It was fortuitous that she should sleep. It would make the difficult conversation they must have easier if they weren’t thirty-five thousand feet in the air.
Let her have a little longer of oblivion before she learned she had been effectively kidnapped.
A BUSTLE OF movement in the cabin woke Freya from her light slumber to find Benjamin’s gaze still on her.
A warm flush crept through her veins.
For the first time since infancy, full sleep hadn’t taken her into its clutches.
He gave a tight smile. ‘I was about to wake you. We will be landing shortly.’
‘Sorry.’ She smothered a yawn and stretched her legs, flexing her feet before noticing her shoes had slipped off. ‘Travel has always had a sedative effect on me.’
It had been the case since she’d been a baby and her parents had taken turns walking her in the pram to get her to sleep. Once she had outgrown the pram the walks had continued with Freya in a buggy, sleeping happily along the same daily walk, which had taken them past a local ballet school. She had always woken up then. Her first concrete memory was pointing at the little girls in their pink tutus and squealing, ‘Freya dance too!’
Those early walks had given birth to two things: her love of dance and her unfailing ability to fall asleep in any mode of transport.
Planes, trains, cars, prams, they were all the same; within ten minutes of being in one she would be asleep regardless of any excitement for the destination.
That she had managed almost half an hour before the first signs of sleep grabbed her on Benjamin’s jet had more to do with him and the terrifying way her heart beat when she was in his presence than it had about any fears she might have for her fiancé.
She’d had to keep her gaze fixed out of the window to stop herself from staring at him as her eyes so longed to do. When her brain had started to shut down into sleep it was images of this man flickering behind her eyes that had stopped her brain switching off completely.
Her fingers still tingled from being held in his hand, her heart still to find a normal rhythm.
Rationally, she knew there couldn’t be anything too seriously wrong with Javier. Benjamin had told her Javier was unhurt and that there was nothing for her to worry about...
But there was a tension in the Frenchman now that hadn’t been there before.
A prickle of unease crawled up her spine and she looked back out of the window.
When she’d last looked out of the window they had been high above the clouds. Now the earth beckoned closer, dark shadows forming shapes that made her think of mountains and thick forests, beyond them twinkling lights, towns and cities bustling with late-evening life.
None of it looked familiar.
The unease deepened the closer to earth they flew and she kept her eyes peeled, searching for a familiar landmark, anything to counteract the tightening of her stomach and the coldness crawling over her skin.
She hardly noticed the smoothness of the landing, too busy straining through the darkness to find something familiar in the airfield they had landed in.
As she whispered words of thanks to the cabin crew and climbed down the metal stairs to the concrete ground, she inhaled deeply. Then she inhaled again.
She had been in Florence as part of her ballet company’s European tour only the week before. Florence did not smell like this. Florence did not smell of lavender.
Benjamin had reached the ground before her and stood at a waiting sleek black car, the back passenger door open.
‘Where are we?’ she asked hesitantly, not at all liking the train of her thoughts.
‘Provence.’
It took a beat for that to sink in. ‘Provence as in France?’
‘Oui.’
‘Did I misunderstand something? I thought you said Javier was still in Florence.’ Freya knew she hadn’t misheard him but told herself her ears were unused to Benjamin’s thick accent and therefore she must have misunderstood him.
Slowly, he shook his head. ‘You heard correctly.’
Through the panicking spread of her blood she forced herself to think, to keep calm and breathe.
She had only met Benjamin once before but knew he was Javier and Luis’s oldest friend. Their mothers had been best friends. They had grown up thinking themselves as family. She knew all this because of a costume fitting she’d had before Compania de Ballet de Casillas had gone on its most recent tour, the one that had taken her to the beautiful city of Florence. A new seamstress had been tasked with measuring Freya, a young, dazzlingly beautiful woman called Chloe Guillem. When Freya had casually asked if she were any relation to Benjamin, she’d learned Chloe was his sister. She should have been glad of the opportunity to speak to someone who knew Javier and taken the opportunity to learn more about her fiancé. It shamed her that she’d had to restrain herself from only asking about Chloe’s brother.
‘Where is he, then?’
Benjamin looked at his watch before meeting her eye again. The lights shining from his jet, which still had the engine running, made the green darker, made them flicker with a danger that clutched in her chest.
‘I think he must now be in Madrid. Very soon he is going to learn you have disappeared with me. He might have already.’
‘What are you talking about?’ she whispered.
‘I regret to tell you, ma douce, that I have brought you here under false pretences. Javier did not ask me to bring you to him.’
She laughed. It was a reflex sound brought about by the absurdity of what he’d just said. ‘Is this a joke the pair of you have dreamt up together?’
But Javier didn’t joke. She had seen no sign whatsoever that her fiancé possessed any kind of sense of humour.
Benjamin’s unsmiling features showed he wasn’t jesting either. The dark shadows being cast over those same features sent fresh chills racing up her spine.
The chills increased as, pulling her phone out of her bag, she saw it still wasn’t working.
There was the slightest flicker in his eyes that made her say, ‘Have you got something to do with my phone not working?’
‘It will be reconnected tomorrow,’ he said steadily. He took a step towards her. ‘Get in the car, ma douce. I will explain everything.’
Her heart pounding painfully, she took a step back, taking in the darkness surrounding them. High trees edged the perimeter of the huge field they had landed in, the only sound the jet’s engine. The vibrant civilisation she’d glimpsed from the window could be anywhere or nowhere.
To the left of the runway sat a small concrete building, its lights on.
When Freya had exited the plane she had seen a couple of figures in high-visibility jackets walking away from them. She had to assume they’d gone into that building. She thought it safe to assume that building contained, at the very least, a working telephone.
‘I’m not going anywhere else with you until you tell me what is going on,’ she said in the steadiest voice she could manage while sliding her hand back into her small shoulder bag. She put her non-functioning phone back into it and groped for the can of pepper spray.
He must have seen her fear for he raised his hands, palms facing her. ‘I am taking you to my home. You have my assurance that