Crazy Hot

by Tara Janzen

  And wasn't that just great. He was so fucking glad to know somebody was having himself a real good time tonight.

  IT was official, Quinn decided. They'd hit disaster status. The Southern Cross Hotel in Boulder had been compromised, and Kid and Nikki right along with it. Kid hadn't gone into details, but Quinn knew him well enough to read between the lines, and what he'd figured out wasn't anything he wanted to discuss with Regan right now. Better for her to have her little sister close at hand, all safe and sound, before she heard the particulars of Kid and Nikki's ill-fated attempt to reach the hotel.

  Quinn pulled off the Boulder side street where Betty had been idling while he and Regan had been arguing for the last five minutes in between phone calls from Kid and Hawkins. She wanted to go to Lafayette. He wanted to ship her as far away from this mess as he could get her. She wanted a chance to study the dinosaur bones. He didn't give a damn about the bones.

  And somehow, she'd won. Thanks to the last phone conversation with Hawkins, who had pointed out that Regan might spot something about the bones that her grandfather had missed. Quinn turned the car east, heading toward Lafayette and the warehouse, instead of Denver and Steele Street, where he should have been taking her.

  “You won't regret this,” she said, her voice full of excitement, but she was wrong. He already regretted it, and they hadn't even gotten there yet.

  “Thirty minutes. That's all. Then we tie the whole thing up,” he said. “And Hawkins better be right about bringing you in.”

  The clincher had been time. They were running out. Hawkins had weighed in heavily in favor of using everything they had to get some sort of edge on Roper and get their dead-in-the-water operation back on track—now. If they didn't handle this right, the McKinneys were going to be prime candidates for the Federal Witness Protection Program, or they were going to be dead.

  It was a chance nobody wanted to take, which had put Quinn's back flat up against the wall and left him doing the exact opposite of what every instinct in his body was telling him to do. He was taking Regan to Lafayette to look over the damn bones, and probably taking her straight into a whole lot of trouble.

  Shit. The absolute best day of his whole life had just taken a real bad turn for the worse.

  CHAPTER

  20

  ONCE HE'D DELIVERED Nikki to Steele Street and left her with her grandfather, Kid found Hawkins on the eighth floor, in the armory, picking out a pair of HK MP5 submachine guns with four extra thirty-round clips.

  “Expecting trouble?” Kid asked, crossing the room where SDF kept their weapons and assault equipment.

  “Looking forward to it, if it gets this far,” Hawkins said, loading a magazine into one of the guns. “We either finish this thing up, or it starts coming down around our ears even more than it already has. Where's the girl?”

  “Nikki? With her grandfather.”

  “When I checked, he was asleep.” Hawkins slipped the extra clips into a hip pouch on his belt.

  “Still is, but she wanted to see him, make sure he was okay. It's been a rough night.”

  “Johnny still asleep, too?”

  Kid nodded. “You going to need another shooter in Lafayette, or do you want me to stay here?”

  “Here. We're going to set the bones up as an easy snatch-and-grab for Roper and his guys, if anything about seven tons of rock can be called easy.” He flashed Kid a weary grin. “What a fucking mess. This thing has been crazy from the get-go. I want the guns, and I want out.”

  “What about Regan McKinney?”

  “Quinn is taking her to Lafayette to look over the fossils.” Hawkins picked up an extra pistol magazine and slipped it in a separate pouch. “Seems the old man found something he forgot to tell me about. I knew he was pretty excited about this one chunk of rock. But he pretty much got wound up about every chunk of rock we had. Then when I'd push him on it a little, he'd kind of forget why he was so excited. I think the pressure has been too much for him. He doesn't forget how to button his shirts or anything, but he does forget what he's doing, even while he's doing it. He might not have been Dylan's best call for the job.”

  “Dylan usually doesn't make mistakes.”

  “Yeah, well, he usually doesn't get very damn sentimental, either.”

  Kid understood Hawkins's complaint. He knew SDF's and Steele Street's history as well as any of the guys who had lived it, starting with the street gang of car thieves who'd worked out of this very building, and the Bust, as they always called it.

