Skintight

by Susan Andersen

  He was the one who’d made this mess—no one else. He’d mishandled the situation from A to Z, from throwing the fucking ball into the pot in the first place to lying to Treena in order to get his hands on it. It was his debt to pay—he didn’t want her anywhere within a ten-mile radius of Sergei Kirov. The mere thought of the Russian learning she was in possession of the ball made him break out in a cold sweat.

  For the first time he actually blessed the fact he’d driven her away.

  He didn’t understand why she’d looked so hell-bent on helping him now, but once he’d mouthed Get lost at her, he doubted it had taken her more than a second or two to come to her senses…a fact for which he knew he ought to be eternally grateful.

  Hell, he oughtta be dancing in the stairwell knowing that Treena was safe. But he was so goddamn lonesome for her that dancing was simply beyond him at the moment.

  Dumb and Dumber hauled him out onto the fourth-floor parking area and a lightly accented voice said, “Welcome, Jax,” from the shadows. Sergei stepped out from behind the squared off hood of a freakishly long Humvee limousine a few rows over from the stairwell. “So kind of you to join us.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed drily as the two henchmen muscled him over to where the Russian stood. “‘Kind’ is my middle name. Although I must admit I did plan to send my regrets at first and go get laid instead. It’s been a long day, you know? But it turns out I was unable to refuse such a gracious invitation.” Glancing at the Lowbrow Boys who had released him but only taken a few steps away on either side, he essayed indifference with a quirk of his lips and added, deadpan, “Imagine my surprise.”

  Sergei appeared unamused and Jax shrugged. He eyed the other man’s dyed-black pompadour and pristine white rhinestone-studded jumpsuit and flowing scarf. “You’re looking mighty resplendent.”

  For just a second, the Elvis buff preened and answered with his favorite King of Rock and Roll impression. “Thank you. Thankyouverramuch.” But upon studying Jax’s empty hands, the Russian’s momentary pleasure turned to a scowl. “The tournament is finished. Where is my World Series ball?”

  Jax had thought he was prepared to take his punishment like a man, but still he heard himself prevaricate. “I didn’t know you expected it the minute the tourney was over.”

  “You do not have it with you?”

  “No.”

  Kirov looked him over, then nodded slowly. “I suppose is too much to expect a man to watch so valuable a treasure and play in final game, as well. Which, by the way, you played—how do you Americans say it?—piss poor.”

  “Not my best effort,” he agreed.

  “But you now have nothing to distract you. So you and I, we take a little ride. Go collect my ball.”

  He wasn’t big on pain—especially his own—but there was no sense putting off the inevitable. He stuffed his hands in his pockets, rocked back on his heels and looked the other man in the eye. “Well, the ride part is doable. Collecting the ball’s gonna be a bit problematic, though.”

  Kirov went very still, his eyes narrowing. “What do you say?”

  “I don’t have it. Turns out the ball didn’t belong to me, after all.”

  Dangerous color crept up the other man’s face. “And you know this fact how long?”

  “A while. But I thought I had a chance of getting it for you, anyhow.” He grimaced. “I was wrong.”

  Kirov nodded to his enforcers and the Russian brothers moved in on either side of Jax once more. They muscled him over to the nearest wall and each pinned one of his arms against the cool cement at his back. Sergei snapped his fingers and a uniform-clad chauffeur got out of the car and walked around to the rear door. Opening it, he rummaged inside, then removed something and brought it around to Sergei.

  Jax looked at the cordless nail gun the driver placed in the Russian’s hands and felt his gut turn to ice.

  Kirov approached him. “You will tell me name of person who has my baseball.”

  “I can’t do that, Sergei.”

  “Then you pay the price.”

  He swallowed drily, but managed to sound calm when he said, “You’re going to make me pay either way—and since I didn’t make good on our bet maybe I deserve whatever punishment you mete out.” Except being nailed to a wall. No one short of a baby molester deserved that.

