by Tara Janzen
Showers of sparks fell all around them. One of the canopies on a jungle hut caught fire and caused a whole new set of screams, and Hawkins figured it would only take one more semidisaster for the whole place to go up in sheer, unadulterated panic. By the time they reached the parking lot, a few dozen people were following in their wake. The elegant garden party had definitely gone and turned into an out-and-out rout.
In a sea of SUVs, Mercedeses, and BMWs, he didn’t have any trouble finding his car. Roxanne was the only Sublime Green 1971 Dodge Challenger R/T in the lot, probably in the whole damn state, the only cruise missile packing a 426-cubic-inch Hemi and a set of Hooker headers under the hood. She was pure American muscle from her rubber to the pair of wide black stripes racing over her body from her nose to her tail, and he would have bet her pink slip that she was the only thing in the lot that could do a quarter mile in under twelve seconds.
Holding Katya tightly to his side, he let her feet drop to the ground as he jimmied his key into Roxanne’s passenger door lock.
“My head,” she moaned into the front of his jacket, her hand cradling her forehead. She was slumped against him.
He gave her a quick once-over and didn’t see any blood or scrapes.
“You’re okay,” he said, and hoped to hell it was true.
Regardless, he had her in the car, strapped into her seat, and was dropping himself behind Roxanne’s steering wheel in under thirty seconds—well ahead of the pack.
As a getaway, this one was looking good. Dylan was still out there somewhere, but Dylan could take care of himself, and in far more dangerous situations.
If he was worried about anybody, it was still Kid, waiting it out in Colombia, waiting for J.T.’s body to come out of the jungle. Hawkins should never have left him. Never.
Shit. He fired up the 426 Hemi, and Roxanne roared to life, shaking like a wet bitch and growling deep in her throat.
Well, he had left Kid, following orders, and he’d ended up here with Katya Dekker, and sure as hell, enough bad crap had come down that he’d ended up saving her—again.
Hell. He slid Roxanne into first gear and power-shifted his way up to a rubber-burning launch out of the parking lot onto York Street. By the time he hit fourth, the Botanic Gardens were no more than a faintly lit memory in Roxanne’s rearview, and they were cruising for the freeway at forty over the limit, punching lights and leaving a trail of smoke.
CHAPTER
3
KATYA DIDN’T KNOW which was her most serious problem: the utter depth of her own stupidity, the number of G-forces pushing her back into the bucket seat of the rocket she was riding, or Christian Hawkins. It looked pretty much like a toss-up to her. Any of the three could prove to be lethal.
Her pulse was racing like a freight train.
It was the car that had cleared her brain, the sound of it, the feel of it. She’d lived her whole life gliding along the world’s roads in her mother’s Cadillacs, her father’s Town Cars, her own little Mercedes when she’d hit sixteen, and a never-ending series of boyfriends’ Beemers, Hondas, and SUVs. But at eighteen she’d tasted power, the bone-shaking, body-trembling, pulse-pounding power of more cubic inches than any sane underwriter would insure. The night Hawkins had pulled her out of the middle of a drunken fraternity-boy brawl in LoDo, he’d taken her home in the kind of car that put the bad in badass. “Get in the car, princess” had been his first words to her, spoken as he’d stood between her and the unruly group of young men who only minutes before she had called her friends—before they’d decided the night’s game would be to see who could get a piece of Katya’s prom dress, before the game had degenerated into getting a piece of Katya, before Jonathan had pulled out a knife to cut off a piece of pink tulle and, in his drunken clumsiness, cut her.
It had been incredibly stupid to get in a strange boy’s car that night, a fact she’d been too hurt and frightened to assimilate until he’d gotten in with her and started the engine. She’d never been in a car that came to life in every metallic molecule all at once, growling and shaking, and she hadn’t been in one since—until tonight.
