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Tall, Dark And Texan
Jane Sullivan


A wrong exit off the freeway and Hollywood-bound Wendy Jamison is suddenly in a worst-case scenario in the worst part of Dallas…until bounty hunter Michael Wolfe roars up on his motorbike. He's the right kind of dangerous–powerful, brooding and hot as hell. Staying in Texas was never in the cards, although Wolfe's incredible kisses may just make her reconsider….Wolfe knows trouble when he sees it. The moment he rescues Wendy, he knows he should walk away. But she's a sexy spitfire, and since her car and money are gone, he lets her stay with him–temporarily. Her sweet body and fast talk can only mean trouble. He's always been a loner–except having Wendy in his bed every night isn't such a bad perk!







Wolfe was stark naked

Wendy froze, stunned at the sight. Back away. Leave his room. But she couldn’t. Not when her eyes were glued to the most beautiful male body she’d ever seen.

Suddenly he began to move. Wendy thought about running, but then Wolfe saw her, and she knew it was too late. As he turned and sat up on the edge of the bed, for a split second she was sure she was going to get a glimpse of the part of his body that would make the rest of him pale in comparison.

“What are you doing in here?”

She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Her eyes roved over his body as if they had a mind of their own, finally landing below his waist.

“Hey!” he said. “You want to look somewhere else? Pervert.”

Pervert? He was calling her a pervert?

“Exhibitionist,” she muttered.

“I live here! If you don’t like it, you know where the door is!”

“Actually,” she said, “I like it just fine.”


Dear Reader,

Picture yourself the victim of a turn of events that leaves you stranded at midnight in the middle of a sleet storm on the mean streets of an unfamiliar city. You have no coat, no money and you know no one within five hundred miles.

Now imagine you hear the roar of an engine, and the biggest, baddest man you’ve ever seen rides up on a motorcycle. He offers to take you someplace warm and safe. What do you do? Keep walking and freeze to death, or hop on and hope for the best? That’s the situation Wendy Jamison finds herself in, and the decision she makes changes her life!

Wendy Jamison and Michael Wolfe are as different as any two people can be, but it doesn’t take long before she sees beyond his big, bad image and brings out the kind and compassionate man he really is. And little does she know that when he offers to let her stay with him for one night, there are going to be many more hot nights to come!

Visit me on the Web at www.janesullivan.com, or write to me at jane@janesullivan.com. I’d love to hear from you!

Best wishes,

Jane Sullivan




Books by Jane Sullivan


HARLEQUIN TEMPTATION

854—ONE HOT TEXAN

898—RISKY BUSINESS

HARLEQUIN DUETS

33—STRAY HEARTS

48—THE MATCHMAKER’S MISTAKE


Tall, Dark and Texan

Jane Sullivan






www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


To all my wonderful friends at Dallas Area Romance Authors.

You amuse me, amaze me and inspire me.

Thanks for all the good times.

I’m looking forward to many more!




Contents


Chapter 1 (#uc3b3459e-461f-5a18-ac14-88c84a8bd1f0)

Chapter 2 (#u3278087d-0d68-52d5-9e49-34be9718c2a5)

Chapter 3 (#u632db79f-91c6-5210-8b72-2ddb51e64d3a)

Chapter 4 (#u5ca48b6d-69b9-53d7-8306-d99eb8aa6e9f)

Chapter 5 (#u9975f7ec-3a9e-5d78-9061-858baec5a039)

Chapter 6 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)

Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)




1


WENDY JAMISON CREPT her 1992 Buick along the dark, deserted street, the February sleet storm pummeling her car and freezing wind whistling through the torn weather stripping around the passenger window. She hadn’t planned on taking a midnight tour of the seedy part of downtown Dallas, but she’d lost track of the turns she’d made since exiting the freeway in search of a gas station and now she was hopelessly lost.

On either side of her, warehouses loomed several stories into the night sky, the majority of them boarded up. Most of the storefronts looked abandoned, topped by apartments that showed only an occasional dim light in a window. The sleet had stuck trash to the sidewalk in big, soggy piles that would probably still be there after the spring thaw. If it had been a hot summer night, the place would undoubtedly be crawling with the shadier side of society, but now, when she desperately needed to ask somebody how to get back to the freeway, there wasn’t a pimp, a crack whore or a drug dealer in sight.

The problem was the trailer she was pulling. Filled with everything she owned, it had played hell with her mileage, running the little arrow on her gas gauge right into the red before she realized it. When that same little arrow had stopped floating and she still hadn’t found an open station, she’d gotten a little uptight.

Now, ten minutes later, she was wiping her sweaty palms on her jeans, trying to get a grip, telling herself that this was just one of those worst-case-scenario situations, which there had to be a solution to. Wendy knew how to stay alive during an avalanche, how to escape a sinking car and how to survive if her parachute failed to open in the event that she lost her mind and went skydiving. Unfortunately, she’d never read about how to get out of a sleazy, unfamiliar, convoluted downtown neighborhood during a winter storm in a car that was choking along on its last gas fumes.

Find a way. You’ll never get to L.A. if you can’t get through Dallas first.

She pulled up to the next intersection, which looked every bit as squalid as the last one. Putting her car in Park, she fumbled through the stuff on her passenger seat, looking for the Texas map she’d picked up at the border. She doubted it would include a map specific enough to get her back to the freeway, but right now it was her only shot.

Then she noticed movement outside her driver’s window. Whipping around, she was shocked to see a man standing beside her car. A big, ugly, hairy man.

A big, ugly, hairy man holding a baseball bat.

In the next instant, her car window exploded. She shied away, throwing up her arms against the sudden blast of broken glass. In the time it took her to realize that he’d whacked the baseball bat right through her window, he’d reached in, pulled up the door lock and yanked her door open. The moment he grabbed her arm, though, self-preservation kicked in. She remembered the mantra she’d learned during the two-hour crash course on self-defense she’d taken at a New York YMCA: Get mad, get loud, get violent.

Letting out a nerve-shattering scream, she swung her foot out of the car and gave her attacker a boot right in the knee. He drew back, retaliating with an arm-wrenching yank that pulled her halfway out of the car. When she reached for the steering wheel and held on tightly, he leaned into the car to pry her fingers loose.

Everything’s a weapon, her German Amazon-woman instructor had said. Use whatever you’ve got.

With a fury that would have made Greta proud, Wendy bit her attacker’s hand. He recoiled, howling with pain, but before she could turn and get in another well-placed kick, he gave her arm a brutal jerk that dislodged her grip from the steering wheel. The next thing she knew, she was facedown on the slush-covered pavement.

She pushed herself back up and flipped over, rocking to a squatting position, but he’d already slid into the front seat. Her car wasn’t much, and neither were her possessions, but the five thousand dollars in her glove compartment was something she had no intention of giving up.

With a desperate lunge, she grabbed the foot he hadn’t yet tucked inside the car. The second she clamped down on it, he shook it wildly, but she clung to it like a bulldog.

“Damn it, lady!” he shouted. “Will you cut that out?”

“No! You’re not taking my car!”

“Oh, yeah? Is that right?”

He reached beneath his coat, hauled out a gun and leveled it three inches from her nose.

Uh-oh.

She stopped pulling on his leg and stared down the barrel of the gun, breathing hard, wondering why her life wasn’t flashing before her eyes.

“Let go!” he shouted.

She did.

“Back off!”

As she leaned away, her heel slipped from beneath her and her butt landed on the slushy pavement. Her friendly neighborhood carjacker slammed the door, jammed the car into gear, gunned the engine and took off down the street.

Wendy scrambled to her feet, watching her car vanish into the night, willing it to use up its last trickle of gasoline and come to a choking halt.

It didn’t.

She stood there dumbly for a moment, staring at her red taillights twinkling through the falling ice. She couldn’t believe she’d been in town only twenty minutes, and already she was a crime statistic. She couldn’t believe everything she owned in the entire world had just disappeared. She couldn’t believe she was standing in the disgusting part of downtown Dallas at midnight with no coat and it was thirty degrees and sleeting like crazy and her car had just been stolen!

Along with her five thousand dollars.

A sick feeling rose in her stomach. It was gone. And she wasn’t naive enough to think she’d ever see it again. She knew the time would come when she’d probably sob uncontrollably about that, but right now she had a much bigger problem.

