My Hard-hearted Hero

Chapter 8 √

When he was going to stop underestimating this woman? Wasn't that fundamental rule of warfare never underestimate your enemy?

Zach stood at the entrance to the pantry, staring at the hellish mess on the floor and the open window high in the back wall. H*ll, she hadn't done anything he wouldn't have. Not that he'd have had a prayer of fitting through that little window. No, he'd have gone after the door lock.

He left the house and strolled toward the tree line, wondering whether to wait her out or track her down in the woods. She must be freezing. Dusk was approaching and she'd been outside without a jacket for nearly an hour, assuming she'd escaped the instant he'd locked the door_a pretty good bet. He smiled grimly. When he caught up to her, she'd probably pull a tree down on his head.

He found himself at the edge of the woods, peering through the bare limbs, alert for any sign of movement. Her voice overhead made him jump

"Too bad I don't have one of those rocks you seem so worried about...." She was leaning casually in the window of his old tree house twelve feet up, a moth-eaten blanket draped serape style over her shoulders.

She disappeared from the window and reemerged at the doorway, where she sat with her feet dangling over the rope ladder.

"If I did, I could've clobbered you with it, snatched your keys and let the cops wake you up."

He crossed his arms over his chest and treated her to his most devastating smirk.

"Yeah, too bad."

She sighed. "All I have is this big old brick someone left on the roof." She opened the blanket to display her newfound weapon.

Zach's smile gradually faded as he blinked at the heavy, mortar encrusted brick on her lap, the same brick he'd placed on the roof of the tree house twenty years ago to hold down the ill-fitting trapdoor leading to the rooftop "observation deck."

Damn. He'd underestimated her again!

With the wisdom of hindsight he analyzed his critical error. Back before he'd kidnapped her, when he'd "Yana proofed" the house and grounds, he'd labored under dangerously inaccurate assumptions.

He'd seen her as a one-dimensional femme fatale, a shallow heartbreaker whose talents extended only to snaring and destroying unsuspecting men. The intelligence, pride and determination he'd witnessed the last week he'd never entered into the equation.

Maybe he should go over the place one more time.

Meanwhile, he just had to know....

"Why didn't you do it, Yana? Why didn't you knock me out with the brick and escape? It would've worked."

She simply stared down at him with those enormous, solemn brown eyes. Finally she said quietly, "Not my style."

What would be Ariana's "style"? The hairs on his nape sprang attention. She'd once tweaked him with a veiled reference to poisonous plants. At the time, he'd laughed it off as bluster. Was he underestimating her yet again?

Perhaps, but hadn't she confessed her fears for his safety when he was so late today? As he'd watched her eyes glaze with tears, there'd been no doubt in his mind her distress was genuine. Somehow he couldn't imagine Ariana doing him violence_herbal or other wise. No matter how far he pushed her.

"Come into the house, Yana." He said.

He sighed. "Are you going to make me come up there after you?"

"Are you going to make me find out what I can do with this brick?" She asked pleasantly, stroking the thing like a pet.

He hesitated. Come to think of it, perhaps he had pushed her too far.