These Boots Were Made For Stomping

by Julie Kenner

  Mostly, anyway. A tiny little part of her thought that this kick-ass thing was pretty darn cool.

  Not, however, cool enough that she wanted to stick around and watch her feet get her killed. Nothing was that cool, and she tried to turn around and race out of the alley before the creep either grabbed her or his gun.

  No such luck. Instead, her feet pulled her forward against her will, and she knew—somehow she just knew—that she was going to end up kicking this guy in the face again.

  Which would have been great if she was, oh, qualified to go around kicking the crap out of people, but her? Lydia Carmichael? No, no, no.

  She’d been way, way, way too lucky so far. If she didn’t get out of here—and right now—something was going to go horribly wrong and she’d end up dead. Or worse.

  Although her feet were moving forward, her mind and the rest of Lydia’s body beat a swift retreat. She reached out, grabbing the iron bar of a nearby fire escape and putting a big old kibosh on the over eager-feet thing.

  Unfortunately, that meant she also put a big old kibosh on her balance, and she jerked backward, her whole body in shock from the internal fight between her feet and her sense of self-preservation.

  That’s when she noticed that the guy had retrieved his gun. Worse than that, he had it pointed straight toward her face.

  Gulp!

  Except it turned out it wasn’t so bad after all. Because all of a sudden the gun melted into a gloppy pile of goo. Her attacker let out a yelp and jerked his gun hand back as if it were on fire, even as Lydia turned, confused, and found herself staring at an absolutely gorgeous guy who—

  Oh. My. God.

  Lydia couldn’t believe it. She stared, blinked, then stared again.

  It couldn’t be! It simply couldn’t be happening. And yet it was.

  She’d been rescued by the Silver Streak!

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “Are you okay?” Nikko asked, handily apprehending the gunman even while blatantly staring at the stunning—and obviously stunned—woman. Her face, so innocent and guileless, was contorted in surprise, and her deep blue eyes reflected both shock and relief.

  She’d been falling, her body in the oddest contortion he’d ever seen, almost as if she was trying to run forward even as she ran away. And he shoved his captive to the ground so that he could zip sideways and hook his arm around her waist, pulling him close to him, the warm softness of her body wreaking havoc on his senses in a way he hadn’t experienced in a very, very long time.

  Mentally, he shook his head. Yes, he missed having a woman in his life, but he’d been focusing on this mission too long if the simple press of a woman against him distracted him so much.

  Not a mere woman, a voice in his head argued. She is anything but.

  Maybe so, but now wasn’t the time. He turned sharply, the girl still in his arms, and pointed an accusing finger at the cretin on the ground who was even then struggling to get up. “I don’t think so,” he said, and the gunman sank back down, trembling, his eyes darting between Nikko and the girl.

  “You,” the girl whispered, her brow furrowing to form an adorable vee above her nose.

  “I heard your scream,” he said. “I’m sorry I didn’t get here faster.”

  “I . . . that’s okay. I—well, she’s safe now, right?”

  He cocked his head. “She?”

  “The girl. The girl I was trying to rescue. Or . . .” she added, her brow furrowing into thoughtful lines. “Or, at least, I think that was what I was doing.”

  “I didn’t see another girl,” he said, wondering if perhaps she was a tiny bit hysterical.

  For some reason, that made her smile. “Then I did it. I really did it.” She met his eyes, hers flashing with amazement and pride. “I haven’t got a clue how I did it, but I saved her!” She smiled up at him, a dimple furrowing her left cheek. “And then you swooped down and saved me. It was amazing—”

  “Honestly, it was nothing.”

  “Me,” she continued without missing a beat, “rescued by an honest-to-goodness superhero. Rescued by the Silver Streak. What an amazing day.”

  It had been, Nikko thought. Until she said those two little words, it really had been.

  Right away, Lydia knew she’d said the wrong thing.

  “I’m sorry,” she sputtered. “I . . . I’m just so grateful and—” Amazed. Awed.

