by Lois Greiman
He felt his brows ricochet off his hairline. “Ya were gonna sleep with Gabe?”
“I did not wish to.”
“’Course not,” he agreed. His best friend was as boring as hell and a know-it-all to boot. Women probably didn’t even notice he had a face like one of them Italian statues and a body packed with enough muscle to bring down a pole shed. “Who would?”
She scowled a little as though he might have lost his mind but spoke again. “Yet I would have done so were it the only way to convince him to help me.”
“Okay.”
She paused, deepening her scowl. “You do not hate me?”
Relief flooded through him like a loosed dam. He’d braced himself against the certainty that she was about to regale him with her sexploits with Santiago. Admitting she’d considered sleeping with Gabe barely made a blimp on his radar, but he kept his expression impassive. “I gotta tell ya, Lotta, I wish I could.” He sighed at his own despicable weakness. “But I don’t seem to have it in me.”
Her eyes were steady. “And still you will help me?”
“If I say I’m gonna do somethin’, I do it.”
She nodded, tense, silent for a moment before speaking again. “Then you must take me to the bed so that we may begin our search early on the tomorrow.”
“You want me to get a room?”
“Sí.”
“Here?”
“Yes.”
He didn’t know what that meant for him, his shaky sanity or his slavering hormones, but he ushered her to the inn’s little lobby as fast as his limited decorum would allow.
Chapter 13
Leaving her to rest on a padded chair, Shep approached the front desk. For a moment, a whole second in time, he debated renting two rooms. But she was so sad, so alone, so vulnerable. It would be caddish of him to leave her unprotected. So instead, he inquired once again about any sightings of Sofia, paid, and clutched the keycard in his hand before returning to her side.
“Ya okay?” he asked.
“Sí. Of course,” she said and rose to her feet. Her eyes were awash, her expression a confusing meld of pride and embarrassment. Tears, it seemed, were not something she wished to share…at least not with him. He had no idea why that made him both angry and disappointed.
“Come on,” he said and was mildly surprised when she followed him. Odd, he thought. It wasn’t as if other women had refused to accompany him in similar situations. But none of them had been Carlotta Elaina Perdilla-Osorio.
He stopped at the appropriate door, sliced the card through the reader, and followed her inside.
She turned to face him, brows rising. “What you do?” she asked. “You do not think to stay here in this room.”
He managed to waylay the weird-ass pleas that threatened to escape his lips and cracked up a grin instead. “Would ya believe me if I said there was only one room available?”
“I think not.”
“How about if I said I could only afford one.”
“So you are not truly Americano?”
He laughed at her continuing misconception of his countrymen’s wealth.
“Well?” she asked.
“I’m as American as chicken-fried steak,” he admitted.
“Chicken fried…” she began quizzically but lifted a hand as if unwilling to be sidetracked. “The point is this…you have the money for another room.”
“I suppose,” he admitted. “But leavin’ you alone don’t seem right.”
“Truly?” He didn’t think her brows could get any higher.
“I’m just tryin’ to keep ya safe.”
“This is the reason you are in my room?”
“Why else?”
She turned and walked away. But in truth, Carlotta Osorio never walked when she could sashay, never simply glanced over her shoulder when she could peer through the flowing waterfall of her hair with those dark-magic eyes—as she did now.
“Why else?” he asked again, but it was all he could do to keep his gaze from slipping down her body, over those goddess shoulders, those far-superior-to-earlobe breasts.
She studied him in silence and oddly, he couldn’t quite hold her gaze. “Ya don’t think I’d try to take advantage of the situation do ya?”
She snorted. “You will sleep on the floor.”
“On the…” He glanced at it. It was ceramic tile. The whole thing. As unforgiving as a bed of nails.
“On the floor,” she repeated, “or in the hall.”
“You’re tough.”
“What did you think?” she asked and raised her haughty chin an extra notch. “That I was easy? That I was the puta?”
“Nope. Always assumed ya was tough as a grizzly and pure as the driven snow.”
She narrowed her eyes at him then shook her head. “You lie,” she said and tossed her all-encompassing bag onto a nearby chair.
He placed splayed fingers over his chest and plopped his ass unceremoniously onto the bed. “Ya cut me to the quick.”
“What is this quick?” she asked.
“The quick?” He leaned back on one elbow, watching her as she pulled a trowel, fuzzy socks, and a flashlight from her bag. For a woman who constantly looked as if she’d stepped from the glossy pages of a fashion magazine, it was surprising that she carried only one duffel. On the other hand, that single bag seemed to contain everything from cosmetics to power tools. How exactly did she do that? “It’s the tender part of a horse’s hoof.”
She paused with a small, silky garment slung over one arm. Just the sight of it did something funky to his…everything. “I have cut you to a horse’s hoof?” she asked.
“It’s just a sayin’. If ya drive a nail too deep into an animal’s foot, you’ll hit the quick and make it lame.”
“Ahh,” she said, “I forget, you are the cowboy.”
“How about you?” he asked.
