“Why are you following me?”
I spun round at the sound of the voice, finding Isabel stood with her arms folded behind me. “You’re on the bus,” I said in shock.
“Answer my question. Why are you following me?”
“Why did you tie my shoelaces together?”
She shrugged. “I thought it’d be funny. Did you not think so?”
“No, no I didn’t.”
“Why are you following me?”
“Listen, Isabel. It’s time for you to go home.”
“Oh, God. Did my father send you after me?”
I nodded.
“Hang on, you’re supposed to take me home?”
“Yes.”
“How are you doing that then? Piggyback?”
“I’ll call for a car.”
“Good luck getting a signal round here.”
I dug my phone out and realised she was right. “Shit.” I should have kept the thief’s car.
She laughed, a high happy laugh that echoed around the car park. “You’re not great at this, are you?”
“It’s not what I normally do.”
“What is it you normally do, apart from take unconscious girls to your hotel room?”
“I work for Tony Matteo.”
“So he sent you then.”
“Yes.”
“And I’ve got to go home with you.”
“Yes.”
“And if I say no?”
“I’m to take you anyway.”
“By force?” She looked frightened as she said it, as if the reality of the situation was just starting to hit her. I liked seeing her look frightened. Stop it, I told myself.
“I’m sure it won’t come to that. Look, there’s a cafe over there. Let’s sit down and talk about it, shall we?”
TEN
ISABEL
“Why don’t you want to go home?”
I looked up at him when he asked that. I’d been staring at my coffee for so long it was ice cold when I took a sip. “It’s a long story.”
It wasn’t that long a story but I didn’t know how much he’d been told. I didn’t know anything about him, not really. He’d appeared in the bar, the most infuriating man I’d ever met. Then I’d woken up to find myself in a hotel bedroom, the blandly anonymous paintings on the wall a dead giveaway as to my location.
I shot upright and was about to cry out when I saw him in the corner of the room. He looked as if he was staring at me, sat rigidly upright with his arms folded across his chest. But looking closer, I realised his eyes were closed.
He hadn’t touched me. I knew that. He could have done and I wouldn’t have been able to stop him. But all he’d done was take my shoes off and tuck me into bed. Then he’d just sat there and fallen asleep.
I was as quiet as I could be, tiptoeing out of bed and collecting my boots. I had no idea how I’d ended up in that bed but I had no intention of staying. My head throbbed painfully as I crossed the room and I was about to open the door to the corridor when a childish impulse struck me.
I told myself that I was tying his shoelaces together to slow him down if he came after me. That was partially true but I also thought it was a pretty funny thing to do to the big mysterious man in black, able to take on three men at once but unable to defend his own shoes.
A tiny whispering part of me wanted him to be cross, wanted him to spank me for teasing him like this. I stamped on that whisper. It wouldn’t help me to have anything to do with a brute like that.
I climbed onto the first bus I saw, wanting only to get away, it didn’t matter where. I hadn’t seen him climb on, so I assumed he was still fast asleep in the hotel. But when he’d walked past me out of nowhere and headed down the stairs, there was no mistaking that gait of his, his strong profile standing out amongst the other passengers, the way he had to duck slightly to stop his head from banging on the roof as he passed.
I followed him off the bus and found him talking to someone in a car, someone who seemed in a hurry to leave. Why did I follow him? Why not just stay on the bus and carry on my way? I can’t really answer that one. Maybe the whispering voice was winning.
Something told me to follow him, so I did. That’s all there was to it. Right or wrong, I ended up sat opposite him in Maggie’s Cafe, a cold coffee in front of me and him sat opposite, the chair creaking under the sheer bulk of him.
“I have to take you back,” he said, sounding as if he was almost sorry that was the case. “You do understand that, don’t you?”
“Please,” I replied. “I could have left you here, I could have carried on but I didn’t.”
“I’d have found you.”
His arrogance was staggering. There was no self doubt in his voice. He was simply stating a fact.