by Diana Palmer
Dane had known that. But Tess hadn’t realized it until now, when it was too late.
There was a chance, only a brief one, that she might get away before the men got her into the car. When he opened the door at the front of the building, he was certainly going to have to take that knife away from her rib cage for an instant. If she was quick and kept her head, she might get away.
Her heart raced madly. She was shaking all over, but she couldn’t give way to panic and fear. She kept telling herself that, going over everything she’d learned from the operatives, the slick little moves they’d taught her about how to get away from a potential attacker. She’d listened and learned. Now those lessons were going to pay off.
She went along with him, acting terrified to throw him off guard. She pleaded with him tearfully to set her free. All the time her mind was working, going over and over the one move she was going to employ when the time came.
It was working. She felt him begin to relax his painful grip. He laughed. He was enjoying her fear. The front door was a foot away. He moved toward it, the knife lifting as he raised his arm to push open the glass door.
Just as he raised it, Tess brought her elbow into his diaphragm with a vicious jab. As his chin came down, she brought the back of her fist up to meet his nose, and felt blood on it. Reacting swiftly, she tore away from him while he was doubled over and ran up the side street toward the crowded main street. It was noon, and people were everywhere. Thank God! The men wouldn’t dare risk taking hold of her with a crowd around her. She ran, panting, not daring to look back.
She merged quickly into a group of people waiting for a red light to change. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted a car speeding up the side street toward her. They wouldn’t, she thought feverishly, they wouldn’t…!
“Tess!”
She looked. It was a Mercedes, and Dane was at the wheel.
“Dane!” She ran across the side street and scrambled in beside him, throwing her arms around his neck and shivering.
He brought her close for an instant, barely aware of his surroundings in the stark terror he’d just experienced. He’d rushed back to the office, hoping to get there before the operatives left. He’d seen Tess running and the other car suddenly speed away. His choices dwindled immediately to getting to Tess or giving chase. That was no choice at all.
His mouth crushed down over hers for one long instant before he dragged it away and turned the car down the wide street into traffic. He didn’t let go of Tess. He couldn’t.
“They almost had me,” she whispered breathlessly. “One of them grabbed me as I started out of our office. He had a knife at my ribs….”
“God,” he groaned harshly, pulling her closer.
“Helen taught me how to defend myself against somebody holding me from behind,” she said. Her cheek moved against the soft fabric of his jacket. “I remembered it. I caught him off guard and got away.” She grinned, now that it was all over. “It was very exciting,” she said, her eyes sparkling as she looked up at him. “I can see why… Dane?”
He pulled off the street into a parking space and sat, white-faced, his hands trembling on the steering wheel. He didn’t speak or look at her.
“It’s all right,” she said softly. She moved, reaching up to draw his head down to hers. She kissed him slowly, nibbling at his lips, his nose, his closed eyes. Her arms slid around him and she pressed close, her face finally sliding against his hot throat and resting there. “It wasn’t your fault,” she whispered. “You forgot that you’d told me I couldn’t go with Helen.”
“I didn’t forget,” he said unsteadily. “I left in plenty of time to get back before the office emptied. But I had a flat on the way.”
“Dane?” she murmured.
“Let me hold you, Tess,” he said, his voice torn. “Don’t talk. Just let me hold you.”
She did, sighing as the peace of the embrace finally got through to him and calmed him. He felt guilty, she supposed, although God knew why he should. She didn’t blame him. She smiled against his throat and kissed him just below his Adam’s apple. She was about to say that for a man who didn’t love her, he was certainly excitable. But she thought better of it. He was vulnerable. He wouldn’t like having her point it out.
He drew in a rough breath, and she glanced up at him. His eyes were frightening. He touched her face with warm, hard fingers. “Did he hurt you?”
“No,” she assured him. Her eyes sparkled. “But I hurt him. I think I broke his nose.”
He whistled softly. “I’m going to have to talk to Helen.”
“You wouldn’t teach me,” she said defensively.
“Thank God she did. I’ll treat Helen and Harold to the biggest damned anchovy pizzas they can eat,” he mused.
“That’s nice.” She laid her forehead against his chin. “Can I have one, too? I’m hungry.”
“Poor little scrap, you haven’t eaten.” He put her back in her own seat and fastened her seat belt, his hands brushing against her body accidentally and setting her tingling. “You can have a pizza if you want one.”
Her eyes melted into his, adoring, acquisitive.
He bridled at that look, at his own vulnerability. He didn’t like having her see him when he couldn’t hide his disturbed state from her. She might think he was emotionally involved. Ridiculous, of course. All the same…
He bent and put his mouth softly over hers, kissing her gently. “From now on, if I have to leave the office, I’ll make sure someone’s with you. I’m sorry, Tess. Damned sorry.”
She smiled. “I told you, it wasn’t your fault.” She stared at his mouth dizzily. “Kiss me again.”
“Too public,” he murmured, drawing back. He indicated throngs of passersby.
“We could eat at the apartment, couldn’t we?”