She sauntered to the bathroom, paused in the doorway to glance back again. The light from behind cast a dark halo over her midnight hair. And in that moment, he was certain that if he lived to be a doddering old man with nothing but a few stray hairs and a smattering of teeth, he would never forget how she looked just then. Femininity personified. Beauty, strength, mystery. “What is it you mean by this?”
He managed to continue to breathe, to shrug, as if his heart hadn’t just stuttered in his chest at the sight of her. “If ya had to sum yourself up in one word, what’d it be?”
“This is the silly question,” she said. Without closing the bathroom door, she plopped her bag onto the vanity and dug out a toothbrush.
He saw her bend, watched her burbling cascade of hair flow past her shoulders, and thought of several words for her. Irresistible was at the top of the list, but he would resist. Damned if he wouldn’t. He’d help her find her sister…if the girl actually was missing.
“Ain’t nothin’ wrong with silly,” he reminded her as she disappeared behind the door. “Mama used to say that silly beats sad all to hell.” That wasn’t exactly true. What she’d said was that he shouldn’t mourn for her. Shouldn’t waste his time on sorrow. Because she’d know, and when they met again on the far side of now, she’d be pissed. Only she never really got pissed. But there was no need to be entirely honest. In fact…he thought, but in that second, Carlotta stepped into the room, causing his heart to hiccup, his brain to stumble. She’d changed clothes in the seconds she’d been out of sight. Had slipped into a satiny, off-white something. It wasn’t particularly revealing, yet it somehow managed to transform her from gorgeous traveler to irresistible seductress.
“Up,” she said and shooed him aside.
He didn’t tell her that that particular ship had already sailed and managed to sit, though he was pretty sure standing would be impossible. She’d probably have to roll him onto the floor like a death-stiffened corpse to remove him from the bed, and he wasn’t at all sure she wouldn’t do just that.
“You may have a pillow,” she said and, lifting the nearest one from
its place at the head of the bed, slapped it against him.
Pain pinged through his injured arm like the rip of a well-shot arrow.
She scowled in the act of turning away, narrowed her eyes, and swung back toward him. “What is wrong?”
“Nothin’,” he said and, against all odds, forced himself to stand.
“Your arm.” Somehow, she managed to look both disapproving and concerned. “It yet hurts.”
He shook his head. When in doubt, deny. It was the credo of every young prankster raised by a caring but crotchety grandfather.
She scowled and moved closer.
“Just my heart,” he said. “Can’t blame the old ticker for takin’ a hit at the sight’a ya in that thing.”
She ignored both the compliment and the lie. “Let me see.”
“Ya oughta be more careful, Lotta. There are all sorts’a guys out there who’d take advantage’a this here situation.”
“Sit!” she ordered.
“Listen, woman…” he began, but she stopped him.
“Sit and remove the shirt.”
“You can’t tell me—“
“Remove it, or I will not allow you to assist me.”
He huffed a laugh. “And I suppose ya think that’s some kind’a hardship?”
She eyed him, making him wonder, rather uncomfortably, if she might understand him better than she should. Better, in fact, than he understood himself.
“It ain’t like it’s an honor to serve ya.”
She shifted. Just the slightest bend of her body, the simplest adjustment of weight so she watched him from a tilted angle as if examining his soul through the dark sweep of her lashes.
He held her penetrating gaze as long as he was able, then, “Dammit sideways,” he mumbled and sat on the bed to unbutton his shirt.
Chapter 14
“Who did this to you?” Carlotta asked.
“I think I told ya. Her name was Angel.”
She felt her temper rise and told herself it was only fatigue. What did she care that he’d risked his life for a woman? He was a philandering playboy who had abandoned her at the first dollop of trouble.
Very well, she admitted silently, maybe there had been a truckload of trouble. Maybe, in fact, he’d been under dire threat of death. But she’d spent a good deal of time nursing him back to health. Weeks bathing him, feeding him, hearing him cry out in delirium. And okay, maybe she’d thought they had formed some kind of a bond. But that didn’t matter. So what if he had raced back to his country without a backward glance. It didn’t mean a thing to her. But she wouldn’t allow her time to go to waste, wouldn’t let her ministrations be for naught.
“I see that her personality did not match her name,” she said and shifted to examine the backside of his arm.
“What?” he asked.
“Most angels, they do not bite their rescuers. It is a bite wound, is it not?”
“Yeah,” he admitted reluctantly. “But what makes ya think Angel was the one doin’ the bitin’?”
“What woman would not be tempted?” she asked and, poking the puckered scar, didn’t bother to explain what she was tempted to do.
“Hey,” he said and pulled his arm away.
“It yet hurts.”
“A little tender maybe.”
She snorted, knowing a lie when she heard one. “Where is this Angel now?” she asked and stepped behind him to examine the wound from another angle.
“Alabama.”
She raised her brows at him. “What is it she do there?”
“She took a likin’ to Eric, an old buddy’a mine. They’re livin’ in a little Podunk burg south’a Montgomery, I think,” he said and shrugged as if it were of no great concern.
“What?” she asked. “You risk your life for her and yet she lives with another?”
“You seein’ a trend, too?” he asked.
You left me, she wanted to shriek, but she kept her tone level. “She has the sex with you, and then she choose your friend? To me, she sound more the puta than the angel.”