  In lust.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said, but the words lacked the warmth she’d heard only seconds before, and as he turned to bind the wrists of their captive, all she could think was that she desperately wanted to run and hide. Her feet, however, stood firmly rooted to the spot. The same feet that only moments ago had been dead-set on running.

  Traitors.

  Except, of course, they weren’t. For that matter, her feet had the right idea. Because deep down, under that oh-so-familiar-Lydia layer of scared, all she wanted in the world was to stay there. Near him. Soaking him up, absorbing the essence of him. This man. Whoever he was.

  Because he couldn’t really be the Silver Streak, could he? Sure, he’d seemed to swoop out of nowhere, but she had been a little preoccupied

  And, true, the gun had melted, which was rather out of the ordinary.

  And, yes, he did look exactly-freaking-like her comic book fantasy.

  But, really, what did that mean?

  Most likely the irritation she heard in his voice stemmed from the fact that dozens of women told him on a daily basis that he looked like the Silver Streak. Would she like to be told she looked like Wonder Woman?

  She frowned. Okay, bad example. But still—

  Still, she told herself firmly, superheroes do exist. You know it. Even if no one believed you.

  She’d been standing with her mother, holding her hand tight as they prepared to cross the street. That was when the limo had zoomed by and a baby of all things had been tossed out of the sunroof. Lydia had seen it quite clearly, though she’d later learned that most passers by had been focusing on the naked woman trying to crawl out of the front window.

  Weird.

  Weirder still was the man who’d swooped from the sky and rescued the baby—just swooped. And he didn’t even grab the baby, not at first. Instead, he’d levitated it up into his arms, looked in Lydia’s direction with a twinkle in his eye, then soared away, up over the rooftops.

  Lydia had told her mother what she’d seen, and had been scolded for making up stories. When she was older, she’d pulled newspaper reports and discovered that the child had been rescued in a high-speed gangster chase through the use of amazing SWAT technology.

  Yeah, right.

  It had been a superhero—even if she was the only one who realized it. And here was another one, standing right in front of her. Amazing.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  She blinked, forcing herself out of her mental meanderings. “Yeah. Um. Yes.” Her feet no longer seemed compelled to run her life, and she’d survived a mugging and so, yes, by all the standards of polite society she was, in fact, okay.

  “I need to get him to the authorities, and then I need to get back to . . . well, I need to get back to a project I was handling before I heard your scream.”

  “It wasn’t my—never mind.” Really, not important.

  “Can you get home okay?” he asked, reaching down to grasp her hand and pull her up. She gasped, the touch of his hand against hers affecting her like a million volts. Or at least the way a million volts would feel if it didn’t kill you immediately.

  Honestly, her mind was turning to mush, and it was all this guy’s fault. This sinfully gorgeous, hunk of a male specimen hero, who’d saved her life and—she blinked. Did he say home?

  She shook her head, reality crashing down around her in the form of an eight a.m. meeting for which she was now very, very late. “I’m not going home,” she said, scrambling to her feet, Darla’s warning not to be late ringing in her ears.

  “Oh, damn!” she cried, looking at h
er watch. “It’s already forty past.”

  She bit her lip and searched frantically for the doughnuts, but she knew it was futile.

  Because unless her new shoes could turn back time, she was screwed. And somehow, Lydia knew that that was simply too much to hope for.

  “But the guy, Lydia,” Amy wailed, almost spilling her merlot. “I had to get a babysitter and everything. You can’t dangle a carrot like that and then not tell me. What about the guy?”

  “The guy?” Lydia repeated, taking a long sip of her Cosmopolitan. “I tell you that my shoes are turning me into some sort of crime-fighter. And,” she added, counting it out on her fingers, “that I got fired, and all you want to know about is the guy?”

  “You said he was a superhero. You said he was the spitting image of the Silver Streak.”

  “Yes, yes, yes,” Lydia said in a rush, because she’d already decided that she was an idiot for stupidly hurrying away. Considering there were umpty-bazillion people in Manhattan, the odds of ever seeing the guy again were slim, and no way was she getting her hopes up. Better to pretend the encounter was no big deal and push it firmly out of her mind. Except maybe, possibly late at night with a glass of wine, a bubble bath, and appropriately dim lighting.

