His last stubborn hope of remaining inconspicuous died a quiet death.
At least she was being pretty docile. He’d take his blessings where he could find them and be grateful for that. Sam stood aside to allow her to slip into her seat.
She turned to look at him. “How long does it take to get to Florida?”
“Three and a half days.”
He thought he saw a flash of panic in the depths of her eyes but if so, she got a firm handle on it, for she merely nodded. “I’m hungry,” was all she said.
“We’ll be stopping for breakfast in about ten minutes. Can you hold out until then, or do you need something to tide you over?”
“I’ll wait.” Catherine was happy to wait, for it meant a few minutes’ reprieve from what she planned to do. Her stomach lurched, but hunger wasn’t really the problem. Nerves were, and the slow, deep breaths she took in an attempt to quell them were only partially successful.
The bus rolled into Boise ten minutes later and into a café parking lot five minutes after that. “Breakfast stop, folks,” the driver announced, and opened the door. “You’ve got forty-five minutes, and I advise you not to dawdle. I keep a strict schedule.”
Up the aisle, a small white-haired woman struggled to shove an awkwardly shaped parcel onto the overhead storage shelf. People jostled her as they streamed around her, mumbling with impatience. Sam, to Catherine’s astonishment, stopped at the woman’s side.
“Here, ma’am, let me get that for you,” he offered, and lifted it from her hands to slide it easily onto the rack. Giving it a thump of accomplishment, he brushed aside her thanks, flashed a crooked self-deprecating smile, and waved her ahead of them.
Catherine studied him from beneath her lashes as they walked into the cafe and settled into seats at a small table by the counter. He looked large and mean, with that black stubble, sullen mouth, and those fierce golden eyes, and Lord knew her experience with him had done nothing to dispel the impression. Who, then, would have thought he could possess such a charming smile? For about thirty seconds it had made him look sort of shy and sweet. She shook her head and accepted a menu from the waitress. She must be more nervous than she thought, to imagine a fool thing like that.
Catherine perused the menu, looking for the most expensive item. Her reward was Sam’s pained expression when she gave her order. Get used to it, McKade she silently advised him. I’m going to hit you right where it hurts the most—in your precious timetable and your almighty wallet.
The thought of what she was about to do made her breath come faster and shallower, and she forced herself to draw it in deeper and hold it longer until her heart rate slowed a little. Timing was everything, and as much as she’d like to get this over with, she wasn’t going to mess it up by rushing it. No way would she risk allowing Sam enough time to get the problem straightened out before the bus had to leave. She looked around the crowded café.
It was filled to capacity with bus passengers. Harried waitresses rushed around, taking orders and filling coffee cups. The one handling their table stopped by just long enough to top off Sam’s cup and set down two sets of flatware wrapped in paper napkins. Catherine unrolled hers and placed the napkin in her lap.
Fifteen minutes later the waitress was back, sliding their orders onto the table in front of them. “Be careful, folks, the plates are hot. Enjoy your breakfast.”
Catherine ate little. Pushing her food around her plate, she kept her gaze locked on the bus driver seated two tables away.
“Dammit, are you gonna eat that, or are you just going to play with it?” Sam demanded irritably, and she started, her gaze swinging back to look at him.
“I’m not as hungry as I thought,” she managed to respond with credible coolness.
“Then give it here. Maybe you grew up in the lap of luxury, Red, but where I came from we didn’t waste food.”
Catherine stared at him incredulously. “No right-thinking person would call the neighborhood where I was raised the lap of luxury.” Hearing herself, she emitted a delicate snort. “But then I forget, we’re talking about you.”
“Yeah, my standards are kind of low, all right.” He deliberately chose to misunderstand the insult as he reached for her plate. “Hell, if you knew where your next meal was coming from seven days a week, I’d say you had it pretty cushy.” Transferring all but a small portion of her breakfast onto his plate, he passed it back to her. “Here. Eat that.”
“I told you, I’m not—”
“I said eat. You didn’t have dinner last night, and I’ll be damned if I’ll let you get sick on me.”