  “Tell me what I want to know and I merely have the boys break one or two of your fingers.” Sergei hefted the nail gun. “Do you know these nails are capable of penetrating cement wall behind you? No telling how much time before someone comes along and finds you. Then there is the extraction process. Much unpleasant.”

  Christ. He had to swallow several times before he worked up enough spit to croak, “I won’t involve someone whose only crime is to be the ball’s legal owner.”

  Sergei looked at one of his goons and the man instantly flattened Jax’s left wrist against the wall and un-curled his clenched fingers with a beefy hand. Kirov pressed the head of the nail gun against Jax’s palm.

  “I give you one last chance to save yourself.”

  Jax hoped like hell the Russian couldn’t smell his fear. Knowing he was about to be pinned to the wall like a bug to a board had hot lightning zinging through his gut and his knees turning to jelly. But he looked at Kirov and didn’t say a word.

  “Hey! You! Elvis! Is this what you’re looking for?”

  Jax’s head snapped up. He had thought he couldn’t possibly be any more scared.

  He was wrong.

  Treena stood over by the stairs, her hair ablaze in the neon glow that flooded the opening at her back. She stood in a spill of tissue paper, the gift bag he’d given her turned on its side at her feet. His grandfather’s baseball was out of its Plexiglas box and in her hand, and even as he watched she tossed it up and caught it. Then she tossed it up and caught it again.

  Rage that she would place herself in this situation when he’d done everything in his power to keep her out of it shored up his weak knees. Forgetting the nail gun pressed to his palm, he surged away from the wall to go hustle her ass the hell out of there. When the Ivanovs slammed him back in place, he ignored them to glare at her. “I told you to get lost.”

  “Yeah, well, big deal. You’ve told me a lot of stupid stuff.” She returned his glower with one of her own. “I am seriously hacked off at you, Jackson—but I’m also damned if I’ll stand by and let some bully with a great Elvis look and a bad attitude literally crucify you.”

  “This is my World Series ball?” Sergei demanded, and Jax took his eyes off Treena long enough to glance at the avid expression on the Russian’s face as he watched the ball flip into the air, then land in her palm with a soft smack, flip up and smack into her palm.

  Treena commanded his attention once again when she said with flat finality, “It’s my ball, buddy.”

  “And you think I cannot take it from you?” Sergei’s voice was a slashing blade of ice. “You do not want to mess with Kirov, lady. I can nail your friend to wall and have my property wrested from your hand in mere seconds.”

  Treena didn’t so much as flinch beneath the Russian’s threat. “And you don’t want to mess with a Polish girl from a financially strapped steel town, mister. Because the instant you make one move in my direction or injure Jax in any way, this ball is history.” To demonstrate, she whipped to the right with military precision and thrust her arm out the opening above the balustrade that enclosed the floor’s outer wall. She gave one brief glance to the street several stories below before turning hard eyes on Kirov. “Lots of people down there, Elvis. If I drop the ball what do you suppose the chances are that it will still be lying around on the sidewalk for you to pick up?”

  “You would never do it,” he said confidently. “Is much too valuable.”

  She tossed the ball up and almost bobbled it in the catch. “Whoops. That was a little close.”

  Sergei snarled something Jax was pretty sure was an obscenity in his native tongue, then lowered the nail gun and turned to
face Treena fully. “What do you want? Money?”

  “No. You won the ball fair and square. But Jax bet it to you in good faith, as well. His father always told him it would be his, and it was simply a fluke that it came to me instead. So I’ll make you an exchange. The ball for Jax.” She glared at the nail gun the Russian held at his side. “Unharmed. I’ve never heard of such a sick use for a power tool in my life.”

  Sergei snapped his fingers again and the chauffeur reappeared to take the nail gun. Then Kirov gave Treena an appraising look. “You really think my Elvis look is—how you say it?—grand?”

  “Great. And, yes, I do.”

  “Kirov likes woman with taste, style and courage.”

  “Nice to know my good points are appreciated. So what’s it gonna be, Elvis?”