  He also knew about the subsequent summer they'd all spent baking in the desolate badlands of western Colorado at the misnamed Rabbit Valley. Not a one of the busted juvies had seen a rabbit the whole damn time they'd been there, though Hawkins had told him about a run-in he'd had with a rattlesnake. Wilson McKinney always figured pretty heavily in the stories, kind of a curmudgeon-with-a-heart-of-gold type, but no one had ever mentioned his granddaughters. Of course, Nikki couldn't have been much more than a little kid back then. Regan would have been more the guys' age, though, and Kid was betting Quinn had noticed her—plenty.

  “Skeeter says Wilson has got a good reputation with dinosaur bones and stuff.”

  “So does his granddaughter, apparently. Now it's her turn.” Hawkins checked the load on his pistol before returning it to its holster. “By the way, Dylan called about twenty minutes ago. He'll be in tonight. Something's come up in Colombia.”

  Colombia, Kid thought. His brother J. T. and Creed were in Colombia.

  “He said he'd have better intel by the time he got here.” Hawkins glanced up at Kid. “I need you to get some sleep. Once Roper gets the bones, we're not letting them out of our sight. Quinn and I will finish up the night shift, but I'm going to need you for the A.M. stakeout.”

  “Quinn shouldn't even be here in Denver, let alone be chasing Roper's merchandise around, not with the price Roper has on his head,” Kid said. As for whatever had come up in Colombia, his brother and Creed were on a hostage rescue mission that didn't have anything to do with the Roper Jones operation. Maybe they'd finally gotten their guy away from the rebels who had kidnapped him.

  “Yeah,” Hawkins agreed. “Dylan is going to kick all our asses if we lose the poster boy, but Quinn is ready to rumble, and quite frankly, I think he's gonna kick Roper's ass—which works out a whole lot better than if I do it.”

  Kid agreed with a nod of his head. ALL-AMERICAN HERO TAKES OUT CRIME LORD played a whole hell of a lot better than EX-CON MURDERS CRIMINAL SUSPECT IN GANGLIKE SLAYING, even in the brackish backwaters of Capitol Hill where SDF's orders originated out of the underbelly of the Department of Defense.

  “You ever hear of feminine mystique?” Kid asked.

  “Betty Friedan?” Hawkins said, without so much as a lift of his eyebrows when the question came out of the blue. “Yeah. I read it. Pretty damned depressing book. I think they put it in the library at the state pen just to mess with our minds.”

  “No, I'm not talking about a book. It's a . . . I don't know, a way of thinking maybe. Or a way of . . . glowing.”

  That got Hawkins's attention. He looked up from the ammunition bench, where they made their custom loads.

  “Glowing?”

  Kid shrugged self-consciously. “Yeah. Nikki McKinney, she's an artist, only paints men, really out-there, spectacular stuff, but one of the things she really likes in a guy is his feminine mystique, the way he kind of glows with the tension inherent in the masculine/feminine dichotomy.”

  Hawkins blinked, then said, “Okay.” To Kid's surprise, he didn't sound the least bit incredulous or confused—only slightly curious.

  Great. He knew he'd come to the right place. Kid's brother J. T. wouldn't know feminine mystique from beans, but Hawkins, well, the guy just knew stuff.

  “Well,” Kid said hesitantly. “I . . . uh . . . don't have any.”

  Hawkins gave him a sidelong glance. “No feminine mystique?”

  “Nope.”

  “And you need some, b
ecause you like this girl?”

  “Yeah. I guess I do. She says she can help me find mine, but—I don't know.” He shrugged.

  “Go ahead and let her.” Hawkins turned back to the bench and finished loading another magazine. “Hell, you might be surprised with what she comes up with.”

  Let her? Kid studied Hawkins's face. He was serious. Okay. He supposed there were worse ways to spend time than posing naked for a beautiful woman who might possibly finger-paint your body, and he was pretty sure that would be Nikki's way of helping. A grin split his face. Definitely top ten material there.

  “Okay. Maybe I'll do just that.”

  “I remember her from Rabbit Valley,” Hawkins said as he shoved another ammo mag in his belt. “She was a cute kid. I guess she turned out okay.”

