Avenging Angel

by Janzen, Tara

  She went for quiet and normal, mostly because she didn’t think she could get past Henry’s secretary with a mysterious-sounding whisper. Mrs. Hunt had yet to accept the change in hierarchy brought about by Johanna’s addition to the firm.

  “Henry, please,” she said when the office answered. “This is Johanna. It’s urgent.”

  “One moment,” Mrs. Hunt responded after a slight, condemning hesitation.

  Johanna closed her eyes and prayed for the old bat to put her through and for Henry to take the call. Henry was also having a little trouble adjusting to the new equal partner in his firm. She knew he preferred his mornings quiet and his clients in the afternoon. She knew he preferred tea at 10:00 A.M. rather than crisis. She knew he preferred her to be on time and the secretaries to be early, which of course Mrs. Hunt always was.

  “You picked a hell of a morning to be late,” he said, coming on the line, and she knew he expected a damn good explanation, despite the fact that she owned half their partnership. “You wouldn’t believe what’s been going on here all—”

  “I’m in Laramie, Henry,” she interrupted him. “The Colonial Inn Motel. I haven’t got much time. There’s a man, Dylan Jones, alias Dane Erickson. Check him out, inside out, upside down, and backward. I want to know everything about—”

  “A man?” Henry repeated, his tone quickly changing. “You’re in a Laramie, Wyoming, motel room with a man?” He sounded incredulous, as well he would, given his long-standing interest in her total lack of a love life.

  “It’s not what you’re thinking, Henry. I’m tied to the bed.”

  What Henry said to that was unlike any combination of words she’d ever heard out of her staid partner’s mouth, even during their college years. It was more like what she was used to hearing out of Dylan Jones’s mouth.

  “I don’t believe it.” Henry swore again, and she could practically see the pained expression come over his face and the way he rubbed the bridge of his nose under his glasses. “You meet some strange man with an alias, for crying out loud, and end up getting left alone in a motel room in the middle of God knows where, tied to the bed, and I’ve got bullet holes in the walls!”

  “Bullet holes? What do you mean bullet holes?”

  “I mean bullet holes, Jo-han-na. Like somebody went through here with an Uzi. The office was broken into last night. Trashed. There’s nothing left of your files and damn little left of mine.”

  “My God.” She’d never dreamed Austin would go that far. That he would be so desperate.

  “It’s got to be the James case,” Henry said. “And if that bastard thinks he can scare us off with—”

  “Henry,” she interrupted.

  “—strong-arm tactics and—”

  “Henry.”

  “—intimidation, he’s going to find out he’s messed with the wrong lawyer. I’ll put him six feet under so fast, it’ll make his head swim.”

  “It’s not the James case, Henry,” she said in exasperation, then froze as the man on top of her moved in his sleep.

  Dylan murmured something unintelligible and shifted the position of his free hand, sweeping it up from the juncture of her thighs to her right breast. Johanna held her breath until it hurt, then let it out all at once, trying to ignore his natural response to fondle what now filled his palm. The man was too crude for words. She wanted to hit him and didn’t dare. She had to get away from him, far away.

  “What do you mean it’s not the James case?” Henry normally didn’t like being corrected, and his verbal attitude told her this morning was no different in that respect.

  “It’s not James. It’s Austin Bridgeman,” she explained, whispering into the phone. “You must have read the papers this weekend. Morrow Warner, the company splashed all over yesterday’s front page with a senator in tow, is his, Bridgman’s, and I’m the attorney who put it together.”

  “Bridgeman?” Henry repeated. “The man you worked for in Chicago? You’re going to have to speak up, Johanna.”

  “I can’t.”

  Henry swore again, then forcibly calmed himself. “Fine. Have it your way. Tell me where you are and I’ll call the police, get somebody in there to untie you.” He sounded like he didn’t believe what depths he was sinking to in the name of friendship.

  “Don’t call the police, Henry.”

  “Dammit, Johanna, haven’t you been listening to me? I can’t come up there myself this morning! My God. This is exactly what happens when you take up with some stranger because of some wild, hormonal deviation—”

  “Henry.”

