Let Me Go (5 page)

She wasn’t going to stand for this though.
She needed to get out. And her gut told her that if she had any
chance of leaving, she had to figure out how they were linked and
what his past held in store for her. She went back to cleaning,
terror forcing her to keep doing what he demanded, and then to bed
for the night. But tomorrow she would have to put on her brave face
and figure out a way to get Mr. Green-eyed Asshole to open up.

Chapter 6

Kat had thought
she wouldn’t be able to sleep with everything that had happened,
but surprisingly, her spent body won out over her racing thoughts.
The next thing she knew, she woke up to a screeching sound that
turned out to be an alarm clock. She hadn’t even remembered setting
it before going to sleep. And Mr. Nameless hadn’t come home before
she passed out. She remembered thinking she should just sleep
through her time here and maybe he’d give up and let her go, seeing
she was useless. Another part of her brain told her she didn’t want
to see what would happen if she didn’t follow his rules. The
logical part of her said she needed to get on the asshole’s good
side to get him to reveal his secrets and use that against him to
get the hell out. And that meant following his obnoxious rules.

After dressing in that stupid and
embarrassing outfit, she washed up and went to make His Highness
some breakfast. She looked around the kitchen, and sure enough, he
was right – there weren’t any real sharp utensils.
But maybe if
she thrust hard enough, she could hurt him with a fork or a butter
knife.
She snorted at that thought. He’d probably incapacitate
her before she had a chance to raise her arm. At exactly six, he
sat at the small table as Kat put eggs and toast in front of him.
He mumbled something that sounded like a thank you but then his
eyes snapped up and narrowed at her. Clearly, he didn’t want to be
thanking her and yet somehow, this was her fault that he had
acknowledged her. He was definitely a confusing guy.

“I wasn’t sure what you liked, so I thought
I couldn’t go wrong with scrambled eggs. But if you tell me what
kind of things you like, I can make them. If you have a preference
for lunch or dinner, let me know. I’ve been told I’m actually a
pretty good cook.” The words tumbled out of her mouth as if her
mind and her speech hadn’t been in sync. Before she had time to
mentally chastise herself for sounding so caring, he spoke.

“I like variety, but I eat just about
anything. Make something new and different each time and I’ll let
you know if I don’t like something.” His tone was flat, but that
was a step up from the cold edge the previous day. There was
something her still fuddled brain was trying to process.

He interrupted her thoughts. “I will be gone
until dinner today. Do not idle. I will know if you didn’t do your
work.”

She stood pretty still, waiting for her mind
to catch up with the situation, but it was no use. He walked toward
the door and she tried to see what numbers he was punching, but
then he swiped his damn thumb on something too. So even if she
could get the numbers, she was pretty sure her thumbprint didn’t
match his. At least she comprehended that much.

“Please,” she asked before he walked out.
She wanted to at least know his name; she felt like that was
something she should know, the name of her captor. “Tell me your
name.”

He stopped short of the door and turned
around, his eyes blazing with fury, a fire she felt in her very
bones. His name. It was a simple request, but each time she asked,
his anger became more pronounced. She sucked in a breath and held
it, her body frozen with panic.

“Don’t ask me that again,” he growled, his
cold eyes trained on her, leaving an unspoken threat hanging in the
air. They stood at opposite sides of the room, but the tension in
the air made Kat feel like she was inches from his face. He
narrowed his eyes, studying her, and must have been satisfied with
whatever he saw because a moment later, he stormed out, shutting
the door behind him.

It took a few minutes for the dread to wear
off and the anger to set in. Well, if he wasn’t going to answer
her, then she could think of a few choice words to use instead of a
name. Kat sighed and tried to eat breakfast even though she didn’t
have an appetite. While cleaning up, it finally hit her. He was
still an ass, but when she was nice to him, he responded,
reluctantly, but at least he responded. Well, except when it came
to his name. That was a touchy subject.
Other than that, though,
huh.
Kill him with kindness.
She could do that. She
could wear him down, break down his walls, and then he’d let her
go. She knew it was pretty unrealistic, but she had nothing else
and if she dwelled on her current situation, she knew she’d snap.
She couldn’t afford to do that, and she wasn’t about to let him see
her tears.
No
. That was a promise to herself she wasn’t
willing to break.
Screw him
, she thought. He wanted to play
games, she’d show him games. If he was Mr. Asshole, she’d be Miss
Sweetheart. She’d get him to cave; she had to. She had no other
options and no other choice.

