“You couldn’t be more off-base.”
“Just do everyone a favor and get some therapy to deal with your daddy complex.”
Olivia had never in her life wanted to hit anyone like she wanted to punch this big, sanctimonious man. She settled for grinding her foot into his.
Shouting a curse, he released his grip on her, and she ducked away. She’d be damned if she would stand here and let him pronounce judgments on her actions. He didn’t know her life, didn’t understand the forces at work between her and her father.
Noah clearly had other ideas. He hobbled around the truck and stopped her just as she was dragging her bag from the passenger seat. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“I’m absolving you of any part in my ‘little game,”’ she retorted. “Thank you and goodbye.”
“Too late for that. What’ll I say when the police or your father’s private security force track me down and haul me in for questioning?”
“I don’t care.”
“And if they decide to throw me in the pokey?”
She made an impatient sound and stalked around the front of the truck. “Now who’s creating a drama?”
He took hold of her arm again. “Just shut up and get in the truck.”
“No!” She jerked her arm from his grip. “I’m not going back. If you try to force me, then you really will be in trouble.”
“Get in the damn truck.” Without waiting to see if she would comply, he swooped in and picked her up.
Olivia was too busy hanging on to a hysterically yapping Puddin’ to fight Noah very hard. She cursed him instead, calling on each and every one of the limited number of obscenities she knew. Then she repeated them again.
He was trying to maneuver her and the dog toward the passenger door when a patrol car sped by on the road.
“Oh, hell,” Noah muttered as the car slowed.
The car turned down a road to the right.
“Maybe they didn’t see us,” Olivia murmured. “Yeah, right,” Noah agreed sarcastically. “This big, white horse trailer is hard to miss. Especially with the two of us in hand-to-hand combat here on the side of the road.”
“But they might not even be looking for us.”
The words were no sooner out of her mouth when the sound of sirens split the air.
The next few moments unfolded like a slow-motion scene in a movie. Three police vehicles—state patrol and sheriff’s—descended one after the other, brakes screeching, raising clouds of dust and gravel. The female officer from the diner was the first to bail out of her vehicle and crouch behind her open car door, calling for Noah to put Olivia down.
Dazed, Olivia said, “They’ve got guns.”
A white line around his mouth, Noah glared at her.
Then she landed in a sputtering heap in the dust.
Noah stepped over her and advanced, hands held high, toward the officers, calling out, “She’s Roger Franklin’s daughter, but I’m not a kidnapper. Just take her away. I beg of you, take her away.”
Chapter Three
The sheriff’s office was located in the county courthouse, right on the central square of the town where Noah and Olivia had been headed. From the small, barred window of the holding room where she and Puddin’ waited, Olivia could see the bus station sign. She had been so close to freedom.
If only they hadn’t stopped for lunch.
Apparently news of her disappearance had gone out from her father’s ranch to the police in the eastern counties of Texas just after she and Noah left the diner. One sheriff’s deputy remembered Olivia with Puddin’. All the officers, who had been meeting for a regular weekly lunch, remembered the horse trailer. So they had started after Noah and Olivia. One car spotted them and called for backup.
“Then everyone descended like gung-ho storm troopers,” Olivia had told the sheriff with no small amount of outrage. “It was simply ridiculous. They treated Noah like a criminal.”
The sheriff’s sunburned brow had wrinkled in consternation. “I’m sorry, Miss Franklin, but at that time, we had reason to think he might be a criminal.”
“Oh, baloney,” she had retorted. “If I had been kidnapped, don’t you think I might have told the trooper who was in the bathroom with me at the diner?”
“People who are in fear for their lives can exhibit some mighty unusual behavior,” the sheriff explained. “Sometimes they don’t ask for help.”
Olivia would have none of that, either. “In the first place, isn’t it more than a little unusual for a kidnapper to stop at a diner with his captive? And then stick around to walk his horse with five officers chowing down nearby?”
Unable to explain away that part of the scenario, the sheriff had flushed an even darker shade of red and excused himself.
This conversation had taken place just after Olivia and Puddin’ had been placed in this room. A move that had followed a screaming and barking marathon precipitated by the sight of Noah being led into the office in handcuffs.
Olivia whispered to Puddin’, “Those handcuffs were the stupidest move yet.” The dog yapped her agreement.
In the hour since the sheriff had interviewed Olivia and left her alone with an underling at guard by the door, she had imagined Noah in another part of the office being manhandled by big, bubba officers who were determined to get at the truth of her so-called kidnapping.
If Noah had been harmed in any way, she was going to make sure he received a handsome settlement. In fact, he deserved something even if he had not been harmed. As domineering and pushy as he had been, he had also tried to help her. She had repaid him by getting him in trouble, just as he had said she would. Maybe she really was the spoiled, thoughtless little child he had accused her of being.
She flushed with shame. Maybe it was time she faced some hard truths about herself.
She still couldn’t believe her father had reported her kidnapped. It spoke to his money and influence that he had been able to convince the authorities to put out such a bulletin. There had been no sign of struggle at their home. No ransom demand. Nothing but her father’s paranoia and his ability to wield his power.
A knock on the door sent Puddin’ scurrying under a chair and snapped Olivia out of her reverie. The guard poked his head in. “Your father’s coming, Miss Franklin. He coptered in from Austin.” The young officer looked so impressed with this news that Olivia wanted to smack him.
After he closed the door, she began counting down the minutes until the storm would hit the building. She was nearing seven when she heard the shouting in the hall. Puddin’ barked and jumped into Olivia’s lap. Then the door slammed open, and her father strode in, his face a thundercloud. In the hall outside, Olivia glimpsed two of the “suits.”
“Dear Lord in Heaven,” her father said, crossing the small space to where she sat, elbows propped on a scarred wooden table. “Why have they got you locked in like this?”
“Probably because I threatened to punch one of the officers in the nose.”
Roger Franklin’s normally florid complexion paled. “Now why did you do that?”
“Because this whole thing is a stupid mess. There was no reason, absolutely no reason at all, for me or Noah Raybourne to be hauled in like common criminals.”
“I thought Raybourne had taken you.”