Baby, I'm Yours

by Susan Andersen

  “For Christ’s sake, Kaylee.” Bobby butted her aside and looked out the window. “Where is she?”

  “There, in the pink dress. Which, trust me, is a huge improvement over her usual wardrobe. Well, I don’t have to tell you, you saw her picture.”

  “Yeah, she was a lot plainer than you, but that’s hardly the main consideration here. Pink dress, pink dress…Whoa, daddy. Got your body, though, didn’t she?”

  Kaylee smacked him on the arm. “Don’t even think about it, buster.”

  He dropped the drape and grinned over at her. “Think about what?”

  “Doin’ the horizontal macarena with my sister.”

  Humming, swiveling his hips, he executed a few gyrations, complete with complicated arm movements. Then, dodging the next smack she aimed his way, he let his arms drop to his side, discontinuing his tongue-in-cheek rendition of the dance. “Nah, I was just teasin’ ya, baby. I got a feeling she’s not my type at all.”

  “Oh, please, am I supposed to be comforted by that? It’s always been my understanding that if they had a pulse, they were your type.”

  “Ah, but that was before I hooked up with you.” He said it lightly, teasingly, but it scared the bejesus out of him that way down deep, on some never before accessed level, he meant exactly what he said. The truth of it made him edgy and uncomfortable, so he shoved the disturbing knowledge aside, gave her a cocky grin, and pushed his luck just a little bit. “But just out of idle curiosity, what would you do if I ever did make a pass at her?”

  She looked him in the eye. “Does the name Lorena Bobbit strike a chord?”

  He took a hasty step back. “It does more than strike a chord, baby, it strikes pure terror in my heart. Jesus, Kaylee, don’t even joke about something like that.”

  The demure smile she gave him did nothing to allay the jumpiness the Bobbit name invoked, and he reached out to jiggle her elbow. “It was a joke, right?”

  “Umm.”

  “Right?”

  “We’d better go, Bobby. Now don’t forget, this is my name sign.” She demonstrated as she’d been doing for the past twenty-four hours, circling the letter K that was formed by her right hand upside down over the palm of her left hand. “Show me ‘Kaylee sent me.’”

  He wanted to pursue the threat to his pride and joy, but he repeated her name sign and held both open hands to the front, palms up, and brought them in toward himself.

  “Good. Now show me ‘meet me in the women’s rest room.’”

  Making the letter D with both hands, he brought his hands together from the sides, palms facing. He pointed to himself, then, with his right hand open, touched his thumb to his chin and brought the hand down to touch his thumb to his chest. He then crossed his fingers and moved it in a short arc to the right. He gave her a cocky grin. “Pretty good, huh?”

  “We’re as ready as we’ll ever be, I guess. I just wish there was more I could do.” She opened the drape a crack. “Everyone’s gone inside. You set to walk me across the highway for my big date?”

  They were almost to the door of the Curl Up and Dye when Bobby took her hand and said in an intense undertone, “I’m gonna do my best to free your sister for you, Kaylee.” Which probably made him one crazy son of a bitch, but there it was.

  She turned to face him. “I know you will, Bobby.” She went up on her toes to kiss him. “Thanks. I owe you.”

  “Yeah? Well, listen, about that Lorena crack, then—”

  “Oh, man, would you look at these nails?” she demanded. “Let’s hope the Bumpkin School of Beauty can do something about them—though I suppose, considering the shape they’re in, they can only be improved.” She grabbed the bills he was pulling out of his wallet and opened the door to the beauty parlor. “Good luck,” she said, and blew him a kiss. Then she stepped over the threshold and closed the door in Bobby’s face.

  “How can you eat all that heavy food in this heat?” Catherine demanded. She looked down at the salad in front of her, deliberately averting her eyes from Sam’s fried chicken platter, with its attendant mashed potatoes and gravy, vegetables, and biscuits. For the first time since he’d dragged her away from her home, she hadn’t ordered the most expensive item on the menu. “Are you sure that chicken’s even okay? It smells kinda off.”