  “—of lust arousing magnitude—”

  “Henry. I am fully clothed and have been all night, so stop thinking what you’re thinking.”

  “You should have called me, Johanna.”

  “I did. I am. Right now.” Lord, she thought, had he always been this sanctimonious? “Henry, listen to me. I am not alone. The man who kidnapped me is—”

  “Kidnapped?” Henry interrupted, his voice going cold.

  “Yes. Get these names: Dylan Jones and Dane Erickson. He was Austin’s number-one bodyguard up until a couple of days ago. He says he kidnapped me to protect me from Austin.”

  “And why in the hell did he do that? What’s his involvement with you?” Henry’s holier-than-thou attitude had taken a nosedive into confusion.

  Johanna looked down at the man cradling her close to his body and didn’t know what to say. What was their involvement with each other? Stolen glances and a promise of protection that had taken four months to deliver? What had he seen in her that had brought him out of the night like an avenging angel to put himself between her and danger?

  Her gaze slipped to the bindings around her wrist. He had compromised himself with his treatment of her. He’d broken laws with every step he’d taken, doing more to ensure her safety and her anger than her undying gratitude.

  “I’m not sure,” she said to Henry. “He says Austin wants me dead, and from what I saw of Austin and his cohorts last night, it’s not a difficult thing to believe.”

  The phone went silent on both ends for a long, frozen moment, during which Johanna imagined how her office looked riddled with bullet holes, an image she was sure was uppermost in Henry’s mind. Then he spoke.

  “You say this man is a professional bodyguard?”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe you better stick with him, until he can get you in to the police.”

  Johanna hated to admit that there wasn’t any “maybe” about it. She looked down at the man lying so close to her. What he’d done was awful, criminal, but it was also a miracle. She had never seen anybody get the better of Austin Bridgeman—until last night when a wild man had shoved her into the corner of an elevator, then dragged her down the street virtually under Austin’s nose without getting caught.

  “He doesn’t trust the police,” she said to Henry.

  “His kind never do.”

  “He says Austin is too well connected.”

  “He’s probably right, in which case we’ve been on this line too long. You better get out of there. Call me at the club when you’ve changed locations, and I’ll send the police for you. When they come, tell your bodyguard to stay out of the way. Or better yet, tell him to give himself up. I’m not going to take my partner’s kidnapping lightly, whether he saved your life or not. Dammit, Johanna. Bullet holes in the walls!”

  The line went dead in her ear, and Johanna hung up on her end. Henry had a plan. Better than hers, she admitted.

  So why wasn’t she buying it?

  * * *

  Dylan woke to a world of throbbing, pounding pain and an insistent, feminine voice calling his name from close quarters.

  “Mr. Jones. Dylan. Wake up. Come on, wake up, We have to leave.”

  She was shaking him and moving him, and he didn’t want to be shaken and moved. He wanted to be left alone where he’d been, hazily asleep in the dreamworld with the soft weight of her breast in his palm and his groin pressed up a
gainst her thigh. She’d felt so good, until she’d started shaking him and moving him.

  “Mr. Jones.”

  She shifted again, and he realized her hand was flat on his belly, pushing against him. That was nice. Real nice. Arousal began thrumming through his body, enticing him with the promise of more pleasure. He sighed and, with a slow, natural move, eased himself up and settled into the warm heat of her palm.

  Johanna stiffened, mortified. Her hand was trapped, and Dylan Jones was so far out of line she would have screamed if he hadn’t chosen that moment to pull her further beneath him and angle his mouth over hers. He moved with the slow surety and precision of a man whose body was fine-tuned to withstand the physical demands of his job. He moved like a man who was finally waking up.

  There was no gainsaying the weight of him pressing her into the bed, or the strength of his arm moving her to a more comfortable position against him, or the mastery of the mouth conquering hers. She tried to beat at him, but instead found her hand brushing against the pillow as he tunneled his fingers through her hair, dragging their bound wrists together toward the top of the bed.

