His knees gave way and he landed hard on the bed.
He wanted to howl like a wolf and trash the room, but there was no time to indulge himself. If he didn’t catch up with her by the time she reached the Black Cat, he might never find her. He yanked his jacket from the floor and shrugged it on, thanking God for automatic checkout. He dug in the pocket for his keys. His body froze.
He dug in the other pocket. The inside pockets. He turned the pockets inside out. He checked every horizontal surface in the room, sweeping brochures, menus, stationery, cable guides, all onto the floor.
Then he punched the wall so hard that the surreal duck picture slid down the wall behind the TV. The crash and tinkle of breaking glass and the blood on his knuckles did not make him feel any better.
Christmas Eve at the Black Cat Casino was rowdy and crazed, ablaze with colored Christmas lights. Annie felt as drab as a field mouse as she fingered her little sack of silver dollars and stared at what she was almost certain was her lucky slot machine. She had never felt so unlucky in her life. She had a gaping hole inside her and her luck was leaking out of it, swirling like a whirlpool in a bathtub drain. She could feel the miserable little swirling sensation deep in her gut.
Of course, that feeling could be the result of not eating or sleeping. She’d just driven endlessly, stopping to doze now and then at rest stops until a state trooper knocked on her window, reminding her that she wasn’t in a campground and it was time to move along.
Buck up, she told herself. You made it. You’re here. But still she stared at the machine, a sick, sinking fear in her belly. Not that she might lose her money; that was the least of her worries. Her fear was that she’d made a terrible mistake back in Bernhard, Arkansas. She’d torn her heart out of her body and left it in a budget-motel room. And she didn’t even know his last name. She’d burned her bridges utterly.
Well, that was Annie Simon for you. If there was one thing she was spectacularly good at, it was burning bridges. In her current luckless state, she’d be smarter to just take her silver dollars and buy herself a sandwich and a cheap room for the night.
Stubborn pride stiffened her backbone. She couldn’t give up now. She’d come too far, given up too much. She had to at least try.
She let out her breath in a long sigh, held her lucky dollars in both hands and closed her eyes. Concentrate, she told herself. Think lucky thoughts. New beginnings. Sunrises. The Milky Way. Colored balloons rising into a clear blue sky. Ice cream.
But Jacob’s face was burned into her memory. His huge, out-of-control grin lighting him up like a Christmas tree. It was impossible to think of anything else. It hurt her heart to think of him.
She opened the bag and began to play, sliding in coin after coin and yanking down the handle. She lost, lost, won eleven dollars. Lost six times in a row, won three dollars. Lost, lost, lost, won two. Lost, lost, lost, in a long string. The dollars drained away with that same miserable, swirling, bathroom drain feeling.
Finally she was holding the last coin. She slipped it into the slot with fatalistic calm. Lost.
Well. That was that. She stared at the machine with blank, numb relief. Now she knew. No more surprises. Down to ground zero.
It was time to head to the ladies’ room, to wash her face and comb her hair. Eleven o’clock on Christmas Eve in a casino wasn’t the ideal time or place for job hunting, but she had nothing better to do. She squared her shoulders, turned.
Her heart skipped a beat, and started to gallop.
Jacob stood there, his hair loose and windblown, his face haggard and unshaven. A silver dollar gleamed in his outstretched hand. “You’ve got one more coin to play, Annie,” he said quietly.
She drank in the sight of his pale, weary, incredibly beautiful face. “I gave that dollar to you,” she whispered. For luck.“
He shook his head. “I want more than that from you.”
“What do you want?” she forced out.
His eyes burned into hers with piercing intensity for a moment, and then a brief, tired smile flashed on his face, softening his harsh expression. “Everything,” he admitted.
She tried to laugh, but it came out like a sob. “You think big.”
“You better believe it,” he said, reaching for her.
She was losing herself in his eyes, and she couldn’t fight it anymore. Her eyes filled with tears as his lips met hers with a kiss of reverent, hushed gentleness, as if she were precious, sacred, adored.
“I love you, Annie,” he whispered. His arms tightened and he hugged her so tightly that she could barely breathe.