“Oh, no, we certainly mustn’t inconvenience the fearless bounty hunter,” she snapped, and stabbed up a forkful of hash browns. Anger steadied her nervous stomach and she cleaned her plate. Then she looked across the table. “Give me back some of that steak.”
He cut the remaining piece in half and passed it to her.
Too soon, their meal was finished, their coffee cups had been refilled, and Catherine’s personal clock had ticked down to the zero hour. It was time to act. She shoved to her feet. “I have to use the rest room.”
“Hold it.” Sam reached across the table to grab her purse. “Hand over your lipstick.”
“Excuse me?”
“Don’t play dumb, Red. Give me your lipstick.”
Catherine heaved a sigh but did as he requested, digging out a tube and passing it to him.
“All of them, Red.”
She located three more and handed them over. “Satisfied?”
“I’ll be satisfied when I collect my fee in Miami.” Then he accompanied her to the rest room, where he opened the door and stuck his head inside, making sure there wasn’t an alternate exit.
There wasn’t. It was a closet-sized, windowless room with a toilet, a sink, and a cupboard full of supplies. Catherine slammed the door in his face, locked it behind her, and went to stand over the sink, her hands braced against the cool porcelain. She let her head hang as she drew in deep, controlled breaths. Then, exhaling, she raised it to meet her own gaze head-on in the flyspecked mirror.
Okay, she could do this—how hard could it be, after all? She just had to cause one itsy-bitsy scene, make a fuss that the bus driver wouldn’t want to waste time trying to straighten out. She could and would do it, if it meant throwing a crimp into Sam’s cherished schedule.
Don’t think about how foolish it will make you feel. She took another deep breath, straightened her shoulders, and turned to the door. She was reaching to unlock it just as someone pounded on it from out in the hallway. Jumping a foot, she snatched her hand back.
“Open up, Red. It’s time to go.”
Staring at the lock, Catherine took a step backwards. Oh, my goodness, that’s it. She didn’t have to make her scene out in the cafe at all. Why hadn’t it occurred to her before? She could do it from right here.
“Red! Open up!”
“No.” It came out weak, soft, and she cleared her throat and tried again. “No.”
There was an instant of silence. Then, low and menacing, “What did you say?”
“I said no. I am not coming out.”
His fist smacked the panel hard. “Get your butt out here, or I’ll break down the damn door!”
“Hey now,” an irate female voice demanded. “What’s going on back here?”
“This doesn’t concern you, lady,” Sam growled.
“I own this place, mister—it darn well does concern me. Especially when I hear a patron threatening to destroy my property.”
“Listen, you don’t understand—”
“Ma’am?” Catherine called through the closed panel. “Please, won’t you make him go away? He got me pregnant,” she improvised. “And he said he’d take care of me. I thought that meant we’d get married, you know? But he’s taking me to a clinic, where he expects me to…” She let her voice trail away. “He says little Sammy isn’t even his, even though he knows I haven’t been with anyone else—”
<
br /> “That’s a damn lie!” Sam couldn’t believe this. A crowd was gathering, the woman who owned the place was glaring at him as if he were the lowest life-form to walk the face of the earth, and the bus driver was consulting his watch. “I never laid a hand on her.”
Somewhere in the growing crowd a man snorted with disbelief, and Sam swung around to glower at him. “What?” he demanded in the face of the stranger’s patent skepticism.
“We’ve all seen her, buddy,” the man said. “And we’ve seen you hovering over her. You expect us to believe you’ve been keeping your hands to yourself?”
“I don’t give a flying…flick…what you believe, Jack. It’s the truth. And if I’ve ‘hovered’ it’s because I’m a bail enforcer and she’s my prisoner.”
Another man emitted a sound of cynical amusement. Sam recognized him as the clown from across the aisle, the one so enamored of Red’s ass. “Nice work if you can get it,” the guy commented dryly. “You and your prisoner sure wrap together pretty tight to sleep…but I imagine that’s just part of the job, huh? Wouldn’t want her gettin’ away or anything.” He looked past Sam to the closed rest-room door and smiled lasciviously. “Can’t say as I blame ya. I wouldn’t mind playing ‘bounty hunter’ with that one myself.”
