“He would have stopped me.”

“Don’t you think you owed him some kind of explanation?”

“It’s not as if Marshall loved me or anything.”

“Then why marry you?”

She managed a short laugh. “I already told you. Marrying me was a way to cement his place in my father’s company.”

“He must have cared about you.”

“I’m sure he cared,” was her impatient, offhand reply. “But it wasn’t about love. I don’t see what this has to do—”

“Right about now this Marshall guy is probably realizing he got stood up. On his wedding day. At the altar.”

“I doubt he’ll even go to the church.”

“And does that somehow make it better?”

She took a step to the side, edging away from him. “I don’t see why you’re so concerned about Marshall.”

Noah pushed his face down close to hers. “Libby, or whatever your name is—”

“Olivia,” she supplied.

“I’m concerned about Marshall because I know how he feels. I’ve been in his place. Standing there. Waiting for a bride who doesn’t show.”

Understanding dawned slowly in her expression. “I’m sorry, but that’s still—”

“You should have had the decency to tell him.”

“And then I wouldn’t have gotten away.”

“You haven’t gotten away.” Stepping in front of her, Noah bracketed her slender body with both his arms, pinning her and her dog to the truck. “We’re going back.”

“I can’t.”

“You don’t have a choice.”

She pushed against his chest, anger sparking in her gaze while the dog whimpered a protest. “I know you’ve done me a favor, but you’re not the boss of me—”

“You made me the boss by sneaking into my rig.”

“But—”

“And lying to me.” Noah gripped her shoulders, leaning in even closer. He could smell the faint trace of her expensive perfume, could see the light sprinkling of freckles across her upturned nose. She looked so damned innocent, so sweet and vulnerable. He could be fooled by her. Fooled very easily.

As if she sensed him wavering, the big, doe eyes she’d fastened on him filled with tears. “I’m sorry I lied to you. Really I am. I just had to get away. I was desperate. Haven’t you ever been desperate?”

What he knew about desperation she couldn’t begin to imagine, Noah thought. He understood all too well feeling trapped and frightened. Compared to him, this woman didn’t know the meaning of the word.

Returning fury thickened his voice. “What the hell were you thinking, using me this way?”

“I had to get away.”

“Didn’t you think your father might assume you went with me? Or that I took you? With your father so worried about you being snatched, isn’t it logical that I might be a kidnapping suspect?”

The muscles in her throat worked as she swallowed. “I never thought about that.”

“Poor little rich girls like you never think about other people, do you?”

Color suffused her cheeks. “That’s not fair. I’m not like that.”

He had to laugh. “So now I’m supposed to think you’re spoiled but good-hearted.”

“I am not spoiled.”

Her protest barely registered with Noah as he warmed to his subject. “You’re spoiled and weak and heartless. Anyone with a heart wouldn’t just leave their groom without an explanation.”

“But you don’t see—”

“I see all right,” he muttered. “I see a pathetic woman acting like a child. If you wanted out of your father’s house, all you had to do was go through the door.”

“It wasn’t that simple.”

“He chained you up? Beat you?” Noah glanced down at the dog she clutched like a lifeline. “Did he threaten to kill your dog if you tried to leave?”

She blanched. “Of course not. He’s not a monster.”

“Then why all this drama? Sneaking out. Stowing away with me.” Noah regarded her with disgust. “It sounds to me like you’re just a little child who likes to play games and create big dramas so Daddy will come racing in.”

“You couldn’t be more off-base.”

“Just do everyone a favor and get some therapy to deal with your daddy complex.”

Olivia had never in her life wanted to hit anyone like she wanted to punch this big, sanctimonious man. She settled for grinding her foot into his.

Shouting a curse, he released his grip on her, and she ducked away. She’d be damned if she would stand here and let him pronounce judgments on her actions. He didn’t know her life, didn’t understand the forces at work between her and her father.

Noah clearly had other ideas. He hobbled around the truck and stopped her just as she was dragging her bag from the passenger seat. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“I’m absolving you of any part in my ‘little game,”’ she retorted. “Thank you and goodbye.”

“Too late for that. What’ll I say when the police or your father’s private security force track me down and haul me in for questioning?”

“I don’t care.”

“And if they decide to throw me in the pokey?”

She made an impatient sound and stalked around the front of the truck. “Now who’s creating a drama?”

He took hold of her arm again. “Just shut up and get in the truck.”

“No!” She jerked her arm from his grip. “I’m not going back. If you try to force me, then you really will be in trouble.”

“Get in the damn truck.” Without waiting to see if she would comply, he swooped in and picked her up.

Olivia was too busy hanging on to a hysterically yapping Puddin’ to fight Noah very hard. She cursed him instead, calling on each and every one of the limited number of obscenities she knew. Then she repeated them again.

He was trying to maneuver her and the dog toward the passenger door when a patrol car sped by on the road.

“Oh, hell,” Noah muttered as the car slowed.

The car turned down a road to the right.

“Maybe they didn’t see us,” Olivia murmured. “Yeah, right,” Noah agreed sarcastically. “This big, white horse trailer is hard to miss. Especially with the two of us in hand-to-hand combat here on the side of the road.”

“But they might not even be looking for us.”

The words were no sooner out of her mouth when the sound of sirens split the air.

The next few moments unfolded like a slow-motion scene in a movie. Three police vehicles—state patrol and sheriff’s—descended one after the other, brakes screeching, raising clouds of dust and gravel. The female officer from the diner was the first to bail out of her vehicle and crouch behind her open car door, calling for Noah to put Olivia down.

Dazed, Olivia said, “They’ve got guns.”

A white line around his mouth, Noah glared at her.

Then she landed in a sputtering heap in the dust.

Noah stepped over her and advanced, hands held high, toward the officers, calling out, “She’s Roger Franklin’s daughter, but I’m not a kidnapper. Just take her away. I beg of you, take her away.”

The sheriff’s office was located in the county courthouse, right on the central square of the town where Noah and Olivia had been headed. From the small, barred window of the holding room where she and Puddin’ waited, Olivia could see the bus station sign. She had been so close to freedom.

If only they hadn’t stopped for lunch.

Apparently news of her disappearance had gone out from her father’s ranch to the police in the eastern counties of Texas just after she and Noah left the diner. One sheriff’s deputy remembered Olivia with Puddin’. All the officers, who had been meeting for a regular weekly lunch, remembered the horse trailer. So they had started after Noah and Olivia. One car spotted them and called for backup.

“Then everyone descended like gung-ho storm troopers,” Olivia had told the sheriff with no small amount of outrage. “It was simply ridiculous. They treated Noah like a criminal.”

The sheriff’s sunburned brow had wrinkled in consternation. “I’m sorry, Miss Franklin, but at that time, we had reason to think he might be a criminal.”