The colored lights began to dip and spin around her. She wound her arms around his big solid frame and hung on. “You do?”
“Yes,” he whispered, his voice muffled against her hair. “Don’t run away from me again. I need you.”
“Oh, God, I need you too,” she choked out. “I love you, Jacob.”
His arms tightened. “Then you’ll marry me?”
She blinked, astonished. “Marry you?”
His voice was urgent. “I only acted like a lunatic because I’m madly in love with you, and you made me chase you all over hell’s half acre. Promise to marry me, and I swear to God I’ll calm right down.”
“Marry you?” she repeated stupidly.
Jacob’s face tightened in dismay. “Don’t tell me I’m scaring you away again. I’m so tired of chasing you, Annie. You’re wearing me out.”
She soothed the anxious line in his brow with her fingertip, and slid her hand down to caress his scratchy, beautifully formed jaw. “It would take a lot to wear you out, Jacob,” she observed.
He closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against hers. “Maybe so,” he said quietly. “But I’d rather save my energy for other things.”
Her heart swelled with tenderness at the exhaustion in his voice. She couldn’t fight the feeling any longer, and besides, this had to be right because it felt incredibly, marvelously lucky. She rose up on tiptoe and pulled his head down to meet her kiss. “I won’t run away.”
His eyes flashed. “Promise?”
“I promise.”
“So will you marry me, then?”
She laughed, delighted. “Well, maybe you could tell me a bit about yourself. Like, what’s your last name?”
“Kerr. I’m an architect. Very respectable. Nice family, no prison record,” he said swiftly. “Now will you marry me?”
Her jaw dropped. “Architect?”
A big man with a red nose prodded Annie’s shoulder. “Hey, you guys gonna use this machine, or what?” he brayed in a boozy voice.
Jacob grinned and held out the silver dollar. “So? Are you going to play?”
“I’ve already won,” she said, happy tears trembling on her eyelashes. “But I guess I might as well. This won’t take long,” she assured the red-nosed man with a smile. She inserted the coin into the slot and hauled down on the handle.
Jackpot. Bells dinged and people cheered. Shining silver dollars clattered out in a thick, liquid-looking stream. Annie leaped into Jacob’s arms, and wrapped her legs gleefully around his waist.
“Tonight, the motel’s on me,” she crowed. “And the champagne, too!”
Jacob buried his face against her neck and held her close, his body trembling. “Deal,” he said.
Later, cuddled together in the sagging bed in the first roadside motel they found, Annie stretched and rested her head on his broad, warm chest. “I would never have pegged you as an architect,” she said in a wondering voice. “That long hair of yours.”
He gave her a guilty smile. “I thought it would ruin my bad-ass, biker dude image if I let on that I know how to iron a dress shirt.”
She laughed and reached for her glass, taking a lazy sip of champagne. “I thought you were going to ask me to be your biker babe, and ride off into the sunset with you on the back of your hog.”
He wrapped one of her curls around his finger and stroked it against his cheek. “Would you have gone
for it?”
“I think you could convince me to do just about anything,” she said with absolute seriousness.
“I still haven’t convinced you to marry me,” he grumbled.
She rested her chin on her crossed arms. “Give me more details, Jacob,” she teased. “Like, what’s the name of the firm where you work?”
He snorted. “Are you going to call and check my references?”
“Spit it out, Kerr,” she said in a steely voice.
He rolled his eyes. “It’s called Kerr and Associates,” he muttered.
Annie’s eyes widened. She was silent for a long moment. “As in… Jacob Kerr and his associates?” she said hesitantly.
“Yeah,” he snapped.
“Ah,” she murmured. “And… what do you and your associates build?”
He shrugged. “Various things. Stadiums, office buildings, airports.”
“Airports?” She disentangled herself and sat up. “Don’t tell me you’re a young urban professional with a closet full of Armani suits and ties.”
His eyes narrowed. “Are you going to hold it against me?”
She scrambled off the bed, flushed with outrage. “You lied to me!”
“Not really,” he muttered defensively. “I just never got around to telling you about myself. You weren’t all that forthcoming, either.”