“Three minutes, folks,” the bus driver called out.
Sam swung around and pounded on the door again. “All right, Red, this has gone far enough. You come out now, or I’m kicking down the door.”
“You do, and you’d better be prepared to pay for it,” the owner said.
“Jesus.” He wanted badly to hit something but reined in his temper. “You got a screwdriver, then? I could take the hinges off.”
“No.”
He didn’t have a prayer of doing it in three minutes, anyway. Sam thumped his forehead down on the door panel and strung together several creatively linked vulgarities.
“Time to board, folks.”
“Sammy?” Catherine’s voice drifted through the portal. “Don’t be mad at me. Please. If you don’t wanna marry me, then you gotta let me go home to my momma. It’s your baby, Sam. I can’t just get rid of him.”
Sam felt the mood of the crowd shift from amusement to something darker and knew Red had won this round. He turned to the driver. “Let me get our bags off the bus.”
“I can’t be opening up the storage compartment,” the driver informed him unhelpfully. “We got rules about that.”
“This won’t violate your rules. They’re inside on the overhead rack.”
“Okay, then. Last call, folks. Bus is leaving.”
Sam grasped the driver’s arm as the passengers boarded the bus. “What about our tickets?”
“Talk to Darcy.” The driver indicated the café owner. “She has the local concession. She’ll reissue your tickets for the next bus.”
“Which will be here when?”
“Do I look like a walking, talking schedule to you? Talk to Darcy.” Impatient to leave, the driver shook off Sam’s arm and climbed aboard. “C’mon,” he snapped when Sam didn’t automatically follow. “You got thirty seconds to get your bags. I’ve got a schedule to keep.”
Sam was off in twenty and the door immediately wheezed closed behind him. A moment later, the bus rumbled out of the parking lot in a cloud of diesel smoke and disappeared around the corner.
Red was the first sight to greet his eyes when he shouldered open the café door again. She was seated at the counter, sipping a cup of something steaming while Darcy fussed over her. Three waitresses sat with their feet up in a corner booth, lingering over cups of coffee and cigarettes. He wondered what the chances were of bumming a smoke. Probably pretty slim. Dropping the bags with a thump, he stalked up to the café owner, careful not to look at his treacherous prisoner for fear he’d lose it entirely and ring her luscious white neck. “The driver said you’d reissue our tickets.”
“Hmmph.” Darcy gave him a disapproving glance. But she left off patting Catherine’s back and moved around to the end of the counter, where a computer was set up. She asked a few questions and tapped in the keystrokes that accessed the functions to reproduce his tickets. Her businesslike demeanor lasted the length of the transaction. Then she went back to regarding him as if he’d just crawled out from under a rock.
“You’ve had your fun with that young woman,” she snapped contemptuously as she handed him the tickets. “It’s time now to be a man and accept your responsibilities.”
Between the street toughs in his old neighborhood and his DIs in the army, Sam had been hassled by the best, and usually he could take about anything dished out to him with a stoic lack of response. Never let the assholes know they’re gettin’ to you was his motto. But something rebelled at the unfairness of hearing that disparaging tone from a total stranger. “Let me see if I’ve got this straight,” he growled, leaning toward the café owner. “You don’t know me from Adam, but you think I oughta marry Red and raise her kid.”
“According to her, it’s your baby, too, mister.”
He laughed without humor. “Right. My baby. The one I got on her having my fun.” That was rich. He’d been hanging on to his professionalism with both hands—and for what? So he could have the name without even a taste of the game?
Well, the hell with it. Red made a big mistake when she picked that particular method of fighting, because two could work this angle. He swallowed his temper and summoned half a smile. “Well, Miss Darcy, what can I say? When you’re right, you’re right.” Stuffing the tickets in his shirt pocket, he turned on his heel and headed straight for the redhead at the counter.
