TALL, DARK AND TEXAN

by Jane Sullivan

"Have you thought about how you're going to get there?"

  "Huh?"

  "To your job tomorrow morning."

  Wendy stared at him. Unfortunately, that little problem hadn't yet crossed her mind. "Public transportation?"

  "They tried that once down here. Somebody torched one of the buses."

  "Oh. Then I suppose a cab's out of the question, too?"

  Wolfe tossed a set of car keys onto the table beside the money. She gave him a questioning look. "You're letting me borrow your car?"

  "I don't need it tomorrow."

  "The Chevy?"

  "Right."

  "I don't suppose…"

  "No, you can't drive my Porsche."

  She smiled. "Can't blame a girl for trying."

  He said something about getting her something to sleep in. Disappearing into his bedroom, he returned a moment later and handed her one of his shirts, along with a portable alarm clock. She caught a whiff of the same scent she'd smelled the night before.

  "Mmm," she said, pulling the shirt to her nose. "Nice fabric softener."

  He frowned. "I hate static cling."

  The domestic image that created was so at odds with his image as a big, tough bounty hunter that it was all Wendy could do not to laugh. And what did a man like Wolfe need with fabric softener, anyway? She had no doubt he could hold up a shirt and scare the static electricity right out of it.

  "Good night," he said, and started to walk away.

  "Wolfe?"

  He turned back. She took a few tentative steps toward him. "I screwed up a lot of things today. Thanks for letting me live."

  "This is the state of Texas, sweetheart. Murder comes with a big price."

  She smiled. "You saved my life, loaned me a hundred dollars and you're letting me use your car. You've got too much invested in me to kill me now."

  They stared at each other a moment more, and all at once Wendy felt those warm fuzzies multiplying inside her like bunnies on Viagra. She took a few steps forward, stood on her tiptoes, pressed her palm against one side of his face and kissed his opposite cheek.

  "Thank you," she said. "I don't know what I'd do without you."

  She meant it as an act of appreciation. A sincere gesture of thanks with nothing else attached. Not a single thought about anything more personal had crossed her mind.

  At least, not until she stood so close to him that she could practically feel his heartbeat.

  Suddenly all those hot, sexy thoughts she'd been having about him all evening coalesced into one gigantic rush of sexual awareness. The air between them seemed to grow hot and heavy, as if her steamy thoughts were oozing out of her mind and filling the scant space between them. She rocked slowly down to her heels, letting her hand fall from his cheek to his shoulder.

  Then she looked up at him.

  Oh, boy.

  The moment she met his dark eyes, crazy little shivers sizzled between her shoulders. Only a few seconds passed, but it felt like a hundred. She touched her tongue to her lower lip, then took that same lip between her teeth. His eyes moved down to her mouth, hovered there for a moment, then rose again, a gesture that could mean only one thing. As impossible as it seemed, he was going to kiss her.

  And she couldn't think of anything she wanted more.

  She stared up at him, her lips actually tingling with anticipation, waiting … waiting…

  "I have an early surveillance tomorrow," he said suddenly, backing away as he spoke. "So I have to leave before dawn. I'll try not to wake you."

  All at once, the erotic possibilities she'd felt between them evaporated like drops of water on a summer sidewalk, and the delicious anticipation she'd felt turned to confusion.

  Wait a minute. Where do you think you're going? Get back here and kiss me!

  She swallowed hard, trying to find her voice. "Uh … don't worry about waking me. I can usually sleep through anything."

  He simply nodded, then disappeared into his bedroom, closing the door behind him and leaving Wendy standing alone in the sudden silence, wondering what had happened to that imaginary warm blanket that had surrounded her all evening.

  Answer: it had turned into a wet one.

  She collapsed to the sofa with a sigh of frustration, hugging Wolfe's shirt, the scent of the fabric softener wafting up to her nose again and making her want him even more. Well, damn. She'd looked up at him with her best kiss-me expression, and he'd backed away as if she'd caught fire. Why?