  Not that she was going to admit that to Amy. Not without another Cosmo, anyway.

  “So?” Amy pressed. “The guy looked like the Silver Streak, your major crush for the last two years because—as we have conclusively established on innumerable occasions—you are a twelve-year-old girl at heart. Though why you’d want to date a superhero is beyond me.”

  Lydia’s eyebrows went up. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Oh, sure, strength and prowess is all good and fine. But he’d be running off to fix some other girl’s problems all the time.”

  Lydia forced herself not to smile. “Exactly why my fantasy is for a superhero with a domestic side. Strong and sexy, but nurturing, too. The kind of guy who’d fix me a romantic candlelight dinner and not have it catered. Or breakfast in bed other than Frosted Flakes.”

  “That man doesn’t exist,” Amy said with a mischievous grin. “I got the last model.”

  “Congratulations,” Lydia said, lifting her Cosmo in a toast. “Guess you’re buying this round.”

  Amy laughed, but didn’t drop the ball. “Tell me!”

  Lydia sighed, clinging to her forget-about-him plan by her fingernails. “You’re missing the whole point. He was a superhero—and so was I.”

  Amy, however, seemed less than impressed. “Told ya, didn’t I?”

  “That I was going to be able to kick serious butt if I bought these shoes? And that the shoes would be calling the shots?” Lydia asked, kicking her feet up into the air and drawing a few stares from the other bar patrons. “Um, no. I don’t think those words actually left your mouth.”

  Amy lifted a shoulder. “Maybe you just weren’t listening.”

  Frustrated, Lydia leaned forward and banged her head on the table three times. When she was near to concussing herself, she looked up at her friend’s amused expression. “You know you’re hopeless, right?”

  “I’m deaf to everything you have to say until you tell me about the guy.”

  “And I’m not telling you about the guy,” Lydia said, “until you have appropriately consoled me over the fact that Stout fired my sorry butt.”

  “Okay,” Amy said, looking contrite. “The guy will hold. Tell me what happened.”

  “Total unfairness is what happened,” Lydia said. “And nobody—nobody—bothered to consider the fact that maybe I was out there trying to make the world a better place. Honestly, Good Samaritans have a hell of a time these days.”

  “The story, Lyd,” Amy said, apparently not caring about the plight of the Samaritans.

  “It all started with the guy,” Lydia began. “Or, actually, it started before the guy. But it really started when I sat on the doughnuts.”

  Amy’s face squished up as she bit back a laugh. To her credit, she managed to keep it at bay. Lydia took that as an invitation to continue, and launched herself full-blown into the story of her humiliation, publicly rendered in front of the entire staff. Absolutely mortifying at the time. Now, after three Cosmopolitans and with one more on the way—she signaled the waitress to make sure—she was beginning to find the hidden humor. It was waaaaaaaay down there, hiding under the lemon twist, swimming in a puddle of alcohol-laced cranberry juice, and shouting dire predictions of one whopper of a hangover in the morning.

  Lydia ignored her inner responsibility and continued to sip. She’d met the guy of her dreams, lost the guy of her dreams, and gotten fired, all within a two-hour time frame. She deserved a bender.

  “I was already late,” she said, “so I couldn’t stop to get more doughnuts. So not only did I race into the conference room a full forty minutes late, but everyone was staring at me because they had assumed I was running late because I was waiting for the snacks—like I’d stand in line at a bakery instead of getting to a meeting on time.”

  “So what happened?” Amy pressed, twirling her hand as if that would make the story come faster.

  “I stood there. Except, I didn’t. I wanted to stand there, all cowering-like in the doorway. But my feet had a mind of their own and they marched me to my seat. So now I was standing by my chair instead of by the doorway.”

  “You sat down, right?”

  “Nope,” Lydia said. “I was going to, but Mr. Stout called me back to the door. And even though my feet didn’t seem really keen on going, I managed to get moving in that direction.” The whole feet thing was rather bizarre, actually, and Lydia wasn’t sure she liked it. Ever since she first put the shoes on, the shoes seemed to be leading the show.

