by Mary McBride
Her toes edged inside his knee now, and Cal would've been a liar if he said it wasn't a turn on. He just wished the foot were attached to somebody else's leg.
“Care to do anything about it?” she asked.
After another sip of beer, he put his glass down and then reached under the table with both hands to plant his thumbs firmly against the sole of her stockinged foot. “How's that?” he asked, pressing hard.
Her thick eyelashes fluttered and Cal could see the moan she was having a tough time stifling. “Oh, God. That's wonderful,” she murmured. “Don't stop.”
He slid his hands up to her ankle, then dragged his fingers back, pressing hard into the fleshy part of her instep while he watched her head arc back a couple of inches and her dark brown eyes sink closed. “You look just as pretty as you did on your wedding day, Mrs. Carter,” he said, keeping his voice low, continuing the massage.
“You're full of shit, Cal.” She smiled as she said it.
“No, I mean it. You've still got world-class ankles, too, Sandy. You always did. Hell, I could do this all night. Except…”
Her shuttered eyes opened a crack. “Except what?”
With a tilt of his head, Cal gestured down the table. “Except that little strawberry blonde down there would probably kill me if she suspected I found anybody sexy but her. She's a lot stronger than she looks. And as I recall, Bud used to have a lethal left hook.”
A small sigh of acknowledgment broke from her pink glossy lips. “You're saying we're just too old and scared to fool around, huh?”
“Well, I don't know about you, darlin', but I'm feeling every minute of my age these days.” He grinned. “I kinda wish we'd both thought about playing footsie eight or ten years ago.”
Sandy—Mrs. Bertram “Bud” Carter of twenty years, with probably twenty or thirty more to go in that role—fully opened her eyes now in order to roll them heavenward. “You really are full of shit, Cal. You know that?”
He shrugged. He knew it, but he was hoping Sandy wouldn't figure it out.
She gave a conclusive little sigh then as she pulled her foot from his hands. “You're a good man, Cal Griffin, and that strawberry blonde is one lucky little girl.”
They both turned their gazes to the opposite end of the table where the lights were nearly dazzling on Bobby's skull as he stood behind Holly's chair, helping her up, and then ushering her toward the dance floor. Holly pitched Cal a woeful little “Mayday” look over her shoulder.
“Cripes,” Sandy said with some disgust. “There goes Bobby again, trying to prove he can do the tango. He watched that movie with Al Pacino too many times.”
By now, Kathy had turned back from her conversation with the waitress and she took a bit of umbrage at the remark about her husband. “He's not that bad, Sandy. Besides, I think it's kind of cute.” Chuckling, she nudged Cal's arm. “Still, your date probably wouldn't mind being rescued before ol' Al tangos all over her poor feet.”
“That's not such a bad idea,” he said, already shoving his chair back. “Excuse me, ladies.”
“Ouch.” Dammit. Holly hadn't meant to yelp. Not out loud anyway. Bobby Brueckner was so utterly serious about the tango, but the banker-slash-hoofer had just clipped her little toe for a third time, and they'd only been on the dance floor a minute or two.
“Sorry about that,” he mumbled, sounding less than sincere, as if it were her fault for being clumsy and getting in his way.
“That's okay.” Holly stiffened her right arm just a bit so they weren't quite so close. Actually, his beer gut was already doing a fairly good job of separating them. Maybe he just had incredibly big feet. She was beginning to wonder if the VIP Channel had made any provisions for hazardous duty pay. God. She'd been a participant in a hostage drama this morning, and now she was about to have a toe amputated or be trampled to death in a crummy Texas roadhouse.
When Bobby abruptly reversed direction, he got her big toe—eee-oww!—and she didn't say a word when he made a condescending cluck of his tongue instead of offering abject apologies. Okay. So she wasn't Ginger Rogers or Jennifer Grey. But Bobby wasn't exactly Fred Astaire, and he sure as hell wasn't Patrick Swayze.
“My turn, Bobby.”
Cal's voice, as it drifted over the banker's shoulder, sounded like the music of the angels in concert with guitars and blaring trumpets and insistent maracas. Gracias a Dios. Mil gracias. A thousand thanks. More. A million.