“No, we could not,” he said gently, reading her expression all too well for his peace of mind. “In the first place, you’ll need days to recuperate from what I did to you last night. In the second place,” he said, his expression growing sterner by the second, “from now on, you’re going to sleep in your own bed, not mine. I won’t let that happen again.”
“Why not?” she asked softly.
His thumb rubbed slowly over her chin and he looked worried. “Because I don’t want commitment,” he reminded her. “I won’t ever forget how it made me feel to be your first lover. But you want forever after. I don’t believe in it anymore. I’ve had my illusions shattered.”
“You might change your mind,” she said. “I might grow on you.”
“You already have. But I can’t marry you,” he said bluntly. “Listen to me, Tess. You think you love me, but you don’t have any experience of men except what you’ve learned with me. One day, sex won’t be enough for you. You’ll want a child.”
“I love you, Dane,” she said simply.
His cheeks darkened and his eyes seemed to kindle, but he fought down the fever those words initiated. “You don’t know what love is,” he replied quietly. “You think it’s two bodies in bed.”
Her eyes searched his. “What we did together last night was much more than two bodies in bed. We made love, Dane,” she said. “Made it so beautifully that I can’t imagine ever letting any man but you touch me as long as I live.”
His eyes closed. He felt that way, too, but he couldn’t tell her. His feelings were locked up, chained.
“It was sex,” he said coldly, forcing his eyes to open and stab into hers. “And you’re damned lucky I’m sterile or you’d really have a problem.”
“I wouldn’t have thought so,” she said, smiling.
He gazed out the window blindly. “Anyway, it’s a moot point,” he said. He started the car. “We have to report this to the nearest precinct. Assault with intent is a felony. I’ll have that—” he employed some old ranger language “—in jail by sundown, and he won’t get out this time, not if I have to call in a few markers and have some old friends help me surround the courthouse!”
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She could picture a throng of cold-eyed Texas Rangers holding a courtroom at gunpoint. She laughed gently.
“How can you laugh?” he demanded. “God in heaven, don’t you realize how close you came to being killed?”
“Nerves,” she told him. “Reaction. Yes, I realize it. I remember thinking I wouldn’t see you again,” she added, adoring his face with her gray eyes. “It made me sad.”
He looked away. He’d had too many shocks lately, all of them to do with losing her. He put the car into gear and pulled out into traffic. He lit a cigarette and didn’t say another word all the way to the police station.
Helen gloated later when she found out that Tess had used her instructions to foil a kidnapping. Dane was in a black temper that lasted all day, even if he did unbend enough to give Helen a bonus for teaching Tess how to survive an assault. But he watched Tess openly, his mind on the dope peddlers. He’d never felt so homicidal.
While the office was full of armed operatives, he made his way back to the police station, to talk to the sergeant who was handling the case.
“Nothing yet,” Sergeant Graves told Dane when the two men were in the former’s office. “We’ve got feelers out, but those two rats have gone down a hole somewhere. They probably knew we’d pull out all the stops after what they did. Your secretary was damned lucky, do you know that? Tomby, the man who tried to abduct her, got off once on a murder charge for lack of evidence. I don’t doubt he’d have killed her if he’d gotten her into his car.”
“Neither do I,” Dane said stiffly. He didn’t want to think about that. He’d go crazy. “I’m volunteering my staff to help find them. I can’t risk having Tess at their mercy again.”
“We’d appreciate the help,” Graves replied. “With your background in police work, you know how much there is to do and how inadequate our staff is. People don’t realize the time it takes to run down felons, or the bureaucracy that stands between law enforcement and the justice system.”
“God, I do,” Dane said heavily. “You try being a ranger. You’ll get an eyeful.”
The older man smiled wistfully. “I did try. Couldn’t pass the oral exam. God, those old-timers are thorough!”
“And damned mean, some of them.” Dane chuckled.
“They have to be. Everyone remembers the story of the single Texas Ranger who got off the train after he was called to put down a full-scale riot. The townspeople were astonished that one man was expected to accomplish all that. The ranger just drawled, ‘Well, you’ve only got one riot, haven’t you?’”
“One man was usually enough,” Dane replied.
“I’ve got a hunch about these two men we’re after,” Graves said suddenly, after the laughter diminished. “They’re high-class suppliers. There’s a man named Louie on parole for distributing. He has some ties to the same underworld element these two are involved with. I’d like to lean on him a little, unofficially.”
Dane smiled slowly. “Got an address?”
The other man returned the smile and scribbled something on a piece of paper. “You don’t know where you got this,” he cautioned.
Dane nodded as he got to his feet. “It was in my pocket when my jacket came back from the cleaners,” he promised. “Good luck.”
“We could both use a little of that.”
Back at the office, Dane gave the address to Adams with some instructions. At closing time, he made sure Tess was with him every minute until they got back to his apartment.
He threw off his jacket, an action she watched with possessive familiarity. Living with him had her spoiled. She loved being with him. Once the men who’d assailed her were caught, she’d have to go home. Her face paled at the realization.
He turned, rubbing a hand around the back of his stiff neck, and caught her expression. “What is it?” he asked gently.