Survival.

Anger had kept her momentarily oblivious to the cold, but now reality set in. She hugged herself, her teeth chattering so hard it had to be knocking her fillings loose. The frigid wind seemed to blow right through her, echoing through the empty streets like the mournful howl of a coyote, and she wondered how long she could last out here before hypothermia set in.

She started to walk, chastising herself with every step. If only she hadn’t gotten impatient, she could have waited out the winter storm of the decade and stayed on course through Oklahoma City instead of swinging south through Dallas. If only she hadn’t messed around finding a gas station, she’d be in a cheap but warm hotel room right now. If only the windows of her old Buick were as strong as the Popemobile’s—

Stop with the ifs. Things happen. This is just one of them. A speed bump on the road of life.

Actually, it was more like a speed mountain, one she’d have preferred to hit while driving through Miami. She made a mental note that the next time she decided to move across the country and start a new life, she’d wait until July.

She trudged down the sidewalk, every muscle trembling in the cold, her boots slinging slush. Putting a hand to her head, she realized that her hair was turning into icicles. The longer she walked, the more uptight she became. This street seemed to be going nowhere. For all she knew, she could be walking straight into hell.

Then again, at least hell would be warm.

Then she heard it. The sound of an engine. It was soft at first, building in intensity as it drew closer, echoing off the walls of the abandoned buildings. She turned around to see a man on a motorcycle swing around and come to a halt in the street ten feet away, planting his booted feet firmly on the pavement. The moment she laid eyes on him, her breath caught in her throat.

He wore a fleece-lined black leather jacket, jeans, black gloves, black boots. Even sitting on the motorcycle, she could tell he had to be at least six foot five, with thighs the size of tree trunks and shoulders so broad she wondered if he could clear the average doorway. A jagged scar ran from his cheekbone to his chin, the kind men generally picked up in street fights or in prison, but his dark, short-cropped hair and surprisingly clean-shaven face made him seem almost handsome in spite of it.

No. She was seeing things. This man was not handsome. No man who wore that tense, almost lethal expression, with eyes that could burn holes through steel, could ever be called handsome.

Still…good Lord.

In spite of the situation, in spite of the cold, in spite of the fact this man radiated danger all over the place, a blast of raw sexual awareness overwhelmed her, a prehistoric reaction that even a million years of evolution couldn’t possibly arrest. She’d heard once that power was the ultimate aphrodisiac, and this man exuded it with every breath he took.

He leveled a gaze at her that would have frozen her to the pavement if nature hadn’t beaten him to it. “What are you doing out here?”

His voice was deep and commanding—the voice of a man who expected an answer the moment he spoke.

“I—I was carjacked,” she said, her voice garbled from the cold. “They got everything.”

“Live here, or just passing through?”

“Heading to L.A.”

“Do you know anybody in Dallas?”

“N-no,” she said. “Nobody.”

For the first time, his intense expression shifted. He bowed his head, his body heaving with a sigh.

“Get on,” he said.

She blinked with surprise. “E-excuse me?”

“I said get on.”

Get on? Behind him? A clearly unhappy man who looked as if he ate scrap metal for breakfast? It was one thing to admire the king of beasts from afar, but she wasn’t sure she should be crawling right into the cage with him.

“Uh…sure. Can you take me to the police station?”

“Not tonight. Too far away, and it’s too damned cold. I’ll take you someplace warm and safe.”

Warmth and safety. Currently the two most beautiful concepts in the English language. But was this the man who was going to provide those things?

She looked around, shivering wildly, looking for options and finding none.

He revved the engine. Last call.

She mentally crossed herself, strode over and slung her leg over the back of his motorcycle.

“Hang on, sweetheart.”

He hit the throttle, and only by clamping her arms around his waist was she able to keep from tumbling off backward. And in spite of the cold, the noise of the engine and her massive fear of the unknown, her only thought was that she’d just grabbed the Rock of Gibraltar. Even through the thick jacket he wore, she could tell he was all bone and muscle.

“Where exactly are we going?” she shouted.

No response. Either he couldn’t hear her over the roar of the engine, or he chose to ignore her. As they sped down the deserted street, her icy hair swirled in a frenzy around her head, the frigid strands smacking her in the face. She ducked her head against his back, hoping to keep the ice cubes that had once been her ears from cracking and falling off the sides of her head. He made an excellent wind block, which was no surprise. A man his size could have blocked a category-five hurricane. Even through his jacket she could feel his body heat, and right now, heat from anywhere was welcome. She closed her eyes, resurrected a few childhood prayers and hung on tight.

He seemed to drive forever before finally slowing down, and as soon as he did, he reached into his pocket and pulled out something that looked like a television remote. He pointed it at a large metal overhead door on the side of one of the buildings. With a grinding mechanical noise, the door came up. To her complete shock, he drove right underneath it into the building, the engine noise of the motorcycle reverberating off the walls of the empty warehouse.

She glanced over her shoulder to see the door coming down behind them. That familiar sense of self-preservation surged through her again, but Greta hadn’t addressed what do to when trapped on a moving vehicle behind a man the size of a redwood tree.

“Hey!” she shouted. “Where are you going? Hey!”

He never slowed down. He continued through the musty-smelling warehouse, dimly lit by a few overhead bulbs. Twenty feet in the distance stood two large metal doors. He leveled the remote at them, and they parted just as he reached them. He drove between them and swung the motorcycle around in a tight one-eighty just as the doors closed again. She looked around to see that they’d entered a room the size of a small bedroom. No doors, no windows. Then she heard a creaking noise, and it began to move.

Good God, they were on an elevator.

“Where are you taking me?” she asked as they slowly ascended, her voice still paralyzed by the cold.

“Home,” he said.

“Whose home?”

“Mine.”

He lived here? What could possibly live in a place like this besides rats, roaches and ghosts?

Serial killers.

Live here, or just passing through? he’d asked her. Know anybody in Dallas? He might as well have said, Hop on, baby. It’s easier to get away with murder if you’re a transient.

No. He’d said warm and safe. She’d heard him very clearly. It might have been a big fat lie, but right now she had no choice but to pray he was telling her the truth.

The elevator chugged up three floors and stopped. The doors creaked open in concert with the soft rumble of the idling engine. He eased the motorcycle forward until it exited the elevator, then killed the engine.

Wendy instantly got off and backed away. The light was dim, but still she could tell they were standing on a large three-story-high platform enclosed by an iron railing. The elevator led to one place—to this landing and a large metal door dead ahead.

He smacked the kickstand down with his foot, got off the bike and stepped toward the door. Behind her, the elevator doors screeched closed. She whipped around, looking to the left of the elevator, then to the right. Where was the control panel?

“Uh…no buttons,” she said. “How do you call the elevator?”

He held up the remote, then stuffed it into his coat pocket.

“Stairwell?”

“Not out here.”

She was trapped.

She backed against the iron railing, her heart racing wildly, her teeth still chattering like crazy, sounding like a jackhammer in the silence of the huge warehouse.

The man slipped his gloves off, stuffed them into his hip pocket, then pulled out a set of keys. He unlocked one lock. Then another. After the turn of a third key, he swung the door open, stepped aside and nodded for her to enter the darkened room.

He’d looked big sitting on the motorcycle. He looked positively gigantic now. Her question of whether he could make it through a doorway with those shoulders was answered.

Barely.

Swallowing hard, Wendy glanced back at the useless elevator. The nonexistent stairwell. The sheer three-story drop over the railing. She wished she had a choice, but the weather, the situation and the look on this man’s face had relieved her of all of those. Taking a deep, shaky breath, she walked through the door into the darkened room.

Okay. It’s warm in here. At least he didn’t lie about that.

That was her first thought, and for several heavenly seconds, it was her only thought.

Then he turned on the lights.




2


WENDY BLINKED against the sudden brightness, shocked at what came into view. The room was massive. No, it wasn’t a room. Just an extension of the warehouse that contained it, with soaring ceilings crisscrossed with pipes and ducts and wires. Along one wall was a refrigerator, a stove and a few cabinets, with a nearby table and a couple of chairs, which she guessed qualified that area as the kitchen.