She’d thought it was Alex covering her as she lay facedown on the lawn, stunned by the first explosion. She’d thought it was Alex who’d lifted her into his arms. Her secretary was buff beyond a doubt, but not much bigger than she was, a fact that had come into play when, partway across the garden, she’d come around enough to realize Alex seemed taller than usual, and bigger, and that the body she was cradled against went beyond merely buff into the “ripped” or “cut” category.
But oh, no, that hadn’t been a big enough clue for her. With the fireworks exploding and sparks raining down, with her head breaking and her heart pounding, she’d taken the coward’s way out and clung to the strongest, closest thing she could find.
She was good at hiding from the truth, and the lion who’d pranced his way down the yellow brick road to Oz had nothing on her in the cowardly department. She’d tried being brave once, thirteen years ago to be exact, and her mother had systematically badgered and argued and screamed and all but beaten the inclination out of her.
So there it was, the sad truth. Her one chance to build a little character had ended in failure.
Too bad, because it sure looked like she could use a little character in her current situation. Her party-girl résumé was hardly likely to reassure Christian Hawkins that any sacrifices he’d made on her behalf had been well worth the effort.
Christian Hawkins. Her gaze went to where he gripped the steering wheel. The back of his hand was broad, powerful looking, the veins prominent beneath his skin—but it was the tattoo that extended just beyond the snow-white cuff of his dress shirt that held her attention, the dark curve of ink, the merest hint of what snaked up his arm and lay beneath the rest of his shirt. No one who had ever seen him naked would ever forget. No one who had seen him naked would ever, ever mistake him for another.
Christian Hawkins. Oh, God. It took every ounce of strength she had not to just bury her head in her hands and burst into tears.
HAWKINS looked over at his passenger, and his mouth tightened. She looked like hell, her hair all wild and tangled, her face smudged with dirt and grass stains, and the slit in her little black dress split to halfway up her rib cage. He could see her underwear. One tiny black satin strap arching over the smooth curve of her hip. Unfuckingbelievable. He’d worked through his anger at her years ago. The only thing he felt for her now was complete and utter indifference.
And yet she was making him sweat.
Given how much she paid for her clothes, he would have thought they would hold up a little better. But that wasn’t the worst of it. He could handle underwear, even hers—and he resented like hell that he had to specifically notate hers. The worst of it was the look on her face. He knew women, and he knew Bad Luck was on the verge of crying, which was the last thing he needed.
“I’m taking you to Doc,” he said, keeping his gaze firmly on the street ahead. “He’ll check you over, make sure you don’t have a concussion or anything.”
Silence met his announcement, a long silence so deep he could almost hear her pulling herself together. Come on, he silently encouraged her. You can do it. Don’t cry on me, Dekker. Not tonight.
“I—I don’t have a concussion. I have a headache.”
Good, he thought. She’d done it. Composed herself and saved them both from a messy, emotional scene.
“I’m sure Doc will have something for it.” Doc had everything, including, at one time, too much gin thinning his blood and a shade too many narcotics fogging his brain, which was why his medical license had been revoked twenty years ago.
He heard her swear softly, and looking over, saw her lower her head into her hands.
“Déjà vu.” The words whispered from her mouth on a weary sigh.
Well, hell. Some things didn’t change, he could have told her, and Doc was one of them. It was true: Thirteen years ago, Doc’s was the first place he’d
taken her—though he’d offered the police station as an alternative. The local precinct certainly hadn’t been his favorite place, but if she’d wanted to press charges, he’d have been willing to back her up. Of course, they would have first had to ditch the car he’d been driving, a stolen Chevy Malibu—very recently stolen, a 1969 SS 396 with three-deuce carburetion, and without a doubt the hottest Chevelle he’d ever driven.
She’d chosen Doc’s, and the former surgeon had put a few stitches in her arm and offered her a dizzying array of pharmaceuticals to stave off the pain. To his surprise, the pretty little prom princess hadn’t had a clue what she was looking at, so Hawkins had grabbed a couple of Percodans and shelled out fifty bucks for the call.
