“Be quiet, do as you’re told, and everything will be fine.”

She’d been kidnapped — abducted in the middle of the day from Ezeiza International Airport in Buenos Aires in full view of airport security.

Zoe Collingsworth’s stomach plummeted as the helicopter tilted sideways and flew at a peculiar angle to the earth below.

She gripped her boxy seat tighter, fingers clenched so hard that the knuckles ached. He’d told her not to talk and she hadn’t, but she was very afraid. This couldn’t really be happening…this had to be a bad dream…

“We’ll be landing in a few minutes.”

She jerked at the sound of his voice. It was the first time he’d spoken in the two hours they’d been aboard the helicopter. She’d never heard a voice pitched so low and it rumbled through her like a slow-moving freight train.

“Where are you taking me?” she whispered, hands trembling.

He briefly glanced her way, his narrowed eyes barely resting on her. “It doesn’t matter.”

Her mouth went dry, fear sucking heat from her limbs. She touched her seatbelt, checking the tension in the belt, as though the small firm strap across her lap could somehow protect her from whatever was to come next.

She wanted to say something fierce and defiant, wanted to be brave because that’s how Daisy handled problems. But Zoe wasn’t a warrior woman and she felt the worst kind of terror imaginable. She’d never even been out of Kentucky before, and now on her first trip anywhere she was…she was…

Kidnapped.

Her heart thudded so fast and hard she thought it might explode. She stared at her captor. He wasn’t looking at her, but staring out the window, his gaze fixed on the darkening landscape below. Twilight swathed all in shadows. “What do you want from me?”

Finally she had his attention. He stared at her in the fading light, long dark lashes concealing his eyes, his expression curiously hard. There was nothing remotely gentle in his grim features. “Let’s not do this now.”

His English was flawless and yet his tone cut razor sharp. He’d been schooled in the States she thought blankly, numb from head to toe. “Are you going to…hurt me?”

She heard the wobble in her voice, the break between words that revealed her fear and exhaustion. He heard it, too, and his firm mouth compressed, flatter, harder. “I don’t hurt women.”

“But you do kidnap them?” she choked, on the verge of hysteria, her imagination beginning to run away with her. She’d been up twenty-four hours without sleep and she was losing control.

“Only if I’m asked to,” he answered as the helicopter dipped. He glanced out the window and nodded with satisfaction.

“We’re landing. Hold on.”

Classic Romance