Avenging Angel

by Janzen, Tara

  Johanna turned in his arms and settled her parted lips over his for a searingly intimate kiss. God, he was heaven to touch. She loved the differing textures of his skin, from the light raspiness of his cheek to the silken fullness of his tongue in her mouth.

  He groaned, and she let herself lean more deeply into him. She wanted him in ways she’d never wanted another man, totally, possessively. When she lifted her mouth from his, she straddled his hips and began unbuttoning his shirt.

  “Are you sure you want this?” she asked, looking at him through half-closed lashes.

  “I’m sure,” he said, so quickly she knew he’d misunderstood.

  A smile teased her mouth. “I mean, are you sure you want to move in with me? I don’t want to ruin us by going too fast.”

  “Johanna,” he said, his eyes turning darkly serious. “I believe in love at first sight, and I believe that’s what we’ve got going here. I was willing to die for you. I’m sure as hell not going to pass up a chance to live with you.”

  “Okay then, Dylan,” she answered, finishing with his shirt and moving to the front of his pants. She undid the buttons at the top first, then slowly slid his zipper down, leaning forward to whisper in his ear. “Be sure and tell me when you get bored.”

  * * *

  Three months later Johanna dragged herself into the kitchen early on a Friday morning. She was wearing his baggiest, most stretched-out T-shirt, which looked like it had been slept in for a very good reason. She had on her own sweatpants and sweat socks. The ensemble was covered with a terry-cloth robe and topped with three sizes of hot curlers wound through her hair.

  “Hey, houseboy,” she said around a yawn. “Did you find a job yet?”

  “Not yet, but I’m getting close.” He held his cup up for a refill without lifting his eyes from the sports section of the newspaper.

  She poured his coffee and got a cup down for herself. “What’s for breakfast?”

  “We’ve got my good cereal, which I would be willing to share. Or you can have your healthy cereal.”

  “I’ll take the Frosty Crunchers.” She sat down and inhaled the fuel-injected steam of Dylan’s coffee while he poured her a bowl of cereal and milk.

  “I like the porcupine look,” he said. “It’s very attractive, but you’re losing a couple of quills on the left side.”

  She reached up and tightened the loose curler. “Are you bored yet?”

  “I’m not sure,” he said, snapping the paper back out. “I thought I’d watch you brush your teeth this morning. See how it works out before I make a commitment.”

  She grinned and waited for his eyes to appear over the headlines. She didn’t have to wait long.

  “What time do you have to be at work?” he asked.

  Her smile broadened. “Don’t you even think it. You know how Henry gets when I’m late.”

  “Yes,” he said slowly. “But I also know how you get when I make you late.”

  “Save your strength for the weekend,” she suggested, dipping her spoon into her cereal bowl.

  “How would you like to be married to a lawyer?” he asked out of the blue.

  She paused with her spoon halfway to her mouth. “I don’t know,” she said carefully. “I suppose it would depend on the lawyer.”

  He’d never mentioned marriage before, to anybody. She’d thought about it, though, a hundred times at least.

  “Okay,” he said. “How would you like to be married to a law student?”

  “Are these hypothetical questions?” she asked. “Or are you coming to a whole lot of decisions all at once?”

  “Neither. I’ve thought about going to law school for a couple of years. Then for a while there, I didn’t think I’d live long enough to finish. As for the other, the first time I thought about marrying you was the first time we made love, and I’ve been thinking about it every time since.”

  “You’ve been thinking about it a lot,” she said, impressed by just how much thought he’d given the subject.

  “I guess the question then is, have you?”

  “It’s crossed my mind a couple of times,” she admitted, working hard to keep from jumping up and throwing herself into his arms.

  “And what do you think?”

  “I like law students,” she said with a straight face. “I was one myself. As for marriage, well, I love you, Dylan, and nothing is ever going to change that.”

  “Then don’t eat your Frosty Crunchers,” he advised, and went back to reading the sports section.

  Johanna looked down at her bowl. If she didn’t eat them, they were going to get soggy. Even Frosty Crunchers would eventually succumb to milk.