  Sam thought it smelled a little funny, too, but it tasted just fine. “It’s just the heat in here,” he assured her. They’d been informed upon entering the restaurant that there had been a power failure earlier. Even though everything was now up and running again, the air conditioner hadn’t yet caught up with the stifling heat that had built up, and the café was still oven hot. He gave Catherine an insolent once-over, taking in her damp hairline, her shiny face, and perspiration-dewed chest, and a lopsided smile pulled at one corner of his mouth. “Why, Red, darlin’, are you worried about me?”

  She snorted. “Yeah, right. I don’t want you puking all over me on the bus if you contract salmonella poisoning from bad chicken.”

  Making a face, he shoved his plate away. “There’s an appetizing thought.”

  While he was signaling for the waitress, Catherine looked up to see a man across the room watching her. Tall and good-looking, he had hair as black as Sam’s and eyes that even from here she could tell were a startling shade of blue. She sat up a little straighter. This could very well be her means of getting them tossed off the bus this afternoon.

  Then she stilled in shock when he suddenly signed her sister’s name sign. Kaylee? Kaylee brought him? Her gaze met his elevated eyebrows, and she gave a slight nod, her heart beginning to pound.

  Pointing his index fingers in the air, he brought his hands together from the sides, palms together. Then he pointed to himself. Meet me…

  A man in brand-new clothing, wearing a dude-ranch Stetson, two-hundred-dollar city shoes, and a tangle of gold jewelry walked up to the black-haired stranger just then and grabbed him by the right arm, the one he was using to sign. The two of them engaged in what appeared to be an intense conversation. A moment later, they walked out of the restaurant together.

  Wait a minute! Catherine leaned forward with indignant urgency. You can’t just leave me hanging here. Where am I supposed to meet you?

  Sam looked across the table at her. “What’s your problem?” He glanced around suspiciously but saw nothing out of the ordinary. Not so much as one young man with his tongue hanging out to be seen gawking at Red’s damp cleavage.

  What’s my problem? she thought sulkily, slumping back down in her chair. Men. So what else is new? But aloud she merely muttered, “Nothing.” Stabbing a forkful of salad, she looked around. “Where is that waitress, anyhow? I could use a glass of iced tea.”

  Ah, man, Kaylee was gonna kill him. Provided Jimmy Chains didn’t do the job first, that is.

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” Chains had assured him before ushering him out the restaurant door. But Bobby had a bad feeling that Alice Mayberry had probably heard those exact same words just before she’d died.

  What a fuck-up.

  Man, he knew he should have left Kaylee to pursue this mess on her own. If he had been smart, he’d have taken himself back to Miami, where the living was easy, and found himself a new woman whose life was uncomplicated. But at least Kaylee was safely out of the way for the moment. And, dammit, he was sorry that he hadn’t gotten her sister away from the bounty hunter for her. It had all been going so nice and slick until Chains showed up. Catherine had actually understood the sign language Kaylee had taught him.

  Chains led him around to the back of the motel, where he let loose of his arm and took a step back. Bobby considered going for his gun, wondering if the safety was off and if he could pull it free of his waistband without shooting his own dick off in the process. He really didn’t like guns.

  On the other hand, he could work around the aversion if it meant the difference between living and dying.

  “I don’t think this’s gonna help, you chasin’ after Kaylee, Bobby,” Jimmy Cha
ins said, and Bobby realized Chains didn’t have a clue about Kaylee having a twin. He clearly believed Catherine was Kaylee. Was there an angle to be worked in that? He didn’t see what it could possibly be, but for now it was all he had to go with.

  “She’s my woman,” he said, “and she took off without so much as a by-your-leave. I can’t let her just run off with another guy without at least talkin’ to her about it first.”

  “What, you doan know? She’s ain’t runnin’ off on you, bud—that joker’s a bounty hunter.”

  “Get out of here!”

  “No, I’m serious, man. Kaylee was arrested for grand theft auto when you were outta town—”

  “Bullshit. She didn’t steal no car.”

  “Yeah, man, she did. Then she jumped bail, and that’s when the bounty hunter went after her. He’s bringin’ her back to stand trial.”

