Page 4 of Stolen Bride for the Don

My heart picks up its beat until a loud thump thump thump is all I can hear, but I’m too weak to do anything but watch as he rounds the back of the car and wrenches open the passenger side door.

“Fuck, she’s losing consciousness,” he says with a rich as sin baritone. That voice…

Warm hands wrap around my shoulders and waist and I’m gently lifted out of the car.

“Archer, dispose of her car” is the last thing I hear before I go limp in his arms.

CHAPTER 3

HUDSON

Well, fuck. This is not how I had planned for this to all go down. I didn’t plan to grab her today, but seeing her dancing and laughing with mirth on that dance floor had me itching to talk to her. Have her with me. Then she told her father she might go on vacation, not next week or next month but possibly tomorrow. I couldn’t just let her slip out of my grasp. I was in the middle of a meeting, so I sent my men ahead to apprehend her.

I toss a worried glance at Andrea’s limp figure as Tanner turns my Grand Cherokee around so we can make the trip home. I take the bottle of water out of the cup holder between us and lift the console so I can shift closer to her.

“Andrea.” I wrap my hand around the back of her neck and tilt her head back. She blinks her eyes open as I place the open bottle against her lips. I sigh in relief. I don’t know what I will do if she doesn’t wake up.

“Drink,” I murmur as I carefully pour the water down her throat.

She gulps it down greedily, and a bit of my concern is relieved. After a few moments though, she starts to push the bottle away weakly. “Shh. Just a little more, pet,” I cajole. Her sapphire eyes snag mine and she stares at me unseeingly, but she obliges.

“Good girl,” I praise when the bottle is empty. I massage the back of her neck gently and then let her go.

“You.” Her voice is hoarse. “I know you.” When I glance at her, she’s staring at me accusingly.

“Do you, now?” Of course, she does. I was at her bar just last night.

She blinks, then slowly glances around the interior of the car. “Those men drove me off the road.”

My hands form a fist at the reminder of her accident. Someone’s head will roll for that. “It wasn’t my intention for you to crash.”

“What do you mean your intention? You did this?” She stares at me in disbelief before an eerie calmness washes over her face. “We’re going the wrong way,” she comments mildly as she looks out the window. I watch her attentively. She seems to be perking up. Good. I can’t stand to see her struggling.

“That depends entirely on how you look at it. Your wrong way is my right way. We’re going to my house.”

“I see.” She glances down at her hands and nods. “Fancy car you’ve got here. Jeep Grand Cherokee Summit?”

I do a double take. How does she know that? Before I can ask, she slides the mechanism on the side of the door that unlocks it and swings it open. Realizing what she’s about to do, I reach out, but my fingertips just grace her silky dress. I stare in disbelief as she rolls out the door onto the hard asphalt, her legs almost getting tangled in her long dress. Damn it.

The Jeep screeches to a halt before I can instruct Tanner to stop, and I’m out in an instant. She has barely just regained consciousness, so how can she be so reckless as to jump out of a moving vehicle?

The doors of the other two cars behind mine fly open, and my men run out. I raise my hand to stop them as I stroll toward Andrea, now sprawled in the middle of the road. Stupid, reckless girl. I’ve got this. We’re just past Route 116 onto 63, which is a long stretch of road with nothing but trees on either side.

Meaning we’re in the middle of buttfuck nowhere. Which means she has nowhere to run except into the woods. And she couldn’t possibly be that reckless. Without so much as a glance back, she scrambles to her feet, gathers her dress in one hand, and starts to limp toward the woods. Fucking hell.

CHAPTER 4

ANDREA

I didn’t think this through. I should have kept pretending to be compliant until we got to a town or a city–wherever the hell his home is–before I made my shitty escape attempt. At least, I would have had the hope of running into someone. Now I have no choice but to scramble into the woods. I curse when my heel snags on a stone, and I stumble, nearly falling face first into the mossy earth.

At least the woods will provide cover, and I’ll be able to hide. My chest heaves as I pant. Almost there. Almost.

“Andrea! Damn it, stop running!” he bellows.

Like hell I’ll listen to him. I can’t believe I almost took that asshole home with me last night. Tree branches slap my face, snagging my hair as I finally cross the tree line. Heart pounding fiercely in my throat, I pause to toe off my heels. How much of a head start do I have?

“Andrea!”

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