Page 5 of Hidden
He chuckled. A rich, deep sound. “I’ve been rescued many times. I wouldn’t sweat it. Will these be enough to hold your things?” he asked, holding up the bags. She nodded. “Good. I’ll be back in a few minutes.” And with that, a blast of cold air washed through the cab as he slid from the seat, closing the door behind him.
She watched him walk across the road, pause at the top of the embankment, then inch his way down. She might have even ogled him a bit. Because honestly, it was hard not to. She started to wonder why he hadn’t married but stopped that train of thought before it took hold. She hated it when people asked her that question. As if being married would make her more worthy somehow. There were a hundred and one reasons why people didn’t marry—from not having met the right person to simply not wanting to. And everything in between. She didn’t know Asher’s situation, and it wasn’t relevant.
He managed to get the back door of her SUV open, not an easy task given the angle of her car. Now all she could see of him was his head and shoulders moving around as he gathered her things.
She cringed at what he must think of her. She hadn’t exaggerated when she said she’d thrown her clothes in the back of the car. She had a makeup bag with her toothbrush and lotions and those sorts of things. But all her clothes, which had been in a pile, were probably scattered all over the place after her auto-acrobatics. Asher didn’t seem the judgy type, but she wouldn’t fault him for thinking her the spoiled movie star when he witnessed her treatment of her belongings.
She frowned at that thought. She actually had a reputation for being easygoing and self-sufficient. She kept her home, and when working, her trailer, clean and tidy. She’d long ago learned that tidiness made it a hell of a lot easier to move through her life. Knowing the exact location of a scarf or a pair of boots often meant the difference between having a few minutes to collect herself and being a harried mess. And she hated being a harried mess. She hated that frantic, almost panicked feeling that came with wondering if she’d forgotten something or hadn’t done something she’d said she would.
So why had she tossed her clothes into the car like an angry ex breaking up with herself?
The question swirled in her mind as Asher closed the back door of the SUV then started making his way down the embankment—toward the driver’s seat. She didn’t know what he was looking for, but her gaze tracked his movements until he disappeared from view. Leaving her alone with her thoughts and questions.
Why had she decided that she needed to see Sofiaright now?
She remembered waking up in the morning and working out with her trainer. It had been a good session, and she’d felt both rejuvenated and the good kind of exhausted. She’d had some coffee and a light breakfast then answered a few emails. At eleven, her assistant, Harry, popped by to drop off dry cleaning and check in on schedules. They’d had lunch together as they discussed the travel details for her next film—a dark comedy scheduled to start shooting in April in Savannah, Georgia.
A few minutes before two, Harry left and she’d turned on her music, curled up in front of the fire, and started rereading the script. She wasn’t to the point of memorizing her lines yet—the script would likely change another twenty times in the two months before shooting. But she liked to get a feel for the rhythm of the story and the different personalities portrayed.
The next thing she remembered was being in the car headed north to Sofia’s.
No, that wasn’t entirely true. She hadn’t blacked out. And it wasn’t as though she couldn’t remember what she’d done. In fact, she remembered an intense internal debate about whether to bring her makeup or not, then opting to pack the very basics. And she recalled sorting through her sweaters to find the warmest ones. She even remembered tossing them all into the car.
What she didn’t remember, though, was why it had felt so urgent.
A sickening, sinking feeling settled in her stomach. Today’s breakdown—or whatever it was—had been worse than the others. Was that a harbinger of things to come? Dear god, she hoped not. But these moments had been happening more and more frequently. Now she rarely went a week without experiencing one. If they kept getting worse…well, she didn’t want to even consider what that might mean for her.
She scowled as she thought about her therapist—the person who, in theory, should be providing the most support. In practice, she’d provided almost none. A diagnosis of fatigue seemed the lazy solution. To be fair, Ellie didn’t discount that it might be a factor. But the determination didn’t feel…complete.
“I got everything,” Asher said, startling her when he opened the door. With her mind lost in thoughts and the warmth of the cab relaxing her, she hadn’t even noticed him reemerge onto the road, let alone approach the truck.
“You okay?” he asked, closing the door behind him and settling into his seat.
Little did he know, he’d asked the question of the hour. But she wasn’t about to drag him through the quagmire of her mind. Rescuing her after an accident was one thing. Listening to her talk about a potential nervous breakdown was quite another.
“I think I’m just having an adrenaline crash,” she replied.
He twisted in his seat to look at her, his eyes—an unusual shade of amber—searching her face. She didn’t know what he found—or failed to find—but he turned back around and reached for something.
“Your clothes are all bagged. And I grabbed your purse and phone,” he said, handing them both over. “The phone doesn’t even have a crack on it, so you got lucky with that.”
She cast him a grateful smile. “I should probably call Sofia,” she said.
“She’ll be worried about you in this weather,” Asher commented as he eased his truck further onto the road. Although how he could tell where the road was, she had no clue. It looked like little more than a white ribbon disappearing into the darkness ahead of them. But she supposed he’d driven this way enough times that he had a good sense of where they were.
“She doesn’t know I’m coming,” she said.
His eyes flickered to her in the rearview mirror before returning to the road.
“Are you sure you’re okay? And I don’t just mean the accident.”
In truth, she was exhausted—not clinicallyfatigued, but emotionally and mentally exhausted. And scared. But her agenda for the day didn’t include dumping that on him.
“I need a little break from Tinseltown. That’s all,” she replied, her voice quiet in the cab. “I love what I do, but sometimes, I need to get away.”
Again, his gaze flickered to her. He didn’t pursue it further, though. “You’ve been to Sofia and Josh’s before, so know that they are south of town. Only about seven miles from here. We should be there within a half hour.”
She nodded then added a “Thank you” when she saw his attention fixed on the road. Her eyes lingered on his face, visible in the rearview mirror. She’d seen a few pictures of all the Warwick men together, and they really did bear an uncanny resemblance to one another. But even though they seemed to share a lot of qualities—physically as well as character traits—Asher seemed a little more laid-back than Josh. Or maybe Josh was a little more intense than Asher.
