Straight From The Hip

She raised her chin as she spoke, instinctively defying him. Good, he thought grimly. She was going to need every ounce of strength she had if she wanted to find her way back. Which was his job—to make sure she did.

“Break you?” he asked, ignoring that she’d called him a bully. He’d stormed into her life and taken her away from everything she knew. Hardly comfortable circumstances. He understood the fear of the unknown, although her unknown was a whole lot more controlled than his had been. “Dramatic much?”

“Hey, you’re the one who tossed me into the back of a car.”

“SUV.”

“Whatever. This is kidnapping. I get to be however I want.”

“Your sisters know where you are and what will happen when you get there.”

“And I should find that comforting why?” She swallowed. “Don’t even talk to me.”

He heard the fear in her voice. He could see it in the way she kept herself stiff. Behind fear was terror and while he wanted her attention, he didn’t need it that bad.

“My name is Nick Hollister,” he said, using the same tone that calmed unbroken horses. “I run a school that teaches corporate survival training. That pays the bills. I also take in kids who have suffered a traumatic loss or been victims of a violent crime. I teach them how to survive in my world. That helps them cope with their own.”

Izzy stared out the window, obviously ignoring him. He wondered how much she could actually see.

“Your sisters asked me to take you on for a few weeks, to help you adjust to being blind.”

“I’m not blind,” she snapped. “I have thirty percent of my sight.”

“You’re acting like you’re blind,” he told her. “You’ve been hiding in your room for a month.”

“It’s not like I can do anything else.”

“Your life is over? Because of one little challenge? That’s impressive.”

“Shut up,” she yelled. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. You can see fine.”

“Wouldn’t it be interesting if I couldn’t?” He swerved slightly as he spoke. The SUV swayed. Izzy didn’t bother looking up.

“Very funny.”

“I thought it was,” he said. “Look. They care about you. Your sisters,” he added, in case she wasn’t following.

This time she did glance at him, only to roll her eyes. The hazel irises were unmarred by her injury. “I’m more than capable of carrying on a conversation. I’m probably smarter than you.”

“I doubt that.”

“Oh, please.”

“How smart is sitting on your ass, feeling sorry for yourself?”

She straightened and glared at him. “I was in an explosion,” she said, speaking slowly, as if to make sure he would understand. “I could have been killed.”

“But you weren’t.”

“I was seriously injured and I lost most of my eyesight.”

“Which you could get back tomorrow if you weren’t such a girl about the surgery.”

He glanced in the rearview mirror in time to see her narrow her gaze.

“A girl?” she asked softly.

“Yeah. You know. Chicken. Lacking in bravery.”

“That’s it!” she yelled. “Let me out, right here. Let me out or I swear, I’ll kill you myself. I’ll rip you apart with my bare hands and feed your body to the snakes.”

“Snakes wouldn’t eat human flesh.”

“Shut up!”

“Skye didn’t say anything about you being hysterical.”

“Let me out!”

“No.”

She grabbed the mesh screening and rattled it, but it had withstood a lot more than a scrawny woman without much muscle on her.

“She did warn me you would be difficult,” he said. “I charge extra for that.”

Izzy sank back in the seat and resumed staring out the back window.

“If you won’t have the surgery, then you have to survive with what you have,” he told her. “That’s where I come in. I teach you how to make it. You’re staying with me until you can be on your own.”

“What if I don’t want to be on my own?”

“You think your sisters want you hanging around all the time? They have lives. You’re what? Twenty-five? Twenty-six? You ready to give up so fast?”

“Go to hell.”

“I’ve already been there.”

He turned onto the familiar paved, private road and drove toward the two-story main house. He’d bought the run-down ranch nearly eight years before. Neighboring ranchers leased his pasture for their cattle, while he used the twenty acres of wilderness for his retreats. He kept a dozen horses in the big barn and had built several guest-houses where clients stayed. There were meeting facilities, a restaurant-grade kitchen that could serve up to fifty at a time and a big media room that rivaled a multiplex.

Not that Izzy would deal with much more than the barn. He planned to work her hard enough that she didn’t have time to feel sorry for herself. The little he knew about her told him she would fight him every step of the way, but he didn’t care about that. He would win, as she put it, in the end because he had to.

He parked in front of the house and turned off the engine.

“We’re here,” he said in the silence.

Izzy folded her arms across her chest and stared out the window.

“When I let you out, you can run if you want. We’re about a mile from our closest neighbor and ten miles from the nearest town. But if you want to go looking, I won’t stop you. The temperature is close to a hundred. Without water, you’ll last maybe three days. Assuming you don’t get bit by a rattler and die sooner.”