  “But why would she do that? She had to have known that I’d straighten the whole thing out the minute I got back, so why didn’t she just stay put?”

  “I, uh…dunno.”

  “I gotta talk to her.” Bobby started to walk away.

  “I can’t let you do that, Bobbarino. I’m sorry.”

  He heard the gun cock at his back and turned back to look at it in Chains’s hand. “You going to shoot me, Jimmy?”

  “I don’t want to. But if you force my hand, I’ll hafta.”

  “Hey.” He held his hands to his sides in entreaty. “Chill. I’m not forcing anything here.”

  “I always liked you, Bobby. Liked Kaylee, too. I don’t wanna hurt anyone, ’specially not a guy just tryin’ to get his girlfriend back. But the boss says…”

  “What, Jimmy C? What does Sanchez have to say about any of this?”

  “Nuthin’. Turn around.”

  “Hey, I don’t think so. If you’re going to shoot me anyhow, I’d rather you did it to my face.”

  “I ain’t gonna shoot you, I said! Jeez!” Chains gestured with his gun. “Turn around and open that door.”

  Bobby looked behind him. “This door?” Until that moment, he hadn’t even realized one was there.

  “Yeah. Open it.”

  He didn’t see that he had a great deal of choice. He opened it and felt a welcome blast of cold air coming from within what appeared to be a refrigeration shed. Fumbling in his waistband for his own gun, he held his breath awaiting the bullet that would end his life. Could a person actually hear the shot that killed him when it came from such close a range?

  His head exploded in sudden pain, and he had just enough time to realize Chains had pistol-whipped him with the butt of his gun and not shot him after all, before the world went black.

  13

  CATHERINE PUSHED BACK from the table. “I need to use the ladies’ room.”

  Hand snaking across the distance separating them, Sam pinned her wrist to the tabletop before she had a chance to rise to her feet. “You can wait for the one on the bus.”

  She looked down at his large hand, brown and strong-looking, holding her paler, weaker looking hand captive, then raised her gaze to meet his once again. “No, I can’t. I need to use it now.”

  “That’s tough, Red. You’re just gonna have to wait.”

  Catherine surged to her feet, her free hand slapping down on the table as she leaned over it to stare into Sam’s face. “I’ve had two tall glasses of iced tea and a glass of water. I have to go to the bathroom. If I do not get that opportunity, and I do mean soon, chances are I will piddle right where I stand.” She leaned closer, until her face was centimeters from Sam’s. “And if that happens, McKade, if I wet my pants in public, you can bet that this entire café will know it’s because you refused to LET ME USE THE BATHROOM!”

  The last several words were literally shouted in his face, and Sam was aware of heads swiveling from every corner of the diner to stare at them. He let go of her wrist. It took an effort to regroup when she had so thoroughly, efficiently, routed him, but he nonetheless thrust his hand out. “Fork over your purse.”

  It practically knocked him off his chair when she hurled it at his chest, but he recovered in time to watch her turn and stalk away. He could follow her progress simply by keeping an eye on the path of dropped jaws that witnessed all that furious locomotion barely confined by a skintight pink dress.

  Had Catherine still had possession of Kaylee’s purse, she would have launched it across the ladies’ room the moment she entered, then kicked it and kicked it and kicked it across the floor. She hardly recognized herself in this state, but God, he made her angry! Who the hell did he think he was, to tell her when she could or could not use the bathroom? He was lucky she hadn’t stripped the skin right off his smug, arrogant face!

  Catching a sudden glimpse of herself in the rest-room mirror, her furious pacing ground to an abrupt halt, and she stared at her reflection with openmouthed wonder. One hand reached out involuntarily as if to touch her image, but immediately dropped to her side, spooked, when the reflection in the mirror duplicated the motion.

  Dear God.

  Her face, normally so pale, was flushed and damp. Her hair blazed atop her head where she’d pinned it up this morning, but it was listing heavily to one side, and pieces of it had slipped free, clinging in untidy tendrils to her nape, her right eyebrow, and her throat. Her body was dotted with perspiration and looked as if it might burst free of the pink dress at any moment. She looked voluptuous and wild and sexual, and she looked—ah, man, she looked…

  Exactly like her sister. That could be Kaylee staring back at her from the mirror above the counter.

