Page 38 of The Nanny and the Hothead
She bolted upright—a terrible freaking idea—then cradled her head in her hands.
Stupid margaritas! Of course, she’d get kidnapped after enduring the most craptastic day.
“Think, think, think,” she whispered, scanning her prison, which was, honestly, pretty spectacular. She took in the stainless-steel appliances, big screen TV, and a plush seating area, then turned her attention to the front of the vehicle and gasped.
There he was!
Her abductor!
She needed to come up with a plan to get out of there in one piece. And for that, she required a weapon. Slowly, she rose to her feet, and the fabric of her clothing billowed around her. What was she wearing? She stared down at a man’s button-up shirt in a shade of pale blue. Where did she get it?
The answer to that question hit like another anvil strike to the brain.
She’d run into the hothead, Mitch Elliott, and he’d given her his shirt last night at the speed date event.
No, the speed date catastrophe!
She had not had the Larissa meets Royce evening she’d expected. A wave of humiliation passed over her as she replayed the reel of last night. Cliff was there—the creep! Then there was the hairy guy who’d followed her down the hall. He’d cornered her—the jackass! The guy wouldn’t budge, and in her boozy haze, she’d wished for a white knight—a gallant, chivalrous hero to send Mr. Meaty Hands packing.
The universe answered, but boy, oh boy, did it have a screwed-up sense of humor.
Mr. Meaty Hand’s breath was nearly too much to bear when Mitch Elliott appeared. He’d come out of nowhere and sent the hairy creeper running. She racked her brain. What happened next?
“Pizza!” she whispered.
Yes, they’d gotten pizza from the food truck. And then what? Did she blackout? Did she hit her head? Her pulse skyrocketed. Her poor moisture-less mouth felt as if it were made of sandpaper. Where did she go after they ate pizza?
It went blank after that.
But one thing was crystal clear.
Somewhere between sharing a slice with Mitch and this very moment, she’d been abducted.
Wasn’t this just her luck! With no mermaid gig and eviction on the horizon, she’d mucked up her one decent job prospect and had totally stood up Madelyn’s client. And now she’d been kidnapped! She reached for the key at her neck and glared at the little thing. So much for opening the right door.
But there was no time to lament her cluster of a life. She had to act.
She craned her head and got a look at the back of her captor’s head. The set of her abductor’s shoulders told her it was a man—a man wearing a ball cap—a blue ball cap! She’d have to remember that. The police would need to know this information. She took a steadying breath, lowered herself to the RV’s shiny tiled floor, then crawled over to the kitchenette area. Carefully, she opened a drawer. And bingo! She’d hit the utensil motherlode. Euphoria tingled through her body, or maybe that was adrenaline or even the remnants of the margaritas. Whatever it was, it triggered her drive to survive! Moving as carefully as a dehydrated, hung-over woman trapped inside a luxury vehicle traveling at forty miles an hour could, she swiped a spatula and a pair of metal tongs from the drawer. Exhaling a shaky breath, she set her sights on the driver—the depraved beast who thought he could take advantage of her.
Had she been drugged? Whatever circumstances brought her here, she’d have to hit this bastard hard enough to knock him out, then she could slam on the brakes and make a run for it. Her hands trembled, but she willed herself forward. “You can do this,” she whispered. She had the element of surprise, and she needed to use it to her advantage. And she also needed to get him off-balance. Gathering her wits, she inhaled a deep breath, then screamed her head off as she charged toward the driver, waving the utensils like a wild-eyed, blood-thirsty, incredibly dehydrated lunatic.
She could not hold back. It was fight-or-flight time, baby, and she was fixing for a fight.
“You kidnapped the wrong redhead, asshole!” she exclaimed, hurling the spatula at the back of the criminal’s head.
The RV swerved violently from left to right, then corrected its course. Excellent! She’d gotten her abductor good and discombobulated. But before she could blink, the vehicle screeched to a stop on the side of the road.
This was it! She zeroed in on the exit, then took off like a shot toward the door.
“Are you crazy?” the kidnapper called, springing to his feet and cutting off her escape route.
Undeterred, Charlotte widened her stance and raised the metal tongs like a battle-ax. Her heart hammered in her chest, ready to throw down when she made eye contact with her capturer. And it was no stranger! “You!” she exclaimed, addressing the hothead. “Mitch Elliott?” she cried on an astonished breath. He looked different. Sure, he was angry. But she’d seen him angry and spitting fire more times than she could count. Whatever level of angry this was, the emotion went deeper and appeared to cut closer to the bone.
“Of course, it’s me!” Mitch snarled, glaring at her from beneath the ball cap. “Jesus, Charlotte, put the tongs down. Are you trying to get us killed?”
Like he had any right to glare at her!
She scoffed. The gall—the absolute gall of this stupid hotheaded chef.
