Amy Bensen 01 Escaping Reality (3 page)

maybe not so suddenly, feel.

His brows furrow. “Sleepy?”

“That’s what you said that made me smile. You don’t seem like a man

who’d say ‘sleepy’.”

He arches a brow and he’s
still
holding my hand. I should object. I

should pull away.

Because he has the experience and depth I’ve long avoided and

craved in a man. All I succeed in doing is melting into my chair, like I know I

could easily melt
for him
. “Is that so?” he challenges.

“Yes. That’s so.”

He looks amused, and—reluctantly, it seems—he releases my hand.

Or maybe not reluctantly. Maybe he wasn’t holding it as long as it felt like

he was holding it. I fear I have no real concept of what is real or not

anymore.

Liam leans closer, so close it’s like he plans to share a secret, and still

I want him closer.

“Just what kind of man do you think I am, Amy?”

The kind that flirts with lost little girls who don’t even know their

own names and then darts off to see the world with a supermodel, I think,

but I say, “Not the kind who says ‘sleepy’.”

Laughter rumbles from his chest, a deep, masculine sound that

spreads warmth through my body. Impossibly, it is both fire in my veins and

balm for my nerves, calming me in an unexplainable way, when I know he is

too good looking, too inquisitive, and absolutely too controlling to play

with. Not that I would even know how to play with a man like this, or really,

any man for that matter. Men, like friends, have been risky propositions.

“Why are you headed to Denver, Amy?” he asks, and the soothing

balm becomes shards of glass splintering through me.

“Excuse me,” the flight attendant thankfully interrupts, saving me an

answer that is still in a file I haven’t read. “Can I take your dinner orders?”

“Chicken,” I say.

Liam glances at me. “How do you know they have chicken?”

“It’s the go-to food for hotels, parties, and airlines.” And there was a

time in my youth when all those things had been in my life. I glance at the

flight attendant for confirmation, and she nods. “Chicken it is.”

“Make that two orders of chicken,” Liam says with another rumbling

of that deeply addictive laughter of his, and while I like his easygoing

nature, I can almost feel the band of control he pulls around him. A muffled

ringing sound fills the air.

“Whoever is ringing,” the flight attendant warns, “you have about

one minute until electronic devices are off.”

She rushes away, and since the sound is obviously coming from

Liam’s bag, I cautiously adjust my skirt and bend over to grab it, dislodging

my folder in the process. My heart lurches as it tumbles to the ground and

spills open, the contents flying everywhere. I grab for the contents, shoving

papers inside the folder again as quickly as I can.

“Your résumé, I believe,” Liam says, and I freeze at his obvious nosy

inspection of the document I have yet to read. The idea that he knows

more about me than me is unnerving.

Slowly, I lift my gaze to find only a few inches separating us, and his

eyes, those piercing blue eyes, see too much. He makes me feel too much. I

don’t know him. I can’t trust him. Is there anyone I can really trust left in

this world?

“Thanks,” I say, taking the resume from him with more obvious snap

than I intend. I tug his bag out from underneath my seat. He unzips the side

pocket to remove his phone, and I am self-conscious of how high my skirt

rides up my thigh as he helps me shove the bag back where it had been. But

he isn’t looking at my legs. I can feel the burn of him watching me in my

cheeks. I know he knows how uncomfortable I am. I know he knows I’m not

okay right now. I feel trapped. Trapped with this man, and I am trapped in a

life that isn’t mine.

Tugging at my skirt, I sit up and he does the same, shifting his

attention to his phone as he does. Taking advantage of his distraction, I

twist toward the window, offering him my back.

Maybe he will think I’m allowing him privacy for his call. Maybe he

will think I’m rude. I don’t care. I open the folder and quickly find the

résumé he’s already seen and start reading. Amy Bensen is, or was, a

private secretary to some executive, whose name I quickly press to

memory.

She’s had that job since graduating college three years before, but

he’s retired and she’s been laid off.

I flip to a summary page behind the résumé that tells me my

backstory, and read on, hearing Liam talking on his phone about some

meeting. An announcement is made about electronic items and I read

faster. Amy Bensen has scored a three-month position handling the

personal affairs of a private businessman who is both a friend of her

ex-boss and overseas for that time period. Her new boss will be providing

an apartment near his personal home that is empty and will need to be

monitored. There is a comment typed in bold and underlined.
You are
not

to apply for work until I contact you and tell you that it’s safe. Do nothing

to bring
attention to yourself.
I inhale a slow, heavy breath and can’t seem

to let it out.
Until I tell you it’s
safe?
What does that even mean? Who is

after me? Do they, or he or she, or whoever, know I was in New York? Can

they figure out where I went? And why, why, why have I let myself pretend

this threat doesn’t exist until I’m forced into hiding again?

The plane roars to life and I nearly jump out of my skin. Casting a

glance over my shoulder, I confirm that Liam didn’t notice, and is

concentrating on punching something into his phone. He might not be

attentive to me right now but he already started asking me questions.

He’ll ask more and I have to be ready. Thumbing through the file, I

find a page with my new family history. My mother died in a car accident

four years ago and my father was a drunk who left us when I was a kid. I

have no siblings. A wave of nausea overcomes me and I shut the file, and

still facing the window, I lie back against the seat, squeezing my eyes shut.

I’d adored my mother. I’d worshiped my older brother. And my father

would never have left me by choice. I
had
a family that was more than a

typed piece of paper in a file. Now I have nothing but a fake name and a

fake life.

Chapter Three

We level off at cruising altitude, the soft hum of the engines lulling

me into deep thought, and I can feel my mind trying to go places I don’t

want to go. Flashes of the tattoo on my handler’s wrist keep interrupting

my plans to keep Liam’s questions at bay the rest of the flight.

