Quint flinched when the man grabbed Annie by her other arm and jerked her to him, bringing her face to within inches of his. She squirmed, but the more she tried to get free, the more he seemed to contain her. And even as Quint told himself to stay where he was, to let her lead her own life and get out of her own trouble, he was rising to his feet.
He couldn't just sit here and let the brute intimidate her like this. As he started across the wooden floor toward the two of them, he tried to size up the situation. The man was a giant. But when Quint saw the way the guy's fingers were pressing into Annie's flesh, he knew he couldn't turn back.
He tugged the band out of his hair, pushed it into his pocket, then shook his head and took a deep breath.
"Hey, there," he said.
The man looked up, and when Quint met the dark fury in his face, he knew that he'd underestimated him.
Quint knew if he had the common sense of a jelly bean, he'd keep going and leave the building. But since Annie had barged into his world, he was painfully lacking in common sense. Right now, he was walking into trouble with a capital T.
"What's your problem?" the guy demanded around the cigar.
Quint stopped and looked him up and down. He knew that any man could be dropped with a heel to the kneecap, or a hard kick in the groin. And in prison when you faced off with someone, you hit hard, fast and dirty. But with Annie in the way, he couldn't do anything just yet.
"Yeah, there's a problem." He looked right at Annie. "I've been looking all over for you. Where've you been?"
She was staring at him wide-eyed, then he caught a flash of relief, followed by a glimmer of understanding. And she fell in with his hastily constructed plan.
"Oh, there you are, honey! God, it was awful," she gasped. "Some creep … he ran me off the road and the car … it's in a ditch. It's ruined."
While the big man was distracted, Annie pulled to one side and freed herself. The next thing Quint knew she came toward him and threw herself at him as she sobbed, "I'm so sorry, so sorry." Then her arms circled his waist and her body was against his.
His breath caught as she pressed her softness against him, and for a split second, he lost his focus. He forgot what this was all about, that it was make-believe and in a heartbeat, the whole world seemed centered on holding on to this woman in his arms.
"Please forgive me," she gasped in a tremulous voice, then lifted her face and the next thing he knew, she was kissing him.
What happened next was a devastating mixture of pure instinct and raw desire. When he felt her lips on his and tasted her sweetness on his tongue, he drew her even closer and kissed her as if it was what he'd wanted to do all along.
Every ounce of need that had been bottled up in prison was in the kiss, every unfulfilled dream and painful desire. For the first time in what seemed a lifetime, he felt alive. And whatever the circumstances, he wasn't going to argue about it. Not when he felt surrounded by heat and softness and shot through with searing fire. Not when she was responding to his touch as surely as he was to hers.
Then as suddenly as she kissed him, Annie jerked back and everything was gone. Her eyes were wide with fear, and he realized that the fear came from the other man pulling her back toward him. He swung her to his right as if she weighed no more than a rag doll, but kept a firm grip on her upper arm.
Before Quint could react, he saw Annie struggle to stand, then ball her free hand into a fist and swing it sideways into the man's solar plexus. The blow barely made the man gasp, but it gave Quint a momentary advantage.
He spun to his right and kicked his left foot straight at the man's kneecap. He felt a satisfying crunch under the heel of his boot and heard a raging curse as the huge man fell to the floor in pain.
Quint turned to grab Annie and get her out of there, but right then someone yelled, "What in the hell's going on?"
Three men came rushing out of the bar. A ruddy-faced cowboy looked down at the man on the floor who was holding his leg and moaning, then he looked at Quint. "What've you done to him?"
Quint held up both hands palms out, cursing himself for letting Annie draw him into this. "Hey, he started it. I was just helping the lady, and he—"
The man looked past Quint, then frowned. "What lady?"
Quint darted a look to his left, but Annie wasn't at the counter. He turned, taking in the restaurant in a sweeping look, but Annie wasn't anywhere in sight. A sense of déjà vu hit him with the impact of a fist driven into his middle. What a fool he was! Annie had taken off and left him to deal with the mess. And heaven help him, but it hurt more than anything Gerald Darling or the prison system had ever done to him. Quint looked back at the man on the ground, then at the others. He might have made another mistake, but this time he wasn't going to stay around and protest his innocence so some D.A. could lock him up and throw away the key.
"Look, I don't want any trouble."
"You probably broke this guy's leg," one of the bar patrons said.
As the others came closer to gather around the groaning man on the floor, their attention was diverted, and Quint took his chance. He eased backward toward the entrance, never taking his eyes off the cluster of people by the counter. He kept moving until he felt the door at his back and he slowly eased it back.
He almost had it open before one of the men looked up and yelled, "Hey, you, you ain't going nowhere until we get this settled."
"Yeah, call the cops," the injured man on the floor gasped. "I'm pressin' charges."
Quint didn't wait to hear any more. He turned and hit the door with his shoulder, hurling it open to crash back against the outer wall. He lunged out into the heat of the night, crossing the sagging wood in two long strides and bypassed the stone steps to jump over the low railing and down onto the parking lot.
