License to Thrill

by Tori Carrington

  Exasperated with the tears that threatened to flood her eyes, Melanie set the heavy revolver in the sand and, still clutching the cell phone, took off the shoes Marc had brought in from the Jeep the night before. She looked between her torn dress and the revolver, then tossed the shoes into a nearby bush. She really hated to litter, but the shoes were the least important thing she had. And considering her impractical attire, there was no place for her to stick any of the items for safekeeping.

  She picked up the firearm, making faster progress as she sprinted across the beach, barely aware of the sun rising to the east or the sounds of nearby gulls. When her gaze wasn’t trained in front of her, it was darting behind her to the cabin that grew smaller and smaller as she ran.

  Still no sign of movement. Relief and disappointment filled her. She was going to get away this time.

  Stopping to catch her breath, she gauged the distance between her and an easily recognizable road. Not far. If she called her mother…

  It occurred to her that Craig’s name hadn’t even emerged as a possibility. She tightly closed her eyes. Why was it that since yesterday, she seemed to look for ways to compare Craig to Marc? It wasn’t as if she hadn’t thought long and hard before accepting Craig’s awkward proposal. She’d taken two weeks. Fourteen torturous days and sleepless nights alternating between crying and determining to put the pieces of her life back together.

  Irritated with herself and her situation, she juggled the revolver and punched out her mother’s phone number with her thumb.

  Her mother picked up on the first ring. “Hello?”

  “Mom?”

  “Oh, good Lord, Melanie! Where are you? Are you all right? Is that—”

  “Mom—”

  “—madman still holding you hostage? I’ve been up all night worrying—”

  “Mom!” Melanie’s patience drained as she tried to edge a word in.

  “—afraid he’d done something awful. You hear those stories in the news. Spurned lover kills his ex-girlfriend, chopping her into little pieces—”

  Melanie tugged the phone away from her ear and stared at it. Chopping her into pieces? What was her mother watching?

  “—they find her in some Dumpster in the back of a Chinese restaurant—”

  “Mother! Listen! Are you listening to me? Look, if you don’t be quiet for a minute… No, sorry, I really didn’t mean to say be quiet—”

  This conversation was worse than the sand that had nearly sucked off her shoes. Only with her mother, she’d be lucky to get out alive.

  “And Craig! I nearly forgot about Craig. He’s right here—”

  “Mother—”

  “Melanie? Melanie, is that you?”

  Melanie instantly relaxed. “I’m fine, really I am, Craig. There’s nothing to be concerned about.” Craig would understand. Craig understood everything. She’d tell him where she was and he’d be here to pick her up.

  “Melanie? This is your mother again.”

  Like she had to be told that. Her anxiety grew. At this rate Marc would find her in a heap on the sand bawling hysterically. She chanced a glance at the house. Her heart leaped into her throat. The back door was open.

  She slapped her hand to her forehead, then lowered her voice. “Mother, look, I know you were worried about me… Listen to me! No, of course I’m not whispering. I need you to pick me up—”

  Suddenly her words were cut off as a shot split the relative calm of the dawn landscape, sending gulls squawking toward the sky. A millisecond later a column of sand spat at her like a geyser, spraying the front of her dress. Another shot followed, and the cell phone went flying from her fingers, her skin vibrating from the jarringly close call.

  Oh, God.

  Melanie hit the sand so hard it took her a full half minute to catch her breath. Those thirty seconds she used to scramble toward a nearby bush. Finally she was able to draw in air, and the raw, harsh sound stunned her.

  Oh, God. Someone’s shooting at me.

  She looked toward the house. The door was still open, but Marc was nowhere in sight.

  Then she spotted him. Crouched at the side of the cabin, he was barefoot and wearing nothing but that tight pair of jeans, a gun drawn as he scanned from his left to his right. Gun? She had his gun.

  Another shot.

  Melanie dove deeper into the brush.