  Damn him. She’d thought about what his kisses would be like so many times it was pitiful, and now that he’d finally done it, everything was wrong, horribly wrong—the place, the circumstances, the timing. Not even in her wildest daydreams had she imagined anything like what he’d put her through so far, and then for him to have the damn nerve to wake up and kiss her.

  “Mr. Jones!” she gasped when he lifted his head for a moment. His only response was a groan and a resettling of his mouth on hers into an even deeper kiss.

  With astonishing ease he slid his hand down over her hip and thigh to bend her knee and bring her closer. She struggled and squirmed beneath him, then immediately realized her mistake as his breathing grew ragged. Her leg was tied to his, and squirming only made their contact more intimate.

  She didn’t bother calling his name again when the opportunity arose. She could barely breathe through the anger he was building inside her. But breathe she did, the one name guaranteed to put the fear of God in him.

  “Austin,” she said, and his hands stilled.

  Slowly he lifted his head, his eyes still closed.

  “Austin,” she repeated. “Austin Bridgeman.”

  Dark eyes opened to the barest slit, his gaze fixed on her mouth, unwavering. He looked like he wanted to eat her for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, then start all over again. She felt the heat of his excitement running through his body. His skin was warm, nearly hot to the touch. His breath was uneven, his body pressed against hers in the most carnal of ways.

  Her anger, so righteous only seconds before, was having an unbelievably difficult time not getting scorched to cinders by his slow, intense perusal.

  Beneath lowered lashes, his gaze drifted to her silk-covered breasts. He looked confused, and aroused, and in pain. Johanna tensed, her pulse racing. She had no idea which of his feelings was going to win out. The moment stretched in unbearable anticipation before he lifted his eyes to meet hers.

  “What about Austin?” he asked, his voice gravelly with sleep.

  “I—I made a phone call. Henry thinks his line might have been tapped.”

  “Phone call,” he said bluntly. His gaze dropped to the floor and the phone sitting next to the bed. “Damn.”

  “My office was broken into last night. They tore through all of our files and put a lot of bullet holes in the walls.”

  “Damn,” he repeated softly.

  “I think . . . I think we should get out of here as soon as possible.”

  “You told Henry where you were?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “Did you tell him who you were with?”

  She nodded again, more slowly.

  He held her gaze for another moment, then his eyes traced a still slightly confused, but heated trail back to her breasts. He stared at her for a long time, gathering himself together.

  “Damn,” he said quietly.

  Eight

  Dylan carefully checked the motel parking lot before lowering himself next to a rusting black pickup. The truck was parked close to the curb at the end of the lot, its front end hidden in a group of evergreen bushes. The windshield was completely busted out, and it was missing a tire in the back, but it had what he was looking for—license plates. In minutes, he’d switched out the front plate with one from the gray sedan and moved to the back of the truck to do the same. He’d left Johanna inside the motel room tied to the bed.

  After he’d gotten his bearings, he’d had enough sense to be embarrassed. He had been all over her. She hadn’t been pressing herself against him out of desire. She’d been tied to him, her wrist bound to his. She couldn’t have gotten away from him if she’d tried. He didn’t know what in the hell he’d been thinking to wake up horny and take advantage of her—though he hadn’t taken nearly far enough advantage of her to do himself any good.

  He swore under his breath. He shouldn’t have left her tied to the bed.

  The last screw came out of the license plate, and he made the final switch. By now, he knew, the Boulder police would be well on their way to piecing together the gray sedan and his Mustang. They’d have him checked out in Illinois and either would or would not come across his FBI employment, depending on how much the FBI wanted them to know. Johanna’s law partner would be throwing a few more scraps of information at the Colorado law enforcers, and it had to be assumed that Austin would get his hands on all the information. So the best Dylan could do was get a new set of plates for the car and resign himself to the fact that he wouldn’t be welcome in Chicago for a while and that he better get the hell out of Laramie.

