His Ransom 5(17)

“Hey,” I said. “Hey, no.”

“No?”

“No,” I said, pushing back against his chest. “I have a boyfriend.”

“I thought you said you were only casually intimate with Jake Carville,” Jean-Luc said. His eyes were sharp, piercing. I felt dizzy just looking at them. He still held me by one arm.

“Yeah, well, I don’t want to be intimate with anyone else,” I said, trying to shrug him off. “I thought you were just interested in my art.”

“I’m interested in everything about you, Lacey,” Jean-Luc said. His voice was low. “Maybe we could go somewhere together and talk a bit more.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Interesting. Why don’t you want me?” He cocked his head. I frowned.

“Are you that irresistible that you can’t find a single woman who wouldn’t spread her legs for you?” I asked sarcastically.

“Vulgar, aren’t you?” he asked. “A vulgar American.”

His fingers tightened around my upper arm. A pang of fear pierced my chest. There was one man walking down the sidewalk toward us. He was about fifty feet away from us. If Jean-Luc didn’t let me go, I could yell out for help. I breathed in a bit easier, keeping my eyes on the man approaching.

“Actually, I don’t swear.”

“Curse words have nothing to do with vulgarity, dear.”

“Just let me go, okay?”

“No.”

The man was getting closer. He looked strong. Maybe not as strong as Jean-Luc, but it might be enough just to have him close by when I yelled out. I braced myself against the wall to push him away.

“Tell me your real relationship with Jake Carville,” Jean-Luc said.

“Why don’t you tell me your relationship with Jake?” I asked. There was a brief flash of worry in Jean-Luc’s eyes. I felt his fingers loosening. “I know you’re not a real art collector. You’re just one of his friends. When I tell him that you came onto me, he’ll be so angry—”

“Angry?”

“Yeah!” I said loudly. The man walking toward us was watching me now. I hoped he could see that we were in a fight. “You know what, he is my boyfriend. And if you don’t watch yourself—”

“That’s it,” Jean-Luc said. He raised his hand. A black Lexus pulled up to the side of the street and the door opened. Had the driver been waiting all this time? “We’re leaving. Come with me.”

“No!” I was already braced against the wall, and when I shoved him, I shoved him with all of my weight. He stumbled back hard and let my arm go. I ran toward the man on the sidewalk.

“Help!” I cried. The man caught me in his arms and I looked up into calm, golden-brown eyes. “He’s trying to kidnap me!”

“Who?” the man asked.

I turned around to point and felt a sharp pinch on my neck.

“Ow!”

I turned around. To my horror, the man with golden eyes was holding a syringe. I put my fingers to my neck, feeling it already starting to swell. I opened my mouth to shout, but I couldn’t speak. My throat wasn’t working.

I tried to kick out, but the man on the sidewalk held me tight and my body wasn’t responding the way I wanted it to. The world began to spin, and I felt my muscles go limp. I couldn’t run. I couldn’t fight. I couldn’t even scream. I slumped to my knees.

The man who had injected me watched me coldly. He put the syringe back into his pocket. My head lolled back, and I saw Jean-Luc reach down to take my arm.

“Rien, help me to get her out of here,” Jean-Luc said.

I stared baldly at Jean-Luc. His French accent had disappeared. He wasn’t French, he was American. What was going on?

“I’m a surgeon, not a weightlifter,” the man said, crossing his arms. “Don’t you have goons to do that for you?”

“Fine. Never mind.”

Jean-Luc picked me by the arm, not even trying to be gentle. I slapped his chest weakly with one hand before my muscles went completely useless. My lips were moving in a silent scream as he shoved me into the black Lexus. He climbed in behind me and so did the man from the sidewalk. They left me lying down in the middle of the seats and buckled in as the car pulled away from the curb.

No. For a brief moment, I thought that the men might have been working for Jake. After all, he had basically kidnapped me after the first time we’d met. But as the men spoke, my hopes turned to brute fear.

“Is she paralyzed?” Jean-Luc asked.

The man from the sidewalk rolled his eyes.

“No, she’s just the world’s best actress at playing dead.”

“Rien.”