Page 143 of Blue Moon

This got worse and worse. He had guns and probably a knife too, if he’d chopped up the deer. And all I could do was pretend. Pretend everything was fine and avoid antagonising my abductor. We each had to play to our strengths, and mine was living a lie.

Thanks, Mom.

“Kacie, I think I can convince him to take off your chain, but…” I narrowed my eyes at Michelle. “But he doesn’t much like you. I can’t think why. He says you have a bad attitude.”

“A bad attitude? You’d bitch too if you were expected to wait hand and foot on a spoiled singer and a delusional asshole.”

“I’ve told you twenty times already, I didn’t freaking ask for this.”

“Whatever. You’re gettin’ awful friendly with him.”

“I’m doing whatever it takes to get us out of here.”

And it was exhausting. I’d survived breakfast, lunch, and dinner, plus a bunch of mansplaining and a dash of good old-fashioned misogyny. Mark Antony assumed that my entire career had been a mistake. That deep down, every woman was just dying for a man to take care of her. Ugh. In some ways, he was really, really smart, like with all the Egyptian stuff, plus I had to admit that his kidnapping plan was well thought through. But in other ways, he was dumb as a box of rocks. If he wanted a stay-at-home-mom type of woman, there were literally dating apps for that, and I bet if one of those girls saw his fancy log mansion, they’d even pretend to be Cleopatra.

We’d also been for a walk outside with Rocky, although he’d kept giving my darling dog dirty looks, and there was literally nothing for miles but trees. Trees and the occasional gunshot. Then he’d found me a bottle of Tylenol and swallowed a couple himself because the bite wound on his ankle hurt.

Good boy, Rocky. Good boy.

“If he lets me loose, then what do we do?” Kacie asked. “Should we go for help?”

“Nuh-uh. No way. There are bears out there. And even if Michelle does nothing but complain, we can’t leave her behind.”

“So we just stay here forever?”

“No, I already told you, my boyfriend will?—”

“Rescue us,” Michelle finished. “Yeah, yeah, we know. Everyone but me is living in cloud cuckoo land. I’m going to bed.”

She stomped off to the room she shared with Kacie, the chain jingling behind her. Didn’t she understand that this would be easier if we all worked together?

“I’m stuck in a nightmare. Pinch me, would you?”

Kacie actually did.

“Ouch!”

“Sorry.”

I sank onto the couch and groaned. Rocky hopped up next to me, circled a couple of times to get comfortable, and rested his head on my thigh. “Another day down. Hopefully, we can get out of here tomorrow.”

“You really think your boyfriend will come?”

“One hundred percent. He’s gonna be tearing the world apart looking for me.”

“But I don’t understand how he’ll find us. Michelle says you’re dating some DJ who has more money than talent.”

It was the first time I’d laughed since I’d arrived at the Egyptian temple-log cabin mashup, mainly because that wasn’t a totally inaccurate description of Kory.

“You mean DJ Sykik? He has some talent, and definitely a lot of money. But he’s just a friend.”

“So who are you dating?”

“My bodyguard. I’m hopelessly in love with my bodyguard.” I closed my eyes for a moment and saw Ryder’s face, the cute, sleepy expression when he woke up next to me in the mornings. “And he was a Navy SEAL. To be honest, I’m more worried about him going to jail for rearranging Mark Antony’s face than I am about him not finding us at all.”

Kacie still didn’t look convinced. “But if he’s your bodyguard and you still got kidnapped, he can’t be that good.”

“He had to take a trip overseas. I moved into the Nile Palace because we thought I’d be safe there, but clearly that was a mistake of epic proportions.” I blew out a breath. “We thought Mark Antony was one of the paparazzi, but it turns out he worked at the hotel. Don’t worry; Ryder will find us. We just have to hold out for a few days longer.”

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