Bobby's intense grip on her hand evaporated, and the next thing Holly knew she was being enfolded in Cal's arms. It felt a little like going from a bed of nails to the all-encompassing warmth of a duvet. Being in his arms felt so right. Just perfect.
The hand at her back pulled her close while his left wrist curled her hand against his solid chest. “This is purely a rescue operation, babe,” he murmured at her ear. “I don't dance. Not anymore.”
“Feels like dancing to me,” she said, surprised at the sultriness of her own voice. The words came out as purring rather than speech. “Feels good.”
He tilted back a few inches to focus his blue, blue eyes on her face. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Holly couldn't suppress a smile that felt absurdly contented, ludicrously smitten. She didn't even want to fight her feelings at the moment.
Cal's smile was fairly smitten, too. “What do you say we ease on over to the far side of the dance floor, and then make a break for the back door?”
Holly laughed. “You lead. I'll follow.”
Making their way across the crowded dance floor turned out to be easier said than done. It seemed that Bobby wasn't the only local aficionado of the tango. They were thumped and bumped from all sides as they moved in the general direction of the kitchen and the back door. Holly didn't especially mind the jostling, though, because every thump and bump seated her more firmly in Cal's arms, against his warm, solid form. Right that moment she would've followed him anywhere—out the back door, across the border, to the moon.
Up until nine months ago, Cal had been, among other things, a professional people mover and crowd threader, using his own weight and forward progress to shift others off balance and out of his way. A human bulldozer with badge and gun. Christ, now he felt like a rat in a maze just trying to reach the edge of the dance floor. As a dancer, he'd never been any great shakes, but he knew how to hold a woman, and judging from the renewed glaze in Holly's expression, he'd succeeded admirably.
Now what?
With his arm around her shoulders, he guided Holly off the dance floor and down the narrow corridor that led past the pay phone and the rest rooms, both of them labeled in Spanish. It took Cal a long moment to distinguish Chicos from Chicas.
“I'll be right out,” he told Holly even as he was pushing the door and congratulating himself on solving the problem about protection. He'd never been in a Texas roadhouse that didn't have a condom dispenser in the men's room. It was standard equipment.
He stepped inside, only to be greeted by the intense odor of pine and the sight of about half a mile of wide shoulders, all in assorted plaids, lined up at the urinals.
The guy on the far right zipped up and swung around. It was Sandy Carter's husband, Bud. “Hey, Cal,” he said, ambling toward the sink.
“Hey, Bud.”
Damn. Cal glanced at the dark green dispenser on the far wall and wondered why he'd assumed he'd be alone for this little transaction. He didn't give a rat's ass about his own reputation, but he'd be damned if he'd let everyone within a forty-mile radius know he was making it with the little producer from New York. Instead of heading for the rubber machine, he went to the sink and washed his hands, just so he didn't look like a total jerk.
“So they're doing a TV show about you, huh?” Bud asked from the adjacent sink, glancing at him in the mirror.
“Yeah.”
“That's really something, man. Who would've thought it back when we were kids?”
“Yeah. Who would've thought it,” Cal echoed. He shut off the faucet and snapped a paper towel from the
holder. “See you around, Bud.”
Out in the dim hallway, Cal didn't see Holly at first, so he thought maybe she'd decided to use the Chicas. He leaned a shoulder against the wall, waiting. He could detour a few miles north on the way home. Holly'd never know the difference. He could stop at a drug store, be in and out in a minute, with no one the wiser.
Then what?
Hell.
Then where?
They couldn't very well go back to Ruth and Dooley's, could they? If Ruthie caught them…All of a sudden Cal felt like a furtive teenager, looking for a place, any place, to lay his lady. He cursed himself for choosing the T-bird with its bucket seats when he could have had a big '68 Caddy for the same price. Of course, six months ago, when he'd bought the car, sex had been the last thing on his mind. But now…
Just then, over the guitars and trumpets on the bandstand, he heard a familiar female voice. A familiar, strident female voice. More Brooklyn than Brownsville.