Near an adjoining wall sat a television with a sofa in front of it. Against another wall was a desk with a phone, computer monitor, scanner, fax machine, printer. Industrial light fixtures hung from the ceiling, illuminating the room with a garish glow. The floor was nothing more than cracked, stained concrete without a rug in sight.

She heard a clanking noise. Turning back, she saw him lock the door with twists, swipes and flips of his fingers. “Stay here,” he commanded, then disappeared down a short hallway into another room.

Wendy looked around the bizarre warehouse loft. The furniture, the computer equipment and the TV should have made it seem at least a little homey, but stuck inside this weird place, they looked strange and surreal. And not a single personal item graced a shelf, table or kitchen counter to indicate that he was a normal human being and not a reclusive psychopath. She tried desperately to get a grip on herself, but in spite of the warmth of the room, fear mingled with the cold she still felt until she couldn’t tell which one was making her shiver.

Venturing forward, she peered around a corner into another area and saw a door standing slightly open. A moment later she heard a scratching noise, and the door creaked open a few inches more.

When a cat the size of a Yugo sauntered out of the room, Wendy leaped back with surprise. The animal stopped suddenly and glowered at her, and she was sure she’d never seen a more wicked-looking feline. He had fire-orange stripes, scruffy fur and paws the size of boxing gloves. But the scariest thing of all were his appendages, or lack of them. All of his left ear and half of his tail were missing.

Good God. He’s eating the cat. One bite at a time.

And now the cat was going to eat her.

“Hey, kitty-kitty,” she said in her best cat-whisperer voice. “Nice kitty.”

The creature tensed. Then all at once he hissed, scurried across the floor, leaped to the kitchen counter and then to the top of the refrigerator, where he glared down at her with evil yellow eyes. Wendy backed up to the wall, her hand against her chest, trying to calm her wildly beating heart. It couldn’t get any creepier here. No way could it get any creepier.

Then she looked toward the room from which the cat had just emerged.

Maybe it could.

With a compulsion she couldn’t quell, Wendy tiptoed over and pushed the door open just enough that she could see what was on the other side, and anxiety surged through her all over again.

On a table lay three guns. She didn’t know a derringer from an Uzi, but she certainly knew a firearm when she saw one.

Then she looked up on the wall.

At least forty photographs were stuck there. They appeared to be mug shots—mug shots of men who were mean and nasty looking, like particularly despicable serial killers. And through about half of the photos were big black Xs. He was marking them out, one by one, with a supersize Magic Marker, as if…

As if he’d snuffed them.

Then it struck her. He’s a serial killer who kills serial killers. Did it get any badder than that?

She quickly pulled the door closed and turned around. She could hear her captor knocking around in the other room, undoubtedly getting the torture chamber ready.

She had to get out of there.

Turning, she spied another door beside the refrigerator, one with as many locks as had been on the front door. He’d told her there wasn’t a stairwell in the elevator landing. Maybe that door led to one. She hoped it did, anyway, because otherwise there was no getting out of this apartment.

No. Not apartment. More like lair. Or hideout. Or fortress. Or covert base of operations. What in the hell did you call a place that looked more like a bunker than living quarters?

A place she wanted to escape. Right now.

She hurried toward the door, looking over her shoulder, watching for him to come out of the back room. As quietly as she could, she opened the first dead bolt, which made a hideous clanking noise. Then she unhooked a chain that had links as wide as her wrist. She was just about to push a heavy metal slide lock aside when she heard footsteps. Spinning around, she saw him walking toward her. With a quick, startled breath, she pressed her back against the door.

“Where are you going?” he demanded.

Fueled by sheer adrenaline, she wheeled back around, smacked the last lock and yanked the door open. Just as quickly, he took a few steps forward and grabbed her from behind, wrapping his arm around her waist and pulling her back as he shut the door again. She screamed, a hair-raising, penetrating scream that could easily have awakened any dead bodies he happened to have lying around. He slapped his hand over her mouth, shoving her scream all the way back into her throat. She tried to fight him, but he pressed his body hard to hers, pinning her against the door.

“Will you cut it out?” he said. “You’re not going anywhere!”

She couldn’t struggle anymore. With a ton of bone and muscle wrapped around her, she was completely at his mercy.

“I’m going to take my hand away from your mouth,” he said, his voice low and intense. “Are you going to scream?”

She just stood there, terrified.

“I asked you if you’re going to scream,” he said sharply.

Finally she shook her head. He removed his hand slowly, and her breath came in sharp bursts that seemed to echo forever in the vast expanse of the warehouse.

“If you’re going to do this,” she said in a hushed voice, “then do it now. Get it over with quickly. Please.”

He froze. “If I’m going to do what?”

She closed her eyes. “Rape me. Kill me. Whatever…whatever it is you do.”

For a count of three, he stood motionless. “What did you say?”

She didn’t want to repeat it. She’d barely been able to get the words out the first time. “R-rape me. And kill—”

Suddenly he let go of her. She spun around, her back pressed to the door, breathing hard. He’d retreated several paces, staring at her with disbelief. “What in the hell are you talking about?”

She swallowed hard. “If you’re not going to hurt me, then why are you trying to stop me from leaving?”

“Why am I—?” He stopped short, staring at her as if she’d lost her mind. He pointed toward the window. “Is it thirty degrees out there? Sleeting?”

She looked over at the ice still pattering the window. “Uh…yeah.”

“Are there lowlifes wandering the streets?”

Clearly there were. One of them had made off with her car. “A few.”

“Do you have any idea at all where you are?”

Hell, no. A global-positioning system couldn’t have helped her out of here. She shrugged. “No. I guess I’m not completely sure.”

“Those are three real good reasons. One would have done just fine. But if you’re still determined to leave,” he said, his voice a low growl, “there’s a police station about four miles west. Why don’t you hike on down there and tell them there’s a rapist on the loose?”

She blinked with surprise, startled at this turn of events. Although he was rumbling with anger, she noticed that his dark eyes didn’t seem nearly as evil as they had a few moments ago. Actually, they looked more sleepy than anything. And he’d made a couple of pretty good points about the weather and all those other things.

Was it possible she could have leaped to a conclusion or two?

“Okay,” she said, shrugging weakly, “so maybe you’re not a criminal.”

“Hell, no, I’m not!”

She recoiled at his angry outburst. “Hey! What was I supposed to think? The abandoned warehouse, the guns, the mug shots, the big black Xs—”

“You saw all that? What were you doing in there?”

“I—” She stopped, then pointed to the cat on top of the fridge. “He opened the door. I just…I just kinda looked in.”

“You were snooping?”

Her mouth fell open. “I was not snooping! I was just trying to find out what kind of fire I landed in when I fell out of the frying pan!”

His eyebrows flew up. “Fire? Are you kidding? I bring you someplace warm where you can stay the night, then keep you from running back out there again like some kind of lunatic, and you call that a fire?”

She opened her mouth to respond, then clamped it shut again. He was making more sense all the time.

She nodded toward the other room. “What about the guns you have in there?”

He glared at her. “Those weapons are for my job.”

“Your job?”

“I’m a bail-enforcement agent.”

“Huh?”

“Bounty hunter.”

Bounty hunter?

It took a full ten seconds for the words to register in Wendy’s mind, and when they did, relief swooped through her. The guns, the mug shots…okay. Maybe those made sense now. It still didn’t explain the living accommodations and the half-eaten cat, but…

“You go after criminals?” she asked him.

“Yes.”

“Bad guys?”

“Yes.”

She peered up at him. “Which means you can’t be a bad guy…right?”

“I already told you I’m not a bad guy!”

She flinched. “Oh, come on! What else was I supposed to think? Don’t you think that any sane woman would have come to the same conclusion I did? That you just might be a little dangerous?”

“Dangerous?”

“Yes! Will you look at yourself, for heaven’s sake? You’re big, you’re scary looking, and I’m pretty sure you could bite the head right off somebody’s shoulders if you wanted to. That doesn’t give me a lot of warm fuzzies, you know.”

He blinked and, for a moment, looked surprised. Maybe even a little insulted. Then just as quickly, his expression melted back into the scowl he’d been wearing before.