  He stared at her a moment, then nodded. “We will make exchange. The ball for Gallagher.”

  “Good. Meet me in the lobby in five minutes.”

  “No. We do it right here. Right now.”

  She snorted. “Yeah, right. That’s gonna happen. Bring Jax with you or the deal is off.” And retracting her hand, she disappeared down the stairs.

  Sergei stared at the spot where she’d stood, then turned to look at Jax, respect for Treena still lingering in his eyes. “There is no shame being beaten by that one. She is an Amazon. You are a luckier man than you deserve.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed, beginning to breathe easier now that she was safely away. “Lucky.” Treena’s luck, however, had run out.

  Because the minute he got his hands on her he was going to kill her.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  “IS HONOR DOING business with you.” Sergei Kirov bent and planted a kiss first on Treena’s left cheek, then on her right. Straightening, he collected the autographed World Series baseball reverently in both hands, nodded curtly to Jax and left.

  She watched him walk away from the semiprivate corner of the lobby where they’d handled the trade. “That man is one seriously scary piece of work,” she said, relieved to see the last of him. Overloaded with un-spent adrenaline and full of herself, she surged up out of her plush chair. Grabbing Jax’s hand—his beautiful, undamaged hand—she hauled him to his feet, as well. She needed more space to burn off all this manic energy, fresh air to clear her head, and after executing a fast boogie that included much exuberant wiggling of her backside, she dragged him toward the terrace doors.

  She’d done it! By God, she’d been scared and unsure that she could pull it off, but she’d done it. She was intrepid, invincible, and after barreling through the doors and onto the windswept terrace, she whirled to receive her well-deserved kudos from Jax. Beaming up at him she flung her hands wide of her body. “Well?” Tell me again that you love me.

  His hands bit into her shoulders as he yanked her up onto her toes, his eyes twin gas-blue flames, his nose inches from her own. “What the hell were you thinking?”

  More stunned than if he’d smacked her to her knees, she attempted to jerk free of his hold, but his grasp tightened, holding her in place. Her temper spiked. “I was saving your ass, you ungrateful jerk!”

  “Who the hell asked you to?” he roared, his fingers biting deeper. “I told you to go home.”

  “No, you told me to get lost! Don’t you try prettying it up now that everyone’s safe and sound.” Bringing her arms up between them, she snapped them wide, breaking his hold. But she didn’t retreat an inch. Instead she thrust her face even closer to his. “And you’re welcome, by the way.” She thumped the flat of her hand against his solid chest. “My God. You don’t know the first thing about me if you seriously think I’d walk away when I had the means to keep those cretins from breaking your hands. As it was, I was almost too late. That crazy son of a bitch was about to shoot nails through your palms and leave you pinned to the wall like some low-rent Christ to the cross!” The memory alone was enough to send nausea rushing up her throat.

  The tail end of the storm blowing through town on its way to the desert to the east swirled her hair around both their heads, and Jax speared his long fingers into the wind-lashed mass of it, anchoring her curls away from her face. For one hot, edgy second, he glared into her eyes. Then he slammed his mouth over hers, and the next thing she knew he was kissing her senseless.

  This was no sweet, gentle caress. It was all teeth and tongue and aggression and, burning like wildfire beneath the sheer thankfulness of feeling his touch on her once again, she kissed him back with equal ferocity.

  Seconds later, he ripped his lips free and merely looked at her, his breath sawing in and out of his lungs. “You think I give a good goddamn about that?” he demanded.

  She blinked, trying to remember what they’d been fighting about before he’d knocked all thought out of her head by kissing her. Oh. Sure. Kirov. The nail gun.

  “You think I care?” Both questions were clearly rhetorical for he didn’t waste any time waiting for her to answer. “I’m not saying it would’ve been a picnic, but I would have survived it. I would have healed.” His voice turned raw. “What I wouldn’t survive, what I could never heal from, is having something happen to you.”