  But a diamond ring wouldn’t . . .

  Gasping, she reached into the bowl and pulled the ring out. She ran to the sink and washed it off before putting it on her finger.

  I can’t believe you did that! Oh, Dylan, it’s beautiful!” She spread her hand for him to see. “I can’t believe you put it in my cereal bowl!”

  “Pretty corny, huh?”

  “And sweet and wonderful.” She slid onto his lap and hugged him for all she was worth. “Oh, Dylan, yes,” she said, then a moment later said, “Oh, no!”

  “Which is it, Johanna?” he asked, setting her a little away from him so he could gauge the reaction on her face. “Oh, yes, or oh, no?”

  “It’s yes, a definite yes for marrying you, but I just realized you’re making all my family’s dreams come true.”

  “Your family has always dreamed of the day you’d find a ring in your cereal?” He sounded a shade skeptical.

  “No, it’s the law thing for my father. He’s always wanted me to marry a lawyer. My sister has always wanted me to marry a lover, and my mother has always just wanted me to get married.” She buried her face into her hands. “Lord, it’s almost too bizarre that you, of all people, should turn out to be the answer to their prayers.”

  “I’m more concerned about being the answer to your prayers,” he said.

  She peeked at him from over the tops of her fingers. “You are, Dylan. Oh, you are. More so than I ever thought anyone could be.”

  “Good.” His smile returned in full force, sexy and mischievous. “I think we can pretty much forget about getting boring from here on out.” He began unwinding the curlers from her hair and dropping them on the floor.

  “I’m going to be late.”

  He laughed softly and kissed her cheek at the same time as he gathered her T-shirt in his hands. “Don’t worry. When the sign reads ‘Wayland, Lane, and Jones,’ I’m going to fire Mrs. Hunt and change the rules.”

  “You weren’t kidding about not getting boring, were you?” she said, helping him by raising her arms over her head. The T-shirt came off, and she shook out her hair until it fell over her shoulders like a silken gold mantle.

  “Life’s an adventure, Johanna—God, you’re beautiful,” he said, pulling her into his embrace. “And loving you is going to be the adventure of my life.”

  * * * * * * * * *

  Please keep reading for excerpts from Dateline: Kydd and Rios and Outlaw Carson

  Dateline: Kydd and Rios

  One

  Nikki Kydd crawled up the hill, snaking through the rotting vegetation on the forest floor, her knees and elbows working in tandem, keeping low to the ground. At the top of the rise she stopped next to a man dressed in similar olive drab camouflage and pushed her sweat-dampened hair back off her face.

  “How does it look? Damn.” She slapped at a mosquito biting her neck.

  “Bad,” he grunted,” scanning the horizon with a pair of binoculars.

  Nikki grinned, the flash of a mischievous expression showing through the grime streaking her face. “What in the hell did you do to them, Josh?”

  “Nothing you wouldn’t have done if you’d thought of it first.” Josh Rios pushed himself up higher by straightening one arm. The binoculars never budged from his face. “They’ve got a grenade launcher.”

  She mutter
ed a curse, and without a second thought she grabbed the binoculars and held them to her eyes. Hanging by the strap around Josh’s neck, the binoculars caused his skull to thud against hers.

  “Dammit, Nikki. If you were going to konk me, I wish you’d done it before we left Costa Rica.”

  “Then you would have missed all the fun.”

  “Some fun.” He slipped the strap over his head and rolled over onto his back. Sweat and muck had mingled to form a mask of mud on his forehead and cheeks. He started to wipe at it with his arm, then decided otherwise. Anything was better than being eaten alive by the swarm of black flies buzzing around them.

  Relaxing for a moment, he stared up at the canopy of trees poking at the sky. Their thick foliage blocked out all but a few faint gleams of sunlight. He prayed none of the trees would topple over, for experience had taught him they were alarmingly unstable. More than once when bivouacked for the night, he’d heard one of the lofty giants let go of the earth and come crashing down, crushing everything in its path. That he was concerned about such an occurrence bothered him more than the possibility.