“Listen, sweetheart. It’s late, I’m tired and I’m fresh out of warm fuzzies. Sleep on the sofa if you want, leave if you want. I don’t give a damn.”

Taking a key from his pocket, he strode over to the door to the war room, pulled it shut and locked it. He disappeared down the hall, turning into what she guessed must be a bedroom.

Then…silence.

Wendy stood there, shivering, swearing she could hear the sound of his angry voice still echoing through the vast expanse of the warehouse loft. Well, she had news for him. He couldn’t be fresh out of warm fuzzies, because he’d never had any to begin with. He’d scared the hell out of her, then acted as if it was her fault.

A bounty hunter. As if she would have guessed that? Ever?

With a few deep, calming breaths, her heart rate slowly returned to normal. At least now she knew she’d live to be broke and homeless another day. And unless she committed a crime and jumped bail, her big, angry roommate probably wasn’t going to be a threat. For tonight, at least, she had a place to stay that wasn’t a cardboard box on the streets of downtown Dallas.

Then she turned, and for the first time, she noticed two blankets and a pillow tossed on the sofa that hadn’t been there before. She stared at them oddly for a moment, wondering where they’d come from.

Then she knew. He had to have brought them out of the bedroom while she was trying to make her escape. She walked over and picked up one blanket, catching the scent of something soft and fresh. Drawing it to her nose, she inhaled. Fabric softener?

Then she saw the shirt.

Sticking out from beneath the pillow was a green flannel shirt. She held it in front of her. From the size of it, she knew it had to be his. She blinked at it dumbly for a moment before the reason he’d left it here finally dawned on her.

He was giving her something dry to put on.

She pulled the shirt against her nose and smelled the same fresh fabric softener. She could wrap herself in it three times over, but it felt so warm…

He was trying to be nice, and she’d called him a criminal. A couple of different kinds of criminal, in fact.

Suddenly she felt bad about that. No, he hadn’t told her exactly who he was, but it had been cold and sleeting, and not knowing how long she’d been out there, maybe he’d just wanted to get her warm again as quickly as he could. The blankets and the flannel shirt attested to that.

Now she felt worse than bad.

She glanced toward the room he’d disappeared into, her stomach churning with regret. She thought about knocking on his door to say she was sorry, but with her rapist-murderer accusation still rattling around inside his head, she didn’t think he’d want to hear anything from her right about now. Tomorrow morning might be a better time for apologies.

She went over to the wall and flicked out the light. By the faint glow of a streetlamp coming in through metal casement windows, she scurried back to the sofa, quickly peeled off her wet clothes and slipped into the shirt. It hung all the way to her knees, but what a feeling. Warmth.

She tossed the pillow at one end of the sofa, then spread out the blankets. She laid her wet clothes over a chair in the kitchen area and eased down on the sofa, tucking herself beneath the blankets.

In spite of the weird situation, she found her thoughts drifting to the man in the other room. He might have been big and scary and all those other things, but as she played the past half hour over in her mind, she realized that a knight on a white horse couldn’t have done a better job of rescuing her.

Yes, she thought sleepily. She had to tell him she was sorry. He deserved it. And on the selfish side, an apology might keep him from kicking her out the door first thing tomorrow morning before she had a chance to get her bearings.

Right now, her situation looked a little scary. Okay, a lot scary. She had no money, no car, no clothes. Nothing but the wallet in her pocket, which held maybe five bucks and zero credit cards. But she always landed on her feet, and this time wouldn’t be any different. That was what she told herself, anyway, to keep from bursting into tears.

You can’t do this. You’ve hit a dead end. Go home.

In the next instant, she slapped herself for that thought. She didn’t care if she had one foot dangling over a cliff with a seventy-mile-per-hour tailwind, she was going to hang on by her fingernails if that was what it took. Aside from her once-a-year holiday trips to see her family, she had no intention of going back to obscurity again. She thought about the factory where she’d worked for four years alongside her parents, her eight siblings and just about every other resident of Glenover, Iowa. It was just what you did when you graduated from high school. A regular paycheck. Sick days. Job security. Yuck.

She’d had bigger dreams.

When she was a senior in high school, she’d starred in Glenover High’s productions of Our Town and Bye, Bye Birdie, and for the first time in her life, she felt truly special. Raised in such a large family, the spotlight rarely made its way around to her, so those few magical nights had been intoxicating.

For the next four years, the thrill of it stayed in the back of her mind, until finally she couldn’t stand it any longer. She left behind the dreary, monotonous, unremarkable town where she’d been raised and headed for the bright lights of the New York stage, knowing in her heart that she was destined to become a star.

Three years, six dead-end jobs and eighty-seven auditions later, she realized she’d made a small miscalculation. In New York, they expected superior craft and exceptional talent and years of paying dues, so actors built careers with the speed of glaciers melting. But in Hollywood…

Now, there was a place where a person could shoot to superstardom overnight. Life was too short to wait around. Once the lightbulb had gone on and she’d realized the error in her thinking, she’d felt compelled to move on as quickly as she could, determined to make something happen now.

Through a friend of a friend, she’d managed to hook up with an agent who’d promised he could get her the contacts she needed, and she knew how to make the most of them. Talent wasn’t a list-topping requirement on the West Coast, so the fact that she was a pretty decent actress meant she was already ahead of the game. She had smarts, she had ambition and she had the right look. Or most of the right look, anyway. She could buy the rest of the appearance she needed just as soon as she found a way to get five thousand dollars back in her pocket again.

Wendy settled back on the pillow and closed her eyes, feeling exhausted right down to her bones. All she needed was a good night’s sleep, some morning light on her face and a cup of coffee past her lips. Once her brain was working, she could formulate a plan to get herself out of this mess and back on the road to Los Angeles, and everything would look rosy again. Her parents, her brothers, her sisters and every other resident of Glenover, Iowa, might be satisfied living as faceless human beings in nowhere jobs, but she’d never be content with that. She was going to make her mark in this world.

No matter what she had to do.

MICHAEL WOLFE LAY IN BED, staring through the darkness, trying to keep his anger in check. He’d been called a lot of things in his life by people with vocabularies that could blow a freight train off its tracks, but rapist and murderer hadn’t been among them.

He’d saved her, and this was what he got?

If only he’d realized how soon the storm was going to hit, he never would have set out for that bar tonight in search of Feliz Mendoza, a burglar on bail who’d decided to skip his court appearance. He never would have gotten caught in plunging temperatures and a sleet storm. And he never would have happened upon a half-frozen woman looking beyond pathetic, her dark hair plastered against her head, her sweater wet and misshapen, shivering so hard she could barely speak.

Given the fact that it was nearing midnight, sleet was pounding the city, the police station was four miles away and the women’s shelter even farther, he’d brought her here. Then she’d shocked him by trying to run right back out into the same crappy situation he’d just rescued her from. Thirty more minutes on that freezing, deserted street without a coat could have put her in the hospital or worse, especially since there wasn’t much of her to begin with.

But it wasn’t until he’d hauled her away from the door, wrapped his arms around her and pulled her against him, that he realized just how small and delicate she really was. Suddenly he’d felt as if he was holding something terribly fragile, and if he made one wrong move, he’d break her. She’d felt all soft and willowy and…

He started to say warm, but she hadn’t been warm in the least. She’d been a walking, talking, screaming ice cube.

Look at you! You’re big, you’re scary looking, and I’m pretty sure you could bite the head right off somebody’s shoulders if you wanted to. What was I supposed to think?

Well, he had to admit that was nothing new. He’d been frightening people to death since he was thirteen years old, and now, at age thirty-one, the fear factor had only escalated. He was used to the world looking at him as if he ate little children and climbed tall buildings to swat at airplanes. And women certainly weren’t exempt from that assessment. They all stopped dead in their tracks at the sight of him, and not because he was so damned good-looking. About the only women who didn’t cross to the other side of the road when they saw him coming were those who were as tough as he was, who knew the streets, who’d seen far worse things in their lives than a man with a face like his.

So why had this woman’s reaction bothered him so much?

Because she should have been thanking him for rescuing her instead of flattening herself against that door, breathing like a teenager in a horror flick and staring at him as if he was some kind of monster. That was why.

