The idea of going home alone terrified her.
It shouldn’t, she had been alone in that prison every day for fourteen months with no one to talk to, no one to hold her when she got scared, to snuggle up with when she got cold, to get angry with and scream about how unfair it was.
She should be used to being alone.
“Abby?” Ryder’s hand touched her shoulder.
“That’s great,” she said brightly, shooting him a full watt smile.
“Yeah, I thought you’d be happy,” he said uncertainly, like he wasn’t sure she was being quite honest with him.
“Of course, it will be great to be able to sleep in my own bed, and curl up in my favorite rocking chair, and have all my stuff around me again,” she said, keeping a big smile on her face. Fake it till you make it. Maybe if she pretended she was happy to return home when she got there tomorrow she would be happy.
She’d survived fourteen months alone in a cage in Mexico, she could survive staying in her own home.
It wasn’t like she needed Ryder to be there to make her feel safe, she’d always felt safe in her home before, it was just a case of nerves. Everything would be okay.
“Hey, Abs?”
“Yeah?”
“You’ve been cooped up in the house the last couple of days so I thought you might like to have lunch outside today. At the beach.”
“The beach?” She perked up at the idea, she’d grown up in California and always been a beach baby. She’d learned to swim basically the same time she learned to walk, she’d learned to surf when she eight, and spent any spare time away from the dance studio that she got at the beach. “I didn’t know we were close to the beach here.”
“Not just close, beachfront,” Ryder told her, more relaxed now that she had relaxed, like some invisible thread linked their emotions. “I thought we could pack a picnic and spend the whole afternoon at the beach, if you’re up for it you can go for a swim otherwise you can just lie in the sun and get some color back into you.”
“It sounds like heaven,” she said on a happy sigh. Sun, sand, surf was exactly the medicine she needed right now, and tomorrow she could worry about going back home alone. Today she was just going to relax and have fun.
11:08 A.M.
“Why don’t you change and I’ll pack some lunch,” Spider told Abigail who had definitely perked up once he’d mentioned the beach. He’d thought she’d be excited when they got her blood work back and her vitals had stabilized, and she could go back home, but when he’d broken the news she’d looked … worried … no not quite worried … scared … she’d looked scared.
Which was the opposite of excited.
But she had been excited about the beach, and he wondered if he’d misinterpreted her feeling overwhelmed for scared. She had been gone for fourteen months, kept isolated in a small concrete cage, she hadn’t interacted with anyone but him and the other SEAL team when they rescued her, no doubt the idea of assimilating back into society was overwhelming to her.
“Okay, I’ll be down in about ten minutes,” Abigail said, already walking toward the closet.
“Take your time,” he told her as he grabbed a pair of board shorts and thongs.
As he headed down to the kitchen he could hear her coughing as she changed, but the coughs weren’t the same whole body wracking, struggling to get enough air into her lungs coughs that she’d had out in the jungle. Now they sounded a lot more normal, and while he would like her to see her own doctor to get a medical professional’s opinion, he was less worried about her physical well-being.
Her emotional and psychological well-being were still top of his list of concerns.
That and figuring out who had targeted Abigail, why, and if they were going to come back for her.
Right on the ten-minute mark Abigail came down the stairs, she was still moving slowly but if she continued to get plenty of rest and make sure she consumed plenty of calories, then she would continue to grow stronger each day.
Adding a couple of soda cans to the picnic basket, he picked it up and turned to face Abigail. “Ready to go?”
She stumbled for a moment, placing a hand on the wall to steady herself, her gaze fixed on his bare chest. Spider knew that he was good looking, and he worked out for several hours every day, women ogled him regularly, and often threw themselves at his feet. When he’d first become a SEAL, he’d loved the attention, loved the fawning women, loved fun, free, easy sex, but that all changed once he had Abigail that first time. After that every other woman paled in comparison. He didn’t care if other women found him attractive or not but that Abigail found him attractive had his body responding to the heat in her eyes.
“Like what you see, honey?” he asked with an amused smile.
“I, uh, I, um …” she stammered as her gaze snapped from his chest to his face. Her cheeks were an adorable shade of pink, and while he wasn’t used to seeing her shy and unsure of herself, he liked that she was obviously still attracted to him.
Walking over to her, he took her hand and winked at her. “Don’t worry, honey, you look ridiculously sexy in that bikini.”
The look she gave him said that she didn’t believe him, and that was enough to put a damper on his libido. He didn’t want his gorgeous, sexy, stunningly beautiful Abigail thinking that she wasn’t attractive or that he wasn’t wildly attracted to her.
Wrapping an arm around her waist, he dragged her up against him, close enough that she could feel how his body responded to her. “Don’t ever doubt how beautiful you are. I know you’re going through a lot, Abby, but I love you, and I’m not going anywhere, and when you’re ready I’m going to tell you why I left and I’m going to do whatever it takes to get you back.”
“Why can’t you just …”
“Because I’m not going to burden you with that right now, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to drag you into my arms and kiss you and touch you.” Because he couldn’t be this close to her and not kiss her, Spider whispered his lips across hers and then quickly released her before he could be tempted to do a whole lot more. “Let’s go.”
Leading through the house and out the front door, Abigail stopped short when she saw that they were right on the beachfront. “Wow,” she murmured as she took in the white sand, blue skies, and rolling waves. “I almost forgot what it was like to be outside. I mean I remember us going through the jungle but it’s all a little hazy, and that was different, that was us running for our lives, but this is …”
“Nature at its finest,” he finished for her.
“Yeah,” she agreed. She kicked off her flip flops, crossed the tiled patio, bypassed the pool, and moaned when her toes curled into the sand.
He remembered that moan.
Remembered it falling from her lips when they were in bed together.
“Uh, Abs, try not to make that sound.”
“Huh?” When she looked behind her and saw that he was shifting uncomfortably she laughed and then took off at a run across the quiet beach.
Since he knew that his friends were all surveying the beach to keep watch for anything that might present a threat to Abigail he followed after her slowly. Until they knew more about Abigail’s abduction, her safety was top priority which meant that she wouldn’t be going anywhere on her own for the time being. But having his friends focusing on safety today meant he was free to focus on Abigail and making sure she had a good time.