by Anne Stuart
“I don’t mean now. I haven’t gotten a really good look at you until now, and you look strangely familiar. I can’t get over the feeling I’ve seen you before.”
“You may have,” he said casually, draining his glass and pouring himself a healthy second dose. “Were you into rock ’n’ roll in the late sixties, early seventies?”
“Who wasn’t? Even in my early teens I had a thing for Jim Morrison. Not to mention—oh, my God.”
He grinned. “You do have good powers of observation, don’t you? I don’t think I’ve been recognized in years.”
“Snake,” she breathed. “You were the lead singer of the Why, weren’t you? With that glorious blond hair down to your hips. God, you were every teenybopper’s dream of heaven, in your leather pants and no shirt, leaping all over the stage. And that wonderful … voice …” She let it trail off, her enthusiasm draining. “Good God, what happened to you?”
“My run-in with friend Mancini,” he said with a shrug. “And don’t look at me with that shocked expression, Maggie. You know as well as I do that things were pretty wild back then, and I was whacked-out. Different woman every night, different drug every hour. Or maybe it was the other way around. I was an arrogant bastard, and I thought people like Mancini couldn’t touch me if I decided what they provided wasn’t the proper quality. A couple of his goons taught me otherwise. A kick in the throat can put quite a dent in a singing career.” He took another sip of his whiskey, and Maggie stared at him, unbelieving.
“And you don’t want to kill him?” she demanded. “You’re in a position for revenge, and you don’t want to take it?”
“It happened more than fourteen years ago, Maggie May. I’ve had a lot of time to come to terms with it. Mick Jagger might be able to shake his ass all over the stage at age forty, but I haven’t got his stamina. I was all set to burn out early and, in a way, Mancini gave me a second chance. You can’t do illicit drugs when you’re in intensive care for a month.”
“But Mancini must think you want to crucify him.”
“Don’t get me wrong. I’d love for people like Mancini to be run out of business. I’m just not about to offer my aging body as a sacrifice in the cause. You can be Superwoman. I’m only a mere mortal who’d like to make it to the other side of forty.”
“Pulaski, I’ll ask you nicely. Please don’t call me Superwoman,” she said.
“Since you ask me nicely, I’ll do my best. But it’s tempting. You want to tell me why you don’t like it?”
“Maybe when you know me better.”
“Am I going to get to know you better?” It was an idle question.
“Maybe,” she said. “Maybe not.”
She let Mack drive the next day. He’d been almost docile the night before, remaining in his own bed without a single suggestive remark escaping that remarkably sexy mouth of his. He hadn’t even objected when she insisted on leaving the bedside light on. He’d merely slouched down in the bed and covered his face with his hat. A few moments later he was snoring quietly.
She hadn’t expected to sleep so well. She wasn’t used to sharing a room, particularly with a healthy, attractive member of the opposite sex, and she was still keyed up and almost too tired from the last forty-eight hours to sleep.
For some reason Peter Wallace kept creeping into her mind. It had been months since their affair had faded away from lack of interest, and its end had been so subtle she’d hardly noticed it. That was what bothered her the most, she thought, punching the lumpy pillow. Maybe she wasn’t able to fall in love, maybe her emotions had been so wrung out years ago that she had none left to give. The thought was depressing, and Mack’s sleeping body in the bed next to hers didn’t help matters. But his gentle snoring proved soporific, and the unexpected revelation of his past career faded out of her consciousness and into her dreams. Suddenly there he was, a long-distance kinescope of a sixties rock star, whirling, dancing, posturing, and prancing, that mane of thick blond hair flying around him, that glorious voice of his singing, howling, screaming, and crooning into the microphone. Until even that dream faded into a deep sleep that lasted until six the next morning.
The arid land of the Navajo reservation seemed endless as they drove from Utah into Arizona. The radio picked up nothing but static and Barry Manilow, the artificial climate produced by the air conditioner made Maggie’s eyes itch, and there wasn’t a fast-food joint in sight.