“You and the horse you rode in on, asshole.”
Cal glanced to his left. Holly hadn't been in the ladies' room after all, but standing only a short distance away, wedged between Tucker Bascom and the wall.
Well, hell. The last thing he wanted to do tonight was confront some half-drunk, bow-legged Romeo who couldn't take no for an answer, so Cal stifled his natural instinct to intervene. Besides, the little chili pepper seemed to be handling herself just fine.
“Aw, c'mon, Tiffany,” Tucker moaned.
“Get away from me.” Holly, only an inch or two above five feet, reached up with both her hands and gave the six-foot, three-inch, inebriated cowboy a shove that sent him pinwheeling backward across the corridor and into the opposite wall.
Cal wasn't one to ignore an opportunity to avoid trouble. He levered off his square foot of wall and reached for Holly's hand.
“Come on, Champ. Let's get outta here.”
“I thought you had a thing for rescuing damsels in distress,” Holly said, sliding into the T-bird's passenger seat.
“You were doing just fine without me.”
Cal laughed as he closed her door and then walked around the front of the car. Holly could have sworn she saw moonlight glinting off his smile. That wasn't possible, was it? Stuff like that only happened in TV commercials. She rubbed her eyes.
“Tired?” Cal asked, settling behind the wheel.
“A little.” She wasn't, not really, but he'd asked the question in a certain hopeful tone, as if he might be looking for an excuse to end the evening. “Are you?”
“Nah. I just thought…”
Before he could finish, the back door of El Mariachi shot open, slammed hard against the metal siding on the rear wall, and Tucker Bascom stumbled out.
“I want to talk to you, Griffin,” he called, pointing across the gravel parking lot. “Wait up.”
“Oh, God,” Holly muttered. “What is that guy's problem?”
“You, I guess.” Cal turned the key in the ignition and the T-bird's engine growled to life, while Holly's immediate instinct was to turn to her right and lock her door, a pretty futile act considering that she was sitting in an open convertible.
“Wait up,” Tucker bellowed, advancing toward them.
“Buckle your seat belt,” Cal told Holly at the same moment he rammed the gearshift into drive and hit the gas. For a second the wheels merely spun, spitting gravel at the fast-approaching cowboy, but then the tires bit into the ground and the T-bird shot forward, leaving Tucker Bascom flapping his Stetson and choking in a cloud of dust.
The sudden acceleration thrust Holly back into her seat, and she held her breath while the speedometer climbed to ninety and the wind knifed through her hair. Just a minute ago, if she'd had to predict the course of events, she'd have bet any amount of money that Special Agent Calvin Griffin would have sprung from the driver's seat as if he'd been ejected, after which he'd have promptly beat the shit out of Tucker Bascom with a few, select, government-approved moves.
Instead—surprise!—he'd fled.
Of course, she reminded herself that this was the guy who got knifed, not while fighting, but while breaking up an altercation. Her hero. The same guy who hadn't gone all the way with a young Nita Mendes.
And then it occurred to Holly that the reason she had just sneaked out the back door of the roadhouse with Cal was probably for the same reason Nita had sneaked out with him all those years ago. She glanced to her left. At ninety miles an hour, Cal's focus was on the narrow two-lane road, right where it should have been.
Any woman with half a brain and a normal flow of adrenaline would've felt scared to death right now, but amazingly all Holly felt was safe and well-protected. Maybe it had something to do with his gray suit and serious tie. Maybe it was just the way he'd held her on the dance floor, as if she belonged to him.
“You don't think he'll follow us, do you?” she asked over the sound of the wind.
Cal's gaze cut briefly to the rearview mirror. “He already is.”
Holly turned to see the flare of two headlights punctuating the darkness behind them. Her sense of safety faltered. “Oh, God. This isn't good at all. What are we going to do?”
Cal didn't answer. He probably thought her question was rhetorical. It wasn't. She wanted to know what the plan was here.