  After a few more minutes of feeling deprived and depressed, she forced herself to look at things logically. Why shouldn't he have backed away? After all, hadn't she caused him nothing but trouble since the moment she walked into his life?

  It was time she faced facts. He was tolerating her. Nothing more. No matter how much he protested to the contrary, the only reason he was even letting her stay was because she'd cried. It was a guy thing. A man would do anything to get a woman to stop crying, including giving in and let a total stranger be his roommate for an undetermined period of time. Undoubtedly he was counting the days until she was finally out of his life. And while he was counting the days, she should have stuck to counting her lucky stars instead of insisting on having the moon, too. After all, he'd given her a roof over her head, a car to drive and money in her pocket. What more could she want?

  Simple question, simple answer: a nice, slow, steamy kiss from the most intriguing man she'd met in a long time. That was what.

  Give it up. Not gonna happen. How much clearer could he have made it?

  With a heavy sigh, she told herself it was for the best. Things seemed to be fine between them now, and she needed a place to stay more than she needed to get up close and personal with a sexy man. Okay, so she had to work a little to make herself believe that, but soon the practical side of her brain won the argument. She told herself that from now on, no matter how many times she stared at him with fuzzies in her tummy and lust in her heart, she was going to keep her feelings to herself.

  * * *

  Wolfe went into his bedroom and closed the door behind him, his heart still beating in his chest like machine-gun fire, thinking that if he had to spend one more evening with Wendy like this one he was going to go crazy.

  If his life depended on telling somebody about the shows they'd just watched, he'd be a dead man. All he'd been able to think about the whole time was the woman on the other end of his sofa, her legs curled up beside her, sipping wine and occasionally brushing a strand of that gorgeous dark hair away from her face. He thought he would hate having somebody invade his apartment, particularly a woman who drew gunfire, burned things and had one hell of a time monitoring her mouth.

  He didn't hate it at all.

  It had been ages since he'd had an eligible woman within speaking distance whom he wasn't hauling off to jail. Now he had one of the most beautiful women he'd ever seen in his living room and he didn't know what to do with her.

  No. That wasn't true. Contrary to what Ramona thought, he knew quite well what to do with her. But he also knew that the minute he did it, she'd turn tail and run. And could he really blame her when he had a face that would scare a person out of ten years' growth?

  He went into his bathroom, turned on the light and looked at himself in the mirror. Really looked. Nope, nothing had changed. He still had eyes that could make a prison-hardened criminal think twice about messing with him, along with that damned scar that made him look as if he'd come out on the losing end of a bar fight. Most of the time, his face served him well. His job depended on him looking like a badass, and he'd never done anything to diminish that image. It'd be bad for business.

  Have you ever thought about smiling once in a while? she had asked him. Just a tiny bit?

  He opened and closed his mouth, squinted his eyes, then tried to smile. It felt as if he was creaking open the hinges of a hundred-year-old crate. Finally he got his lips to turn up, but only his mouth was smiling. The rest of his face refused to get the message.

  After a few m
ore ridiculous-looking attempts at appearing cheerful, he gave up, telling himself that he was what he was, and there was nothing he could do to change it. Did it really matter, anyway? That little peck on the cheek had just been Wendy's way of saying thanks, and only a complete idiot would have taken it for anything else.

  Still, the way she'd looked up at him…

  In those few seconds, all he saw was that full mouth, those gorgeous lips and those beautiful brown eyes that seemed to be calling to him like a siren song, and he could have sworn…

  No. It was wishful thinking. Nothing more. Kissing a man like him in a situation like this was, without a doubt, the very last thing on Wendy's mind.

  * * *

  Chapter 8

  « ^ »

  As soon as Wendy arrived at Lone Star Bail Bonds the next morning, Ramona gave her a crash course in the bail bond business, then introduced her to the two men who worked for her. Lonnie was a stick figure of a man with an unlikely mop of salt-and-pepper hair and a perpetually lonesome expression, while Ralph was short and stout and looked as if he'd never met a buffet he didn't like. Both of them spent most of the time on the phone when they were in the office, then made periodic runs to the jail to secure the release of people who'd been arrested once everything was in order for their bonds to be posted.

