spotted the problem with that scenario before Aaron, who seemed to be too caught up considering other viable options of escape to come to the same conclusion. I decided to state the obvious.

“They will have spotted your car by now.” I said in a low, calm voice while throwing him a significant look.

“They’ll know we haven’t left the house because they would have seen us leave. Besides, they wouldn’t think you’d just abandon your car. Which means … they
will
find us,” I concluded in a slightly shaky voice.

Aaron seemed a bit taken aback.

“I hadn’t thought about that,” he admitted, looking stunned. “I guess I’m really off my game,” he added. “It’s not like I have to deal with murderers every day, you know,” he added slightly defensively.

“Hey …,” I said, throwing my hands up in surrender, “… it’s okay, no one’s questioning your manliness or … whatever.”

Judging by the look on Aaron’s face, I gathered I had sounded a bit snotty just then, which I hadn’t meant to be. It had just come out that way.

“I’m sorry,” I said in a serious tone, looking him straight in the eyes. “I shouldn’t have said it like that ― I guess I’m off my game, too. And I’m just exhausted and … scared shitless.”

At that last bit of my confession, Aaron evidently had a hard time keeping his miffed expression, his lips turning up in a smile against his will at my unexpected choice of words.

“I’m not sure
you
can be scared ‘shitless’. You seem too proper to even use that term,” Aaron snickered, once again acting condescending and insulting me in branding me ‘too proper’.

In my book that was quite an insult, issued by someone who obviously prided himself on being cool, sexy and a daredevil. I huffed angrily, turned around, and headed toward the mattress, plumping myself right smack in the middle, leaving no space for Aaron to sit down and rest.

When I heard him approaching the mattress, apologizing while roaring with laughter ― a feat not easily accomplished ― I hastily turned on my side and slid to the edge of the mattress to give him room, not wanting to offer him any further cause for an argument that would force me to interact with him until I was able to calm down and rest.

For the moment, I had enough of dealing with his patronizing attitude. I felt ― once again ― cowed and humiliated.

Screw you
, I thought,
proper enough for you?

Quite possibly, I was downright overreacting, but at the moment I just couldn’t care less. I was tired and cold and scared. So, naturally, I felt I deserved to be a little out of line if it suited me. And it suited me just fine.

The fact that Aaron was laughing out loud after just having lost the closest thing to a father he had ever known, was an indication that he was feeling as much on edge as I was. It seemed he was dealing with his loss the only way he knew how to: he was doing a really good job repressing everything!

I heard something heavy being set on the ground next to the mattress, the book he had carried in his shirt, I presumed. Then I felt Aaron plump himself right beside me; but I didn’t react in any way.

“Oh, come on,” Aaron complained, lying on his side with his chest to my back, his face looking over my shoulder in an attempt to get me to talk to him again.

“Come on,” he pleaded again in between laughs.

“It’s not funny,” I managed between clenched teeth.

Aaron seemed momentarily confused.

“What’s not funny? What did I do? What did I do that’s so terrible that you’re behaving like a …”

“Exactly,” I countered. “Like a little girl. Isn’t that what you were about to say?”

“Yes, that’s what I was about to say. And I’m not wrong, am I? That’s exactly how you’re behaving.” Aaron answered angrily.

“You’re right.” I whispered in a voice so low I wasn’t sure Aaron had heard.

That was indeed the truth. I was behaving like a little girl.

Unfortunately there was nothing I could do about it. I could be confident in anything I did when I knew it was something I was good at or could muster with the right amount of time and work. But with him, everything was different.

I didn’t know how to handle him, didn’t know how to let him know what it was I wanted, needed, from him. Was afraid to even admit it to myself … much less him.

The mere fact that he regarded me as an insecure little girl and that I was aware of how he saw me, tended to make me do just that: act that way. He was the one who brought it out in me, the one person I would have liked to impress by being suave and grown-up.

It was a curse, it was
my
curse! And I was stuck with it, there was no cure, at least none I knew of.

Bury two dozen garlic cloves under a new moon and dance around in a circle like a lunatic,
I thought morosely,
or something like that.

“You just … don’t understand,” was all I could manage to say aloud.