But at least there was no black sedan in sight either. The roads were filled with the requisite pickups that seemed the major form of transportation in that part of the world, interspersed with the omnipresent Winnebagos.
“I like the name of that one,” Mack said out of the blue. “The Snow Princess out of Fairbanks, Alaska. You’d think if they lived in a place that pretty, they wouldn’t bother to travel.”
Maggie was instantly alert. “Don’t you think that’s sort of a suspicious name? I mean, isn’t snow another word for cocaine? Or is it heroin?”
Mack gave her an amused glance. “Are you seriously going to tell me that Mancini and his boys would advertise if they went undercover? Or the CIA? Or the rebels?”
“Hell, Pulaski, you have too damned many enemies,” Maggie said, leaning back. “You’re right of course. You didn’t happen to get a look at who was driving?”
He grinned. “A very large, very cheerful-looking lady well past sixty years old. Her equally large, equally cheerful spouse was beside her.”
“How do you know they’re married? You shouldn’t jump to such conclusions. If they were both looking cheerful, they are probably living in sin.”
Mack gave her a brief, curious glance. “I take it you’ve been married too.”
“Not on your scale. Just once, for a very short time,” she said, looking back at the Snow Princess with not much more than idle curiosity. It lumbered along in serene innocence. “We both knew it was a mistake, and fortunately neither of us was so egocentric that we couldn’t admit it. I was on the rebound, and I should have known better. Did you ever marry on the rebound?”
“Maybe number two, but I don’t really remember. I stopped marrying them a while before I lost my voice, and most of that time is a little vague.” He smiled at her, that curiously seductive smile that she wasn’t sure she trusted. “So who were you rebounding from?”
“A man. And a way of life,” she said repressively. “And that’s all I care to say about it. You want to tell me about your love life?”
“We’ve got only two days to Houston, Maggie May. I don’t think I’d get past age twenty.”
He managed to get a laugh out of her. “You’re a con artist. I bet you played havoc with all the groupies’ hearts.”
“Groupies don’t have hearts. Besides, I’ve learned my lesson. I’m now down to one woman at a time. Quality wears a lot better than quantity.”
“I imagine it does.” She sat back, remembering for a moment. Quality and quantity. When it came right down to it, her past had been sorely lacking in both. Of course there was more than one kind of quality. There was breathless, mesmerizing, addictive passion that left you stupid and vulnerable and in so much pain it took years to recover. And then there was the quality that came with a good man trying his best, with her doing everything she could to love him back and, ultimately, failing. She’d known that with Will, her husband of eight short months, and she’d known it with Peter Wallace. The sense of emptiness and failure that had been nagging at her for the past few months came back full force.
Maybe it was bad blood. Maybe she was doomed to follow in her mother’s footsteps, always falling in love with the wrong man, never being able to love the right one. Her sisters hadn’t been blessed with any more luck than she had. Kate was on the verge of a divorce, Holly seemed to go through men like Kleenex, and Jilly kept away from them altogether. They were a sorry lot, the four of them.
“Penny for your thoughts,” Mack’s voice rasped beside her, and she looked up, startled.
“I was thinking
about my family. You got any brothers or sisters?”
“One brother. He lives in Seattle, drives a car very much like this one, and totally disapproves of me. Loves me, but thinks I have a helluva life-style.”
“So you do.”
Mack shrugged. “I like it when I’m not being gunned down. It’s not for Alan, but then I’d suffocate if I had to live his life. He’s a stockbroker, with a socially ambitious wife, socially ambitious children, even socially ambitious dogs. I think their image is more real to them than what’s behind it.”
“What is behind it?”
“Basically good people but lacking in depth. Do you have brothers and sisters, Maggie May?”
“Three sisters. Half sisters, to be exact.” She wrinkled her forehead. “Actually, I guess I have more than that. My mother had four daughters, my father had me and then three sons by his second wife. I tend to think of my half brothers as more like cousins. It’s odd, because they’re just as closely related as Kate or Holly.” She shook her head.