  He walked back to the sedan and attached his new Wyoming license plates. He was covering his tracks as methodically as possible. The switch had taken him less than five minutes. He added the five glorious minutes they’d wasted in bed and the few minutes she’d taken to wake him after the phone call, and he figured at worst he had an hour and a half lead on Austin. He was still winning. Last night he’d only been ahead of Austin by a couple of minutes.

  * * *

  Johanna heard Dylan come in and was torn between venting her fury and ignoring him completely. She’d done her part. She’d shown good faith. She’d sewn him up and told him about the phone call, and he’d left her tied to the bed. On top of everything else, she was going to bring him up on assault, and emotional cruelty, and indecent exposure. If she had her way—and up until last night she’d been damned used to having her way—he’d be fighting his way through lawsuits from a jail cell for the rest of his life.

  She turned her head away when he started for the bed, but when he touched her, she lashed out.

  “Don’t touch me.”

  Her voice was colder than ice and actually gave him pause.

  “I’m cutting you loose,” he said after a moment, reaching for her bindings again.

  “Then do it without touching me.”

  He stopped once more with the knife blade inches from the tape. “I’m sorry.” With a quick upward slice of the blade, he had her free from the bed. He closed the knife against his thigh and slipped it into his pocket before reaching to undo the belt tied around her wrists.

  “Sorry?” She turned on him with barely controlled fury. “Sorry? For what exactly are you sorry, Mr. Jones? For abducting me in the middle of night and dragging me, unwillingly, across state lines? For accosting me with a deadly weapon? For that disgusting display you put on in the shower? For—”

  “Disgusting display?” he interrupted, his hands stilling in the act of untying her. A small grin tweaked the corner of his mouth. “You’re the one who looked, Miss Lane. All I did was take a shower.”

  Color blossomed and spread across her face. He watched her for a moment longer, then finished untying her. She jerked her hands away and called him a bastard under her breath.

  He didn’t disagree. “I won’t apologize for saving your life,
no matter what I did.” He hesitated for a moment, and when he spoke again, his voice was quieter. “But I am sorry I left you tied up when I went outside, and I’m sorry . . . well, I’m damn sorry about what happened.”

  He didn’t need to explain any further. Her blush deepened to a hotter shade of pink. Ignoring what he’d said, she brushed by him with her head held high. Once in the bathroom, she closed the door with a solid slam and locked it with a rebellious snap of the lock. Dylan Jones could go to hell. She needed her privacy.

  Her head dropped to the back of the door, and she closed her eyes. She needed more than her privacy. He had done the unforgivable. He had made her blatantly aware of the sexual energy simmering between them like a pot about to boil over.

  Beneath his too-tough exterior, he had a quiet, intense yearning for her that she’d never fully appreciated until he’d awakened in her arms. He’d acted on instinct—pure, and simple, and passionate. She wasn’t the type who usually inspired unrehearsed passion. But she’d sensed his desire months ago in his ever-watchful gaze and rare smiles, and a part of her had responded. Now—he’d kissed her, with sensuality and a carnal tenderness she wouldn’t soon forget.

  He’d also walked away from her, which was the only decent thing he could have done under the circumstances. A disbelieving sigh escaped her, and she shook her head. In less than twenty-four hours she’d changed her opinion of him from a wild, crazed gunman to a decent, passionate man. Next she’d be bestowing sainthood, all because he’d kissed her and she’d felt something beyond the anger she’d held on to so dearly.

  An insistent knock on the door startled her out of her reverie. She lifted her head.

  “We have to leave. Now.” His voice came through the locked door.

  She wasn’t ready to face him, but he was right. She rubbed a hand over her eyes. Lord, she hated it when he was right.

  * * *

  After hours of driving, the barrenness of Wyoming was beginning to take on a certain appeal. Herds of pronghorns grazed in the rolling hills, their tawny coloring blending in with the heat-dried grass. Johanna watched eagles ride the wind in an empty, summer sky. She noticed the isolated ranches dotted miles apart across the landscape, and she thought about the women who lived on them.