Page 43 of Stolen By the Billionaire
Blaze bounced her in his arms. “I’ve got you.”
She flopped her bound feet. “Put me down!”
“Maybe you’ll think twice before lying to me about making a run for it.”
“Well, I’m not going to tell you the truth about that.”
He started walking for a different door, not the one with sunshine streaming through the windows that she presumed led to the backyard. “So noted.”
Even though he was carrying her perfectly competently and didn’t seem to be struggling at all under her weight, Sarah wished her hands were unbound so she could loop her arms around his neck and take some of the strain off his shoulders. Being nothing but dead weight like a sack of feed corn while he carried her felt lazy.
As they approached the door, Blaze called out, “House, open the door from the garage.”
A red light set in a panel beside the door flashed green, and the solid steel door swung open at their approach.
He turned his shoulders to fit her through the doorway and carried her into his house, mumbling, “This is not how I envisioned carrying a woman over the threshold for the first time.”
“Yeah, well, if you didn’t want to ruin your first threshold-crossing experience with a kidnapping, you should be rethinking your life choices right about now, not complaining about it to me.”
Blaze snorted slightly, but he didn’t smile. He never seemed to smile. “Taking responsibility has never been a problem for me.”
He carried her past the longest mudroom Sarah had ever seen, with floor-to-ceiling dark cherry cabinetry because they were still in the Midwest and winter was coming, and then down a corridor with little rooms like a laundry to each side, and finally into a kitchen.
And what a dang kitchen.
Stainless steel appliances.
An enormous, two-door refrigerator.
The stove had six burners.
Countertops for days.
It would be so easy to do months’ worth of canning in this kitchen in just a few days.
Sarah caught herself before she sighed at the beauty of it.
He dropped his arm behind her knees, and Sarah’s feet landed on the floor.
She shuffled and hopped as she turned, trying to take in the trundle bed-sized drawers that must be filled with cooking equipment because no appliances interrupted the pristine white expanses of countertop that she could see.
Blaze asked her, “Let’s try this again. If I cut the ties on your feet, will you run away, or shall I carry you every moment you are in this house?”
Sarah was so busy goggling at the kitchen that she just shook her head.
He crouched, taking that utility knife from one of his pockets again. Just a nick in the plastic from the laser-sharp blade popped the zip ties linking her hands to her ankles and then her ankles to each other.
As soon as the plastic bands fell to the immaculate cherry floors at her feet, she ran as fast as she could, angling for the enormous glass front doors she’d seen farther down the corridor.
Her hands were still bound behind her back, but she didn’t care. If she could run outside, down the hill, and out into the road, someone would help her. She’d just have to get past those big iron gates and high wall somehow.
From the kitchen, Blaze called out, “House, lock down.”
Bolts snicked shut all around her.
When Sarah got to the front door, she yelled, “House, unlock the front door! Open the front door!”
She bashed her shoulder into the wide glass door, but the dang thing didn’t budge. She tried hooking her elbow around the handle because the door looked like it might be a slider, but then she was flopping around with her elbow caught on a hook.
