Page 155

“Hey…Mia loves my shirts,” Max heard Kade yell through the door as he raced for his vehicle.
The smell of alcohol assailed him as he closed the door of his rented vehicle, and it wasn’t coming from just the garment he was wearing. Grabbing the bottle, he lowered the window and tossed it onto the dirt driveway. He’d throw it away when he got back. Mia was coming home with him, and she was intoxicating enough to keep him drunk on her forever. The liquor had been a poor substitute, and it had fogged part of his memory. From this day forward, he wanted to remember everything, experience every part of the woman he loved.
Starting the car, he jammed it roughly into gear and turned the small sports car around, heading down the driveway much faster than he should be going down a road full of potholes. But Max ignored them, his mind already focused on only one goal.
No more bullshit.
No more games.
Mia belonged to him, and it was beyond time he claimed her completely, knew her totally, loved her unconditionally. And once he found her, he was never letting go.
Mia fastened her seatbelt woodenly, her entire body exhausted, her heart and soul empty. She might be here on this plane bound for Los Angeles, but she was only a shell, a body going to another place. Her heart had stayed with Max back at the ranch.
She stowed her purse and carry-on beneath the seat of the aircraft and leaned her head back against the headrest, closing her eyes against the pain of knowing that she was leaving Max. Again. Maybe taking those few hours in the shelter of his arms had been a mistake, making it even more painful to be without him. Somehow, she needed to rebuild her life away from everyone she cared about. She was toxic to them, and if Danny did locate her, she didn’t want anyone she loved to be anywhere nearby.
“You have to the count of ten to get that beautiful ass up and out of this plane.”
Mia’s eyes popped open in shock, the sound of Max’s deep, masculine voice vibrating right next to her ear, so close she could feel his warm breath caress her temple.
“Max?” She stared right into his eyes, stormy, turbulent, and so close she had to tilt her head back to see them. “You have to get off this plane. We’re going to be taking off soon.”
“One.” Both his expression and voice were uncompromising.
“Max. Stop this. You need to go.” Mia was panicked. Max didn’t look like he was about to back down, and she couldn’t get off this plane. But she wanted to. God, how she wanted to leave right now, throw herself into Max’s safe embrace and let him take her wherever he wanted to go.
“Two.” He bent down and snagged her carry-on from under the seat and dropped her purse in her lap.
He brushed his upper body against her, and Mia tried not to inhale the masculine fragrance that assaulted her as he straightened.
Mentally slapping herself, she remembered that she couldn’t be weak. “I’m leaving you, Max. I don’t want to be with you anymore. I don’t love you.”Liar.She was such a liar. But she couldn’t think of any other way to make him back off. And she really, really needed him to go. She couldn’t look him in the eye and say that she didn’t love him, so she stared straight ahead, waiting for him to exit the plane.
“Three.”
Mia’s eyes snapped back to his face. He’d slung her small bag over his shoulder and his arms were folded in front of him. He looked obstinate, and determined to get her off the plane. And at the moment, Max Hamilton looked anything but tame. In fact, he looked pretty damn certain he was going to bend her to his will.
Okay…well…she could be just as pigheaded as he was being at the moment. “I’m not going, Max.” She crossed her arms, frowning.
“Four.” He reached down and flipped the latch on her seatbelt, opening it with a simple flick of his wrist.
“Don’t make this harder than it already is. Please.” Mia had lost all desire for pretense, her look beseeching him to cease. Blinking hard, trying to keep her tears of frustration from falling, she saw a dangerous glint in his eyes, a dogged stubbornness that warned her that he wasn’t going to relent.
“Ten.” The word had barely left Max’s lips before he snatched her bodily out of her seat and slung her over his shoulder.
Mia scrambled to hang onto her purse, her fists beating on Max’s back. “Let go. Dammit. What are you doing?” It was actually pretty obvious that he was bodily carrying her off the plane, his stride steady and even, as though he were trying not to jostle her around too much.
Mia decided at that moment that there was nothing more mortifying than being bodily removed from a full aircraft. Luckily, she was near the front of the plane, but Max never stopped to let her down, even after they’d exited and were heading down the ramp and into the main airport.
Exasperated, she said to his back, “What happened to counting to ten?”
“Took too long. You talked too much,” he answered abruptly, moving toward the airport exit, drawing looks from the people they were passing that ranged from amusement to alarm.
Max had parked in the loading zone, a completely illegal place to leave his car. “I bet I would have gotten a ticket,” she mumbled, irritated.
By the time he deposited her in the bucket seat of the sporty vehicle, she was shaking with frustration. He didn’t say a word as he calmly snapped her seatbelt, closed the passenger door and then jogged around to the driver’s side. He had the car in motion before she could get out, which she realized had been his intention.
“You do understand that you just kidnapped me. Last I knew, it’s illegal to take a woman without her permission,” she told him in a sharp tone. “How did you get through security, anyway?”
Max shrugged. “I bought a ticket on the flight.”