He didn’t need this. He didn’t need a crazy, argumentative, thankless woman bugging the hell out of him, disturbing the peace and solitude he valued so much. He’d never brought a woman here and just the thought of her asleep in the other room right now unnerved him. This was his space, and he didn’t share it with anyone.

Come tomorrow morning, he intended to remedy the situation. The quicker he got her out of here and she became somebody else’s problem, the better he was going to like it.




3


WENDY WOKE the next morning to sunlight shining brightly through a row of metal casement windows. Rising on one elbow, she looked around, and for a moment she wasn’t sure where she was. Then she glanced down at the huge flannel shirt she wore and it all came back to her.

She slid out from beneath the covers and scurried to where she’d tossed her clothes over the chair last night. They were still cold and damp. Glancing at a clock in the kitchen, she saw it was nearly eleven o’clock. Had she really slept that long?

Then she sensed a much more pressing problem.

She’d once gotten caught in a New York cab in a snarl of traffic for over two and a half hours, but even then she hadn’t had to pee as badly as she did right now. She adjusted the extra-extra-large shirt he’d given her until the neckline rested on her shoulders instead of halfway down her left arm and went in search of a bathroom. A minute later she reached a startling conclusion.

There wasn’t one.

No. That was impossible. She circled the loft a time or two more, and suddenly it dawned on her that the bathroom could be only one place.

Inside his bedroom.

She walked to the door and tentatively pushed it open. Scanning the room, she saw a row of shelves along one wall overflowing with books and magazines. A lone dresser was positioned along another wall, and on top of it sat a portable television. Against the far wall was a bed, where he lay sleeping, stretched out on his stomach with the covers kicked off.

And he was stark naked.

She froze, stunned at the sight. Back away. Leave the room. Pretend you saw nothing.

But she couldn’t. Not when her eyes were glued to the most beautiful male body she’d ever seen, and she’d seen her share. He had a physique as if he’d dropped right down from Mount Olympus, with gorgeous broad shoulders, just enough muscle to be hugely impressive without looking as if he’d popped a case of steroids and an absolutely world-class ass.

She’d known he was big. Rock solid. But she hadn’t known just how flawless a body he had. It was like staring at a national monument or a hundred-story skyscraper or something else so awe inspiring that the only reason she’d pry her eyes away would be to haul out a camera. And stretched out beside him was the feline from hell, his one-eared head resting on the edge of the pillow, sound asleep. It was such a bizarre sight—the massive man and the gargantuan cat sleeping peacefully side by side.

But no matter how stunning the sight, she still had to pee. Badly. On the other side of the room, she saw the door leading to the bathroom. She tiptoed in that direction, but halfway there she heard the rustle of sheets and blankets.

The man had begun to move.

She stopped and flattened herself against the wall. He started to roll over, dislodging the cat. She thought about running from the room, but then he caught sight of her and she knew it was too late. As he turned and sat up on the edge of the bed, for a split second she was sure she was going to get a glimpse of the part of his body that would undoubtedly make the rest of him pale in comparison. But at the last moment he pulled the sheet along with him and rose from the bed, dragging it along as he walked toward her.

“What are you doing in here?”

She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Her speech had deserted her completely. And no wonder. Every drop of her blood had rushed to the most demanding part of her body right now—her eyes. And at the moment they were roving over the exposed parts of his body as if they had a mind of their own, finally landing dead center on the part below his waist that he barely had covered up.

“Hey!” he said. “You want to look someplace else?”

Her gaze shot up to meet his. He spit out a breath of disgust and walked toward the bathroom. “Pervert.”

Her eyebrows flew up. Pervert? He was calling her a pervert?

“Exhibitionist,” she muttered.

He whipped around. “I live here! If you don’t like it, you know where the door is!”

“Actually,” she said, her attention playing over his body again, “I like it just fine.”

She met his eyes again, and she swore that the big bad bounty hunter actually blushed. He turned and stormed toward the bathroom, slamming the door behind him.

Wow. Just…wow. She’d never in her life seen a body like that on a man, and the shock of it almost made her forget just how badly she had to pee. Almost.

She waited with extreme impatience and not a little bit of pain, and after a few minutes, she heard a flush. Thank God. It wouldn’t be long now.

Then she heard the shower. No, no, no!

Ten long, agonizing minutes passed as she waited for him to come out, the mountain lion on his bed giving her the evil eye the whole time. Finally the man emerged, a towel wrapped around him this time, and his dark, wet hair slicked back. But instead of moving aside to let her in, he slowly ran both hands up either side of the door frame, blocking the entrance, nonchalantly flexing those awesome biceps and chest muscles.

“Going somewhere?” he asked.

She stared up at him. “Uh…the bathroom?”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Silence.

She shifted uncomfortably. “Do you think you could let me by?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Like…sometime soon?”

“Uh-huh.”

“When?”

“As soon as you get naked.”

“Get what?”

For the span of several seconds, he just stared at her, a calculating expression on his face. Then she knew.

This was payback.

She rolled her eyes with disgust. “Look, I’m sorry, okay? How was I supposed to know you sleep naked?”

“You came into my room without knocking.”

“I didn’t want to wake you.”

“I like my privacy.”

“You can’t be serious about this.”

“Do I look like I’m joking?”

She eyed him carefully. “Truthfully? No. Actually, so far I haven’t found you to be a particularly funny guy.”

He eyed her up and down. “Off with it, sweetheart.”

She huffed with disgust. “I am not taking off my shirt!”

“My shirt.”

“Whatever.”

Still he refused to move. She put her hands on her hips. “Just what do you intend to do? Stand there all day?”

“Nope. Not all day. But I can spare at least a few hours.”

“Oh, just forget it!” she said, glaring at him. “I don’t need your damned bathroom!”

“Suit yourself. But there’s not another one within a mile of here. Not one you’d want to use, anyway.”

“Well, I suppose that’s what bushes are for, aren’t they?”

“Good luck finding one. This isn’t exactly the garden district.”

He had her there. Damn it. How dare he keep her from one of the fundamental necessities of life for such a petty revenge?

Unfortunately, he could be as petty as he wanted to be because it would take a bulldozer to move him away from that door. How was she going to get out of this?

Okay. Maybe it really wasn’t such a big deal. After all, during that cheap vacation in Mexico two years ago, she’d sunbathed topless on the beach. And there was the tiniest little possibility that she might have gotten caught on a Girls Gone Wild video flashing her boobs during a moment of Mardi Gras insanity. If he’d happened along during one of those times, he’d have gotten an eyeful, along with every other man in the vicinity. Was this really any different than that?

But there was a problem. One glance at her nearly nonexistent breasts, and he was going to know he’d gotten the short end of the deal. He’d showed her the body of Adonis, and all she had to offer was Olive Oyl. Still, a man was a man, and there was a strong possibility that getting naked in front of this one would be like dangling raw meat in front of a lion.

All at once he put his palm against the wall beside her left ear and leaned in closer. She froze for several tense seconds. His sharp, challenging expression, his rugged features and his intense, dark eyes made him look almost…sexy. In spite of the situation, she felt an odd stirring deep inside her, and she couldn’t stop her breath from coming faster and her body from heating up. Then he slowly reached up and touched his fingertip to the top button of her shirt, and she was absolutely certain that she was going to end up naked whether she’d agreed to get that way or not.

“I told you I like my privacy,” he said, his voice a malicious drawl. “And I meant it. So if I catch you sneaking in here again, it’s all coming off. And I won’t be responsible for what happens next.”

To her immense relief, he stepped back, wearing that pissed-off expression that made him look like a prison guard on death row. She brushed past him, went inside the bathroom and closed the door behind her. She turned and leaned against it, sucking in a huge breath of relief and letting it out slowly, shocked as hell to still be clothed.

Then, out of nowhere, images sprang to mind of just what he might have meant by I won’t be responsible for what happens next, and it occurred to her that taking that particular punishment might not be a totally negative thing.

Stop it. He’s big, he’s mean and he’s threatening. A man you don’t want to mess with.

She did her business, then decided that if he could avail himself of the shower, so could she. She found soap in there, some heavy-duty manly deodorant stuff with little green flecks of Irish whatever in it, but what the hell. Clean was clean. And the generic shampoo would hardly make her hair brittle if she used it just once. On the other hand, the hot water was heaven. For the first time since she’d been driving in her car last night, her body felt warm all the way to her bones.

