by Shirl Henke
According to her cover story, his attic floorboards were supposed to be warped, but all the timbers below were in great shape. Bloody Architectural Digest quality, dammit! The most interesting one at the moment was the structural beam jutting straight out as he met her eyes and dared her.
“Gonna zap me?” he whispered.
She pointed the stun gun at the strategic place and replied, “If I do, we’ll have a wiener roast, so don’t tempt me.” More like a kielbasa roast. “Just be a good boy and put on the pajamas,” she managed to say with a level voice. He turned around and reached casually for the pj’s, giving her a full view of that great set of buns. Fits with the sausage.
Looking over his shoulder as he slipped the bottoms on, he said, “Didn’t mean to moon you, but I imagine a trained medical professional’s seen it all, hasn’t she?”
“Pretty much.” She managed to leash her libido by reminding herself about the cool ten K plus expenses she’d collect from dear old Aunt Claudia. Right now that road was looking really long, hard and rocky. Don’t think long. Don’t think hard. Don’t think rocks, dammit!
“Good night, Mr. Moonie.” She motioned for him to lie down on the bed.
He stretched out and then folded his hands as if to pray with the open cuff still dangling from his right wrist. “Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray—”
“You’ll have to do your nightly devotions hands unfolded. Reach down and click the cuff to the bed frame.” She pointed at the exposed steel bar beneath the box spring.
“I work much better with both hands free, darlin’,” he said, grinning again as he patted the mattress.
“You’ll only need one hand free to do what you need to do tonight.” Sam couldn’t help the snide tone any more than she could keep her eyes away from the tent pole under the sheet.
Muttering about feminine perversity, he clicked the cuff to the bed frame and closed his eyes. Sam flipped off the lights, undressed and slipped into her own bed. After a few moments, she heard him whisper.
“You know, a few times today, I thought I heard Cole Porter tunes.”
She rolled on her side and stared across the darkness separating them. “I was playing an Ella Fitzgerald CD of Cole Porter’s hits. I like his music.” The minute she replied, she could’ve kicked herself. Not smart to get involved, especially in a snatch as unorthodox as this one.
“Me, too. My favorite’s ‘Night and Day.’”
Too late now. She replied, “Hmm. I’d never have taken you for a romantic. Mine’s ‘Love for Sale.’” His soft chuckle caught her by surprise.
“Certainly it is.”
Damn the man. So she was mercenary. So what? A girl from South Boston didn’t have all that many options, unless she considered driving over the road with Uncle Declan. But Sam would be damned if she explained herself to a preppy-turned-reporter like Matt Granger. In a few minutes she could hear the sound of soft male snoring blending with the wheeze of the air conditioner.
She lay in her bed staring at the ceiling, wide-awake.
Chapter 2
“Rise and shine, Prince Charming. It’s time to hit the road for Boston.”
Matt opened one eye and blinked at Sam, then pulled the pillow over his head, muttering through the feathers, “Go away, Fairy Godmother.”
“My, aren’t we testy this morning. You had a good night’s sleep.” She tried to sound self-satisfied but knew it ended up coming out with too much edge.
He tossed the pillow to the foot of the bed and stared balefully at her. Sam Ballanger looked like she hadn’t gotten one wink last night. Maybe the advantage he needed? Matt decided to push the envelope. “Cranky as hell, huh? I offered to help, but nooo, Ms. Medical Professional, you had to stand on principle…or should I say lie on it?” He grinned at her and watched her seethe.
“Your snoring carried all the way to the Continental Divide. That’s what kept me awake,” she shot back. “Believe it or not, you’re not that irresistible. In my book, no man that badly in need of rhinoplasty is.”
“Liar. I snore soft like a baby.”
She tossed the key onto his bed and shrugged casually. “Just get up and head for the bathroom.”
