Page 36 of Outcast

She walked out of the room and locked the door, muttering something about the bourgeoisie. I clamped my lips shut. If she’d seen some of the apartments Mom and I shared in the early days, she wouldn’t compare me to the likes of Henry, who had grown up stinking rich.

I turned to bourgeoisie boy, who was already halfway through the second round of sandwiches. “What are you doing?”

“I’m hungry.” He threw a Snickers bar onto my lap.

I picked it up and held it to the light, examining its wrapper for puncture marks, breaks in its seams or any other signs of tampering.

Henry snatched it out of my hands, pulled it open and gave it back. “Eat something and keep up your strength. If they want to drug you, they’d hold you down or do it while you’re sleeping.”

After sniffing for chemical scents, I bit into the chocolate and rolled it on my tongue, checking for unusual flavors. Yesterday, I’d been too busy freaking out about having been left in the middle of a field to think about how I’d slept through the duct taping, but now, I had a few ideas. “Did you drug my cocoa?”

“Hobson,” he snapped.

Right. Forget about the past and focus on the current situation. “Why are you so calm? Have you been kidnapped before?”

“Twice.” He pulled open his Snickers bar and took a huge bite. “The first I barely remember because I was five, but the second happened just before my first day at Mercia.”

“You were eleven?”

He paused and gave me a strange look. “Ten. My birthday’s on the first of September.”

“What happened?”

“Cars ambushed the limo on a country road, and they snatched me.” He shrugged. “It was in all the papers.”

I chewed the chocolate and swallowed. “I didn’t keep abreast on the international news circuit at that age, so sorry I missed it.”

His face split into a crooked grin and his eyes flashed to mine with a mixture of mirth and desire. “You’re actually quite amusing.”

“Thanks.” I tried to ignore the sleeping butterflies that stirred in my stomach, picked out a peanut and held it to the light. “I always wanted to be the side entertainment during a kidnapping.”

Henry chuckled, drawing my gaze to his smiling face. He finished his Snickers bar in two more bites and shrugged off his waterproof jacket. Then he unzipped his thermal jacket and pulled off his sweater. The fabric rode up, revealing a stomach that could have been carved out of marble. His abs rippled with his movements, a contour of peaks and valleys I longed to explore with my fingertips and tongue.

All the moisture in my throat rushed south and gathered between my legs. What caught my attention most was the golden treasure trail that led down into the waistband of his cargo pants. When the fabric rode up to the bottom of his pectoral muscles, a little gasp escaped my throat. “What… What are you doing?”

“It’s hot.” He pulled down his long-sleeved T-shirt, abruptly ending the show. “You’ll get dehydrated if you keep on all that outdoor gear. Take something off.”

Heat rushed to my cheeks as I imagined his bare skin pressed against my own, and I clutched the Snickers bar to my chest. “I’ll keep on what I have, thanks.”

He rolled his eyes. “Suit yourself.” Then his gaze landed on my chocolate. “Are you going to eat that?”

“Yes!” I took a larger than average bite of the Snickers and chewed hard.

Henry laughed and lowered himself back onto the mattress. The see-saw effect of his weight had me rolling onto his side and inhaling his comforting citrus and mint scent. “Oh, Hobson,” he said with a chuckle. “If I had to be kidnapped, I could think of no more an amusing companion than you.”

I longed to snap at him and demand to know if that was why he’d stood back and watched me get bullied and tormented, but he’d remind me to focus on the present. Instead, I asked, “What do you mean?”

“You’re stubborn. The average person would have left the school with all that pressure. I know Yelverton stayed out of financial desperation. Someone living in her kind of squalor can’t afford to leave when things get tough, but you could have gone anywhere with the Trommel fortune. Why?”

“You’ve answered your own question.” I shifted to the other side of the mattress.

“What are you talking about?”

“Trommel fortune. There’s no Hobson fortune. My father’s a fashion photographer with a young family. He can’t afford boarding schools.”

“Is that why your mother left? She was a model, wasn’t she?”

I bit down hard on my Snickers bar. Of course, someone like him would see all women as shameless gold diggers who walked out on perfectly good men for those with more money.