Of course, there was still that pocket of cold desperation clinging to the inside of her stomach.

Right now, the man in the other room was the only ally she had within seven hundred miles, and she was pretty darned sure he didn’t want her around any longer than necessary. But there had to be a way to persuade him to help her. She figured a trip to the police station to file a crime report would be a good first step. He’d at least take her there, wouldn’t he?

Past that, she had no idea what she was going to do.

AS SOON AS THE WOMAN SLIPPED past him into the bathroom, Wolfe got dressed, then went into the kitchen and found her damp clothes hanging over the chair. He threw them into the dryer on the landing of the back stairwell, then sat down on the sofa and picked up the Metro section of yesterday’s Dallas Morning News. A quick scan of the headlines told him he didn’t really give a damn about any of it, and he tossed the paper to the coffee table again.

How was he supposed to concentrate on the newspaper when there was a naked woman in his bathroom?

He folded his arms, closed his eyes and listened to the shower running, imagining what her body looked like beneath that spray of water. Damn. He would have loved to have made good on his threat, to take a look at that sweet little body he’d had his hands on last night. In the end, though, he never would have done it, no matter how bold she seemed to be about wandering into his bedroom whenever she felt like it. He hated that feeling of somebody invading his space, disturbing his peace and quiet, and by the time this day was over, he’d make sure she was gone and everything was back the way it was supposed to be.

He heard the shower stop, and a few minutes later she emerged from his bedroom wearing his shirt again and a towel wrapped around her hair. She glanced toward the kitchen chair.

“Where are my clothes?”

“I put them in the dryer.”

She smiled. “Well. That was nice of you. Thank you.”

“You can’t put them on wet. And you can’t leave until you put them on.”

Her smile evaporated, replaced by a look of resignation. She folded her arms across her chest and walked toward him.

“Look. I think we got off on the wrong foot here. I made you mad last night after everything you did for me, and then I came into your bedroom this morning and made you angry all over again. I’m sorry about that.”

He just stared at her.

She eased closer. “You’re supposed to say, ‘Why, thank you, Wendy. I accept your apology.”’ She paused. “That’s my name. Wendy Jamison. And yours is…?”

“Wolfe.”

Her eyes widened. “Is that a nickname?”

“Last name.”

“And your first name?”

“None of your business.”

She gave him a look of muted disgust, and he couldn’t have cared less. It had been a long time since he’d felt the need to be on a first-name basis with anyone, and this woman was no exception.

“Just as soon as your clothes are dry,” he told her, “I’ll take you to the police station.”

She let out a breath. “Thank you. I’d appreciate that.”

She reached up and unwrapped the towel. Then she bent forward at the waist, wiggled her head and stood back up again, slinging her long, dark hair over her shoulders. She tilted her head and finger-combed it, letting it fall in damp, shiny threads down her back. The neck of his shirt had fallen aside, displaying her upper chest and left shoulder. Her skin was pale, more a product of genetics than the season. It was soft, smooth and unblemished—the kind of skin that looked as if it would bruise if he so much as whispered against it.

“Do you think the police will be able to recover my car?” she asked him.

“Nope.”

Her face fell. “You’re not much of an optimist.”

“I’m a realist. I’m betting your car has already been chopped, packed and shipped.”

She heaved a sigh. “To tell you the truth, that’s what I figured. Unfortunately, everything I own was in that car and trailer. Including my five thousand dollars.”

“Five thousand dollars?”

“Yes. In my glove compartment.”

“What in the hell were you doing keeping that kind of money in your glove compartment?”

“I stopped by the bank as I was leaving New York. I wanted to get traveler’s checks, but their computer was down, and I got tired of waiting. It was almost closing time, and I wanted to get on the road. So I told them to give me the money in cash.”

“Bad move.”

“Yeah,” she said, “I know. Don’t you just love hindsight?”

She sat down on the opposite end of the sofa, one leg curled beneath her, then leaned forward and rubbed her fingers up and down her other leg from her thigh to her calf, drawing his attention toward yet another expanse of her bare skin. Her legs were long, lean and delicate, and he wondered how they were even strong enough to hold up the rest of her.

She looked up at him. “Got any lotion?”

He glanced away. “Fresh out.”

“Your razor was a little dull. Hard on the old legs.”

Actually her legs weren’t old at all, and they looked just fine to him. More than fine. And what in the hell was she doing using his razor?

“Bet you’re wondering why I was heading to L.A.,” she said.

The thought hadn’t crossed his mind, but before he could respond, she answered her own question.

“I’m going to be an actress.”

She said it with a bright little sparkle in her eyes, and he resisted the urge to roll his. A beautiful young woman heading to Hollywood to become an actress? There had to be a bigger cliché somewhere on the planet, but he couldn’t imagine what it was.

“I know what you’re thinking,” she said, holding up her palm. “But trust me. I’m not some dumb little ingenue who’s going to end up on a casting couch before she knows what hit her. I know what I’m doing.” She turned on the sofa until she faced him, resting her elbow along the back of it. “See, I spent a few years trying to break in on Broadway, but the trouble there is that they want you to be talented. I am, of course, but there’s a fine line, you know? Between pretty good and great? I don’t think I’ll ever cross that. I’m very self-aware. I know my limitations.”

“So you think you can make it in Hollywood instead.”

She made a scoffing noise. “Of course I can. Ever seen Baywatch?”

Good point.

“And I’m not going it alone. I’ve got an agent. He’s a friend of a friend who has my head shots and résumé and thinks he can do something for me. Open a few doors. That’s all I need, you know. A few doors opened so I can wedge my foot in.” She smiled. “And the rest, as they say, will be history.”

He knew she was impulsive, careless and argumentative. Now he could add delusional to the list.

“The trouble is,” she said with a dejected sigh, “I kind of lost everything I own last night. That leaves me in a pretty precarious position.”

She turned those big brown eyes up to stare at him plaintively, and Wolfe felt a twinge of sympathy. He had to admit that while he’d met lots of people down on their luck, she was a little further down than most.

No. She wasn’t his problem. Pure chance was all that had led him to pick her up in the first place. He’d already done his good deed by letting her sleep on his sofa last night, and that was as far as he intended to extend his charitable contribution to the Society of Struggling Actresses.

“Do you have a family?” he asked her.

“Of course. But they live in Iowa.”

“So call them.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“I have eight brothers and sisters. My parents work at the local factory and barely make ends meet. They’re lucky to put food on the table. The day I left town, I knew I’d be on my own. I promised myself I’d never ask my family for anything.”

“They wouldn’t help you?”

“Yes. They would. They’d give me everything I need and go without themselves, because that’s just what they do. So that’s not an option.”

“Friends?”

“No point in going to that well. It’s dry. I’m the rich one of the bunch.” She settled back on the sofa, a pensive expression on her face. “I can handle this situation. I just have to think, you know? Formulate a plan. I’ve been at rock bottom before and managed to climb out.” She pondered the situation for a few moments more. “The first thing I need is a little walking-around money. A couple hundred bucks, just so I won’t be destitute. Then I can start looking for a way to get to L.A.” She raised her eyebrows questioningly. “Any idea where I could earn a little quick cash?”

Wolfe started to say no. Then a thought occurred to him.

He’d scoped out Mendoza at Sharky’s last night, hitting a dead end because he couldn’t get the guy alone long enough to grab him. If Wolfe walked into that bar, he was liable to be recognized, and Mendoza’s buddies just might cause more trouble than Wolfe wanted to deal with. But if he could get her to lure Mendoza outside by himself, he could have him in handcuffs and into his car before Mendoza knew what hit him. After she did the job for him, he could give her some cash for her trouble, drop her off at a women’s shelter, and his conscience would be clear.

“What are you willing to do for it?” he asked her.

“What do you have in mind?”

“There’s a job I need to have done. I could go down to Harry Hines and pick up a hooker, but you’ll do.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Hey, I’m not sleeping with you, so get that out of your mind right now.”

“It never entered my mind.”

Well, that was a lie. But his random thoughts of the past half hour had nothing to do with the matter at hand.