He shoved the sheet down to his waist and rubbed his hand over his right deltoid muscle. “You should try sleeping with one arm cuffed to a bed frame sometime. I probably have a dislocated shoulder. Now, if you were really a trained medical professional, you’d know how to kiss it and make it well…”
“Very funny, Mr. Granger. Now please move it,” she said in what she hoped was a bored voice. “While you take care of necessities, I’ll get us some breakfast from the vending machines in the motel office.”
“Sounds yummy,” he groused, still lying flat on the lumpy mattress.
“Beggars can’t be choosers,” she replied cheerfully.
“I thought I was a ‘patient,’ not a beggar.”
“Quit stalling. We need to be on the road within half an hour if we’re going to make it anywhere near Denver by tonight.” She waved the stun gun just to emphasize her point. She could see him glance away from it to the table where she’d laid out the sleep mask, bandages and a roll of medical tape.
Matt could also see that the jim-dandy custom straitjacket was draped over the back of the chair. One more day’s ride locked in solitaire and his reflexes would be so shot that he’d never be able to take her. Still, there was the fitting on the gooseneck pipe under the bathroom sink…
Sam pointed to a small vinyl zipper bag lying on the top of the battered old television and said simply, “Toiletry items.”
“How the hell am I supposed to brush my teeth, not to mention shave or take a shower, with my right hand cuffed to the drainpipe?”
“No showers, Mr. Granger. We’ll both get a little ripe before we reach Boston. For the rest, you’re a big boy. Be resourceful and you’ll figure it out.”
I’ll be a hell of a lot more resourceful than you’d ever imagine, Sammie, babe. Matt let her lock him in the bathroom. He always thought clearer on an empty bladder.
While he was taking care of business in the other room, she peered through a broken slat in the blinds. No one in sight. Might as well go to the office and see what she could scare up for breakfast.
When Matt heard the outside door close, he fleetingly considered yelling his lungs out for help. But then he recalled that she’d told him they were the only customers in the fleabag. Probably true. Even if he could make himself heard over the blaring TV, it was doubtful a desk clerk in a dive like this would give a shit. Even if he did, “Nurse Ratchet” would make him believe her poor “patient” was having a seizure or a conversation with Bart Simpson.
Matt set to work on the gooseneck pipe. “Great. Everything in this dump is made of Lego blocks except the plumbing. Which is made of friggin’ Swedish steel!” He grunted, red faced with strain, wrapping both hands around the connection to give it one last desperate try. No go. He needed something for leverage. “Not even a Boy Scout would carry a pipe wrench in his jammies,” he muttered savagely as his eyes swept frantically around the small mold-encrusted room for anything he could reach that might help.
That’s when he saw it. A rusty old C-clamp holding together the broken curtain rod over the window. It was partially obscured by the hideous blue-and-orange plastic ruffle and a generous layer of cobwebs. Matt Granger was a tall man with long arms to match his lanky frame. But stretch as he might, his fingertips could only come within six inches of the damn clamp. He yanked on the ruffled “window treatment,” hoping to rip the rod loose from its mooring. No go, again.
With a sickening thwap the rotted brittle plastic flew off the rod, smacking him in the face with sticky cobwebs. Snarling an oath about spider spit, he threw the filthy monstrosity into the tub and pulled the shower curtain closed to cover it up. Then he wiped up the mess around the sink and in his hair, praying she wouldn’t notice the missing plastic ruffle on the window. No sense giving Sam any ideas about checki
ng out the next accommodations more thoroughly than she had these. Then he heard the front door open.
“Ready or not, here I come,” she sang out.
Matt decided if he was ever going to get away from this single-minded broad, he’d better take his chance now. Just thinking of her little “object lesson” with the stun gun made him wince, but what the hell. She’d have to move in real close to use it—not that he doubted for one instant she’d hesitate. Still, he reasoned, he was a big man and she was a small woman. How hard could it be to overpower her before she got a shot at him? Trained medical professional. He snorted as the bathroom door opened.
“All I could get was a carafe of their coffee and a couple packages of cake doughnuts, artifacts that must’ve been in the vending machine since the dawn of automation.” Sam glanced at his bare chest and the droplets of water dripping from his hair and face onto those broad shoulders. No good, Ballanger. Ah, not good, but beautiful. She tossed him the key and spun around, stalking out of the doorway to wait while he unlocked the cuff.
