by Jill Monroe
“Besides,” he said, his gaze dropping from hers to study something far off in the distance. “I’ve been in jail before.”
2
JAIL. BEFORE?
Hayden’s hands fell.
“Yeah. That usually does it,” he told her, his voice tired. Tony turned away from her and just like that, the figurative window slammed shut, too.
She squinted against the sunshine as she tried to read his body language. Back straight and hands fisted at his sides. Didn’t need that one lone psychology class to diagnose him as tense and agitated.
Had she been too quick to trust him? Was he really an ax murderer or the mastermind of a Ponzi scheme? What she needed was answers. And maybe an escape route.
Okay, before she got all weird about this, people were arrested all the time for bizarre stuff. Not returning a library book for twenty years. Changing the clothes on a mannequin in full view of the public. She’d even heard a crazy story about how a police officer had dragged a lady—with her toddler strapped to the car seat—right to the clinker, all for a few days’ expired driver’s license.
Did people still use words like clinker?
Focus.
People also got arrested for grand theft auto, burglary or kidnapping. Check. Check. And check?
She could reach for his hand and talk this out with him, or reach for the keys and zoom down the road away from him. Both made sense. But if Tony had planned to hurt her, he must be pretty inept because he’d really missed his chance. In fact, when he’d had the opportunity, he’d kept his distance, had in fact taken near-Herculean efforts to avoid touching her and done everything a man could do to put her at ease in what must have been an incredibly awkward situation for him, too.
He turned as she approached him, her footsteps crunching the leaves and twigs scattered along the side of the road. He towered above her, and when his brown eyes met hers, they gave no hint of his thoughts.
“I’m so used to the people around me being aware of my past, that I forget how people can judge.”
Okay, that was defensive—and an overreaction. “Listen, I’ve known you, what? Half an hour fully clothed? No one makes good decisions naked. Besides, you don’t get to casually throw out that you were in prison, and then get all sensitive when I’m nervous about it. Understandably nervous.”
He sucked in a deep breath and his brow furrowed. This must be deep-in-thought Tony. Considering she’d only known him half an hour—fully clothed—she’d already seen him, chivalrous, considerate, playful and very, very naughty.
Or was that naked. Definitely naked.
Focus.
“You’re right,” he said.
“What’s your angle here?”
Tony shook his head, but a small smile toyed with that übersexy lower lip of his. “You are the suspicious one. No angle, just truth.”
Then he shrugged.
A shrug? As if what he’d said was no big deal? Hayden had never thought of herself as the suspicious type, but what kind of man tells a woman she’s right? Things weren’t adding up.
“So you’re saying you were wrong a moment ago?” she asked, just to make sure she’d heard him correctly.
Tony nodded, then ran his palms down the denim material of his borrowed shorts. “Hayden, this doesn’t have to be so hard. Take the car. Take the cash. I can walk into town. Just leave me enough money to make a call at a pay phone somewhere.”
“Do they still even have pay phones?”
“I’ll figure something out. Don’t worry about me. I don’t think we stole the money or the car, but make your first stop in town at the police station if you’re worried.”
His eyes were clear, and that gorgeous smile of his was honest. She spotted nothing but openness, and her lips pursed together. “You’re trying to convince me you’re a good guy, aren’t you?” she asked after a long moment.
He rubbed at the stubble on his chin. “After a whole lot of work, I am a good guy.”
“And prison?”
“Technically it was jail. And that’s a story best left to tell you on the long road trip to Dallas.” Playful, sexy Tony was back.
“So what you’re saying is that I’ll learn all your secrets if I don’t strand you on the side of the road.”
He leaned toward her, bringing with him the scent of sunshine and pure masculine temptation. “Maybe not all my secrets.” His voice was a teasing rasp that made her want to surrender to that temptation. A challenge urging her on—yeah, go ahead and try to learn all my secrets.
“I have conditions,” she warned.
“Lay ’em on me.”
“We don’t spend the money except on essentials. Like gas. Not until we know the cash is ours free and clear.” Truthfully, she didn’t believe they’d stolen the money, either. It just wasn’t in her nature, and it would risk way too much to ever make taking a couple of thousand dollars worth it. The real Hayden, the one who’d still managed to hook up with a protective sexy man despite a night of craziness would never have pocketed this cash. But borrowing wasn’t completely out of the realm of possibilities, and loans meant repayment. Debt didn’t even begin to describe the kind of bills awaiting her after graduation and gainful employment. No sense in adding to her balance by spending needlessly on the return trip to Dallas.
“Agreed. The money stays safe.”
“Don’t lie to me. Ever.”
“Been lied to before?” he asked.
Her sigh was heavy. “Lots of times.”
“So you’ve been lied to and apparently have a problem with always being right. You need to date better men, Hay.”
Don’t I know it. “And don’t call me Hay.”
He lifted a brow. “That’s the third condition?”
“People think it’s really funny to text me that. Hey, Hay.”
“It could be worse.”
Hayden shook her head. “It’s become a favorite nickname for my friends. It’s obnoxious.”
He kissed the end of her nose, and she shivered. “Okay, no hey, Hay.”