  “More than okay.” Kid's grin broadened. “She's amazing.”

  “Right. Another amazing McKinney woman.” Hawkins let out a short laugh, then went back to loading magazines. “Look, I'll call you about four o'clock to tell you where we are.”

  Kid checked his watch. It was almost eleven. Buoyed by the new plan, he helped Hawkins finish up. When Hawkins left for Lafayette, Kid went back to the office to check on Nikki.

  She was alone and asleep. The minute he saw her, curled around a pillow on the bed in one of the guest suites, he knew he couldn't do it. He couldn't be naked in front of her while she painted him or took his picture, or tried to dress him up in angel wings or anything else. It was a great fantasy, but the reality of it was impossible.

  First, he'd probably embarrass himself with a raging hard-on, which Travis had not done. He didn't know how, but the guy had been totally placid during the whole shoot. Kid just didn't have that kind of disinterest. He hadn't been able to think of much besides sex since she'd answered the door back at her house.

  Secondly, he just couldn't do it. Couldn't bear the thought of her looking for something in him that just wasn't there, and missing him in the process. Not that she was likely to miss his guaranteed hard-on. He was more than okay in that department. No ego. Just the facts, and given her artistic expertise, so to speak, she would definitely notice.

  So, great. He was standing there, watching her sleep and thinking about his equipment—and the equipment was rising to the occasion.

  It was pathetic. She was just lying there, fully clothed, breathing, and he was getting turned on. It didn't make sense. She wasn't even his type, not even close. He liked tall, willowy blondes and brunettes with long hair and even longer legs. Girls who were athletic, liked extreme sports, and were preferably stuck on him. Colorado was full of these beautiful outdoor girls whose only makeup was a tan and whose idea of fixing their hair was winding it up in some kind of a knot and sticking a chopstick or a pencil or both through it. They wore cargo shorts and T-shirts that said SAVE THE ESCALANTE, and their mountain bikes cost more than their cars.

  Nikki still had mascara smears on her face, and her little silver box of makeup doodads was right next to her on the bedside table. She had five earrings in one ear, and three in the other, and her hair was black and purple, neither color anywhere near a natural shade. Her T-shirt had almost as much Lycra in it as her little black skirt. It clung to her, leaving nothing to the imagination—as if his imagination needed any help.

  She stirred on the bed while he watched, stretching with sleepy grace and absolutely riveting him to the spot. He couldn't take his eyes off her, and when her eyes opened, her gaze went straight to him.

  “I missed you,” she said around a small yawn, her hair a wild tousle of pure bed head, her T-shirt riding up just enough to give him a heart attack.

  Yeah, right, he thought, his pulse skipping a beat. He'd known her a little over four hours, been gone less than twenty minutes, and he'd missed her, too, a lot. This was so pitiful, feeling this way, but there didn't seem to be a damn thing he could do about it. She was so freaking beautiful. How could any guy not stare?

  “How's your grandfather?” He already knew, had just checked on the old man, but it felt like the polite thing to ask.

  “Asleep”—she yawned again—“just like the boy watching him. What's his name again?”

  “Johnny Ramos.”

  “He's cute. Almost pretty, with those delicate Hispanic features,” she said, dragging her hand back through her hair, making it stick up even more wildly from her head. “How old is he?”

  Kid just stared at her, then expelled a burst of laughter. “No way,” he warned her, and laughed again. “No way. He's only seventeen.”

  A sleepy, teasing smile curved her lips. “Okay. He's jailbait. How about you? Have you changed your mind about modeling for me?”

  “Maybe,” he admitted, and wondered just how true it might be.

  “I was dreaming about you.”

  Well, that pretty much froze him to the floor.

  “I was so scared tonight,” she continued, her smile fading into another yawn. She rolled onto her back and covered her mouth until the yawn was finished, then turned back to him. “Sometimes I talk too much, when I'm scared. I'm sorry I went all motor-mouth on you.”

  “Not a problem,” he assured her, knocked senseless by the way she moved. He'd never seen so much unconscious grace in such a small package. Everything about her was so smooth—mesmerizing. “I think I've got your whole life story now.”