  She looked down to find her free hand covering her belly, an unconscious attempt to protect the life that grew there. Stinging tears flooded her eyes as the danger that had loomed around her like an intangible cloud for nearly twelve hours crystallized into stark, terrifying reality.

  Wrapping her fingers around Marc’s revolver, Melanie reached deep inside, seeking the stillness she had learned to count on to see her through on the job. Her heart thudded harder, and she choked back a tidal wave of panic. Come on, come on. Where once she had been able to count on herself, her talent for clear thinking, now it seemed every lick of knowledge had gone, leaving her feeling scared and vulnerable.

  Think of the baby.

  The harder she sought strength, the more panicked she grew. Then, suddenly, like a slow influx of cool air, stillness swept over her. It started in her chest and emanated outward, calming the tremor in her hands. She planted her feet firmly on the ground. She crouched, her breathing shallow but controlled, her sight swift and ears alert. There. The rising sun reflected off something dark and shiny near the road.

  She quickly ducked and slipped the safety off the revolver. Hooker. It had to be him. Given the remoteness of the cabin, there was no way he could have accidentally found the place. He must have followed them from the inn or the town house. Not that it mattered. Right now, she was at a disadvantage. She knew approximately where he was, but he knew exactly where she was.

  Forcing a swallow, she balanced the gun in both hands, the weight familiar and reassuring. She’d always been a crack shot. She prayed she hadn’t lost her touch.

  Another crack of gunfire. The bullet ripped through the bushes to her left. She sidestepped quickly, then revealed herself, aimed and squeezed off a round. The trigger had barely sprung back before she was under cover again and sprinting toward the house.

  One yard, two yards…

  Crack.

  She dove into the sand headfirst, wincing at the mouthful of sand she took in. As soon as the round whizzed past, she was up, blindly shooting at her target, then running again.

  “Mel, get down!”

  She heard Marc’s order, then fastened her gaze on him. He was nearer than she thought, and whatever sand remained in her mouth spewed out when he hit her head-on. He was shooting even as he fell on top of her.

  The stillness she’d felt left her immediately upon coming in contact with his body. She didn’t know if it was the fear that they might never be this close again, or if she was just awfully glad to see him, but she felt on fire, despite everything going on around them. The scent of gunpowder filled the air, and the sound of a car’s tires squealing against asphalt ripped at her ears, but all she could think of was that she could feel the rapid beat of Marc’s heart against hers. Irrationally, she thought, That’s just the way it should always be.

  She opened her eyes to find him looking at her. A quizzical glint darkened his eyes as he scanned her features. She realized she was about to pass out.

  “You okay?”

  She nodded, struggling to regain her wits. “Fine. I’m fine. Your cell phone’s history, though.”

  His devilish grin made her smile. Her brain was on overload. One moment she was arguing with her mother on the phone, the next she was eating sand while an escaped criminal used her for target practice. That would make anyone a little loony, wouldn’t it? But even as she tried to convince herself that’s why she felt the way she did, her body told her something else. And growing evidence of Marc’s arousal pressed into her thigh.

  He rolled off her and leaped to his feet. “Get up, Mel.” He offered his hand.

  She took it. Standin
g, she took inventory of the new tears in the dress.

  “Nice. Think we can market it?”

  “Yeah, you can call it the hell-and-back look,” she murmured.

  Everything she’d been thinking, feeling, minutes before was gone.

  “Well, if that wasn’t a sign that we’ve overstayed our welcome, I don’t know what is.” Marc sighed.

  She looked at him. “Hooker.”

  His gaze was intense. “You saw him?”

  “No. But who else could it be?”

  “You’re right.” His expression grew pensive. He paced a couple steps, then hopped when he stepped on something in the sand with his bare feet. She shivered as he turned to face her. “Out for a morning jog, were you, Mel?”

  Recalling exactly why she had tried to make her escape, she sobered. She futilely tried to brush the sand from her dress as she headed toward the house. “Something like that.”

  He grasped her arm, pulling her to face him. “Why?”

  Her throat growing tight, she handed him his gun. “You know why.”