But Annie was on a roll. “You snake! You stalk me, and pursue me, and seduce me, and mess with my mind, and bend me to your will, and now I find out that you… that you build airports!”
His face was abjectly contrite. “I’m so sorry. Really.”
“And after all that, you have the nerve to ask me to marry you?”
He reached out a long arm and yanked her back down on top of him. “I’m begging you, then.” His voice was rough with intensity.
She scrambled off his hard body and slid off the bed. He followed with catlike swiftness.
“That’s enough of that strong-arm stuff,” she warned him, backing hastily away. “I won’t stand for it. You be nice, Jacob.”
He stopped dead in his tracks, his eyes wary. “I’m sorry,” he said carefully. He waited, naked and beautiful, his arms at his sides and his fists clenched. The silence between them was thick with emotion, with words unsaid and questions unanswered. The air hummed with it.
Oh, enough, already. Her mind was made up, and there was no reason to keep torturing him.
Well, then again… maybe just a tiny bit.
She crossed her arms over her breasts and widened her stance aggressively. “I’m afraid a lame-ass apology is just not going to cut it.”
A wary smile played about the corners of his sensual mouth. “Just what would cut it?”
She put her hands up on his muscular shoulders, and shoved down hard. A comprehending grin of delight split his face, and he folded promptly to his knees. “Your wish is my command, Empress Annie,” he said softly, nuzzling her belly.
“It damn well better be,” she said breathlessly. “Start apologizing, buddy, and you better make it good, because your ass is mine tonight.”
He looked up, laughter crinkling up the gorgeous laugh lines around his eyes. “Do you mean that literally?”
Annie smiled down at him, sweetly, cruelly. “That’s for me to know and for you to wonder about, loverboy,” she purred.
He shook with laughter. He didn’t look as scared as he ought to be, she thought, trying not to giggle. A ruthless dominatrix did not giggle. But there was too much emotion bottled up inside them both. It fizzed out like champagne bubbles, and they laughed until their laughter melted into something deeper, more wrenching. Jacob’s shoulders shook, and Annie cradled his dark head against her belly. She sank down to her knees and wrapped her arms around his neck. “Of course I’ll marry you, you big idiot,” she whispered.
His arms encircled her, squeezing her breathless. “You mean it?”
She pried his damp face away from her shoulder. “You still need convincing?”
He nodded, his face somber. “You better believe it.”
She cradled his face in her hands and kissed him tenderly. “I never could resist a challenge,” she said.
* * *
About the Authors
SUZANNE FORSTER has written more than twenty novels and has been the recipient of countless awards, including the National Readers’ Choice Award for SHAMELESS, her mainstream debut. Her books routinely hit top spots on the USA Today bestseller list, and numerous others. Her last novel, THE MORNING AFTER, appeared on the extended New York Times bestseller list. She lives in Newport Beach, CA.
She’s one of the hottest writers in the industry. Romantic Times calls her the Queen of Erotic Romance. She’s THEA DEVINE (yes, it’s her real name), author of seventeen steamy full-length novels and a half dozen sexy novellas. In addition, her erotic short fiction has been published by Penthouse Forum, and she also writes contemporary romance and is a long-time freelance manuscript reader. She lives in New York’s Westchester County with John, her husband of thirty-five years. Visit her website at www.theadevine.com or contact her at [email protected].
LORI FOSTER has become the bestselling author of over twenty-eight novels since publishing her first book in 1996. She writes for five different publishers, doing single title, category, special projects, novellas, an electronic book, and online serials. She also writes lead articles for Writers Digest magazine and has a very popular bimonthly column on Editor Interview in RWR. Lori, her husband of twenty-two years, their three sons, and their Chihuahua, Brock, all live in rural Ohio. You can write Lori at: Lori Foster, P.O. Box 854, Ross, OH 45061, or visit her webpage at www.lorifoster.com
SHANNON McKENNA lives in southern Italy, where she spends her time juggling two careers, writing and music. After living for several years in New York City, singing celtic, renaissance, and medieval music and working a bewildering variety of temporary jobs, she moved to Italy; for the sun, the sea, the food, and the freedom to take naps — but most importantly, for love. She and her husband live within sight of the sunny Adriatic.
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