Page 66 of Prohibited

She stood there, caressing the polished mahogany, staring at the wallpaper and feeling that tug again of, what now? The apprehension of not knowing, the ambiguity of her circumstances, caused her more anxiety than when she’d been kept under lock and key. Last night, the housekeeper had shown her to a room where she’d found a white cotton nightgown laid out for her. She’d only discovered that she wasn’t entirely free to come and go as she pleased when she’d walked out of the room in the middle of the night and nearly ran smack into Ryan, sleeping in a chair in front of her bedroom door on the carpeted landing.

It was a vast improvement over the dirt floor cell, but it filled her with an acute apprehension. Every minute that passed, she expected someone to come and take her again, to lead her to the basement and lock her in there.

The most rational part of her was evaluating a potential escape plan. Right now, for instance, she was free. There was also a lovely little pair of French doors in her bedroom that opened up onto a balconette. She could tiethe linens together in her room and climb down into the garden below.

And then she would be free.

Free?

Free to do what? Run right back to Walter Stanley? Unless he was dead, she would never escape him. The idea filled her with more dread than staying at the mercy of Alex and Ryan.

And even if Walter Stanley suddenly disappeared, she was stuck with Linus.

A thought that caused her to feel even sicker.

Evie wrapped her arms around herself, suddenly cold though the house was warm from the summer heat blazing outside.

And how could she leave Lindsay now? What if something terrible happened to him?

And the look on Ryan’s face, the shock and the… gratitude. The shape of his mouth as he formed the words, “You came back.” A prickle went over her skin, traveled into her cheeks. Was she blushing a little? She pressed her hands to her face. Laughing at herself would have been the appropriate response if she didn’t feel so lost.

Why was she enamored with him? So they’d shared a tryst in a gardening shed all those years ago. So she’d loved him once. He was a prick with a bad temper. And while she couldn’t hold it against him that he hated her for being an accessory to his brother’s murder, however inadvertent, that didn’t make it any less real that he wasa professional criminal who wasn’t above abducting a woman to torment his enemies.

He was no good and she had no business thinking about him or getting flustered by him. After the mess that Walter Stanley made of her life, she should be sick to death of criminals and wayward men. After the way she’d been carrying on, she ought to be sick to death of men, period.

Her husband was right–she had been making a fool of herself. And a fool of him. She didn’t care so much about his reputation, but it weighed on her that she had spent her time doing nothing but plummeting toward self-destruction since Etian died. Ever since she’d woken up to find herself in a small cell in the basement of a building in downtown Tulsa, she’d been racked with terror that she was going to die having never recovered her life after the war. Before the abduction, no matter how much she told herself she wished she were dead, she had discovered that this was most assuredly not true. She wanted to live. And she didn’t know what would happen now, but she knew that things would be different for her. Forever.

Leaving the banister behind, she wandered to the door of a room she hadn’t seen yet and poked her head inside. It was a richly appointed bedroom, like the one she’d been given to sleep in. Like the one Lindsay was napping in just now.

How strange to be in Alex Laurent’s house. He was an enigma of a person, lacking a warmth at his core that she had taken for granted in almost every other person she had ever met. Every other person except for WalterStanley, of course. The chill behind his smile reminded her very much of Walter Stanley, though of course that’s where the resemblance ended.

The fact that he felt some type of ownership over her brought her comfort, however disconcerting, where initially she had found it demeaning and infuriating. The regard he had for Lindsay, no matter that it seemed to arise from possession rather than love, was a practical demonstration of how one could benefit from that sense of ownership.

Evie bit her lip and clasped her hands under her chin, staring at the wainscoting on the wall in front of her, where she’d drifted to a stop. Lost in thought. The house was quiet. So quiet. Not the disconcerting quiet of the basement where she’d been locked in the cell. No, this was a peaceful quiet. A pause before the next breath.

But what did it mean that they were allowing her to wander by herself through the corridors, house quiet? Lindsay fast asleep?

There had been no discussion. No acknowledgement, outside of Ryan making a vague and threatening statement about the storm cellar.

Ryan, who had spent all night in her room, sitting against the door. Obviously keeping her from leaving, but why didn’t he lock her in the storm cellar?

She rubbed her hands up and down her arms and turned toward the stairs. They had rushed her through the foyer of the house last night and straight up the stairs. This had afforded her barely a glimpse of the rest of thehouse. And she couldn’t help but be curious about its contents.

On feet light as air, she took the stairs one at a time. One of her hands trailed along the polished banister, marveling at how smooth it was. A soft rustle made her pause and she looked around, searching for the source of the noise.

Finding nothing, she proceeded a little further and a little more cautiously.

“Going somewhere?”

The deep rumble of Ryan’s voice, drifting at her from nowhere caused her to nearly jump out of her skin.

“Jesus,” she said, clutching her hand over the green silk and cotton dress that lay over her chest. She turned her head and found him seated on a gossip bench next to the telephone. A paperback novel with yellowing pages and a broken spine lay open on his lap. Though she tried to look anywhere but his eyes, she couldn’t help it. As always, they were so bright that they seemed to glow. The color of the Mediterranean, where her husband had taken her for their honeymoon. And they filled her immediately with a sharp, forking heat that she hated and craved all at once.

The expression on his face was unreadable, but it pinned her to the spot, nonetheless.

He still looked tired, but he had washed his face, combed his hair. There was still the shadow of a beard on his fine jaw, but it only added to the soft halo of danger that seemed to radiate around him. There was a cup ofcoffee on a cork coaster next to the telephone. Some of his fingers were loosely curled around it.

Just looking at his hands made her cheeks sting and she hoped to God he didn’t notice.

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