The tattoo shifts to flames and I am suddenly floating in a cloud of

thick smoke, trying to escape, but I can’t see to get out of it. I can’t scream.

I try to scream. They are screaming. Oh God. Oh God. I have to get to them.

A sudden bright light pierces the fog and I jerk to a sitting position and grab

my throat, gasping for air, feeling the rasp of smoke burn through my lungs.

“Easy, sweetheart. You’re okay.”

I barely register the voice. I can’t focus. My hands go to my face.

“Where am I?”

“Amy.”

Strong hands touch me, turn me, and I blink a pair of piercing blue

eyes into focus.

Memories rush over me. “Liam?”

“Yes. Liam. That must have been one hell of a nightmare.”

Nightmare? I fell asleep? “No, I…” Images flash in my mind, and I

squeeze my eyes shut, trying to block out my fear, the smoke, and

gut-wrenching screams. My fingers curl around what I realize is Liam’s shirt,

and on some level I know that I’m clinging to a man I barely know, but he is

all I have. Somehow he is all that is keeping me from melting down.

“Amy,” Liam whispers, stroking a hand down my hair. I tell myself it’s

inappropriate for him to touch me like this. It’s also exactly what I need,

and somehow so is he. I tell myself it’s simply that he’s at the right place at

this very wrong time in my life, but it does nothing to discourage my

reaction to his touch, to the warmth radiating from where my palms rest on

his chest and up my arms. Without a conscious decision, I lean closer to him

and my lashes lift, my eyes meeting his, and the connection shoots

adrenaline through me. I am no longer in the hell of my head. I am right

here with this man and he leaves no room for anything else.

“Is she okay?”

I jerk back at the sound of the flight attendant’s voice and Liam’s

hands fall away from me, leaving me oddly cold. “Excuse me? Am I okay?” I

ask, wondering what the heck I did that would merit that question.

“She doesn’t like it when I talk sports,” Liam jokes, obviously trying to

spare me a more personal explanation of…what? What the heck did I do?

“Too much basketball makes me crazy,” I add, trying to snatch up the

breadcrumbs Liam has tossed my way, but I fear I sound too strained to

sound more than baffled.

“It’s not basketball season,” she points out, looking less than pleased.

“Since when does that stop a basketball fan from killing us with

basketball talk?” I ask, and that earns me a deadpan look, which has me

quickly shifting gears, trying to make blind amends. “I’m fine. Sorry if I

caused some kind of trouble.”

She frowns and glowers accusingly at Liam, and all signs of her early

admiration of his overwhelmingly hotness from earlier are gone. “She

doesn’t seem fine.” Her gaze shifts to me.

“You shouted. It scared the heck out of us.”

Shouted? Oh, good grief.
Way to not bring attention to yourself, Amy.

“I took a decongestant,” I say, trying to be truly convincing this time. “They

make me sleepy and give me nightmares.”

Her lips purse, but her expression quickly softens. “Well, that makes

sense. Yes. I can see how that might happen to someone sensitive to

medications, but boy oh boy they must have worked you over. We’ve only

been in the air fifteen minutes and you were awake when we took off. You

were knocked out hard and fast.”

Which isn’t like me. Not on a normal day. Certainly not on a day I feel

threatened. “I’m really sorry I scared you,” I offer, attempting a smile that

I’m pretty sure never makes it to my lips. “I promise to stay awake the rest

of the flight.”

“You don’t have to promise that,” she says, and grins. “But maybe

warn us before you go to sleep. We’ll have dinner served in five minutes.”

She rushes away and Liam doesn’t give me time to savor her departure.

“Decongestants?” Liam asks softly, drawing my gaze back to his.

“My ears pop when I fly.” The lie comes easily. I’m back to the me I

hate. “And unless you want to confess to drugging me, that’s my story and

I’m sticking with it.”

He studies me a bit too carefully for my own good, and something in

his eyes has me warm all over and wishing he’d touch me again. “What are

you afraid of, Amy?”

You
, I want to say.
You scare me because you make me want to trust

you.
I laugh, and it sounds strained even to my own ears. “Godzilla,” I say,

confessing the fictional monster I’d feared in childhood, until life had

shown me real monsters existed.

If I’d expected his laughter, he doesn’t give it to me. “Godzilla?” he

prods, angling his body to block out anyone passing by us, his back to them,

his body almost caging mine. The impact of this man’s full attention is

overwhelming. My breath turns shallow, and to my utter disbelief, my

nipples are tight and achy. I do not respond to men like this. I just…don’t.

“Everyone has a proverbial monster under the bed,” I manage, and

thankfully my voice sounds far more steady than I feel. “Godzilla is mine,” I

continue. “And hey—at least there weren’t any hippos crossing the road in

this nightmare. I’ve had that one a time or two, as well.

Actually, I don’t think the hippos felt like nightmares. Just strange

dreams.” Shut up, Amy.
Shut
up.
Why are you telling him anything more

than you have to? You
never
,
ever
tell more than you have to.

“I won’t try to analyze what the hippos mean,” he comments, and

the slight curve to his lips on the words fades away as he adds, “but your

monster under the bed sounds more like a skeleton in the closet to me.”

“Fear and a secret are two different things,” I remind him, pointing

out the difference in the two phrases.

“Often they come together. A secret that leads to fear in one way,

shape, or form.”

Suddenly, my joke feels like an open window to my soul that I

desperately want to slam shut. Tension coils in my muscles and I quickly

pull my guard into place, turning the tables.

“Sounds like a man who speaks from experience.”

“Yes, well,” he says, a cynical tinge to his voice, “experience isn’t all

it’s cracked up to be, now is it?”

I search his eyes and look for the meaning behind his words, but I

find nothing. He is unreadable, as guarded as I am on my best day, and I