“What are we going to do, Cal, just keep driving? Is that the plan?” she asked, and then when he still didn't respond she started thinking out loud while looking over her shoulder every few seconds. “You know, if I were writing this scene for a movie, it would definitely be set in a city where we could make a sharp right, nearly hit a woman with a shopping cart, just miss a pushcart, then take a quick left at the end of the block. It might even be fun if it were San Francisco and we were leapfrogging at ninety miles an hour on those steep hills. But this…”
She waved her hands in the air for emphasis. “This is Texas, for God's sake, where the roads just go straight and flat for miles, forever. The guy who wins is the one who doesn't run out of gas, right?”
He still didn't answer.
Squinting at the dashboard, Holly was relieved to see that the T-bird had over half a tank. But the lights behind them were coming on fast. Too fast.
“Cal? Seriously. What are we going to do?”
“This,” he said. “Hang on.”
She dug her fingertips into the dashboard. “This” turned out to be some combination of decelerating, braking, and steering that had the T-bird screeching and squealing as it turned 180 degrees at a force of about three Gs. The maneuver practically knocked the breath out of Holly's chest, and the next thing she knew they were going ninety again, but in the opposite direction. With Tucker Bascom's headlights coming right at them.
Before she could let go of a scream of protest, the two vehicles passed with a giant whoosh, the blare of horns, and Tucker's curses blowing back on the wind.
And then Cal hit the brakes and turned the wheel again, and the T-bird went careening off the road—backwards!—thumped over some rough ground, angled behind a huge mesquite bush, and stopped. Dead.
The only sound then was the whine of the roof as it rose from behind the back seat and came forward over their heads. Cal reached up to latch it on his side, then leaned across Holly to secure the latch on the passenger side and crank the window closed.
“There,” he said, settling back behind the wheel.
“There?” Holly's breath had come back. “There what?”
Cal angled his head toward the road, barely visible now through the tangled branches of the mesquite bush. Holly looked in that direction in time to see Tucker Bascom's pickup flying past, back toward El Mariachi. She watched until the truck's red taillights disappeared in the dark.
“He won't be back,” Cal said as he reached across the console for her hand. “Don't worry.”
“Right.”
“You're shaking.” He drew her hand to his mouth, softly kissed her fingers.
“Nah. That's just my normal metabolism.”
Holly was amazed that Cal's palm wasn't the least bit sweaty after their harrowing ride. His hand was steady as a rock.
“Don't worry. Really.” He chuckled. “By the time that ol' boy realizes he's not chasing us anymore, he'll be in the next county.”
Holly couldn't help but laugh, weakly at first, but then managing an all-out giggle. “That was some pretty aspiffy driving, Agent Griffin.”
He laughed. “Yeah. And it'll be even spiffier if I can get this vehicle back on the road.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean the reason I turned off here was because the ground looked wet and I figured we wouldn't raise any dust.”
“That was pretty quick thinking. I'm impressed.”
“Yeah?” He lofted an eyebrow.
“Yeah,” she said.
“How impressed?” His voice was low, but even so there was a note of amused challenge in it, and despite the dark confines of the car, she was sure she could detect a sexy little gleam in his blue eyes.
He was waiting for her to initiate a kiss! Her heart sort of levitated into her throat at the realization, and then it dropped to her stomach as she leaned to her left to put an end to the wait.
“Baby,” he whispered as his mouth met hers and his arms moved around her, pulling her closer.
It wasn't a kiss at all, Holly thought. It was more like a match stick meeting tinder. Which was she? The tinder or the match? Not that it made any difference. She was burning all the same. Completely engulfed by Cal's hot mouth, his strong arms, his warm hands, the golden beery taste of him, the hot Texas night smell of him.
Holy shit.
She didn't realize she'd spoken out loud until he groaned against her lips, “No kidding. Let's get out of here. I don't know about you, but I'm too old and battered to make love in the back seat of a car.”
Holly extricated herself from his embrace so he could reach for the ignition. The engine sparked to life. He slipped the gearshift into drive and stepped on the gas.
The rear wheels spun.
Cal eased off the accelerator and swore.
“Here we go,” he said. “Nice and easy.”
The tires spun. And spun. And spit wet, sandy soil out behind the car that sank, little by little, deeper and deeper, into the ground.