Catherine had been keeping a wary eye on him and swiveled to face him fully when she saw him stride straight for her. She felt pumped by her victory but shaky, and she braced herself, unsure what to expect. He had to be ten kinds of furious, and he hadn’t even heard yet about the schedule for the next bus. She didn’t know whether to thrill at her success or fear for her life when he did hear the news. She couldn’t read anything except determination on his face, but that didn’t necessarily mean blood wouldn’t flow.
The last thing she expected was for him to swing a leg over her thighs to straddle her where she sat, curl both big hands in her hair to hold her steady, and clamp that sullen mouth over hers.
Inexplicable white-hot sensation shot through her like a laser. Shock rocketed hard on its heels. Vaguely aware of the waitresses’ gasps, Catherine reached up and grasped his wrists to pull his hands away, but it was like trying to dislodge stone, and he was already lifting his head anyway. His mouth was slow to leave hers, however. It clung to the last instant, an insistent suctioning heat that tugged at her lips. Desperate to deny the response she had no business feeling, she pulled harder at his wrists, but his palms remained cupped around her nape, his thumbs firm on her cheeks, his fingers splayed against the back of her head. The instant his lips cleared her mouth, she shoved at his chest and demanded, “What do you think you’re doing, Mc—”
“I’m a pig,” he murmured, and tipped his head to press his mouth to the vulnerable hollow behind her ear. His hands held her head high as he dragged his mouth slowly down the middle of her throat. “You were right on the money yesterday when you said so.” He opened his lips and drew a portion of her neck against his teeth. Releasing it, he rubbed his thumb over what Catherine very much feared was the resulting red spot, and gazed up at her with those intense golden eyes. “I’m sorry, honey. I’ll take care of you and the baby. I promise. You tell me what you want, and I’ll do it.”
Catherine stilled. Oh, the cad. The unprincipled, brazen cad. He’d taken her own story and used it against her. She squeezed her thighs tightly together. And for a minute there, to her eternal shame—
He stepped back suddenly and pulled her off her stool, whirling her around and enfolding her in his arms, her back against his chest and one of his huge hands spread across her stomach and abdomen to pull her into the hard heat of his thighs. A hard ridge poked insistently at th
e small of her back.
Oh, man, wasn’t it awfully warm in here all of a sudden? Looking at Darcy, Catherine decided that it wasn’t only her, for the older woman, too, seemed to be dealing with a sudden rise in temperature. She was staring at them with her mouth agape while dabbing at her throat and nape with a handkerchief.
“When’s the next bus, Miss Darcy?” The rumble of Sam’s voice vibrated between Catherine’s shoulder blades.
Darcy had to clear her throat twice. “Um, nine o’clock. Tomorrow morning.”
Catherine felt every muscle in Sam’s body tense. “Tomorrow?” His voice was dangerously quiet. “There’s not a bus out of here until tomorrow?”
“Not heading east.”
His hold grew uncomfortably tight around Catherine, and she made a small sound of distressed protest. His arms immediately loosened their grip, but the musculature surrounding her remained unyielding as stone. “Is there a motel nearby? Something on the cheap side?”
The waitresses all tripped over themselves to give him the information. Minutes later, he had both bags in one hand and a hard grip on Catherine’s wrist with the other. “Well, hey, I’m real sorry we can’t invite y’all to the wedding, but if you’re ever in Florida, look us up. Sam and Kaylee McK—”
“Catherine,” she interrupted. She gave the women a solemn look. “My name is Catherine. He seems to have a difficult time distinguishing me from my sister.”
An unholy smile lit his face. “Only in the dark, darlin’,” he said, and pulled her out the door. It was quite clear he relished having had the last word—not to mention the looks of horrified fascination his comment had left on the waitresses’ faces.
The smile faded, however, as he strode across the lot with Catherine digging in her heels an arm’s length behind him. She had a bad feeling that his anger was just a scratch below the surface—and if he was attempting to walk it off, the program didn’t appear to be meeting with noticeable success. That fact was driven home when he stopped suddenly and swung around to face her. Their bags hit the ground, raising a puff of dust.
Baby, I'm Yours Page 6