“I didn’t say we slept together.”
“So she refuse you!” She laughed as she dug around in her bag, found the glass bottle for which she’d been searching, and screwed off the metal lid. The minty scent of pennyroyal filled the air.
He scowled at her unlabeled concoction. “Turns out, I had no interest in sleepin’ with her.”
“Huh!”
“Ya don’t believe me?”
“No, I do not.”
“Because?”
“Because you are the man,” she said and eyed him dismissively.
“Glad you noticed that I… Hey!” he bellowed and jerked away, but she had already smeared the ointment onto his wound.
“Admit it,” she ordered.
“What the devil is that stuff?”
“Tell the truth.”
“It burns like hellfire.”
“Are you so much the coward that you cannot even admit your desires?”
“Rangers ain’t cowards, sweetheart. We’re the best’a the best.”
She laughed. “And yet this Angel turned you down.”
“Holy…” He jerked to his feet, still staring at his arm as if expecting smoke to rise from the puckered scar. “Are ya tryin’ to kill me?”
“When I am try to kill you, you will know it, Linus Shepherd,” she said and poked a finger at him. “Now, admit it, you wished to have the sex with her, but she did not compile.”
“She did not comply.”
“So I am right!”
“No, you’re not right. I didn’t have no interest in her. Not in that way anyhow.”
She watched him, thinking. “Then she was not pretty.”
“Funkin’ hell!” He yanked his forearm away from his ribcage as if hoping to prevent his torso from catching fire. “It’s eatin’ a hole in my skin.”
“Tell me the truth, and I will stop the burn.”
He jerked his gaze to hers. “What?”
“I have the cure just here,” she said and held up another bottle she’d mindlessly fished from her bag.
“You’ve poisoned me? Seriously?”
“Is the truth so hard to admit?”
“Alright,” he said. “Fine! I admit it. She was kinda a dog.”
She couldn’t stop the gasp. “How dare you—“
“Now give me that damned… Wait a minute.” He paused, rolled his shoulder, scowled at the wound. “I think it feels better.”
“How dare you call a woman such?”
“What is that stuff?” The bunched muscles that capped his shoulders had begun to relax.
“Have you no consciences? What would your mama think if she knew how you disrespect her sex?”
“I don’t disrespect nobody,” he said distractedly and poked tentatively at the wound. “Not even other species. Huh. Where’d you get that shit?”
“What?”
“Feels better than it has in months.”
“What you mean you do not disrespect other species?”
“Granddad was an ornery old sonofabitch.” He flexed his biceps. Muscles popped, heaping like magic beneath his sun-browned skin. “But he didn’t allow no mistreatment’a animals. Have ya got a patent for that stuff?”
“What do animals have to do with your wound?”
He glanced up as if surprised to learn they still debated such a tedious subject. “Angel’s a malamute.”
“¿Qué?”
“A malamute. Sled dog. Whatever. All white. Think that mighta been the reason for her name. Ol’ Eric’s had a weakness for the breed ever since we snuck into the Cinemax to see Iron Will.
“Ya got more’a that weird-ass tonic?”
“Angel was a dog?”
“Yeah.” He glanced up innocently, dimples etching inroads in his lean cheeks. “What’d ya think?”
“You joke me.”
“I wish,” he said and prodded the scar contemplatively. “Ya make that stuff yourself?”
“It is my father’s recipe. He make from the nectar of many different plants.”
“I thought he was a farmer.”
“Sí. He used it on our mule.”
“Well…” He rotated his shoulder again. “I’ve been called a horse’s ass before.”
“Why did this dog bite you?”
“I was tryin’ to get her outta the pit.
“Seriously, have ya considered marketin’ this stuff?”
“The pit?”
“Angel was a fightin’ dog. She and an Airedale the size’a a moose were goin’ at it like pissed off wolves. I suppose she thought I was just another enemy.
“Would this stuff work on old wounds?”
Carlotta reared back in outrage. “They yet battle dogs in this country?”
“Sometimes.”
“This is the barbaric.”
“Ain’t that the truth?”
“What were you doing at such a place?”
“I went for the other fights.”
She scowled.
“Bare knuckle,” he said and, lifting his fists, made a few quick jabs. “Damn, I feel good. I got some buddies’d pay dear for this stuff.”
“Do not say it.”
He took a few more jabs, circled a little. “Say what?”
“You did not go to fight.”
His grin was little-boy charming, but his body was all another story entirely. “Didn’t I?”
“You are the idiota.”
“But a pretty fair street fighter.”
“And you think that is not barbaric?”
He lowered his fists. “No one forces men to do it, honey. Not like the dogs.” His expression hardened. “Shitheads should be horse whipped.”
She felt herself weaken. “So you refuse to let the dogs fight.”
His dimples popped again…part demon, part angel now. “You’d think I insulted their mamas the way they acted when I took her.”
“Then what happen?”
He shrugged. “I ran like hell, hangin’ onto her collar with her snappin’ at me like a damned crocodile. Got bit. Got shot at. Called the cops.”
She watched him, searching for lies. But there were none. She was sure of it.