Wild, Hungry Hearts
Page 26
Out of the corner of his vision, he saw Dum start toward them. Z pushed Ursa ahead of him. She planted her high heels and turned back. Damn it, Ursa. Dum took another step toward her, and Z’s fist instinctively curled up into a hard ball.
“What are you? An idiot? She’s a cop,” he heard Joey the Slant hiss at Dum. Joey shuffled toward them, a tense expression on his face.
“She don’t look like a cop,” Dum said in a surly fashion.
“Feel free to join the dozens of convicted criminals who were stupid enough to think the same thing,” Ursa said.
Z blinked, immediately veiling his surprised glance at Ursa. She was leveling a stare at Dum that could have cowed a charging bull in its tracks.
“Your fly is open,” Ursa added deadpan, nodding at Dum’s crotch.
Dum glanced down quickly, only to flinch in embarrassment when he saw his zipper was intact. Z didn’t think he’d ever seen a man turn that particular shade of purple. He resisted a wild urge to laugh.
“What do you know about what anyone looks like, you box of rocks?” Joey the Slant said bitterly, slapping at Dum’s shoulder. “Come on. We’re getting out of here.”
Joey met Z’s stare as he passed. “This ain’t over, Z. Not by a longshot. Be ready to hand over either the bike, or the money.”
Z just shrugged negligently, all of his attention focused on the woman who stood next to him, all of his will concentrated on erasing threat from anywhere near her.
“Come on,” Z told Ursa tersely when they exited the bar onto a sunny spring morning. He pulled her alongside him toward his bike.
“But I have my car,” Ursa protested. “It’s parked down the street.”
“We’ll come back for it once things quiet down. I wouldn’t put it past Joey to have us followed.”
“But they can follow us on your bike too, can’t they?” Ursa asked, accepting his helmet without hesitation when he gave it to her. She shrugged off her briefcase and passed it to him while she fastened the helmet. He had to hand it to her. Despite her initial confusion at his slight of hand in the bar, she’d handled the situation like a pro. At the moment, she was all brisk business.
He handed her back her briefcase.
“Are you forgetting how I drive?” He mounted his sleek, aggressively styled custom Bonnie.
Her eyebrows arched. She nodded once in understanding, a small smile pulling at her lips.
Had her mouth always been so pink and edible looking?
Z pushed aside the inappropriate thought and gave her a hand while she straddled the seat behind him.
“What do I do with my briefcase?”
“You’re going to have to put it between us and squeeze up tight to me. Tighter, Ursa,” he said when she followed his instructions.
She tightened her hold around his waist. Her arms felt slender, but surprisingly strong. He felt her cheek press against the back of his shoulder.
“Is that tight enough?”
Not nearly, baby girl.
Shocked at his own intrusive thought, he busied himself with starting his bike.
He didn’t think of Ursula Esterbrook like he would most attractive women. He tried not to, anyway.
For Christ’s sake, get a grip. You were there when she was born.
“Where are we going?” she called out to him as they left the Crucifixion Café’s gravel parking lot.
“Were you on your way to work? Do you want me to drop you off at the hospital? I’ll have to do a little maneuvering first, to make sure we aren’t being followed,” he said as they sped along the mangy Reno backstreet where the café was located. What the hell had Ursa been doing in this scummy neighborhood to begin with?
“No, don’t worry about that. I was out doing some home visits, so they won’t expect me at the office until this afternoon,” she yelled over the roar of the engine. “Why don’t we go to my place? We can talk.”
He paused, considering. He didn’t like the idea of exposing her to his seedy life anymore than he already unintentionally had. But then again, he had complete faith in his ability to lose anyone who attempted to follow them. No one would know he’d indulged in a nostalgic moment with a neighborhood girl from his childhood.
No one but Ursa and him.
He’d never been to Ursa’s Reno apartment, where she’d moved to work as a social worker in a local hospital. But the idea of being with her in her undoubtedly clean, bright, wholesome environment—a miniature slice of the Esterbrook house in Tahoe Shores—held a strangely compelling appeal.
Maybe it was because he’d just had a close call with something so foul.
She gave him her address, and he rapidly calculated a route to get there, one that was guaranteed to expose and avoid any potential tail. He had a history of losing tails in Reno.
He was surprised, and a little irritated, at himself for not making some excuse for getting her at a safe distance from himself as soon as possible. He told himself it had nothing to do with how nice her cheek felt pressed against his leather jacket, or how good it felt having her hug him so tightly… or how much he resented her damn briefcase for creating a barrier between him and her breasts pressing against his back.
No. It couldn’t have anything to do with that.
Table of Contents
Wild, Hungry Hearts
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Epilogue
A Note from the Author
Wild, Wounded Hearts
Prologue
Chapter One