  He was definitely getting too old to bushwhack these godforsaken Central American rain forests. Well, actually, he wasn’t getting too old, but Nikki was. In the year since he’d found her on the streets of San Simeon, they’d been in and out of more scrapes than in all his previous twenty-four years. The girl had a way of finding trouble. She also had a way of finding a story.

  “Josh,” she hissed. ‘“Get your camera, the telephoto lens. We’ve got one.”

  He reacted immediately to her command, forgetting about his weariness in the rush of excitement. All they needed was one good shot; then they could get the hell out of there.

  The thought brought him up short again, his hand pausing on his Nikon, his brow furrowing. Damn, he was getting old.

  “Hurry,” Nikki whispered. “They’re moving out of the clearing. He’s the one in back. Typically.” She snorted the last word in disgust.

  Josh screwed in the heavy lens—Big Bertha, he called it—and automatically checked the other settings on the Nikon. Thirty seconds later, he had the camera poised and the lens racked out.

  “He’s American,” Josh murmured, “but . . . Ah, I see it.” He smiled, focusing on the tiny flash of captain’s bars on the man’s lapel. “For a military adviser, he’s awfully far from base.”

  “Yeah. I wonder what he’s advising them on. How to track nosy reporters through the rain forest?”

  “I’m not going to argue politics with you,” Josh said, letting his motor drive eat up a roll of film as he scanned the group of men, trying to fit the captain and a recognizable chunk of landscape into the same frame. He and Nikki disagreed on almost everything except how far they’d go to get a story. It made for a stormy relationship sometimes. “Okay, I’ve got it. Let’s go.”

  He turned toward her, but she was already ten steps ahead of him, slinging her pack over her shoulder and disappearing into the thick undergrowth at the bottom of the hill.

  Josh watched her, and found himself thinking all the strange thoughts that had been plaguing him for the last two months, maybe longer if he dared to admit it. Nikki had great breasts, and the way her hips curved into her waist was getting damn hard to ignore. The skinny girl he’d picked up as a stringer and interpreter was becoming a woman before his very eyes. He couldn’t shut off his awareness of her, and he didn’t know what to do about it. But one thing was clear—they couldn’t go on this way, running from one crisis to another, raising hell in every two-bit town in Central America, scooping the other reporters at every opportunity, and griping and complaining when they didn’t.

  Tonight, Josh, he told himself. Tonight he’d tell her she was going back to the States. He hoped he was up to the fight.

  The instant the thought crossed his mind, he knew he wasn’t. He was tired of fighting with her, and lately they seemed to do little else. Every conversation they had turned into an argument, and he knew why. Fighting was the only safe avenue for releasing his frustration. When he looked at her, or when she stood too close, he wanted to touch her . . . and touch her again. He wanted to run his thumb along her usually too smart mouth until her lips softened with desire. He wanted to gaze into her sea green eyes until she saw him as a man, until her golden lashes drifted down and she raised her mouth to his. Then he’d kiss her long and sweet. He would wrap his arms around her waist and pull her close, feeling her breasts press soft and full against his chest; and he’d kiss her some more, sliding his tongue into her mouth and—

  “Damn,” he muttered, forcing himself back away from the waking fantasy. He’d never make it through the night if he allowed his emotions free rein. Hell, they wouldn’t even make it back to the hotel. A part of him insisted on believing that if he made the first move, she would respond. If he kissed her, she’d kiss him back. Of course, the rest of him said he was nuts, the parts of him concerned with survival, with common sense, with continuing to be a free agent.

  As he sat there in the dirt arguing with himself and breaking down the camera, a low bank of gray clouds rolled in over the trees, stealing the dim light from the sky. He cursed again and began jamming his gear into his pack, berating himself for being a fool. He’d lost all sense of perspective in his life. Nikki was filling his mind, making him do dumb things like getting caught in the rain. She was probably halfway to the jeep, and he was still screwing around on the hill.