  “He totally read me the riot act for not getting to work on time, for not turning in the report on time, and for forgetting a simple task like the snacks.”

  “But you did turn the report in on time,” her loyal best friend replied, suitably indignant.

  “And I tried to tell him that,” Lydia said. “I had this whole long spiel about how the report had been on his desk for hours yesterday, and that he was the one who’d made me stay late even though I’d done all my work, and that it was completely unfair of him to assume that I’d blown off getting doughnuts when, in fact, I’d been saving a girl from being mugged.”

  “No way! You go, girl!”

  “No, no,” Lydia rushed to correct. “I said I tried. It was all there in my head, but I couldn’t quite get it past my lips.”

  “Lydia!”

  “Well, I tried.”

  “You’re telling me you raced into an alley to fight a guy with a gun, but you couldn’t tell Mr. Stout to go jump in a lake?”

  “Pretty much,” Lydia said miserably.

  “So then what?”

  “Then he had me sit back down, I went through the whole stupid meeting, went back to my desk and finished two projects, and, as I was shutting down my computer, Mr. Stout came by and fired me.”

  “No way.”

  “Way,” Lydia said.

  “And you still didn’t say anything?”

  Lydia shook her head, looking down at the floor. “I’d taken off my shoes and was kind of sitting there relaxing, you know? And I couldn’t open my mouth. He fired me and I just sat there and took it. I even thanked him.” The memory washed over her, making her shudder.

  “You didn’t!”

  “I totally did. I’m such a dweeb.”

  “You are not. You rescued that girl. That has to count for something.”

  Lydia cocked her head and crossed her arms over her chest, leaning back in her chair as she examined her friend. “Yeah, it counts for the fact that I have good taste in shoes.” She pointed at the things. “These guys did it. Not me.”

  “Phhhbtt,” Amy retorted, calling on her cunning intellect to draw up that snappy comeback. “Shoes can’t make something out of nothing. It’s in there.” She leaned across the table and tapped Lydia on
the chest. “It’s in you.”

  “Maybe,” Lydia said, but her heart wasn’t in it.

  “So, what are you going to do? For a job, I mean?”

  Lydia frowned, because that little problem had crossed her mind, too. “I’m not entirely sure,” she admitted.

  “Maybe the Silver Streak can find you a job,” Amy suggested.

  “I doubt it,” Lydia said. “I don’t even know where to find him, and—”

  “I was joking,” Amy said. “That was my subtle ploy to lead you into telling me about him.”

  And so Lydia did. Everything from the way she’d found the girl in the alley, to how Silver had shown up, looking all sexy and competent, to the electric tingle she’d felt when he’d touched her hand.

  “Sparks?” Amy asked. “There were really sparks? Oh, my God, Lyd. I’m practically swooning.”

  “Well, I thought there were sparks,” Lydia said. “I’m not so sure about him. And since I haven’t a clue how to find him, I guess it doesn’t much matter.” How stupid had she been, rushing off to work when her fantasy man was right there? And for what? To get fired?

  Idiot, idiot, idiot!

  “Maybe if you go back to that alley . . .” Amy suggested.

  Lydia shook her head, not wanting to get her hopes up. “Let’s get real. The guy’s a freakin’ superhero. What’s he going to want with me?”

  Amy looked pointedly down at Lydia’s feet.

  “No way,” Lydia protested. “That’s not real. I’m just me. No superhero here,” she said, spreading her arms.

  “Well, I think you should go for it. He’s your fantasy guy, Lydia. What harm is there in trying to snag him? I mean, come on. A guy who can fly and beat up thugs has to be pretty darn good in be—”

  “Amy!” Lydia protested, feigning shock.

  “Well, it’s true,” Amy pouted.

  “And it’s moot,” Lydia said. “Don’t know how to find him. Case closed. The end. Over and out.”

  Amy just scowled.

  “Let’s focus on getting me a new job,” Lydia said, taking a sip of the fresh Cosmo the waitress put in front of her—her fourth. “That’s productive, right?”