Fire and Ice - Anne Stuart [20]
They’d come after her. It was that simple, that finite. If he didn’t lose them, come back for her, then she’d die. All because she’d run off to Japan without thinking it through. She’d just wanted to put the embarrassment of her one lousy night of sex behind her, one stupid mistake with an un-caring jock who looked just the slightest bit like someone who was turning out to be a walking nightmare. She wanted her sister, she wanted to immerse herself in the magic-strewn Heian period of ancient Japan. And she’d wanted to get over any lingering fantasies about Reno, the ultimate bad boy.
She’d accomplished that much, and the unpleasant night with a graduate student should seem more like a comedy than a tragedy. As for the rest of it, she wasn’t ready to die because she’d been impulsive. If she was going to die, she wanted it to mean something.
She opened her eyes. It was cold—the scent of snow was on the air and ice was sinking into her bones. She’d spent most of her life in Southern California—her blood was too thin for winter in the mountains.
Was he coming back for her? What if he didn’t? What if the Russians killed him? Was she going to wait here and let them find her and kill her? Or was she going to sit here and freeze to death?
Neither seemed particularly pleasant. If she hadn’t jumped out of the car, he would have pushed her—she had no doubt about that. He was entirely ruthless and unsentimental—a punk samurai with loyalty to his cousin and not much else.
So why had she thought he was so deliciously romantic? He was unlike anyone she’d ever known. Edgy, absurd, exotic and beautiful, and every man or boy she’d met since she first saw him had always paled in comparison. Even Duke had been a quarter Chinese—probably why she’d chosen him in the first place.
She’d been an idiot, but then her experience with men was pretty pathetic. She’d always been the odd one out. It was no wonder she’d never had a real boyfriend. There’d been no prom, no parties, no group of girls to giggle with. On top of being freakishly smart, she was too tall. If she had to be so smart, couldn’t she have at least looked small and helpless, instead of being a strapping almost-six-foot tall?
And the depressing truth was, she was likely to die a virgin. A twenty-year-old virgin with the mind of a scientist and the experience of a twelve-year-old. And the sappy romantic longings of an adolescent.
The worst mistake had been to try to remedy that particular problem. With another graduate student, albeit someone ten years older than she was. She’d had enough sense to keep her distance from the predatory professors, who seemed to take pride in going through the female population of their classes.
Duke had been just as big a mistake. She should have known that from his name. She’d waited too long to tell him she was a virgin, which he’d found both a turnoff and a joke, and even now she wasn’t sure if his rough, fumbling attempt at intercourse had actually de-virginized her. She’d bled, and he’d spilled all over her, leaving her covered with blood and goo, and then he’d walked out, not even kissing her. And she’d been too stupid to realize the story would be halfway across campus by the next morning. It was no wonder she’d run.
Any lingering romantic fantasies should have been wiped out by the harsh reality of Reno. He wasn’t the stuff of her daydreams, he was a man who killed when he had to. A man who clearly found her—a huge, gawky, inconvenient female—less than charming.
Maybe she’d rather freeze to death in the woods than face him again.
No, that was being melodramatic. At least he had no idea she’d once had a mad crush on him. One that was vanishing swiftly, the colder she got. She wrapped her arms around her body, trying to hug some heat into her, and tucked her hands in her armpits. If she started shivering, she wasn’t going to stop. She gritted her teeth, tensing her body so she wouldn’t shake. Cold, it was so damned cold. Where the hell was Reno?
Maybe she should