  His fingers fisted in her hair as he stared down at her, his expression fierce, and Treena’s heart tried to pound its way out of her breast. “All my life I’ve been out of step with the rest of the world,” he said. “Kids that were my age thought I was a freak. Adults admired my brain but had nothing else in common with me. By the time I reached an age where the gap between twenty-four and thirty-four is a hell of a lot narrower than the one between fourteen and adulthood, I was used to disassociating from people on all but the most superficial of levels.”

  Holding her gaze, he very gently swept his thumbs across her cheekbones. “Then I met you.”

  Not only were the knots loosening in her stomach, she was beginning to feel downright fine again. “And you fell in love with me.”

  “God, yes—like a baby grand from a fourth-story window.” He pressed a soft kiss on her lips, then raised his head. Looking down at her with those incredible eyes, so sober and serious, he said, “I want you to forgive me.”

  For just a moment, the tiny slice of her that felt entitled to savor her resentment clung to the last fragment of it. Then she drew in a deep breath and with her exhalation expelled all her toxic emotions. “Okay.”

  “And for what it’s worth, you did save my ass tonight.”

  “Damn tootin’.”

  The raw desperation eased from his eyes and his lips tilted up at the corners. “You were nothing short of magnificent up there in the parking garage,” he admitted. “And I thank you for what you did, because I know it took courage. But nitroglycerin in the hands of a toddler is more predictable than Kirov, Treena. And if he’d hurt you because of me and my stupid wager, I don’t think I’d ever recover.”

  She wrapped her arms around his neck. “So what are we going to do about you, Jackson Jax Gallagher McCall?”

  “Well, clearly I’m a menace to society. So maybe you should take me home with you. Get me off the streets before someone gets hurt.”

  “How long do you think you’d need to stay with me?”

  “That all depends.” He released her hair to slide his hands over her shoulders, to stroke them down her back and cup them around her butt. The wind immediately whipped her curls across their faces again, and he backed her into an area marginally more protected. “You plan on throwing my less than honorable behavior in my face every time we fight?”

  “Not forever,” she assured him virtuously. “But I did figure I could milk it for a good three or four months yet.”

  “Then let’s say thirty or forty years. We’ll renegotiate once you get that milking thing out of your system.”

  “Done.” Then her smile faded as almost painful intensity snuck up and gripped her heart. “I love you, too, you know.”

  “Yeah. Once I calmed down—which is to say about two minutes ago—I figured that out. You never would have put yourse
lf at risk for me like that if you didn’t.”

  “Just so you know, I don’t intend to do that again. But then, you’re not ever going to make another stupid bet that would make that necessary, are you?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  He looked so earnest, so solid and hers that she just had to kiss him. When she came up for air, she brushed a strand of hair off his forehead and simply looked at him. Soaked him in. Saw his incredible blue eyes, bright with happiness, noted the flush across his cheekbones, admired his strong, slightly overlong jaw. And she realized something momentous. “We’re going to have a wonderful time together the next thirty, forty or however many years we negotiate, aren’t we?”

  “Oh, yeah.” Laughing, he picked her up and whirled her round and around. When they finally came to a halt, he smiled down into her eyes. “You can bet the bank on that, sweetheart.”

  EPILOGUE

  “HERE’S TO ITALY!”

  Jax watched martini glasses and beer mugs shoot aloft as Treena, Mack and Ellen responded to Carly’s toast with “To Italy!” He added his own voice to the salute and lifted his bottle of lager to clink with the other upraised stemware in the little bar where he’d first seen Treena.

  “I think it’s so smokin’ that you two are taking Ellen’s long-awaited trip together,” Treena said, smiling at Mack and Ellen.

  “Yeah, smokin’,” Jax agreed. “But when are you going to make an honest man out of him, Ellen?” He gave Mack an evil smile when the older man glared at him. Mack was still holding a grudge against him for lying to Treena about his identity, and Jax had quit trying to get in the duffer’s good graces and started going out of his way to needle him instead.