  Both men greeted Wendy with smiles, which was a real upper. She knew what it was like to have a job where she had to work with sourpusses, and she was thrilled that this wasn't going to be one of them.

  After her condensed training session, Wendy answered her first phone call.

  "Lone Star Bail Bonds," she said cheerfully.

  On the other end of the phone was a woman whose teenage son had been arrested on drug charges. Wendy directed the call to Ralph, then looked up at Ramona.

  "How was that?"

  "Lose the perkiness. People call here because they're in trouble or they know somebody who is. The last thing they want to hear is Barney the Dinosaur on the other end of the line."

  Wendy nodded, and the next time she answered the phone she put on her serious phone voice. It kind of made her sound like Joe Friday asking for just the facts, ma'am, but Ramona seemed pleased.

  Okay. So far, so good.

  About halfway through the morning, Ramona told Wendy she could take a coffee break, and Wendy asked if she could make a couple of quick long-distance calls. She phoned her sister Terri again and told her the whole truth about what had happened. When her sister flipped out a little, Wendy gave her Wolfe's number and her number at work, telling her not to worry, that she had a job and a place to stay. Terri would pass that information on to her parents, who would probably be calling to hear firsthand that she really was all right, but Wendy would deal with that when the time came. Then she called her agent in Hollywood to tell him what had happened and that she was going to be delayed indefinitely, letting him know how he could get in touch with her, too.

  "So," Ramona said offhandedly, as Wendy hung up the phone. "Did you and Wolfe have a nice dinner last night?"

  "Uh … yeah." Wendy winced. "Well, we might have, except for one tiny problem."

  "What's that?"

  "I can't cook."

  Ramona blinked with surprise. "You mean all that gourmet cooking stuff was a lie?"

  "Not exactly. I mean…" She sighed. "Well, okay. Yeah. Unfortunately, dinner turned out to be a little … lacking."

  Ramona glanced out to the parking lot. "Looks like you drove Wolfe's Chevy here this morning."

  "Yeah. That was nice of him, huh?"

  "So even though dinner wasn't quite up to par, you're still staying with him?"

  "Yeah."

  "How long is he going to let you stay?"

  Wendy sighed. "He didn't really say."

  "But he didn't say when you had to go?"

  "No. He didn't."

  Ramona smiled a little, then glanced back down at the file she held. "Good. That's good."

  Wendy had already figured out that Ramona was one of those people who never said all of the things she was thinking. She definitely had a lot of lines that needed reading between, but damned if Wendy could do it.

  Around noon, using part of her lunch hour and some of the money Wolfe had given her, Wendy hopped into the Chevy and ran over to Trinity River Thrift Store. The clerk recognized her immediately and started to suggest a few items of clothing related to the lovely purple coat she was still wearing, but Wendy opted for normal stuff—jeans, shirts, sneakers. Then she stopped at an actual store and bought undergarments. If she washed everything tonight she'd have clothes to wear for the rest of the week. It was a real upper to be clothed again. That meant she was getting control of something in her life. Yes. Things were definitely looking up.

  Ramona had offered to buy Wendy's lunch if she'd swing through a drive-through and pick up burgers for everyone, so she stopped at McDonald's on her way back from shopping. She'd just returned to the office, doled out the food and sat down at her desk to eat, when a man walked through the door.

  He looked to be in his late twenties, wearing a pair of camouflage pants, black boots and a black turtleneck sweater. His sandy-blond hair was swept away from his face, and he had eyes so blue she could make out their color at ten paces. He stood at least six feet tall with a carefully sculpted body that said he never missed a workout. As he sauntered across the office, Wendy's first thought was that he was a pretty hot guy. Her second thought was that he thought so, too, which pretty much canceled out her first thought.

  The man started toward Ramona's desk, then caught sight of Wendy. She could almost see a pair of antennae shoot right out the top of his head and, like a guided missile, he changed course and veered toward her desk.

  "Well, look at this," he said, stopping to stare down at her. "The view has sure improved since the last time I was here."