The third condition had originally been that he keep his hands to himself. Despite whatever had happened the night before, she was a responsible adult. An engineer. Almost. People depended on her to design roads and bridges and lines that delivered water and power and heat to their homes reliably. Or would.
She took comfort in being reliable and dependable. It was the way her grandparents raised her to be. Informing a man she barely knew that sex was off the table for the foreseeable future was most definitely the responsible thing to do.
There are other kinds of reliable, her subconscious teased. Like a man who could be relied upon for a good time. If Tony could give her shivers with just an almost-innocent kiss on the nose, imagine what he could do with his hands? His lips? His whole body? Dependable orgasms, that’s what. “Yeah, no hey, Hay. That’s my third condition.”
“I drive, you navigate?” he asked with a nod.
“It’s sweet of you to offer, but it’s really okay. Especially since the car is so uncomfortable.” Hopefully he wasn’t one of those men who didn’t want the woman to drive.
“I also figured you wouldn’t want to drive the whole distance, and since you know the Dallas area better than I do, you could take that leg of the trip.”
“Okay, sounds like a plan, Mr. uh—what’s your last name?” Yeah, very responsible. She’d just been considering orgasms with a man whose last name was a blank.
“Garcia. I told you that earlier, remember?” He opened the passenger door for her and she slumped down hard against the seat.
Garcia. Documentary filmmaker. She’d refused to share her last name. “Oh, yeah, I do now.” She rubbed at her temples as if that would snap the events of the past twenty-four hours back into place. “My short-term memory is fuzzy.”
“Same with me,” Tony informed her as he slid behind the wheel. He rolled the seat almost all the way back to accommodate his legs and turned the ignition to fire up the car. �
�What did you eat for breakfast?”
“Pumpkin spice muffins and biscuits with a load of gravy,” she told him, no temple rubbing needed. “No problem remembering that. I’m guessing whatever was responsible for taking our memories of last night was mostly out of our systems by the time we ate.” Or food played way too much of a role in her life to be forgotten. Probably both.
Tony’s fingers tapped against the steering wheel as he drove. “Okay, so we have memory loss. What about that fire-breathing tattoo? Still no discomfort?”
Just the kind one got from knowing she had a dragon permanently drawn on her butt. And knowing that Tony had seen it, scales and all. But no, it wasn’t painful. She wiggled around in her seat just to be sure. “Still nothing.”
“Memory loss and pain relief. Could be anything.”
They broke out of the trees and Tony turned on his blinker to merge onto the state highway. Billboards advertising diners and roadside motels greeted them along a lonely stretch of road.
This rural part of Oklahoma didn’t look that much different from Texas—blue skies and flat plains dotted with cows and horses stretched to the horizon.
Silence settled between them, edgy and filled with so many unanswered questions. They’d been go-go-go since they’d woken up this morning, and now there was time to think. Time to feel. Although her memory of last night was gone, and her recall of this morning sketchy, her body sure did remember sensation. Touch. Taste. She craved more. More of Tony. Her nipples pebbled and Hayden crossed her arms against her chest.
“How about some tunes?” she suggested, her mouth dry. Maybe once they found a town, they could stop at a convenience store and grab a couple bottles of water and she could cool down.
Tony played around on the radio, trying to find a station, but he only got static and a lone swap-meet program. He quickly switched it off when it became clear all the offerings would be farm related.
“I guess the state car license-plate game is out,” she offered with a small laugh, trying to make light of the situation.
He shook his head, and his eyes crinkled with a smile. “The only car for the past ten miles was going the other way.”
“When I was little, my grandma and I would play two truths and a lie.”
“Now that doesn’t seem fair.”
“Oh?”
“I promised I’d never lie, and I always keep my promises, Hayden.”
A delicious tingle of sensation trembled down her spine and settled in the small of her back. Snippets of their conversation from this morning, hazy though they might be, filtered into her mind.
I promise, I’m a good guy.
What kind of idiot forgets making love to the most beautiful woman he’s ever been with?
I don’t want to get back to the city and forget all about this.
Even working a double at the diner couldn’t have prevented her from ignoring the heady stuff he was tossing her way. Ripples of want tumbled through her body. Yeah, she definitely wanted a repeat of last night—only this time she was determined to remember it. But first she wanted to find out more about the man she was going to romp on later.
“So...um...jail.”
He chuckled, low and rumbly, which predictably bombarded her with a new layer of want. Why was she so into this guy? Great looking, sure. Smart and funny, true. But she’d dated other men bearing the lethal three before. Sometimes all even in the same guy.
Pheromones?
The mystery?
She almost snapped her fingers. The mystery of him—that had to be it. How they’d hooked up coupled with his shadowy past, how could she resist?
“That’s not a story I tell to people I barely know.”
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, come on. You’ve seen me naked. You know me well enough.”
Tony glanced her way, his dark eyes meeting hers, and then dropping to her lips. Her breasts. She sucked in a breath. He fixed his gaze on the highway again, his knuckles whitening as he gripped the steering wheel. Hard.
Good. She didn’t want to be the only one battling against the collapse of common sense due to hot sexual vibes.