  “How awful for you.” She propped her head up on her hand and gave him the full benefit of her undivided attention.

  Even with the mascara smudges, he'd never seen more beautiful eyes, such a clear, sun-shot gray, her lashes so thick it occurred to him they might not be real, her eyebrows like two perfect sparrow wings. Everything about her was perfect. She was pedicured, manicured, and probably bikini-waxed.

  Whoa, what a dangerous thought to have pop into his mind.

  He cleared his throat. “No. It was fine, really, except that you were scared.”

  “Weren't you?”

  “A little,” he confessed. “In places.” Especially for her.

  She stared at him for a long, quiet moment.

  “I found my cherry lip gloss.”

  “Uh, great.” Cherry lips. Right. That's just what he needed to know—that her mouth was all glossy soft and sticky sweet with the taste of cherries.

  “Are you going to be around for a while? Doing the bodyguard thing?” she asked, sitting up on the bed. A long, sinuous stretch followed, complete with another yawn.

  “Yes, ma'am.” The words came out sounding like something he'd swallowed. His heart beat heavily in his chest. He was going to have to kiss her. He couldn't possibly get through the night, or even the next five minutes, without kissing her. His body was nearly electrified with the need to touch her, to somehow draw her close and bury his face in the curve of her neck and shoulder, to open his mouth on her skin and run his tongue all the way down her body from her throat to between her legs.

  Geezus. He was going to fry a circuit board if he didn't get out of the room.

  He cleared his throat again. “I'll be out in the office, if you need anything.” Amazingly, the statement came out fairly controlled, as if he were actually in charge of himself—which he wasn't at all. She breathed, and his pulse raced. She glanced at him, and his blood surged.

  “No,” she said quickly, half coming off the bed, a trace of panic in her voice. Then she blushed and sat back down. “I mean, I was hoping you would stay, for just a while. I thought, well, you don't have to take your clothes off or anything, but I thought I could do your face.”

  “Do my face?”

  “Yes.” She gave him a small smile and scooted back on the bed, making room for him at the same time as she reached for her box of tiny makeup containers. “Just your face, I swear. Please. It'll help me relax. I've never been shot at before.”

  Yes. Of course. Perfect. He owed her that much at least. He'd be happy to sit on the bed with her and have her hands all over him.

  All over his face—anything to get close to h
er.

  And when he died from pure and abject sexual frustration, it would at least be an artistic death. He would keel over looking like God knew what by the time she was finished with him.

  No, he told himself, use your head. It was impossible. He simply wasn't to be trusted on a bed with her.

  “Sure,” he said, walking over as casually as possible and consigning himself to a few minutes of glorious torture.

  But it wasn't a few minutes. A half an hour later, Nikki was still “doing his face,” and he was floating someplace between heaven and hell.

  She smelled wonderful, not like perfume, but a little like makeup, a little like her studio, and a lot like warm skin and soft breath, and up close he'd figured out that her eyelashes were real. She'd gotten an expression on her face, the same look he'd seen when she'd been working with Travis, and he was fascinated by it. He'd never thought anyone could be so intensely focused on his face.

  What was she seeing? he wondered, when she would lean back and narrow her gaze, taking him all in before she started in anew. He might have doubted it was him at all, except that now and then she would meet his gaze, and color would rise in her cheeks.

  He loved it, her awareness. Personally, he was going for a Bronze Star in awareness. She was using her fingers on him and lots of brushes, dabbing out of her tiny pots and compacts, spiking his hair and putting color there, and every time she touched him, another pint of blood drained out of his brain and pooled in his groin. It was the most perfectly awful and wonderful sensation, a real challenge to his integrity and everything he believed in. He was holding himself so still, he was hardly breathing to keep from rising up and pressing her back down onto the bed and consuming her.

  “There,” she finally said, sitting back on her heels.

  Reaching out, she took his chin in one hand and turned his face to either side, surveying her handiwork.

  “Do you want to see?”

  “Sure.” God, he was so smooth. He'd actually managed a word without his voice cracking.