Matt noted the way she’d looked at him. Maybe he could give good old lust one last college try before chancing the stun gun. “Coffee smells good,” he said. In fact, it smelled like a blend of road tar and battery acid, but he was used to the stuff in the Herald’s newsroom, which was even worse.
When he reached for his clothes, piled in a heap on the floor, Sam said, “No. Leave them. I’ll put them in the van later.”
He gave her a quizzical look, then grinned. This was working out even better than he’d hoped.
“Put on the pj’s again and slip on the robe and house shoes. It looks more convincing if a patient’s not dressed in street clothes,” she explained quickly, too quickly.
“So much for romance,” he mumbled as he reached for the discarded pajamas and coarse terry robe, taking his time, letting her stare at his naked chest. After he’d belted the robe casually around his middle, he walked over to the table, never breaking eye contact with her. “Pour me some java?”
“Pour it yourself,” she snapped, gesturing with the gun. As he did so, she watched the front of the robe gap open. He hadn’t buttoned the pj top, either. She could see his chest again. Had he done that deliberately? Of course he had. Ballanger, you have to be a moron to fall for this guy, she chided herself, watching him take an experimental sip of the coffee and reach for a doughnut as he sat down across from her.
Smiling, he swallowed down the large Styrofoam cupful as if it were medicinal. “Ah, nothing like a jolt of caffeine in the morning.”
“You must have a cast-iron mouth,” Sam said as he poured a second cup and chomped into a doughnut.
“Newsroom habit. Reporters learn to drink this sludge like water. Only thing that redeems it is it’s too hot to taste. I really do work for the Herald, you know.”
“Yeah, well your aunt said you ‘dabbled’ at writing stories. Didn’t say where. Look, I checked out Claudia Witherspoon before I took this job, believe me. She’s a female Warren Buffet. We’ve been over this before, remember?”
Matt snorted in disgust. “She never approved of my career choice. I was supposed to be a good little Yalie, stay in Boston and work for the family brokerage firm.” He shuddered.
Sam looked at him with renewed interest. “Yale, huh? Figured you’d have ivy of some kind growing out of your ears. Why not just chill out at the family manse, live off your trust fund?”
“Would you like to sit around and do nothing?” he asked.
Sam shrugged. “Never had the option. It might be nice to jet-set around though, you know, sipping martinis.”
He couldn’t help the frustrated bark of laughter. Oh, would his great-aunt pay for this if he got dragged all the way to Boston right in the middle of the biggest story of his career! He’d wring her scrawny, manipulative old neck! “That’s what you imagine the life of a Boston Brahmin is like?”
“It isn’t?”
He knew she was humoring him. “It’s boring beyond measure and filled to the brim with social obligations.”
“No wonder you ran away and joined a cult then.”
Matt sighed. “I did not join a cult.” It came out through gritted teeth.
“Not what Aunt Claudia said. You were living in that complex just the way she described it. I believe her term was ‘a pack of California coconuts.’”
He raised one eyebrow as a thought occurred to him. “I wonder if the old girl’s finally gone around the bend.”
“You’re the one around the bend. She sounded plenty sharp.”
“Sharp she always has been.” His eyes narrowed in cunning intensity. “She’s paying you to bring me to Boston. How about I pay you not to?”
Sam shook her head, wiping crumbs from her mouth with a paper napkin. “Against my ethics. If I took bribes it would wipe out my business.” And Pat’d put me in the slammer with Renkov and his pals when they arrest them. “A girl’s gotta think of her reputation, after all.”
“Yes, I know, you are, after all, a ‘trained medical professional.’ I’ll pay you…three thou to let me go.” He measured her over the rim of his cup as he sipped.
Sam chuckled in genuine amusement. “You never give up, do you? Even if I were willing to stiff dear old Aunt Claudia—which I’m not—it wouldn’t work. She’s paying me ten K plus expenses. I get you back under her wing within the week, she even promised me a bonus. The old dame’s loaded.”