“So what were you thinking about your family?” It was a casual question, one to wile away the long hours of Arizona flatland, but Maggie wasn’t in the mood to spill her soul.
“Just that I missed them,” she said evasively. She could see by the look he gave her that he wasn’t fooled, but he dropped the subject. She was learning he had a way of doing that, pushing just a little bit, then pulling back when she got uncomfortable. She sort of liked that about him. She sort of liked a lot of things about him, even though she still wasn’t quite sure she trusted him.
“Do you have any more of those nails you threw on the road yesterday?” he asked in a tone of no more than casual curiosity.
She looked at him, as she had many times during the morning, trying to superimpose her memory of the legendary Snake on the rumpled, world-weary, very real man beside her. He had the mirrored sunglasses perched on his nose and his hands were resting with casual competence on the leather-covered steering wheel. Big hands, strong hands, she noticed.
And then his words penetrated her abstraction and Maggie was instantly alert. “I threw them all. Why?”
“Because while I think the Snow Princess is completely innocent, I’m not too sure about the Little Hustler from Mobile, Alabama. Vern and Donna Jean and Jennifer and Tommy are supposed to be inside. Instead, they look like Juan and Carlos and Manuel. And I don’t think they’re here to see the sights.”
“The men in the car yesterday weren’t Hispanic.”
“So we’ve traded one set for another. Great.” Mack straightened in his seat, just marginally, and she could see those strong, broad hands of his flex experimentally around the steering wheel. “Where’s the Snow Princess?”
“I can’t see it but I guess it’s behind the Little Hustler. Do you want me to drive?”
“I thought we already agreed that in these circumstances we didn’t have time to stop and switch drivers?” His voice was still casual. “You’re going to have to leave it up to me. Fasten your seat belt.”
At least he’d stopped calling her Superwoman, she thought gratefully. “Are you sure you can handle it?”
“We don’t have much choice, now do we? If it’s any consolation, I can tell you that I managed to survive two Ferraris, a Corvette, and a Jaguar XKE in my misspent youth. I can assure you I did not drive slowly.”
“This thing doesn’t handle like an XKE.”
“No, it handles like a goddamn tank. But at least it’s fast.” He cast a calm glance into the rearview mirror. “And I think it’s about time for it to prove its stuff.”
The Little Hustler had been gaining steadily. Mack had been accelerating, pushing the speedometer up and up, but the RV had managed to keep pace, even move closer. The Snow Princess was left far behind in the summer dust, but things were still overtly polite between the white sedan and the Winnebago. Maggie huddled down in the seat, her eyes trained on the side mirror.
“I think you’re right,” she said. “I don’t think our friends from Mobile, Alabama, want to talk.” Close up, their faces looked frighteningly implacable. “Why don’t you step on it?”
“I’m afraid I have. Does this thing go much faster than ninety?”
“You mean to tell me the Little Hustler is following that fast? The damned thing must be all engine!”
“Enough engine to keep pace with us, not enough to pass us. They’re going to realize that sooner or later, and we’re going to have to hope they don’t have guns. I don’t suppose … ?”
“Nope. I came straight from London. Even with a permit it’s too much trouble to carry weapons around the various airports of the world.” She allowed herself the luxury of swiveling around in her seat to get a good look, at their pursuers. At speeds of ninety plus there was no longer any pretense they weren’t in an automotive duel to the death. She swung back quickly, not even wasting her breath enough to swear. “They have guns.”
Mack shrugged. “Got any suggestions? You’re supposed to be protecting me.”
“Don’t remind me.” Suddenly she undid her seat belt and dove over into the backseat, almost kicking him as she went.
“What the hell are you doing?” His imperturbable calm had begun to shred. “It’s just slightly distracting to have you bouncing around the backseat. If you can’t come up with a rescue, you could at least hold my hand.”
“Shut up,” she muttered under her breath, ripping open her suitcase and tossing clothes all over the car. “I’ve just had a brainstorm. Where the hell is the Jack Daniel’s?” She pulled it out with a cry of triumph. It was half empty, which suited her purposes even better. She paused long enough to take a long pull off it, and then set to work with feverish haste.
