‘Get in the car, get in the car, get in the car!’
‘I can’t just...’ Skye argued even as her feet were taking her towards the Jeep.
‘Is it locked?’
‘I don’t know,’ she replied, casting a glance around her to see if anyone was there to see her trying the handle of the door. Her pulse was racing and a sweat that had nothing to do with the heat broke out across her skin. ‘No, it’s not locked, but I can’t just—’
‘Skye, I swear, if you don’t—’
‘Okay, okay,’ she hissed into the mouthpiece of her mobile. Cursing herself, and her sisters, she cast one last furtive glance around to make sure no one was looking. ‘This is insane,’ she hissed as she pulled open the door and slipped into the footwell of the back seat. A bubble of hysteria rose in her chest, threatening to shut off her oxygen supply. She reached towards the large duffel bag and pulled it over her, still firm in the belief that any second the Hoxton Heavy would find her and demand to know just what she thought she was doing. It was a good question. One she genuinely didn’t have an answer to.
‘Skye?’
‘I’m in, I’m in,’ she whispered. ‘I have to go. I’ll call you as soon as I can.’ And with that last promise she hung up, wondering if she’d lost her mind.
‘Où est elle?’ Benoit demanded, looking around the foyer of the hotel. He didn’t have time for this. His staff didn’t have time for this. Or at least the rest of them anyway, he thought, glaring at his assistant.
‘Je ne sais pas. Elle est partie.’
At least his assistant had the good grace to look shamefaced at not knowing where the woman he’d asked to leave had gone. Enough for Benoit to know it wouldn’t happen again.
Yesterday one phone call to his assistant had upset the contracts team in two countries as they’d scoured through years’ worth of Stransen Steel paperwork to find some apparently unsigned contract. He’d received more phone calls in the last twelve hours than he’d had in the last twelve weeks and he’d had enough. He was meticulous with his paperwork, as were the people he employed. This was Stransen’s mess and they could deal with it.
‘Alors...’ Benoit had given this mystery woman enough of his precious time. ‘C’est fait?’
‘Oui.’
He left the foyer without another word to his assistant. Four days. He just needed four days of silence, of nothing. No emails, no demands, no company by-laws that forced him into things he never wanted to do.
He checked his watch. He’d wasted at least twenty minutes looking for this woman. Twenty minutes too long. He wanted to be at his home, the only place where he was truly shut off from the world of Chalendar Enterprises—and the axe that hovered over his head.
He’d given everything to the family company in the last fifteen years, but in the last two... He didn’t need his great-aunt’s warning ringing in his ears to know that he’d pushed himself and—clearly—the board too far.
Shaking his head and biting back a curse, Benoit simply could not believe that he was in this position. That was why he had to get away. To see if there was any way round the ridiculous by-law the shareholders were threatening to enact that meant he had to marry by his thirty-second birthday. Two weeks. He had two damn weeks.
His Great-Aunt Anaïs had tried to warn him, but the final straw had been when she’d mentioned his father. He was nothing like his father. Nothing. Before he’d died of a heart attack, André Chalendar had nearly bankrupted the company that had been in his family for more than one hundred and fifty years. And Benoit had brought it back from the brink, he’d made major deals, and so what if he’d immersed himself in a little mindless pleasure in the last two years? He was a healthy adult male in the prime of his life and he had healthy adult very male appetites. He was single—and would stay that way, no matter what the board of directors wanted.
Refusing to give in to the streak of fury burning bright, he closed the door to his Jeep gently and, turning the key in the ignition, he put the four-wheeler into gear and took the road out of San José. He needed to get to his house before the sun went down. Although the crime rate was low in Costa Rica, the roads at night were a different matter.
He turned up the volume on the radio and let the music soothe him as he glided the powerful Jeep from the smooth motorways off towards the potholed jagged concrete roads that cut towards the rainforest. Four days of uninterrupted blissful isolation was exactly what he needed.
Thirty minutes into the journey he switched radio stations and almost smiled at the heavy base line pounding through his speakers, letting it ripple across his skin and vibrate deep in his chest, when something shifted on the back seat and, heart in mouth, he watched with horror as a figure appeared in the rear-view mirror. Shock caused him to swerve sharply.
He struggled with the steering wheel as it shook in his hands, his muscles tensing against the pull towards danger, and had almost regained control when the car hit a deep pothole which sent it careening off the road and fast towards a tree. He pumped the brakes, desperately trying to slow the car, to lessen the impact, to—
The bonnet smashed into the dense wooden trunk with an angry shriek of screeching metal and something white clouded his vision and exploded—a popping sound cut through his thoughts, pain sliced his temple and from somewhere he could hear the echoes of a high-pitched scream, realising only a moment later that it had come from the woman in the back of his car.
CHAPTER TWO
BENOIT PUT A hand to his head, where the sting of pain was more acute than throbbing and cursed when he saw the traces of blood on his fingertips. Fighting through the haze in his head, he twisted, ignoring the pain in his ribs, to make sure the woman was okay.
‘Tu va bien?’ he called, hoping that the stowaway in the back of his car would answer.
Nothing, no response. Panic began to build in his chest, outweighing any of his own aches or pains. He was ready to kill her, but first he needed to make sure she was alive.
‘Es tu blessée?’ His breath only escaped his lungs when he heard her groan. At least she was conscious.
‘I don’t think so,’ came the feminine English-speaking voice from the back. ‘I just need to—’