“It’s probably the same story with hundreds of kids. I didn’t fit in. No one gave a shit at home. I was angry about everything for no reason and for a thousand reasons all at the same time. I’d been labeled a troublemaker back in high school.”
His sigh was heavy, self-deprecating and yet indicating a distance from his old self in a way. Great. Hot, sexy and contradictory.
“One day I ditched school and took my mother’s car.”
“What did you do?” Although it probably made her sound like the biggest bore out of Boresville, she’d have no idea what to do if she stole a car. Try to hide it for later? Rob something else?
“Just drove around with the music loud. I thought I was pretty damn cool, bucking the system and messing with my mom, until I sideswiped a car.”
“Oh, no.”
“Well, I was barely fifteen so it was bound to happen. I was arrested, but the cops only locked me in an interrogation room and played a bad-cop-badder-cop scenario, probably to try to scare me straight. But I was hell-bent on a path of destruction. They ran the plates and called my mom. I could hear her voice as she talked to the police officer. She asked if they had a jail cell. ‘Put him in it,’ she’d told them.”
“Tough love.”
“Just tough.” He rubbed his fingers along the stubble on his chin. A tell? That was the second time he’d made that gesture.
“There are days when I actually feel sorry for my mom. Had to have been tough, pregnant at sixteen and dropping out of school. Her parents—I won’t even call them my grandparents—kicked her out of the house when she refused to put me up for adoption. My bio dad was off impregnating some other girl by the time I was born. My mom always had great intentions and even bigger illusions. I’m sure she was imagining I’d be that one bright spot in her life to give her unconditional love.”
Hayden had always believed that to be the parents’ job. Her mom and dad had died young, but she’d always known they’d loved her. Same with Gran and Grandpa, who’d delayed their early retirement plans to raise her.
“Instead she got a carbon copy of herself. Moody, defiant and forever rebellious. I actually think those cops felt bad as they locked me up.”
“How long did you stay in there?”
“Long enough to get a black eye from another inmate and to realize I wasn’t as tough as I thought I was, but that lesson didn’t stick. A few hours later, someone from Children’s Services came to take me to juvie.”
She tried to imagine Tony as a scared teenager whose mother hadn’t loved him, and Hayden’s heart and emotions and everything girlie inside her began to soften and melt.
Don’t. Don’t do it. You are not his rescuer who is going to show him true love and give him hope. He is not going to be a better man all because of the woman who sees past the tough, hard facade he’s erected to barricade his heart from the cold, unfeeling world.
That dreamy scenario didn’t even work in movies anymore. She didn’t believe in others saving you. You saved yourself. Besides, he seemed to be doing just fine.
“How long were you in juvie?”
“A week and a half. I got probation and a promise that my record would be expunged if I kept my nose clean. Ha—that didn’t last long. My mother was ordered to take parenting classes that she attended drunk. So yeah, storybook family of the year we were not.”
“What was your big turnaround then, because clearly you’re...”
His eyes crinkled at the corners again. “What?”
“Um.”
“Hot? Funny? Sexy?”
“Actually, I was going to say doing pretty okay.”
“The word every man wants to hear from the woman who woke up naked beside him. Okay.”
Hayden gave him a playful shrug. “Maybe if I’d had something to remember from last night...”
“Whoa. You’re going to play
it like that.”
Actually, she’d had no idea how she was going to play it until that near dare rushed out of her mouth.
“Almost sounds like the lady is issuing a challenge.”
Dependable orgasms.
The subconscious thought popped up and threatened to derail her common sense. But what was the downside here? Tony was hot, clearly understood boundaries and as he lived in California, he’d be gone soon. So maybe he was the perfect candidate for a little pregraduation celebratory fling.
“Maybe it is a challenge.”
Tony’s right hand dropped from the steering wheel and he reached for her hand. His fingers twined through hers, warm and strong. His knuckles grazed her thigh and little goose bumps tingled to life.
“Challenge accepted.”
3
“SO HOW’D YOU go from juvie to documentary filmmaker?” she asked, her fingers still entwined with his. Project Getting To Know The Man You Plan To Romp On Later was officially in effect.
“You’d think the world would be easy for a mouthy guy with a piss-poor attitude, a distrust of anyone in authority and a confrontational approach at school. That is, when I attended school.”
Hayden laughed, which she was supposed to do. Fact to file—Anthony Garcia liked to cover up hard memories and pain with humor.
“By the time I was a sophomore, I was ditching school more than I ever went. One of Mom’s boyfriends thought it was funny to change the locks and so I stopped going home altogether.”
She gave his hand a light squeeze, and he squeezed hers right back.
Warmth. Understanding. Connection.
“Probation doesn’t last when you’re found squatting in rentals, blowing off school and getting high. They dragged me in before the same judge from before and she gave me a choice. Jail or the CW Transitional Center. I was almost stupid enough to say jail, because self-destruction was a way of life for me by then. Another one of the few things I shared with my mom. But the center was my last shot, and something inside me made me keep my idiot mouth shut. I remember the first day there, I— Damn! Would you look at that.”
Hayden straightened in her seat and glanced left and right but only saw the outlying indicators of a small town. Gas station, a roadside strip hotel and a car dealership. “What?” she asked.
