Neither seemed particularly pleasant. If she hadn’t jumped out of the car, he would have pushed her—she had no doubt about that. He was entirely ruthless and unsentimental—a punk samurai with loyalty to his cousin and not much else.
So why had she thought he was so deliciously romantic? He was unlike anyone she’d ever known. Edgy, absurd, exotic and beautiful, and every man or boy she’d met since she first saw him had always paled in comparison. Even Duke had been a quarter Chinese—probably why she’d chosen him in the first place.
She’d been an idiot, but then her experience with men was pretty pathetic. She’d always been the odd one out. It was no wonder she’d never had a real boyfriend. There’d been no prom, no parties, no group of girls to giggle with. On top of being freakishly smart, she was too tall. If she had to be so smart, couldn’t she have at least looked small and helpless, instead of being a strapping almost-six-foot tall?
And the depressing truth was, she was likely to die a virgin. A twenty-year-old virgin with the mind of a scientist and the experience of a twelve-year-old. And the sappy romantic longings of an adolescent.
The worst mistake had been to try to remedy that particular problem. With another graduate student, albeit someone ten years older than she was. She’d had enough sense to keep her distance from the predatory professors, who seemed to take pride in going through the female population of their classes.
Duke had been just as big a mistake. She should have known that from his name. She’d waited too long to tell him she was a virgin, which he’d found both a turnoff and a joke, and even now she wasn’t sure if his rough, fumbling attempt at intercourse had actually de-virginized her. She’d bled, and he’d spilled all over her, leaving her covered with blood and goo, and then he’d walked out, not even kissing her. And she’d been too stupid to realize the story would be halfway across campus by the next morning. It was no wonder she’d run.
Any lingering romantic fantasies should have been wiped out by the harsh reality of Reno. He wasn’t the stuff of her daydreams, he was a man who killed when he had to. A man who clearly found her—a huge, gawky, inconvenient female—less than charming.
Maybe she’d rather freeze to death in the woods than face him again.
No, that was being melodramatic. At least he had no idea she’d once had a mad crush on him. One that was vanishing swiftly, the colder she got. She wrapped her arms around her body, trying to hug some heat into her, and tucked her hands in her armpits. If she started shivering, she wasn’t going to stop. She gritted her teeth, tensing her body so she wouldn’t shake. Cold, it was so damned cold. Where the hell was Reno?
Maybe she should try to make it out of the woods on her own. She’d made such a mess of her life she should probably want to die, but she wasn’t that far gone yet. She had every intention of living a long, vigorous, probably celibate life.
They’d passed through several small towns on their way up the mountain—if she managed to reach civilization, she’d be able to find help. They wouldn’t
like that she had no money or identification—both those things were in her backpack in Reno’s stolen car—but they’d probably help her anyway. And if worse came to worst, a Japanese prison was probably a lot warmer than a mountainside in winter, and her powerful father would be more than able to extricate her quickly. Ralph Lovitz was a force of nature, a self-made man, a billionaire and full of sheer protective rage where his family was concerned. He had more money than God, and he’d always make sure nothing bad happened to her. She’d be perfectly fine, she told herself.
The first flake of snow drifted down and settled on her nose. She’d lost feeling in her feet, her hands, her butt on the cold, hard ground. She’d given up the fight to keep from shivering, and she sat huddled in a ball, her arms around her knees, shaking with the cold. Snow began drifting down rapidly, covering everything, and the bright winter moon made the landscape look like a fairy-tale setting. A fairy tale of death.
She was crying. Good thing Reno was either dead or had given up on her—he already found her annoying enough. If she kept crying, and that seemed more than likely, he’d probably want to strangle her himself.
She let out a tiny sob, followed by a hiccup. Tears never helped anything—her sister would have told her that. No, she wouldn’t. Summer would put her arms around her and tell her everything would be all right.
But Summer had disappeared. Maybe she was dead, as well. Maybe Lianne Lovitz was going to lose both her daughters. And no one would ever find her body—she’d just freeze to death and maybe twenty years from now a hiker would come across her corpse….
She let out another sob. At least freezing to death didn’t hurt. You just went to sleep; everything got numb and then you slept and then it was over.
But she didn’t want it to be over. Where the hell was Reno? It didn’t matter how much of an asshole he was, it didn’t matter what a pain he thought she was, she wanted him to come back and save her. How could he have abandoned her like this?
He’d be back. The only reason he wouldn’t be back was if he’d been killed. One man in a cheap car against an SUV-load of mercenaries who already held a grudge. She was an idiot to think he had a chance in hell of making it.
She should get to her feet. Try to walk out of here, but her feet were numb and she was shivering too badly to get to her feet. She needed to stop crying—the tears would be freezing to her face before long. She rubbed them away with her sleeve. He was dead, she was abandoned, and she didn’t know which was worse.
“Are you crying?”
The voice was annoyed, impatient, and came from the hill below her, as Reno appeared from a thick stand of trees.
She didn’t stop to think, she simply flew from her huddled spot and leapt on him, knocking him flat as she wept all over him.
“I thought you were dead!” she sobbed. “I thought they’d caught you and killed you and I was going to die alone in the woods.”
He lay still beneath her for a moment, then pulled her arms away from his neck, pushing her up so he could look at her. “I’m hard to kill,” he said. There was an odd expression in his eyes, one she couldn’t read. But she could guess. Annoyance.
“Sorry,” she said, scrambling to her feet, slipping a bit on the icy ground. He jumped up, effortlessly, catching her arm as she slid, holding her upright.
“Come on,” he said after a long, awkward moment. “The truck’s down below.”
“The truck? Where’d you get a truck?”
“I stole it.”
She sighed, the sound shaky as she pulled herself together. “You’re lucky your grandfather’s a gangster or they’d throw your ass in jail so fast. Unless stealing cars is considered a minor crime.”