At that, Aaron’s strong and muscular arm reached around me and had my body turned toward his in under two seconds, despite my struggling against him.

“Then explain it to me,” Aaron challenged, his arm still tightly wound around my body, holding me in place, our bodies so close together that I suddenly found myself gazing straight into Aaron’s eyes.

His expression had undergone quite a change since I had looked at him last. He had gone from amused and playful to deadly serious.

I could tell that he was a man on a mission; he was not going to give in and let me go before he got to the bottom of why I acted the way I did, and before I clarified exactly what I had accused him of not understanding.

I swallowed hard. There was no way I would live through the next couple of minutes. I was not going to be able to worm my way out of explaining ― but I had to try.

“Would you please let go of me,” I growled at him, struggling to move out of his grip and away from him.

“No,” Aaron answered coolly, not even moving a muscle as he kept me tightly in place, while I was already breaking out in a sweat from struggling so hard.

“You have to admit it’s pointless,” Aaron said in such a calm voice it made me give up on the idea of worming my way
out of anything. It just wasn’t going to work.

“So, here’s your chance to explain what it is I do so well to piss you off and make you throw a tantrum.”

There it was again, I thought. His words were perfectly chosen in order to piss me off. But I chose to ignore his snub, because things couldn’t get worse than they were anyway.

“Tell me,” Aaron insisted, his voice low, his eyes on mine, his fingers seemingly unconsciously kneading my back.

My heart sank into my boots.

“Err … I … there’s … nothing … err …,” I stammered.

I was suddenly so nervous, the words wouldn’t come. Besides, I didn’t know what to say, anyway. What should I tell him? That I ached for him?

That despite his making fun of me, and even though he didn’t like me back, I was slowly and against all sane reasoning starting to fall for him? That it hurt me how lowly he thought of me?

How humiliating! I would rather die, I thought, and then revised that thought in light of the assassination crew in the house above our heads.

“Why are you so nervous?” Aaron asked cautiously, looking me over with a gaze so intense it made me go weak in the knees.

It was lucky I was lying down, I thought. Was he aware of his fingers kneading my back in a most intimate manner? A shiver I couldn’t hold back shook my body.

Of course he noticed
, I couldn’t help but think when I saw him surveying my trembling body.

“You’re shaking,” Aaron uttered in a steady voice, seemingly unperturbed by my quivering body. But I saw. He couldn’t hide the change, the spark of recognition in his eyes, the moment he realized what it all meant.

It couldn’t have been too hard to figure out, I mused. If he had read the signs he would have realized it before then, with the way I was sure I was carrying my heart on my sleeve; the way I reacted to him, or more precisely overreacted to him.

Maybe, I gathered, he hadn’t wanted to see the signs. Maybe it was more comfortable that way.

However he had managed not to see it before, there was no escaping the look in my eyes at that moment, I was sure. I was certain my feelings were mirrored there as I looked at him, at this beautiful creature that didn’t want me.

At that thought, tears sprang to my eyes; I had no strength left to hold them back or even to attempt it. Closing my overflowing eyes and turning my head away from him, I tried to hide this mortifying image of myself from view.

“Wait,” Aaron murmured in a stunned and shaky voice, no longer the unaffected man he had mimicked to perfection. He reached out to me, his large strong hand cradling my wet, tear-streaked cheek and gently turning my head toward him again.

“I’m sorry; I didn’t mean it as an insult. I like that you’re not … a bad girl,” he managed, his voice slightly uneven, his thumb gently wiping away the tears that had marred my skin moments before. “I don’t
mean
to be an ass,” he continued, making me laugh despite the distress I felt.

“Apology accepted,” I said, giving him a small smile in appreciation of his efforts to soothe me.

He hadn’t alluded to what he had seen in my eyes, nor had he asked me to explain anything further. There had been no need. The explanation had been given implicitly. He probably didn’t know what to say or how to respond to this unwanted infatuation, I gathered.

He wasn’t likely to want to brush me off if he could avoid it, so he chose not to mention it. But it didn’t matter. The truth was out, and it wasn’t like I could change that. There was no more damage control. The damage was done.