His feet hit the heavy gravel with a jarring crunch, then he turned to his left and ran for the Corvette that was all but invisible in the deep shadows cast by the only tree in the whole area. He only had a fleeting moment to look around, but Annie wasn't anywhere in sight.
As he neared the car, he felt like a human magnet, drawing trouble to him on all sides. Just because he'd met a woman with green eyes and a stubbornness that seemed to throw her into harm's way, he was doing things that he'd promised himself he never would do again. Just two days out of prison and he'd broken every rule he thought he'd forged in stone behind the chain-link and razor wire fence.
But Annie was gone, and that was over. The kiss had been a diversion, nothing more, and right now he wished he had another diversion. But there wasn't any. He just had to get the hell out of here in one piece.
When he reached the Corvette, he would have vaulted over the door to get in, but as his hands touched the warm metal, he knew that nothing was over. Someone was sitting in the passenger seat, and he didn't need bright lights to know that Annie wasn't gone at all.
Quint stared at her sitting in the passenger seat clutching her purse on her lap. And a rage inside him erupted. "Get the hell out of my car," he rasped, his fingers clutching the metal frame so tightly they ached.
"Quint, I—"
"You're on your own, lady. Now get out of my car."
"You get in and let's get out of here. We can't—"
"There is no we. Get that clear, here and now."
If Annie had had any other choice, she wouldn't have been in this car again, but she'd been robbed of choices when she came out of the restaurant moments ago and found the parking lot all but empty. And not after that kiss; it had been meant to convince Bugsy but ended up rocking her world. And she couldn't allow anything like that to get in her way.
She hadn't known exactly what Quint would do when he found her here, but she hadn't expected him to be raging at her. Not when the taste of him was still on her lips, and she knew all she had to do was to touch her lips with her tongue to experience it again.
But right now the kiss might never have been. The man looked as if he wanted to lift her bodily and throw her out of t
he car. And she had no arguments left for him. "There is no we," he'd said, and she knew the stark truth of that sentence.
That moment when she'd been shocked to see him coming to her rescue with Bugsy might never have been. And when they had kissed … well, that was gone now, too. There is no we.
"All right, all right," she said, bracing herself. "You made your point. I'll get out and leave you—"
Before she could get the words out, the front door of the restaurant crashed open and Quint twisted to look back over his shoulder as someone yelled out, "Hey, you, get back here! The cops are on their way." Things were going from bad to worse. Quint turned and, with a muttered curse vaulted the closed door, slid in behind the wheel and pushed the keys into the ignition.
The engine roared to life. "Hold on," he told her and jammed the car into gear.
Tires spun on gravel, throwing it out behind them as Quint swung the car to the left. When he snapped on the headlights, Annie saw two men charging the car from the restaurant, waving their hands and yelling, but whatever they were saying was lost in the roar of the engine.
She felt the car fishtail on the gravel. Then the tires hit the pavement of the highway and squealed until the car finally surged forward into the night, heading west.
Annie gripped the sides of the leather seat as the speed built until she could hear a roaring going past her ears from the rush of air. Her hair was being teased wildly, stinging her eyes and whipping across her cheek, but she made no attempt to brush it from her face. She didn't let go of her grip on the seat until Quint eased off on the gas as the lights of Langston faded into the night behind them.
She glanced at Quint, his hair tangled and the deep glow of the dash lights casting odd shadows on his face. There was tension in his jaw and the way he gripped the steering wheel; despite the fact he was decelerating, she could tell he wasn't exactly relaxing.
He didn't want her with him, he'd made that clear enough, but she knew that her presence in his car wasn't the main reason he was darting looks behind them and taking quick, shallow breaths.
"What happened in there?" she asked.
Quint slowed the car even more as he rummaged around in the pocket on the console, then he said to her, "Take the wheel."
"What?"
He cast her a shadowed look. "Since you're in this car for now, help me and hold it steady for a minute."
She reached over to touch the wheel and was taken aback that the heat of his touch still lingered in the leather cover. But she gripped it and did her best to keep the car fairly straight on the road while Quint quickly raked his hair back to tie it in a low ponytail.
When he took the wheel again, Annie drew back and fumbled in her pant pocket to get her own band. As she managed to capture her hair, she said, "Well, are you going to tell me?"
"What?"
"What did you do back there to have them charging out after you and threatening to call the cops?"
"I hurt that guy's knee, and he wasn't exactly happy about it. I think that's enough."
"He deserved it," she muttered. "He's a jerk."
"I started to tell the men in the bar that very thing, but my prime witness to the incident had made herself scarce." He looked at her, the night hiding his expression. "Who was that guy back there?" he asked.
"A truck driver. He gave me a ride, then when I came back from making a phone call, he … he thought I should stay with him."
"What a stupid thing to do," Quint muttered.
"Excuse me?"
"Stupid. Hitching a ride with that gorilla was the most stupid, dangerous thing—"
"Okay, okay, you made your point. I shouldn't have taken his offer of a ride, but I wasn't in any position to be picky."
"Thanks for leaving me holding the bag."
"You had it under control," she said with a shrug. "I thought it would just get confusing if I stayed around."