  That had to be some kind of record. In the span of fifteen seconds, he'd reduced her to an insignificant piece of eye candy.

  "Ramona?" he said. "Aren't you going to introduce me?"

  "This is Wendy Jamison. Wendy, this is Jeremy Slade. He's a bail-enforcement agent."

  "Forget that politically correct crap," Slade told Wendy, folding his arms over his chest. "I'm a bounty hunter. That's right, baby. I hunt people for a living."

  Wendy stared at him dumbly. Was this guy for real?

  "So what are you doing for lunch?" he asked her.

  He didn't appear to be blind, but somehow he'd missed the hamburger, fries and cola on her desk. "Well, I was kinda thinking maybe I'd eat this hamburger."

  "Trash it. Let's go out."

  "Sorry," Wendy said, dragging a fry through ketchup. "I'm a tightwad. Can't stand to let anything go to waste." She tossed the fry into her mouth.

  "Then forget lunch. How about dinner tonight?"

  Wendy shook her head, still chewing. "I have plans."

  She did. TV dinners with Wolfe. Or if Wolfe wasn't going to be home, she'd eat with Weenie. In spite of his personality defects, he'd be far better company than the man standing in front of her right now.

  "Tomorrow night, then," Slade said.

  "Gee, I have plans then, too."

  He sat down on the edge of her desk, dropping his voice dramatically. "I'm a bounty hunter, you know. A very dangerous man. How about it, Wendy? Do you like dangerous men?"

  Wendy just sat there, dumbfounded. Was she the only woman on the planet who didn't buy this kind of crap? Then she glanced at Ramona in time to catch her rolling her eyes.

  Nope. Not the only one.

  Just then the door opened, and Wolfe walked into the office. Wendy sat up straighter, her heart skipping wildly. He met her eyes for a brief moment of acknowledgment, then sat in the chair beside Ramona's desk and got right down to business.

  Something had definitely changed since last night, something Wendy had tried to dismiss as nothing more than a reaction to the fact that he'd taken her in and protected her and made her feel safe when her whole life
had fallen apart. But if that were true, then why was she getting all flushed with excitement when all he'd done was walk through the door?

  Even in the midst of that confusion, though, there was one thing of which she was absolutely certain. He had a body to die for, and if Pretty Boy didn't move his butt off the edge of her desk and quit blocking her view, she was going to deck him.

  Then she glanced up at Slade and realized that she wasn't the only one whose attention was focused on Wolfe. He drew a deep breath that expanded his chest, then raised his chin a few millimeters and replaced his betcha-think-I'm-sexy expression with an irritated frown.

  Hmm, Wendy thought. Tension.

  She looked back at Wolfe, expecting him to meet Slade's taut reaction with one of his own. But he never even glanced in Slade's direction. He tossed a bail ticket down on Ramona's desk.

  "Got Pagliani."

  "Good," Ramona said. "I know he was a tough one."

  "Oh, will you give me a break?" Slade called out. "My grandmother could have brought that guy in. If I hadn't been out of town, he'd have been behind bars a week ago."

  Wendy's attention shot over to Wolfe, whom she fully expected to stride across the room, yank Slade up by his collar and do some serious rearrangement of his facial features. But for some reason she couldn't hope to fathom, Wolfe never even looked in Slade's direction.

  To Wendy's surprise, Slade stood up and sauntered over to Ramona's desk. "Hear you brought Mendoza in, too," he said in a mocking tone. "Another highly dangerous apprehension."

  Okay. For some reason, this man had a death wish. Why else would he be instigating a pissing contest with a man who could squash him like a bug? Slade was a big guy, but Wolfe was bigger. Way bigger. Still, even with his smart mouth, Slade could have been on Mars for all Wolfe was acknowledging him.

  "I've got another one here," Ramona said a little sheepishly, "but you're not going to be happy about it."

  Wolfe opened the file, and his face fell. "Rico? God, Ramona—"

  "I know, I know," Ramona said, holding up her palm. "Don't rub it in."

  "Didn't I tell you he had run written all over him? You never should have posted bond on that guy."