  * * *

  Nikki dashed the last few yards to the jeep, clutching her pack in her arms to keep it dry. Once inside, she slicked her hair away from her face and grabbed a towel out of the back. The thick white terry cloth felt heavenly on her face. It should, she thought. They’d absconded with it out of the best hotel in San Simeon, the Paloma Grand Hotel. Of course, at her insistence, they’d left a neat stack of coins on the bathroom counter. But as she rubbed the luxurious cloth over her face, she wondered if they’d left enough.

  The other door was wrenched open, and she heard Josh swearing under his breath as he sloshed into the driver’s seat.

  “What took you so long?” she mumbled from beneath the towel.

  When he didn’t reply, she peeked over one heavily embroidered edge of terry cloth. He was sprawled over the steering wheel, his clothes steaming, his head hidden between his arms. Water streamed down the ebony strands of his hair and plastered his shirt to his body, revealing every muscle-hardened curve of his shoulders and biceps. Unbidden, her gaze traced the length of his arms to his large, rough hands, then dropped to his waist, and farther to where his leg rested against the stick shift, only a few inches from hers. A soft explosion of heat burst deep inside her body and trapped her breath in her throat. Jumbled, chaotic images flashed through her mind—of Josh sweeping her into his arms, of his mouth close to her ear, whispering in the dark, of her hand so small and white resting on his tightly corded thigh, her fingers slowly and gently stroking his satiny brown skin.

  “Let’s get going,” she blurted out. “Before the road turns into a swamp. I’d rather spend the night at the hotel than stuck out here.”

  “Good idea,” he mumbled, wiping his face on his sleeve and glancing over his arm. “I could use a cold shower.”

  His eyes were a dusky blue in the shadows, like a midsummer twilight. They met hers across the vapor-filled interior, and for a moment she forgot not to stare. He was so beautiful, his face, dark and arrogant, chiseled out of a young girl’s dreams. A streak of mud slashed down his cheek, concealing the lower half of the scar that traced his hairline. The result of an ill-spent youth on the Texas side of the Rio Grande, he’d told her once with a wry grin. During the past year, she’d imagined and then confronted him with a dozen different scenarios of that ill-spent youth. She’d come up with hair-raising exploits in back-alley street fights and illegal border crossings in the dead of night. He’d never confirmed any of them, but he hadn’t denied them either.

  Now she wondered anew about the person who had
cut him, and she wondered what it would be like to touch that thin white line with her fingertip, to caress his face and take the old hurt away. The heat in her body slowly rose to her face, and she knew she’d looked too long.

  “Right. I could use a shower, too,” she said quickly. But deep down inside she doubted if the Casa del Flores had enough cold water to cool her down.

  * * *

  True to the hotel’s name, spidery boughs of bougainvillea interspersed with cascades of clematis swept around three sides of the Casa del Flores’s courtyard. Graceful palm trees swayed and dipped in the evening breeze, the rustling of their fronds lost in the sounds of the dining area. Tomorrow the whole place might go up in flames, but tonight the Casa del Flores was a haven of peace.

  Nikki sat hunched over her table, jotting notes by candlelight. Three empty beer bottles flanked a plate of half-eaten beans, rice, and tortillas. She’d picked all the chicken out. If Josh didn’t sell a story pretty soon, there wouldn’t be any chicken next time. She really had to get on him about it. The figures she quickly added up proved her point. They were running on empty.

  Boom or bust, she thought with a disgruntled sigh. Even looking at her notebook, she didn’t know where all their money went. There were too many miscellaneous entries—all of them in Josh’s handwriting. “Misc.” seemed to be his only expenditure.

  She flipped to the back pages where they kept their private accounts. Typically, Josh’s debits were all labeled “Misc.,” the last one nearly three hundred dollars. What in the miscellaneous hell had he done with three hundred dollars? she wondered, wrinkling her brow.

  She had very few debits on her private page, just a sure and growing line of credits tucked away in a Boulder, Colorado, bank. But there weren’t enough of them. She needed more money, lots more money. A year of risking her tail in the hottest spots in Latin America hadn’t given her the price of one person’s freedom.