"So you ran out and got in my car?"
"I left," she said. "Getting in your car wasn't in the plan, but after I grabbed my suitcase from his truck, I realized I didn't have any other options."
"Well, I do," he said. He slowed the car a bit as he glanced at her. "And you're right in the middle of every one of them."
She could feel her hands clenching into fists on her thighs, but she tried to keep her voice light. "If I'm involved, don't you think you should fill me in?"
"All right. You're in trouble, and unless you tell me right now what's going on, I'm dumping you on the side of the road, and I won't show up again later on to flatten a lecherous truck driver when he comes on to you."
"I didn't ask—"
"No, you didn't. And it won't happen again. But I think I deserve some sort of explanation for what's going on with you." He paused, then, "Now you've got options – tell me or get out."
Quint almost held his breath. He was certain she'd ask to be put on the side of the road, and it shocked him that that wasn't what he really wanted. Despite the fact he almost dumped her in the parking lot at the restaurant, the idea of seeing her in his rearview mirror again, looking like a waif by the side of the road, was immensely distasteful to him.
He could sense her moving, looking away from him, but she didn't tell him to take a flying leap or to stop and let her out. "You're right. You deserve an explanation, but I'm not in trouble. I've just got a small problem."
"Semantics," he muttered.
"Trouble is something you get yourself into, a problem is something you have to figure out. And I'm trying to figure out something."
"What?"
He heard her release a sigh, then she spoke quickly, "I was supposed to be in a wedding, and I decided not to be. It's that simple."
"Whose wedding?"
"A friend's."
"If it's that simple, what's the thing you have with the cops?"
"It's not the same thing you have about the cops, that's for sure."
That came from left field and shook Quint. "What are you talking about?"
"I saw the way the mention of the cops made you take off like a bat out of hell. You wanted to toss me right there, but you took off and that meant dragging me with you. I think you're the one who's got something going on."
Quint tried to regroup. "We weren't talking about me."
"Maybe we should."
"It's my car, my rules. We're talking about you. If you're going to be in this car, I have to know what you're into."
"All I want is to go to New Mexico. That's it."
"What about the wedding?"
"It's been called off."
"So, you took off?"
She shifted in the seat and when he took a look at her, she was resting her head against the back of the seat, staring at the starry sky overhead. "I had to." She brushed at her cheek and he could see weariness in the action.
Something in that simple action touched him, maybe in the same way a stray puppy's plight would have. That comparison almost made him laugh. What he felt when he was around this woman wasn't pity, especially after the unexpected kiss at the restaurant.
"Why did you take off?" he asked.
"It was getting ugly, and I didn't want any part of it."
He knew that feeling, but she was doing a better job of avoiding being involved than he'd ever been able to do. "Just because you ran out on a friend's wedding, the cops are after you?"
"No, of course not. I never said they were after me."
"All right. Where are you heading?"
"I told you before – west."
"West as in New Mexico?"
"Yes, New Mexico."
"And what's there?"
"A friend," she said.
"Another friend?"
"Yes."
"Is that one getting married, too?"
"No, of course not." She shifted in the seat and said, "Can I ask you something?"
"I told you, I'm off-limits as a subject of this conversation as long as we're in this car."
"I just want to know why you stepp
ed in with that truck driver."
He wished he knew the answer to that himself. "I've got a bad case of potentially terminal foolishness."
Her laughter came from nowhere, a soft, lilting sound in the warm evening air and a wonderful contrast to the feelings and events since he'd met her. He couldn't remember the last time he'd heard a woman's laughter, or how absolutely beautiful it sounded.
"We've all had that from time to time," she said softly. "Look at me, I got in the truck with that … that gorilla."
He looked at her, the sound of her laughter was nothing compared to her smile exposed by the soft lights of the dash. He'd all but forgotten about laughter and beauty in this world, but this woman was bringing them back full force. "You got out of it in one piece."
"Thanks to you," she said softly as her smile began to die. "You were great back there."
He looked away, hating the end of the gentle expression of pleasure. "Any man, no matter how big he is, will fall like a log if you get him in the knee."
"Well, I'd always heard it was another part of the male anatomy you were supposed to aim for."
He actually found himself smiling at that, an expression that felt as if it hadn't been used for a lifetime. "That works, too."
"I bet it does."
He regripped the steering wheel as he realized how foreign this was to him, a pleasant conversation with another human being. "Although let me give you a bit of advice. Hitting a mountain in the stomach isn't exactly effective."
"It was all I could think of doing at the time."
"It helped, actually. It took him off guard long enough for me to do some damage."
"I thought if I acted like I was looking for you and kissed you…" Her voice trailed off, but not before her words brought back that moment when her lips touched his. The car jerked forward as tension began to replace the ease of moments earlier. "I did what I thought I needed to do," she said in a rush.
"Forget it," he said, but knew that was easier said than done.
"I want you to know that if there'd been any other ride around there, I wouldn't have gotten in your car. And I'll get out as soon as we get to the next town."
THE BRIDE WORE BLUE JEANS Page 5
