“Please just shut up!”
“Don’t I have a right to know what I’ve helped you steal from Roger Franklin?”
“I didn’t steal anything,” she exclaimed. “It’s me he’ll be looking for.” The words seemed to burst out of her. “I’m what he’ll want.”
“What are you saying?”
She twisted around to face him, the dog whining on her lap. “Roger Franklin is my father. I’m running away from him.”
Dread kicked Noah in the belly like a fist.
Roger Franklin’s daughter. Good God, the man was going to kill him.
Later, Noah wasn’t sure how he got the truck off the highway. All he remembered was turning into the parking lot of what appeared to be an abandoned produce stand.
Moments after coming to a stop, he dragged Libby—yeah, like that was her name—and her dog across the front seat and outside the driver’s side door.
Once her feet touched the ground, she jerked away from him. “You don’t have to manhandle me.”
“I ought to do worse than that!” Noah let loose the crudest, most vulgar curses he could think of while he paced back and forth in front of her.
Libby huddled against the truck, clutching Puddin’.
Noah turned and stopped. “Are you saying Roger Franklin bruised your arm?”
Her answer was a slow, miserable shake of her head. “I fell out of a window while I was escaping.” She had the grace to at least look ashamed of having misled him about the bruise.
“You went out the window? Ran away?” Noah was just beginning to comprehend her choice of words. “Wait a minute. How old are you?”
She swallowed hard. “Almost twenty-four.”
He cursed again. “You’re an adult. Why couldn’t you just leave through the front door?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Tell me.”
Her sigh was dramatic. “Can’t you just take me on to the bus?”
“No!” he shouted. “From the looks of the security around your home, I don’t think your father takes kindly to anyone making off with what’s his. And he just might think I took you. So you owe me some kind of explanation.”
“You’re not going to understand—”
“Try me,” he ordered.
And so her tale unfolded. Her mother’s kidnapping and murder. Her father’s fears and overprotectiveness. Olivia’s many tries at freedom. Her plans to marry Marshall Crane. Her realization that marriage would only trap her further.
Only then did Noah break in. “You mean you’re the daughter who was supposed to get married today?”
“I’m the only daughter.”
Blood pounded in his temples. “And you just took off.”
“I told you. I couldn’t marry Marshall.”
“And what about him? Did you bother telling him you were leaving?”
“He would have stopped me.”
“Don’t you think you owed him some kind of explanation?”
“It’s not as if Marshall loved me or anything.”
“Then why marry you?”
She managed a short laugh. “I already told you. Marrying me was a way to cement his place in my father’s company.”
“He must have cared about you.”
“I’m sure he cared,” was her impatient, offhand reply. “But it wasn’t about love. I don’t see what this has to do—”
“Right about now this Marshall guy is probably realizing he got stood up. On his wedding day. At the altar.”
“I doubt he’ll even go to the church.”
“And does that somehow make it better?”
She took a step to the side, edging away from him. “I don’t see why you’re so concerned about Marshall.”
Noah pushed his face down close to hers. “Libby, or whatever your name is—”
“Olivia,” she supplied.
“I’m concerned about Marshall because I know how he feels. I’ve been in his place. Standing there. Waiting for a bride who doesn’t show.”
Understanding dawned slowly in her expression. “I’m sorry, but that’s still—”
“You should have had the decency to tell him.”
“And then I wouldn’t have gotten away.”
“You haven’t gotten away.” Stepping in front of her, Noah bracketed her slender body with both his arms, pinning her and her dog to the truck. “We’re going back.”
“I can’t.”
“You don’t have a choice.”
She pushed against his chest, anger sparking in her gaze while the dog whimpered a protest. “I know you’ve done me a favor, but you’re not the boss of me—”
“You made me the boss by sneaking into my rig.”
“But—”
“And lying to me.” Noah gripped her shoulders, leaning in even closer. He could smell the faint trace of her expensive perfume, could see the light sprinkling of freckles across her upturned nose. She looked so damned innocent, so sweet and vulnerable. He could be fooled by her. Fooled very easily.
As if she sensed him wavering, the big, doe eyes she’d fastened on him filled with tears. “I’m sorry I lied to you. Really I am. I just had to get away. I was desperate. Haven’t you ever been desperate?”
What he knew about desperation she couldn’t begin to imagine, Noah thought. He understood all too well feeling trapped and frightened. Compared to him, this woman didn’t know the meaning of the word.
Returning fury thickened his voice. “What the hell were you thinking, using me this way?”
“I had to get away.”
“Didn’t you think your father might assume you went with me? Or that I took you? With your father so worried about you being snatched, isn’t it logical that I might be a kidnapping suspect?”
The muscles in her throat worked as she swallowed. “I never thought about that.”
“Poor little rich girls like you never think about other people, do you?”
Color suffused her cheeks. “That’s not fair. I’m not like that.”
He had to laugh. “So now I’m supposed to think you’re spoiled but good-hearted.”
“I am not spoiled.”
Her protest barely registered with Noah as he warmed to his subject. “You’re spoiled and weak and heartless. Anyone with a heart wouldn’t just leave their groom without an explanation.”
“But you don’t see—”
“I see all right,” he muttered. “I see a pathetic woman acting like a child. If you wanted out of your father’s house, all you had to do was go through the door.”
“It wasn’t that simple.”
“He chained you up? Beat you?” Noah glanced down at the dog she clutched like a lifeline. “Did he threaten to kill your dog if you tried to leave?”
She