“He’s cleaned up his act since then.” Clean and sober, Doc Blake now ran the neighborhood AA meetings, but he was still open for his unofficial late-night business, especially for the street kids.
The sound she made from behind her hands was indecipherable, but came damn close to sounding like a very unprincesslike snort.
Fine. She could think what she wanted, but he was calling the shots.
“Y-you can just take me home,” she said after another long moment, lifting her head up on a steadying breath and dragging one hand back through her hair. “Please. I’ll call my own doctor from there.”
Please. He liked the sound of that. He liked it a lot, but her request was impossible.
“I’m sorry. I may be able to take you home later, but I’m afraid first it’s going to be Doc’s.”
He felt more than saw her turn in her seat and level her gaze at him.
“May be able to take me home later?” she repeated. “Are you kidnapping me?”
Ah, he thought. There it was, the regally cool tone of voice only a prep-school girl and senator’s daughter could pull off.
“It’s not exactly kidnapping. There won’t be a ransom note, but we need to make sure you’re safe, and we won’t be able to do that until we figure out who blew up all those palm trees while you were standing under them.”
Her answer was another long bout of dead silence, which he didn’t for a second misinterpret as acceptance.
“Y-you think somebody was trying to hurt me?” she finally said, her voice a shade too breathless to continue qualifying as regally cool, a degree too hesitant to maintain even the illusion of icy calm. Dammit. “And who’s ‘w-we’? Do you mean the man you were talking with at the party?”
“Don’t panic, Ms. Dekker,” he said calmly, and took his advice for himself. “I work for the Department of Defense, and we don’t know that anybody was trying to hurt you. That’s what we’re going to try and find out.” She was just a job tonight, just a job in a black satin thong.
O-kay. He shifted in his seat.
“If you want to give your mother a call, I’ll give you a number in Washington where she can verify that my partner and I were at the Gardens tonight under the authority of the DOD. My only request is that you don’t give her my name, at least not yet. It’ll be up to my partner to decide how much she needs to know.” He tried to sound as reassuring as possible. He wanted the full ice-princess package here tonight. He needed the ice-princess package. That was the picture of her he’d nurtured all those months in prison, because what had nearly driven him insane were the memories of her heat—hot mouth, hot love, hot temper.
And all of it was the last thing he wanted to be thinking about.
“Department of Defense?” she finally said. “Our Department of Defense? You’re kidding, right?”
Her confidence in him was downright heartwarming.
“No.” He wasn’t kidding, dammit. He’d turned out just fine, no thanks to her. Was that so damn hard to believe?
She mulled his answer over for an annoyingly long time.
“So my mother didn’t hire you to be my bodyguard tonight?”
Good God, no. “I think I’m the last person your mother would hire for any reason, but especially for watching over you.” He hoped Dylan got in touch with Grant soon and figured this mess out.
“H-how can she verify, if I don’t tell her your name?” she finally asked.
Good question, but he didn’t like the sound of the voice asking it. She was going to lose it, if he didn’t get her calmed down.
“I’ll give her a code and route her through someone she knows,” he said. “She has more than a few friends at DOD.” It was Marilyn Dekker’s only redeeming quality. She was an all-American, blue-blooded hawk from the top of her no-nonsense, dirt-brown pageboy haircut to her black patent leather pumps. Every time he saw her, he wondered where Kat had come from. That the blond bombshell and Mrs. G.I. Joe shared a genetic base was hard to imagine. Marilyn Dekker was built like a linebacker, one square block on top of another, and Kat had more curves than a cyclone.
“No.” The word came out dangerously breathless, yet damnably insistent. “I don’t think so.”
“No?” He shot her a quick glance. “What do you mean, no?”
“No, I’m not . . . n-not going to call my mother.”
Perfect. She wasn’t going to call her mother, but she was going to hyperventilate herself into a dead faint. He could hear her over there on the other side of the car, each breath coming faster than the last, each one shallower than the one before. So much for the ice-princess package. She was going into full meltdown mode.
“Take a deep breath,” he advised. “Please.” For my sake.