Matt swore beneath his breath. Last option closed. Three grand was all he had to his name unless he hocked his car and small sailboat, neither of which were exactly liquid assets. “She inherited a couple of mil from my grandfather and quadrupled it several times playing the stock market over the past forty years or so,” he said glumly.
While he appeared deep in thought, Sam observed him. He acted nothing like a patient, but then he wasn’t nuts, only a reporter messing around in a deal way over his handsome head. Her usual range of clients sulked, turned mute, whined or were so catatonic that she could’ve propped them up in a corner and slept through the night in perfect safety. Now and then one went ballistic. Once Granger found out the truth, he might, too. A good thing she carried the stun gun.
She’d never met a guy with half as much sex appeal as Matt Granger. Of course that was understandable, considering that her snatches were usually pimply teens or wealthy nutcases whose families spent a fortune to prevent scandal. Nothing like this dude. He’s out of your league, Sam. If you met him in Miami, he’d walk past you without a second glance.
Samantha seemed distracted. This might be his only chance. Matt lunged against the table, overturning it into her lap and sousing her with coffee. She let out an oath of outrage as the scalding liquid splashed across her chest and legs. His long arms extended, big fingers biting into her shoulders. Her hand, still holding the stun gun, was pinned beneath the edge of the table. Luckily, the table was small and round, lightweight enough for her to kick at the center base of it and roll it off her as he moved in.
He was a big sucker and his grip was punishing as he tried to get her into a bear hug, immobilizing her arms. That helped get her to her feet, but before he could lift her off the ground, she hooked one ankle behind his knee hard. He lost balance and started to topple, still holding her. But his grip on her arms loosened sufficiently for her to raise the gun and press it against his rib cage. She gave him a short jolt.
“Son of a bitch!” He grunted through gritted teeth, but didn’t let go, trying instead to knock the weapon out of her hand.
Then she let him have it, a full three-second burst. He folded up like an accordion at the end of a three-day Polish wedding. Granger slid bonelessly to the dirty carpet, now soaked with coffee and powder sugar. He was still conscious but his muscles were sending crazy jangled signals to every nerve in his body. Sam stepped quickly back as he twitched and flopped. A banked carp could’ve moved better.
His eyes, the only part of him still able to obey brain commands, glared at her in confusion
while he tried to curse. At least, she was pretty sure he was cursing. His speech was too garbled to really tell.
“I warned you, Mr. Granger. Now look at the mess you’ve made. I’ll have to charge Aunt Claudia extra to pay for the damages. And we’re going to be late getting on the road.” She affected a sigh of patient resignation to cover her acute case of nerves. Boy, would he be pissed when he found out how he’d been set up. Too bad, but all the better to get thoughts of sex out of her head. This charming little encounter definitely cured her of that. It had been a close call.
Sam had only been forced to zap a few of her patients and none with a maximum charge before. Then again, none had been his size. As she waited for him to come around, hoping it would not take too long, she soaked some towels with warm water and tried to clean him up as much as possible. A burn patient covered with powder sugar and reeking of stale coffee might just raise a few questions if anyone got close enough to notice.
After she’d done the best she could with Granger, she quickly changed into another set of scrubs. Considering how furious he’d be, she decided it might be prudent to put him in the straitjacket while he was still malleable. Getting the jacket on him was not easy. He was dead weight and groaning at every movement. As she worked, Sam explained. “Maybe I should’ve told you I’m not just a med tech, Mr. Granger,” she said calmly. “I was a cop for seven years before I went into the retrieval business. I have a black belt in judo. Ni-dan.”
Great. Matt’s brain felt like an egg frying on a Miami sidewalk on the hottest day in July. It could comprehend what she was saying, but refused to have anything to do with his autonomously spastic muscles. I’ve been taken down by a woman—a woman half my size! Well, what next? He decided it didn’t matter. She probably had a nuclear device or two stashed in that fanny pack of hers.