Kat put those thoughts to rest. There was
nothing she could do at the present but get to work. Even with her
master plan, she wasn’t willing to defy him, and not following his
rules would defeat the purpose of being nice. Cleaning the house
was much easier that day. She knew where everything was and the
best way to tackle the job. After a few hours, she was done. She
tried to go through the mental list of things he told her to do.
Make the beds, laundry.
She couldn’t think of anything else.
She quickly made the beds and there wasn’t enough laundry to do it
yet. She figured once a week would be good. She shook her head with
disbelief to dislodge her long-term thoughts.

With time on her hands, she decided to do a
little snooping. She started with his room. She looked through all
his drawers, his closet, under his bed, and even in his bathroom.
She didn’t find anything that could tell her about this man or how
to get through to him. What was actually kind of odd was how bare
his room was. He only had some clothes and a few papers here and
there. As clean as he was, the ironic thing was that although
everything was put away, underwear and clothes were just stuffed
into the dresser and loosely hung up. Some shirts were on the verge
of having their shoulders stretched from being on the hanger
incorrectly.
Huh.
She thought that was interesting.

She moved on to the office and she finally
had time to admire the bookshelf.
Damn!
It had only been
about two days and she already missed having the comfort of a book
to read. She browsed the titles. Some she knew, some were classics,
and some were ones she hadn’t read. The amusing part was the
eclectic choice of books. She had expected military-style books,
maybe even some history books, from someone who seemed so
overpowering. Nope, he had a large selection of different genres –
mystery, fiction, nonfiction, fantasy, and sci-fi. There was also a
section with books about prisons and law. She pulled one of the law
books off the shelf and scanned it quickly. There were notes in the
margins of some of the pages and she wondered if that was his
writing. She had figured out he had been in jail from what little
he had said.
But for what?
She wasn’t sure. She wondered if
he was trying to clear his name. It didn’t matter to her. All that
mattered was finding some trace of who he was so she could work on
getting the heck out of dodge.

She took one last look at the books, telling
herself that next time she had some time on her hands, she would
start working her way through his collection.

She looked at the time and wondered where it
had gone. She would have to start dinner soon. She still had the
desk drawers to look through. And as she tugged on the first one,
she realized with disappointment that it was locked. And then, of
course, the other drawers were too. Yep, being left alone to snoop
was definitely too good to be true. If only she knew how to pick a
lock. She’d have to work on that.

She let the disappointment creep in for only
a moment before she started dinner. While she was cooking, she
actually started thinking about her situation. She knew next to
nothing about this guy. She didn’t even know his name. All she knew
was that he was pretty clean, felt he needed to get revenge against
her because he thought she was involved somehow, and he left her
pretty much alone most of the time. He scared the hell out of her
and yet, she wasn’t actually afraid he’d do anything to truly harm
her. Humiliate her, yes. Physically hurt her, didn’t seem like it.
After all, when he threatened her with punishment, it was just more
forms of degradation and humiliation. She had to figure out how to
use that to her advantage. She tried being nice and he just left.
She couldn’t use her non-existent feminine charms on him if he was
never there. One option she had was to try to catch him off guard
at dinner by being Miss Nicey-Nice again. For now that was her only
plan. It had better work soon because there was no way Kat was
going to be stuck being a slave. She might be a shy, mousy
bookworm, but deep down she had her own little bit of feistiness.
Oh, Mr. Kidnapper, be prepared to be played
. She crossed her
fingers and knocked on the wood cabinet beside her. She figured she
could never be too superstitious. She finished dinner and waited.
Any minute now, she could play a doting…er…a doting…kidnapee?
Sure, whatever worked.