“I . . . I—” Her voice caught in her throat.
Ah, hell. She wasn’t going to make it. Easing down on the brake, he quickly slid Roxanne down through her gears and pulled over.
“Put your head down.”
“C-can’t.”
Okay, that was his fault. He’d buckled her in using Roxanne’s three-point harness. Moving fast and sure, he reached over and undid the seat belt with one hand, then put his palm over her nose and mouth as he gently pushed her head toward her knees.
The last thing he wanted was for her to faint, but this . . . this was crazy. He was in a car with Katya Dekker, and she was holding on to him like her life depended on it—one hand gripping his wrist, the other cupped around his hand. And she was breathing on him like a package deal of bolt-on boost, fast and cool on the inhale, warm on the exhale.
A small, tearing sound drew his gaze downward, and he watched in calm disbelief as her dress slowly ripped another two inches, maybe three. She was going to come out of it in about two more seconds, with him practically on top of her.
There was a lesson in here somewhere, he was sure. Or maybe he’d offended some ancient, pre-Columbian god while he’d been in South America—because this was a test.
“Breathe,” he reminded her when she stopped for a couple of seconds.
She did, and this time kept going, sounding like she was starting to get the hang of it. In. Out. In. Out. Going slower, getting steadier.
Hell. He turned his face into his shoulder and looked over her head out the passenger-door window.
Katya Dekker. He didn’t deserve this.
He didn’t have any room for her anywhere in his life. No room for regrets, or anger, or memories. No room for anything. She didn’t exist for him. That’s the way he’d arranged things. That’s the way he liked things.
But for someone who didn’t exist, she was taking up a helluva lot of room in his car.
CHAPTER
4
HOW ABOUT SOMETHING for panic attacks?” Hawkins asked Doc Blake. “She just about hyperventilated herself into a coma on the way over.”
Doc peered up at him over the rims of his bifocals, turning from his shelves of neatly organized and labeled drugs. Hawkins knew he got them from a couple of ER doctors over at Denver General who figured any help Doc Blake could give out was better than some fool kid dying on the street because of an overdose or an infection.
“Maybe if you quit scowling at her, she won’t be so nervous.”
Scowling? He wasn’t scowling at her, or if
he was, it was for his own self-protection.
“She’s—” What in the hell? he wondered, leaning a little to the side to better see into the examining room. Doc had left the door open, and Kat was standing next to the exam table doing . . . what? His gaze dropped down the length of her body, then ran back up right along with his pulse. Four-inch heels did amazing things for her legs, especially in the oddly twisted, hipshot stance she’d taken, trying to safety-pin her dress together over her hip.
Geezus.
He forced his gaze back to Doc. “She’s the . . . uh—” His mind went blank. All he could think was that even dressed she looked half naked.
“I know who she is.” Doc came to his rescue with a jaundiced lift of one bushy, white eyebrow. “But maybe you need a reminder.”
His gaze slid back to the examining room. Yeah, maybe he did.
“There were people lobbying for the death penalty for the way that Traynor boy died,” Doc reminded him.
Yeah. It had been ugly. Real ugly.
And Bad Luck Dekker was beautiful—if a guy went for that whole long-blond-hair, green-eyed look.
Right.
She’d finally gotten the pin in place and was smoothing her dress down. It was absurd, of course. She needed about a hundred safety pins to really do the job.
“Lots of people seemed to come up dead that summer,” Doc continued. “The Traynor boy, Lost Harold, and the floater they fished out of the South Platte River.”
Lost Harold was a wino who had keeled over with a massive seizure down by Union Station. Being kind of a reclusive-type wino, it had been three days before he was found in the jumble of cardboard boxes he’d been calling home. The floater was a woman, Hawkins remembered, a young woman, and she’d been in the water a long time before some hapless jogger had seen her body caught up in a tangle of trees.
“My record’s clean, Doc,” he said, returning his attention to the portly older man. “I didn’t kill the Traynor kid.”