  Her reason for being in the rest room in the first place suddenly became imperative and she dashed into a stall, dancing in place while she yanked up the skirt of her dress and thrust down her panties. She ripped a paper protector out of its case on the wall, slapped it on the seat and sat.

  Oh God, Oh God, when had this transformation taken place? How had it taken place without her even noticing? When—even though she preferred the roominess of her own clothes—had she ceased to be embarrassed by Kaylee’s? And how had good manners been allowed to surrender without a whimper to a competitiveness she hadn’t even known was part of her nature? Everything about Sam McKade ought to be an insult to her hard-fought-for good breeding.

  Instead, everything about him seemed to exhilarate her, tempt her, push her to pursue feats the likes of which she never dreamed she was capable. She longed to smack him, to get away from him.

  To kiss him silly, yank down his pants, and climb onto his lap. Moaning, she bent forward and rested her forehead on her bare knees.

  She didn’t get it. She should be appalled by all these changes that had been wrought within her in such a short span of time. Instead she liked them. Where the hell was her good sense? She banged her fist over and over against the side of her knee.

  Then she sat up. Oh, please, this is too pitiful. Can’t you find a better place to have an identity crisis than sitting in a bathroom stall with your undies down around your ankles? It was certainly getting her nowhere, and if she wasn’t back out in the café soon, Sam would come banging on the door. She really didn’t feel up to dealing with that at the moment.

  So, big deal, she thought, trying to find a way to manage her discovery with logic. She was having a bit of fun. She’d been robbed of one vacation, so what was the harm in getting whatever pleasure she could out of the situation? And if the thought that this was loads more fun than covering Europe all alone kept sneaking into her consciousness, what, in the long run, did it actually matter? Matching wits with McKade was stimulating. And it was safe. Nobody would be hurt by it.

  Standing, she straightened not only her clothing, but her spine as well. She hit the flush lever, then opened the stall door and stepped out.

  Right into the muzzle of a gun that was pointed straight at her chest.

  She squeaked incoherently and stumbled backwards until the man with the gun reached in the stall with his free hand and hauled her forward. Swinging he
r free of the cubicle’s confines, he set her loose. Catherine scrambled backwards, but the counter housing the sink blocked her escape, its sharp corners cutting into her hips. She reached back to grip its edges with both hands. “What…?”

  It was the same man who earlier had interrupted the stranger trying to sign her—and it was a damn good thing she’d just emptied her bladder, because looking down the bore of that black gun would have resulted in a sizable puddle at her feet otherwise. “Wh…what do you want with me?” She spread her hands on either side of her to display her purse-less condition. “I’m not carrying any money.” Then a truly terrible thought occurred to her. Oh, please, please. Let him be a robber and not a rapist.

  “Doan play stupid, Kaylee.”

  Her heart slammed up against her ribs. He thought she was Kaylee? This was not some random act of violence, then; it was aimed specifically at her sister. Oh, God, Kaylee, the bounty hunter wasn’t enough? You had to get me involved with a gun-toting goon, too?

  Catherine saw the amiable lack of intelligence in the man’s eyes. She noted his incongruous footwear, urban-cowboy hat, and an easy thousand dollars worth of gold jewelry, and queried tentatively, “Jimmy Chains?”

  “I’m sorry ’bout this, Kaylee. I don’t wanna have to do it, but the boss insists you can’t keep your mouth shut, and I really gotta get back to the neighborhood. All this wide-open space and good ol’ boy bullshit is making me nutzoid.”

  She edged down the counter in the direction of the door. “I can keep my mouth shut.”

  “That’s what I tol’ him, Kaylee! But Sanchez says ya can’t.”

  “Well, go back and tell him he was wrong.”

  “Are you crazy? I can’t do that.”

  “So what’s the alternative then, Chains? Are you gonna shoot me?”

  “I don’t wanna!” he said defensively, which scared her worse than an out-and-out threat would have, because she could see that he truly didn’t want to, but that he would do so all the same.