  His gaze held her still. “Are you telling me that last night…”

  His words trailed off, leaving her speechless. She stared at the sand beneath her feet and squinted against the brightness of the rising sun.

  “That last night was about lowering my guard so you could take off?”

  Looking at her feet, she ignored the squeezing of her heart and whispered, “If the shoe fits.” She winced at the words, hating how callous they sounded. The last thing she wanted to do was hurt Marc. But he was making it very difficult for her to do anything else.

  She cleared her throat. “Don’t you think we should be getting out of here?”

  “Why? So you can just dump me at the first opportunity?”

  She eyed him thoroughly. She didn’t like what she’d said or the impact it had on him. But if it helped put her on equal footing, then that was what was important. Wasn’t it?

  One thing the last ten minutes had made painfully clear was that going home, returning to the neat little plans she’d made, wasn’t an option. But she hoped where she went from here was.

  “I promise not to ditch you if you agree to being partners on this,” she said, pushing the words through her tight throat.

  “Come on, Mel—”

  Her heart beat an even, powerful rhythm, giving Melanie an important element of her life she’d lost months ago. Control. A sure sign was the echo of her mother’s voice in the back of her mind telling her there were some things a woman wasn’t meant to do. Couldn’t do. Things the past few months had made Melanie believe she no longer should do. But right now, right this minute, her survival instinct kicked in pure and strong. She needed to protect not only herself, but her baby. And to do that, she needed to be in control of the situation. If not as leader, at least as partner.

  “Marc, please listen to me. If what happened proves anything, it’s that I am far from safe just sitting still waiting for the proper authorities to pick up Hooker. I’m going to have to track him as deliberately as he’s tracking me.” She cleared her throat, the reality of the words chilling her. “Either you’re in or you’re out. It’s your call.” She tried for a shrug as nonchalant as any he’d ever given her. “Makes no difference to me.”

  Suddenly, he grinned. Not a “You’re killing me, Mel,” grin, but a grin that said something more. She felt her face grow hot. Instead of turning away, she met his gaze.

  “Now that’s more like the Mel I remember.” He handed her the gun. “So are you ready to go hunting, partner?”

  MARC DIDN’T KNOW what to believe. He was acting more on instinct than wisdom. Why had Mel run? He watched her curvy little behind, clad once again in the pink dress, as she opened the door to a posh D.C. hotel room. He groaned. He didn’t want to feel anything more than professional respect for her. Not any more. If she could leave him after last night…

  Despite the partnership deal they’d struck, he was having trouble indulging in conversation with the new, reanimated Mel. On their ride to the city, she’d broached nearly every subject. Correction—every subject that had anything to do with Hooker. Sharing with Marc the details of the first letters Hooker had written—she’d sent the rest back unopened—telling him the frequency of Hooker’s phone calls where he professed his innocence. And of course she’d grilled Marc on everything he’d picked up over the past few weeks.

  Throughout much of it, he’d remained silent, his hands attached to the steering wheel until he realized he was trying to pulverize it in his grip. All he could think of was he needed some space to think. Considering he’d had far too much space in the past three months, and that he’d been trying to get her to talk since he’d first put her into the back of his Jeep the day before, his reaction was not only unexpected, it was aggravating.

  He rubbed the back of his neck. He felt used. Violated. Cheap.

  He grimaced. He was reading too many of those damned magazines.

  “We should be at some fleabag motel on the outskirts of town instead of in a four-star hotel,” he said under his breath, holding open the door so she could maneuver herself and the shopping bags she carried inside.

  “What makes a motel safer?”

  He glanced around the long fifth-floor hall, scoping out the fire exit directly across from their room. “Escape routes.”

  She set the bags on a puffy, flowery ottoman and began rifling through them. “We’ve stood post at this hotel countless times. We both know exactly where the escape routes are, so what difference does it make?” She took a bra and a pair of panties from one bag, then a pair of jeans from another. “Besides, after where we stayed last night, I could do with a soft bed, cable and a bit of comfort.”

