Page 85 of Pulling Strings

Pulling the Bronco’s keys from my pocket, I stepped around him on my way to the door and flung it open.

“Get your shit and come on,” I growled.

“I’m not leaving.” Donovan squared his shoulders. “You can’t make me.”

I raised my hands. Not in surrender, though. The exact opposite.

“I absolutely can.”

His nostrils flared an angry inhale. “Do it, and I’ll never forgive you.”

An unfortunate consequence, but one I could live with. It was better that he hated me—even blamed me—for his life if that meant saving it.

But I didn’t say that. And I didn’t grab him and drag him from the room, though I wanted to.

I’d been forced, coerced, and trapped too many times by men more powerful than me, and I did not want to become any more like them than I already was.

“Actually, forget it,” Donovan said after we’d stood in silence too long. He zipped the duffel and shouldered it. “I’ll go. Just to get away from you.”

29

Unlikely Ally

After pacing the motel room, swearing, and barely pulling free of the barbed hooks of a panic attack—I hadn’t had one of those since I was a teenager—I pushed my already taxed brain into overdrive. Drawers were ripped out of the dresser, pillows unstuffed to litter the floor with cottony debris, and oversized art pieces yanked from the walls. My nose started bleeding so badly that I got in the shower clothes and all, then stood there watching water run pink down the drain.

In the wake of all that, I collapsed on my bed and didn’t stir until a knock on the door roused me the next morning.

Stumbling to answer it, I hoped to find my brother on the other side. Repentant or reveling in his newfound villainy, it didn’t matter. It turned out the idea of him loathing me was less tolerable than I’d first believed.

Dragging aside the chair I’d used to block the entrance, I pulled the door open. Blinding sunlight framed a short, scrawny silhouette that I knew immediately wasn’t Donovan.

I blinked and squinted, rubbing the blur from myeyes until Ripley Vaughn’s countenance became clear.

“May I come in?” he asked. The English accent and the attempt at propriety grated on me.

Scowling through a mockingly grand bow, I stepped back to let him enter.

He stopped just inside, and his head turned in a visual sweep of the space. “What happened here?” he asked, giving me cause to reassess the damage I’d done to the room.

“Redecorating,” I replied.

“Ah.”

I moved to the bedside lamp, switching on both shaded bulbs before heading to the upset of clothing left from last night’s sloppy sorting. Grabbing a long-sleeved thermal, I gave it a sniff and found it clean enough to tug over my bare torso.

A glance back found Ripley clearing the seat of one of the floral-upholstered chairs, awkwardly picking up garments and moving them to the adjacent table.

With a snort, I swept my hand through the air, dumping the pile onto the floor.

He turned and sat without so much as a questioning glance, and I began a search for jeans to replace the flannel pants I’d crawled into after last night’s impromptu shower.

“Where’s your pet zombie?” I asked with my back to him.

“She’s asleep,” he said. “And I’d appreciate it if you called her by name.”

I rolled my eyes. “Remind me?”

“Maggie.”

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