“How much does the job pay?” she asked.

“You don’t want to know what you have to do first?”

“Does it involve getting naked?”

“No.”

“Then I’ll do it.”

“A hundred bucks. Of course, the wardrobe is coming out of your paycheck.”

“Wardrobe?”

“I’ll take you by the Trinity River Thrift Store. Cheap and trashy.”

“So what’s the job?”

“I’m going fishing.”

“Yeah?”

Wolfe gave her a deadpan stare. “And you’re the worm on the hook.”




4


A FEW MINUTES LATER, Wolfe had given Wendy the gist of his plan, and she felt a tremor of excitement at the very thought of it. A hooker. He wanted her to play a hooker.

Hot damn. Character roles were so much fun.

Wolfe went to the kitchen, grabbed a box from a cabinet, then brought it back and dumped its contents onto the coffee table.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“Breakfast.”

She picked up one of the bars. “Protein Power?”

“Eighteen vitamins and minerals. Lots of fiber.”

“Any room for flavor in there?”

“No pain, no gain.”

She unwrapped one and bit into it. It tasted like sawdust and sand pebbles held together with Elmer’s glue. In the time it took her to gag one down, Wolfe had eaten three. She’d barely disposed of her wrapper in the trash when he grabbed her clothes from the dryer, tossed them to her and told her to get ready.

After she dressed, Wendy asked Wolfe if she could make a long-distance call, promising to pay him for it out of the hundred dollars she was going to earn. She mentally ticked off her siblings in her head, finally deciding to call her oldest sister, Terri. Terri was levelheaded and nonreactionary and would tend to ask fewer questions than anyone else in her family. Good thing, since Wendy intended to fudge a little on the truth of her situation.

When Terri came on the line, Wendy told her that since she’d gotten sidetracked in Dallas because of the storm, she’d decided to stay there with a friend for a few days. True to Terri’s nature, she didn’t question a thing. She merely made Wendy promise to call her as soon as she left for Los Angeles again.

Wendy hung up the phone, glad she’d bought some time. Now all she had to do was formulate a plan to get to the West Coast that didn’t involve taking money from her family.

Minutes later Wendy was following Wolfe down that big, creaky elevator to the first floor of the warehouse, where she was relieved to discover that the motorcycle wasn’t the only vehicle he owned. First in line was a nondescript white van. Next to it sat a gleaming late-model SUV, which she’d have salivated over if she hadn’t seen the black Porsche hiding on the other side of it.

“Oh, wow,” Wendy gushed, running her hand over its fender. “Now, this is a gorgeous car.”

“Hands off. We’re taking the Chevy.”

“Chevy?”

Wendy had been so preoccupied with the sports car that she hadn’t noticed vehicle number four. Like a mangy mutt sidled up next to a purebred, an ancient Chevy Malibu sat next to the Porsche, its crunched left rear fender crisscrossed with rust and its yellow paint faded almost to white.

Wendy blinked with confusion. “You have a Porsche, and you’re driving that?”

“We’re going into a bad area. We have to fit the profile of the neighborhood.”

“So when do you drive the other cars?”

“The van’s for surveillance, and the others depend on what I’m doing or who I’m after.”

Wendy looked longingly at the Porsche as she slid into the passenger seat of the Chevy. They left the warehouse and headed toward the police station. An hour later Wendy had filed the obligatory theft report with a very bored looking detective who had a splatter of coffee on his tie and a comb-over that hid nothing but his self-respect. It was pretty clear all around that she stood a better chance of getting hit by a meteor at midnight than recovering her car and belongings. It was a sickening feeling knowing she had literally nothing in the world but the clothes on her back, but she refused to give in to it. Instead, she let excitement take over.

After all, she was getting to play a hooker.

They left the police station. A few minutes later, Wolfe pulled into the parking lot of the Trinity River Thrift Store. He parked the Malibu in a space near the front door, giving Wendy a nice view of the establishment’s dirty sign, dirty windows and dirty neighbors, squashed as it was between an adult video store and a condom shop.

They went inside. The place smelled like a hundred-year-old attic. Shelves were filled with various garage-sale items—lamps, glassware, dishes, bookshelves. Lining the back of the store were minor to major appliances that were not-so-gently used, along with a genuine antique walnut-veneer bedroom suite complete with missing hardware and beer bottle rings. And the clothes. It looked as if every woman in every sleazy trailer park in Texas had cleaned out her closets and donated them to an even bigger charity than herself.

The clerk, a twenty-something woman dressed in a pair of jeans and a too-tight sweater, came out of the back room. She had naturally frizzy but unnaturally blond hair and had clearly been the victim of a recent cosmetics counter explosion.

The woman took one look at Wolfe and stopped short, her mascara-laden eyes slowly widening as her gaze panned upward. Then she glanced at the cash register, as if she was expecting him to haul out a gun and demand all her money. Wendy didn’t blame her. Her first look at Wolfe had been equally overwhelming.

“She needs clothes,” Wolfe told the clerk, nodding toward Wendy. “Something flashy and trashy. You got anything like that?”

The clerk swallowed hard, as if trying to dislodge a boulder from her throat. Finally she pointed to a rack a few feet behind them that was filled with sparkles and spangles. Wolfe strode over, flipped through the clothes and pulled out an animal-print micro-miniskirt. Wendy took it from him, staring at it in disbelief.

“Sorry,” she said. “I can’t wear this. Synthetic leopards are an endangered species.”

“You’re playing a streetwalker, not a high-dollar call girl.”

She held it up, twisting it one direction, then another. “I don’t think this will even cover my rear end.”

“Exactly.”

Wolfe grabbed a minuscule black top with gold sparkles and handed it to her. She stretched it a couple of times. “Well, this’ll fit my left pinkie. What else do you have?”

“Just put it on. What size shoes do you wear?”

“Five.”

He dug through a nearby bin, tossing shoes left and right before coming up with a pair of monstrous black platforms. If this job included surveillance through third-story windows, she was going to be all set.

The clerk pointed her toward a short hallway leading to a dressing room, where Wendy wiggled out of her jeans and into the skirt. Then she tossed her shirt and bra aside and pulled the stretchy top over her head and into place. She turned, looked into the mirror and froze.

Yes, the skirt was short. The shirt was tight. The shoes were stratospheric. But the clothes had caused a definite transformation toward the indecent.

This was so cool.

Dressing for a performance was always such an upper. It made her feel the character. Be the character. She blinked lazily into the mirror, then drooped her eyelids in a come-hither stare, visions of hot, mindless, well-compensated sex flowing through her mind. She ran her hands up her hips to her waist, then threw her arms back over her head and tousled her hair into a sexy mess, feeling a buzz of exhilaration at the sight of Wendy the Good Girl morphing into a hot, sexy lady of the evening. Wolfe was right. When in Rome, you had to dress like Roman hookers, or whatever that saying was.

But then she realized that part of the equation was missing, something no self-respecting prostitute would ever go without. She stuck her head out of the curtained dressing room and motioned to the clerk. The woman came down the hall.

“Got any makeup I can borrow?” Wendy asked.

“Uh…sure. Just a minute.”

Wendy wasn’t too keen on wearing another woman’s makeup, but then she wasn’t too thrilled about wearing another woman’s clothes, either. Unfortunately, she was stuck with both.

The clerk returned with a cosmetics bag the size of a kangaroo pouch. Wendy thanked her and hefted it into the dressing room. A few minutes later, she’d put the painted in painted lady. After a final look in the mirror, she swept the curtain aside. With a pout on her lips and a swivel in her hips, she headed back down the short hall.

Stopping at the doorway that led into the main part of the store, she slid her hand slowly up the door frame and cocked her hip, planting her other hand against it. Wolfe turned and caught sight of her. He looked down her body to her legs and back up again, a slow, lingering appraisal that told her she’d definitely gotten his attention. Yes. She could feel it. She was every man’s dream in one gold-spangled, animal-spotted, high-heeled package, and he couldn’t take his eyes off her.

Then he zeroed in on her breasts. His usual frown deepened into an even more pronounced one, and he shook his head with disapproval. Her elation fizzled like a lit match hitting a puddle of water.

She dropped her hands to her sides. “What?”

