Page 112 of Stolen By the Billionaire
Blaze clicked the key fob in his pocket, locking the doors because a moment of compliance was not enough to earn his trust, and strolled around the car's trunk to the driver’s side.
Everything made sense with the revelation that his hardworking little hayseed wanted to be a brat.
She’d been the good girl her whole life, the one who stayed, the one who did what she was told, the one who didn’t rebel in anything.
Through a massive amount of self-control, she had done everything she was supposed to.
The farm chores.
Church.
Caring for her parents.
Blaze would bet that she got straight-As in school, but that her homework wasn’t brilliant, just hardworking.
Unless her parents or the farm had needed her to do more. In which case, she would have given up selfishly doing her homework for self-aggrandizement because others’ needs were more important.
And this whole you-kidnapped-me thing of hers was a valiant attempt to pretend she was still the good girl, but he was forcing her to be away from the farm and not do her chores because the guilt would have been more than she could handle.
The whole point of bratting was that the bad girl was punished with the very thing she shouldn’t want.
As he neared the driver’s side, the car unlocked that door automatically, and he settled himself behind the wheel.
Sarah had put her seat belt on, and her hands were knotted in her lap as she stared down at her feet.
Blaze pulled the Aston Martin onto the ramp and then sped up to merge onto the highway, easing into the travel lane even though little traffic interrupted the long asphalt stretch eastward.
Sarah still hadn’t spoken or moved.
“So,” Blaze said. “What was all that?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, she sounded just like any one of the hundreds of veterans he’d counseled over the last few years as they sidestepped talking about the real reason they were calling the crisis hotline. “Yes, you do.”
“Because you’re kidnapping me?”
“Oh no, kitten. We settled that. You’re avoiding thinking about something else. Dig deeper.”
“I don’t know what you’re—”
“I’m going to venture a guess, then. You don’t want to see your brother.”
Sarah reached for the door handle.
Blaze didn’t look away from the road snaking toward the darkening horizon. He dropped his voice to its lowest register and ordered, “Stop.”
Her fingers hovered in the air.
“Put your hands back in your lap.”
She did.
“Now, you don’t want to see your brother.”
“He betrayed the family,” Sarah recited yet again.
Man, that refrain. Her parents must have drummed it into her but good, probably with a bridge chorus of Don’t step a toe out of line, or you’ll end up thrown out, abandoned, alone, and despised just like him. “You’ve never questioned what your parents told you about Logan.”