“I hate to be touchy, Maggie, but this is no time for a drink.” Mack yelled. “The Little Hustler is getting impatient.”
As if to emphasize his point, the big RV crept up on them, tapping them lightly on the fender. The car lurched forward, and it took all of Mack’s professed expertise to keep it on the road. “Maggie!”
“Shut up, Pulaski. I’m making a Molotov cocktail and it’s tricky business.”
“I don’t care how tricky it is. If you don’t speed it up, we’re not going to need it.”
“Damn, I wish I had something a little more … I’ve got it.” She rummaged back into her suitcase, holding on tightly as their car was once more rammed from the rear. Grabbing her nail polish remover, she soaked her favorite pair of silk panties, poured the rest of the contents into the whiskey, and stuffed the underwear in the top. “Got a match?”
“Christ, no!” He was sounding definitely ragged at this point. “I gave up smoking years ago.”
“Hell and damnation! Plug in the lighter.”
“The lighter! You’ve got to be out of your mind—” Once more they were rammed, and Mack’s language grew colorful indeed. Enough so that Maggie stopped a moment to listen respectfully.
“You’ve got a way with words, Pulaski,” she said coolly. “Hand me the lighter.”
She finally got the panties to light. “When I count to three I’m going to open the rear window. You just drive like hell. Ready?”
“Okay, Maggie. Do it.”
She was both amazed and awed. To her Molotov cocktails were only theory, and the real thing was impressive indeed. The front of the Winnebago was coated in a sheet of flame. It fell back immediately, veered off the road, rolled over twice, and came to a stop in a forest of flames by the side of the road. Maggie watched long enough to see three figures scramble away before it blew up.
“Very satisfying,” she murmured, neatly folding her clothes with shaking hands. “Just like television. No one gets hurt but the bad guys get vanquished.”
“It would be nice if it always worked like that,” Mack said from the front seat. “You okay, Maggie?”
She met his eyes in the rearview mirror. “I’m just fine.” She kept the shaking hands out of sight. “I do this all the time.”
“Sure y
ou do, Maggie. Sure you do.” And he drove on down the road.
four
“Chicken-fried steak?” Mack’s voice was thick with loathing disbelief. “Are you seriously intending to eat chicken-fried steak?”
Maggie ignored him, flashing her brilliant smile at the tired waitress. “And a glass of red wine and a large Tab,” she added.
“You’re a barbarian,” he said the moment the waitress was out of earshot. “No one in their right mind would order chicken-fried steak.”
“I would. We’re in a diner in rural Texas, and I intend to immerse myself in the experience.” She cast a deceptively casual glance around the diner, at the flat, twilight landscape outside the dirty windows. “I’ve read about chicken-fried steak for years, and now’s a fine time to try it.”
“Read about it? What the hell kind of books do you read?” He took a healthy swig out of the coffee that every self-respecting Western waitress served first.
“Anything and everything. Mysteries, romances, science fiction. Everything but spy books.” She ran a casual finger through the layer of grease coating the gray Formica tabletop.
“Why not spy books?”
She grinned at him. “I’m afraid they’ll give me bad ideas.”
He shook his head, and Maggie watched in interest as the fading sunlight played over his face. She was getting used to that face beside her day and night. Hell, she might as well admit it. She was getting to like it. Those hazel eyes of his were a peculiar combination of cynicism and warmth, as if he knew just how rotten life could be but still liked it immensely. His mouth was turned up in a half-smile more often than not, and the broken nose added character to a face that Maggie remembered as being almost angelically beautiful when he was younger. He could no longer be called angelic. If anything, there was a devilish streak about him that Maggie was finding more and more attractive. And she was old enough and smart enough to know better.
“Just because you grew up in Texas and take things like chicken-fried steak for granted,” she said, her wayward thoughts completely hidden, “doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy the exotic local cuisine.”