  Comfort? He felt as though he was soiling the room just being in it. And every negative comment she made about last night jabbed at him like a well-placed punch.

  He put down the pet carrier and his bag.

  He turned to find her emptying a small amount of kitty litter into a box. He pulled a can of cat food from his bag—the contents of which he purchased when Mel was buying clothes. He let Brando out, holding the can up when the overgrown tom wound around his ankles. “Well, you’re none the worse for wear. You probably slept through the whole thing, didn’t you, sport?”

  He looked up to find Mel watching him in a way he couldn’t immediately identify, a way he didn’t particularly welcome. Her face had gone all soft while her eyes held a faraway look. “What?” he grumbled, shifting uneasily.

  Her cheeks reddened, and she immediately dropped her gaze. “Um, I’m going to go take a quick shower, you know, before we get down to work.” She glanced toward the bathroom door. “Why don’t you order up some room service? Brando’s not the only one who’s hungry.”

  He opened the can, then put it on a bag on the floor. Brando swooped down on it like a ravenous fiend, making a rumbling sound between a growl and a purr as he knocked the smelly stuff back.

  Despite the little they’d eaten in the past eighteen hours, food didn’t appeal to Marc at all. But talking to room service personnel would give him something to do while he waited for Mel. And it would get his mind off trying to figure out exactly what he was feeling and why.

  He hesitated when it came to ordering for Mel. Last night he’d fixed all her favorites, and she had eaten the salad and lettuce and tomato off both their burgers. When the room service lady got impatient with him, he made up his mind and ordered her a salad and a burger and fries for himself.

  He slowly hung up the receiver and found himself right back to square one.

  Sitting on the bed, he listened as Mel turned on the shower, and the restlessness within him grew larger than life. He realized that a lot of his agitation had to do with the fact that he’d been unable to protect her—again. She could have easily been hit, or worse, this morning. He shoved his fingers through his hair. Between when he figured out what was going on and when he tackled her to the sand, he’d known a fear
unlike anything he’d ever experienced. It had paralyzed him. Made him focus on protecting Mel and Mel alone when he’d known the best way he could protect her was by incapacitating Hooker.

  Instead, Hooker had gotten away and lived to shoot at her another day.

  The new direction of his thoughts wasn’t any more comforting than the last. Snatching up the receiver again, he put in a call to Connor at work. By now his brother should have recovered from the fall he’d taken, and his anger should have lowered to a slow simmer. At least that’s what Marc was banking on because he had a few favors to ask.

  “McCoy,” his older brother answered.

  “Connor, hey, it’s Marc….”

  After a good talking down and a promise for revenge, Marc found out Connor had been on the property when the sniper hit. He’d followed the plain black sedan with no plates but had lost the perp shortly thereafter. He’d returned to the cabin, but Marc and Mel had already gone. He also learned that no new word had been posted on Hooker’s whereabouts. Connor promised to call if he found out anything, official or otherwise.

  Marc hung up the phone, frustrated to still hear the sound of the shower. At this rate, the woman was going to wash herself down the drain.

  He sprung from the bed and vigorously rubbed the back of his neck. Yes, he always experienced a certain charged tension after a close call, but this… His muscles were coiled so tight he expected them to pop at any second. His mind kept fastening on the image of Mel’s wet, soapy body in that shower just a few feet and a wall away. Damn. Why had she run that morning?

  He strode across the room and retrieved his bag from the top of the television. The Feminine Mystique was written across the glossy cover of the magazine he slid out. Glancing toward the bathroom where the shower was still running, he opened to the table of contents and found the page of the article. God, if Mel—much less any of his brothers—caught him reading this stuff…

  He grudgingly admitted that he didn’t believe Mel when she implied she used sex to distract him the night before. No woman could be that good at pretending. But why would she tell him that? It didn’t make any sense. It could be, as the magazine suggested, she needed to keep a part of herself to herself. He wondered how much else Mel was keeping from him.