Wolfe strode over to a table piled with various undergarments. He grabbed a bra and lobbed it to her. She stared down at it, unable to recall the last time she’d seen so much lace and Lycra all in one place. Anna Nicole Smith would have had trouble filling up this one.

He turned to the clerk. “Got a box of tissue?”

“Uh…no,” she said. “No tissue.”

“Toilet paper?”

She nodded obediently and scurried to the bathroom, as if Godzilla himself had threatened to eat Tokyo if she didn’t hurry. She returned a moment later with a roll of pink toilet paper and handed it to him. He tossed it to Wendy. She stared down at the half-empty roll.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Do I look like I’m kidding?”

She searched his deadpan expression, looking for a little sparkle in his eyes, a little turn-up of his mouth. No such luck. The stone-faced presidents on Mount Rushmore were more likely to crack a smile.

She went back to the dressing room and put on the bra, trying to ignore the fact that it was a preworn garment, then started stuffing. Then she stuffed some more. It took most of the roll to fill up the cups, and when she finished she pulled the stretchy top down over them. She turned left and right, checking out her new profile in the mirror.

Boobs. She had boobs.

Hmm. So this was what it felt like.

She walked out of the dressing room. Wolfe stood waiting, his sharp focus zeroing in on her newly augmented bustline. She gave him a big smile and thrust her chest out for his inspection.

“So whatcha think? This is about as big as I can go before I’m a walking fire-code violation.”

He turned away. “It’ll do.”

Yeah, he was trying to play it down, but still she could see it in his eyes. Like all men, it was pretty clear that Wolfe deemed excessive cleavage to be a major improvement, like adding a family room onto a tiny house. More recreational possibilities.

As they headed for the cash register, Wendy suddenly realized that with this skimpy outfit, the moment she stepped outside she was going to have goose bumps on her goose bumps.

“Hey, wait a minute,” she said. “I’m not wearing much in the way of clothes here. It’s cold outside.”

“So buy a coat.”

“A coat?” the clerk said, suddenly coming to life. “Oh! I’ve got the perfect one to go with that outfit! Wait till you see this!”

She trotted down an aisle and returned with a waist-length garment that looked like a patchwork of purple raccoon pelts. And the raccoon had clearly had a disfiguring skin condition.

“Isn’t it just the cutest thing?” she gushed. “I was gonna grab it myself, but it’s eight bucks, and I don’t get paid till Friday. Besides, it’d look better on you with your hair color and complexion and all.”

Wendy decided to take that as a compliment. But eight bucks? Right now, that sounded like eight thousand. Not that it wasn’t a steal for such a stunning garment, but her hundred dollars was slowly dwindling away.

She turned to Wolfe. “You’re paying for the coat.”

“Excuse me?”

“It’s up to you to provide me with adequate working conditions. Warmth is a basic necessity.”

“But you get to keep it when you’re through.”

“Well, I should hope so. I didn’t think you’d want to add it to your wardrobe.”

He leaned in close to her and whispered, “But I might use it as a drop cloth to change the oil in my cars.”

“Which would only make it more attractive,” she whispered back.

He glared at her a moment more, then heaved a sigh of disgust. “Fine. I’ll buy you the damned coat.”

Wendy turned to the clerk. “I’ll just wear this stuff out of here. Could I have a sack for my other clothes?”

“I’m out up here, so I’ll get some from the back.”

Wendy took the coat off the hanger, slid into it and checked out her reflection in a nearby mirror. “Ooh!” she cooed, looking back over her shoulder at Wolfe. “She’s right! It’s really me, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” he muttered. “It’s you, all right.”

She gave him a sigh of mock disgust. “What’s a girl gotta do to get a compliment out of you, anyway?”

“This is a job, not a date.”

“Then I’m betting you have a lot more jobs than dates.”

“My personal life is none of your business.”

“Have you ever thought about smiling once in a while? Just a tiny bit?”

“Waste of energy.”

“So you’re always this crabby?”

He pulled out a twenty and tossed it on the counter, pointedly ignoring her.

“Having a bad day?”

He said nothing.

“Bad month?”

Not a word.

“Well, it certainly can’t be a systemic problem. Not with those fiber-loaded power bars you eat. A few of those once a week and you’ll never, ever have to worry about—”

He clamped his hand onto her arm and pulled her aside, dropping his voice to an angry whisper. “Do you want this job, or don’t you?”

She blinked with surprise. “Of course I do.”

“It requires shutting the hell up when it’s necessary. And it’s necessary from here on out. Do you think you can handle that?”

She raised her eyebrows. “So I’m supposed to play the sexy, silent type?”

“That’s right.”

She gave him a sly smile. “What if the guy wants me to talk dirty?”

Wolfe just stared at her, shaking his head slowly. The clerk returned. He grabbed the sack from her hand, stuffed Wendy’s clothes inside and hustled her out of the store.




5


AS WOLFE DROVE toward Sharky’s, he felt more than a little unnerved by the woman sitting beside him. Not that she didn’t look the part he wanted her to play. The clothes and makeup were right on the money, showcasing her body in a way that would make just about any man sit up and take notice. But he hated questionable outcomes, and he sensed one right now. Everything about this woman felt edgy and out of control.

Then again, all she had to do was get the guy to walk out the door of that bar. That was all. Any woman should be able to pull that off, especially one with a body like hers. Forget her unnaturally amplified breasts. Her legs alone would have Mendoza panting in her wake.

Wolfe brought his Chevy to a halt at a red light, then reached for his clipboard in the back seat. He flipped through the pages, grabbed a photo and handed it to Wendy.

“This is the guy. He jumped bail on a burglary charge.”

Wendy took the photo. “Are you sure he’ll be at the bar this early?”

“My informant told me that he’s coming back today around noon for a game of pool. Grudge match. High stakes. He’ll be there.”

“So why don’t the cops just pick him up?”

“Too many bail jumpers, not enough time. That’s where I come in. Once a guy misses his court date, the bondsman can send somebody after him. I’m that somebody.”

“So if this guy is wanted by the police, why is he hanging out in a public place?”

“It’s what guys like him always do. They’ll change addresses, they’ll change jobs, but they’ll rarely change their routines. I’ve picked up guys everywhere from bowling alleys to pizza parlors to whorehouses. Anything they’ve done in the past few years, they’ll continue to do.”

“That’s kinda stupid, isn’t it?”

“Most criminals are.”

“Why don’t you just go in there and grab him? You’ve got to be bigger than this guy. I mean, like, way bigger.”

“Because that bar is friendly territory for him, enemy territory for me. I’ve found a lot of guys in this area. If I show my face inside, somebody might recognize me, and all hell is liable to break loose.”

“Do you really think anyone is going to mess with you?”

“Drunk lowlife? Yep. In a heartbeat. That’s chaos. I don’t like chaos. I like nice, calm apprehensions where nobody gets mad, nobody gets hurt, and nobody even realizes what’s going on except the guy who’s getting apprehended.”

Wendy smiled. “Gee, that sounds kinda boring.”

“Why? Because nobody’s hauling out weapons and firing at anything that moves? Fine, then. It’s boring. And I live to work another day.”

“But what if somebody does pull a gun? You’re not even armed.”

“Don’t bet on that.”

She looked at his heavy coat, sweatshirt, jeans, boots. “I give up. Where’s the weapon?”

“None of your business.”

“Just wondering how lively this job is likely to get.”

“Listen to me,” he said. “I’m always armed. Always. But in thirteen years I’ve never once fired a weapon and I’ve never been fired on. Do you know why that is?”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t take chances. And you’re not going to, either. You’re going to go into that bar, tell him you’ll take him to heaven for a hundred bucks, and get him out the door.”

Her eyebrows shot up with surprise. “A hundred bucks? Is that all I’m worth?”

Wolfe couldn’t resist. “I don’t know. Is it?”

She leaned closer to him, her face easing into a smoldering expression, her voice becoming a deep, throaty purr. “No way, baby. I’m priceless.”

She continued to stare at him, her dark brown eyes so hot and provocative that he felt a shot of pure lust. In the span of a few seconds, he saw himself ripping that tiny little skirt right off her, then digging through that hideous pile of toilet tissue to get to the really nice stuff underneath. And then—




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