Chapter 7

Mason should have
been working at another one of his odd jobs, but Kat had gotten to
him, and he had spent the past two days drinking with Benny. How
low he had sunk. He used to be a prominent doctor, but thanks to
his bogus conviction, his license was gone, and no one wanted to
hire him for any type of “professional” job. Thankfully, he still
had some money left from his inheritance. Most of the money he had
earned himself had gone toward his legal defense, whatever good
that did him. He could probably survive more or less on just what
he had in the bank if he was frugal, but he couldn’t be idle every
day all day. He ended up landing non-steady jobs, mostly manual
labor, ranging from construction to mechanical work, even being a
type of garbage man for some companies when they needed to dispose
of certain types of waste. Benny had offered some, what he would
call unsavory, work. Mostly keeping track of some of his illegal
gambling spots, but Mason couldn’t bring himself to do that. Funny,
that kind of illegal was out, but kidnapping was okay because it
was justified. So then Benny had a friend of a friend who hired out
for temporary jobs and that was what he’d been doing for the last
year. From sought-after doctor to kidnapping garbage man. This was
all Kat’s fault. The only good thing about his inconsistent work
schedule was that he had plenty of time to figure out his plan for
revenge. He had spent the last year, with Benny’s help, rearranging
his place. “Tricking it out” as Benny would say, with the latest
and greatest gadgets to ensure Kat wouldn’t be able to get out and
no one would know she was there. He had spent a big portion of that
time following Kat Gingham around. Watching her, waiting for a way
to get to her without arousing any suspicions. He was pretty
surprised when he saw she had cleaned up her act, sobered up, and
appeared to have even found a boyfriend. Too bad her lying, abusing
past had done a number on him. He wondered sometimes if she ever
thought about him and felt guilty for lying.
But if she had,
wouldn’t she have come forward and set the record straight?
Nope, clearly this new-found life was all about her.
Selfish.

As luck would have it, Kat and her boyfriend
had broken up. She had no job, and it appeared she was about to be
without a place to stay. He watched her for long enough to know she
didn’t have any friends, and she didn’t seem to keep in touch with
anyone. It was like Mason’s own personal sign that the time was
right. Getting into her place was easy, knocking her out was
easier, getting her to his place and essentially locking her up was
a cinch. But being with her in the same place, torture. What he
remembered of her from the hospital, she was scrawny and scratched
up. Her junkie appearance was not attractive at all. When he
studied her after he was out of the hellhole, it was almost like
she was a different person. Her body had filled out and her face
looked healthy, but she looked tired and sad and worn down. He had
to keep telling himself that she was just the object of his
revenge. But now she was real. He didn’t regret what he had done,
but at the same time, he realized in the back of his mind that,
technically, kidnapping someone was wrong. Now that she was in
front of him, though, she wasn’t as weak as she had appeared to be
when she was with her boyfriend. That thoroughly confused him. At
the same time, she was feisty enough to exact revenge on him, so
should he really be that surprised. But damn, if she didn’t look
good in that little French maid outfit Benny had suggested. Her
lean legs went on for days and her breasts barely squeezed into the
top. Her bottom lip was a bit fuller than her top, giving her an
almost pouty expression, while her big hazel eyes pleaded with him.
When he looked at her, he almost believed the confusion written in
her eyes. He wondered if it was possible that the drugs had done
some permanent damage that caused her to truly forget what the hell
she had done to him. It wasn’t unheard of, but it was pretty
unlikely.
Nope
, he reminded himself,
it was all an
act
. Now that she had been caught, she was trying to manipulate
him with her puppy dog eyes.

The other confusing part about all this was
her almost immediate acceptance of her situation. She tried to
assert herself the first day, but that was pretty much it. She
followed his rules and was even nice to him.
What the hell was
that about?
He expected her to fight him, try to hit him, even
attempt to outsmart him. The most she did was aggravate him with
her assertions that she didn’t remember him. This was supposed to
be punishment. This was supposed to get under her skin so she felt
pain, humiliation, fear, and worry. This wasn’t a fucking picnic,
but she was treating it as such and it was shaking his nerves. He
had left two days in a row to hang out with Benny and his buddies
because he just couldn’t be around Kat. In just two short days, she
had managed to get under his skin and that was not the plan. He was
in control. He had the upper hand. And when he came home for dinner
tonight, he would put her in her place. She thought cleaning was
easy, fine. He’d make her do a ton more chores and then some. See
how cheery her disposition would be then. He hated her for what she
did do him, and now he was hating her for what she was doing to his
damn mind. He suffered thanks to her, and she should be suffering
now too. He was going to work her to the bone and get her off his
mind.