The Makeover Mission Read Free

the woman
who couldn't hear him. He squeezed her hand, knowing it was a useless gesture,
surprised that he was compelled to do it at all.

Chapter 2
    « ^ »
    " H ere, drink this." The voice was close to her. A
male voice, like hot caramel over cold ice cream. One she thought she should
know.
    "Open your eyes and drink this."
    She didn't want to open her eyes. Then there'd be no going back,
no pretending she was safe and in Sioux Falls. But there was no avoiding it.
The voice wouldn't let her.
    Slowly, as if they had been glued shut, she pried her eyes open.
Then shut them quickly.
    Gray-eyes. Mesmerizing, compelling, lying Gray-eyes. Like the
crash of a wave—it all came back to her. Her apartment building. A cramped,
airless room. A man with medals strung across his chest and another
man—Gray-eyes—telling her one thing, holding her still while yet another shot
her full of who knew what.
    "You can't ignore it. Better to face things head-on."
    Easy for him to say, she wanted to snarl, surprised at the clean
edge of her anger. It felt good. Better than the terror she remembered so
vividly. The helplessness and confusion in the small room. The willingness to
trust a man who said one thing and did another. This man.
    She opened her eyes again. Cowering was for cowards. While Jane
thought she was a lot of things—shy, unprepossessing, ordinary—she didn't like
thinking of herself as a coward.
    "Who are you and what do you want?"
    The demand she heard in her voice pleased her. For a second she
thought he might have felt the same way. A glimmer of a smile touched his lips,
until he pushed forward a glass. It looked as if he'd been holding it, waiting
for her. "Drink this. Then we'll talk."
    She raised herself to a reclining position, balancing on her elbow
and reaching for the glass, aware her hand shook as she grasped its cool
surface. Even under ordinary circumstances it would have been difficult to
appear unmoved when a man like this hovered next to her, close enough that she
could smell the scent of his skin and feel the heat his body radiated. An
awareness out of place with the man who had kidnapped her.
    She willed herself to look away, to break the contact of his gaze
pinning hers, and caught herself wondering what was in the glass he insisted
she drink. More drugs? Something to keep her quiet and compliant? Until what?
Or when?
    "It's just water."
    "Then you take a drink first." She thrust it back into
his hands, surprised she dared such a thing, even more surprised when he
accepted it and took a long, slow draught, his gaze never leaving hers over the
edge of the glass.
    "It will help with the dry mouth." He pressed it back
into her hands. Obviously this man had dealt with drugged women before. Not a
comforting thought. "Later, if you want, I'll get you some aspirin for
your headache."
    Yes, he definitely knew the aftereffects. Just who was this guy?
And what did he want with her?
    She watched him rise to his feet and cross to a chair several feet
away. Only then did she sip from the glass, thankful for the cool sensation
soothing her too-dry throat, yet wary as to why he was being so solicitous. He
remained quiet until she had finished most of the water and placed the glass on
a coffee table before her.
    It was only then that she sat up and looked around her. Looked
around and felt the flip-flop of her stomach. They were no longer in the small,
cramped room. It looked like a plane, but not the passenger kind.
    Instead it looked like a living room, with carpeted floors, two butternut-brown
leather chairs on both sides of the couch she was sitting on, end tables and a
series of oval windows on either side which showed nothing but blue, blue sky.
With a feeling of detachment, or maybe it was hysteria again, she was glad to
find that here at least she wasn't tied to anything.
    Not that she could make a run for it thousands of feet in the air,
she thought, sure it was hysteria making her want to shake her head and