“When they catch those two men, I’ll have to go home.”
He frowned slightly. He didn’t want to think about that, either. It made him feel empty. The past few days with her here had been magic, and not just because they’d become lovers. He enjoyed being with her.
“You’ll probably be glad,” she said, trying to brighten up. “No more lingerie drying in the bathroom, no more shoes under the couch….”
“That isn’t quite true,” he said. “I’ll miss you. I think you’ll miss me, too. But we adjusted to being apart a long time ago.”
She searched his eyes. “You mean, just after you got shot and I took care of you.”
He nodded. “We were almost this close then, until I made a dead set at you and scared you off.”
She smiled tenderly. “I’m not scared anymore,” she reminded him, and her face colored.
He moved closer, pulling her against him. His head bent over hers and he rocked her gently. “It has to end,” he said bitterly. “I told you, I don’t want commitment.”
Her arms slid under his and she lay her cheek on his broad chest, against his warm white shirtfront. She didn’t argue because there was no use. She drew in a breath, savoring every second she had with him. The memories would be sweet, at least. “Can I sleep with you tonight?”
He stiffened. “I want that,” he said huskily. “But, no. It will only make it worse when you have to leave.”
“That’s like not driving a car because it will be irritating when it breaks down.”
He chuckled despite himself. “I suppose so.” He lifted his head. “It isn’t a good idea to get any closer than we already have,” he said finally. “It’s going to hurt like hell as it is.”
She started to speak, but he put his thumb over her lips.
“I know you think you love me,” he said. “That will pass, once you’re back in your own apartment and resuming your own life. This will seem like a bad dream.”
“Last night won’t,” she replied.
“I know.” He kissed her forehead with breathless tenderness. “But it was only one night. You’ll forget, in time.”
“Will you?”
He let her go and stretched, pretending he didn’t hear her. “Who cooks, and what?” he asked. “I feel like a hamburger. Several hamburgers,” he amended. “That slice of pizza at lunch wasn’t filling.”
“Hamburgers it is. I’ll cook,” she volunteered.
“You always cook. That isn’t fair division of labor.” “It is, considering how you cook hamburgers,” she said under her breath as she went toward the kitchen. “Female chauvinism.”
“Contradiction in terms.”
He made a huffy sound and went into the bedroom to change.
She made hamburgers and sliced some Swiss cheese to go on them, along with chives and onions and mustard and mayonnaise. Dane stared at his suspiciously when she put it before him.
“Try it before you say terrible things about it,” she coaxed.
He narrowed one eye and glared at it. Eventually, he picked it up and tasted it, and his eyebrows arched. “Different,” he said.
“Kit taught me,” she said. “She learned from her boss.”
“The office has missed them,” Dane said dryly as he washed down bites of hamburger with rich black coffee. “Logan Deverell is one of my biggest accounts. His mother, Tansy, keeps me in the black.”
She laughed. “She’s a wild woman, isn’t she? Always into something, mostly trouble. We spend a lot of time looking for her. Mr. Deverell worries too much.”
“Not really,” he mused. “Not since she got arrested in Mexico for drug trafficking.”
“But she wasn’t,” she argued. “She bought a colorful purse from a vendor who mistook her for a mule.”
“Mistaken identity has landed saner people than Tansy in jail,” he reminded her. “If Logan could tie her to a post, he’d stop worrying.”
“Yes, but we’d lose his business,” she pointed out.
“Perish the thought.”
“I miss having lunch with Kit,” she sighed. She glanced at him. “She’d have a flying fit if she knew we were li
ving together.”
“We aren’t,” he pointed out.
“We are so. Temporarily, anyway,” she replied.
He finished his hamburger and made himself another one. This time he sliced onions and spread mustard on one bun and catsup on another.
“Purist,” she muttered.
“I’m conventional,” he explained as he sat down again. “I like a downtown hamburger.”
She laughed. Her gray eyes sparkled as she looked at him, so enthralled by the sight of him across a table that she couldn’t hide it. Even in an old T-shirt and jeans, he was something to see.
“I don’t guess we could go down to the ranch for the weekend?” she asked wistfully.
He shook his head, his eyes wary. “We can’t risk it.”
“Because of the drug dealers.” She nodded.
“No, Tess,” he replied quietly. “Because we’ve been lovers. Beryl isn’t blind. The way we look at each other would give the show away.”
“Oh.”
“She’s old-fashioned in her attitudes.” He grimaced at her blush. “I know. So are you. So am I, for that matter.” His eyes darkened. “And despite that, it made me feel ten feet tall to know I was the first. I’ll treasure that night as long as I live.”
“So will I,” she said softly, searching his eyes. “You said you’d never been tender with anyone. But you were patient and gentle, and I know you didn’t feel like being that way. You wanted me very badly.”
“I wanted to cherish you,” he said huskily. “I wanted to give you a sweet memory, something to wipe out the fear I’d kindled in you the first time I kissed you.” He shrugged. “Maybe I wanted to know if I was capable of tenderness, as well.”
She cleared her throat. “I don’t think there’s much doubt about that anymore,” she said demurely.