License to Thrill

by Lori Wilde

  Tough love. That was the answer. She made the conscious choice to aggravate him.

  “You gonna sit there and feel sorry for yourself all night, Gentry?” She cocked her head and leveled him a stern stare.

  He didn’t even look up at her, which scared her even more.

  “What? You want me to go find a preacher to eulogize the car?” She was desperate. If she couldn’t break through to him she had no idea what to do.

  He didn’t move.

  She snorted, exaggerating the sound for his benefit. “Great. Just what I might have expected from a spoiled, pampered, rich blue blood.” She laid it on thick, gesturing with her arms and raising her voice in a desperate attempt to attract his interest.

  “Having a frickin’ pity party over a car. Boo-hoo, poor baby.” She paced behind him, hands on her hips. “I got news for you, pretty boy, while you’re indulging yourself, our grandparents are God knows where, maybe even being chased by nasty, menacing people while you sit on your duff and…”

  “That’s enough!” Mason snarled, leaped to his feet, and whirled around to face her in a movement so sudden and fluid Charlee choked on her words.

  Ulp.

  “Not another peep out of you.”

  For a long moment, she just stood there in disbelief, like the time when she was a kid and she’d been petting her hamster and it bit her so hard her thumb bled.

  Mason’s chocolate eyes smoldered with a perilous fire. His jaw was set, every muscle in his body tensed. His dimples, which were beguiling when he smiled, dug into his face like ominous burrows when he glowered. He stalked toward her with a loose hip stride that promised more trouble.

  He looked very, very dangerous.

  Charlee gulped and took a step backward, stunned by the changes in him. Was this the same man she’d just driven four hundred miles beside? Where was the self-controlled, self-contained guy she’d met in her office yesterday afternoon? Gone was all semblance of civility. In Mason’s place stood a total stranger.

  “I’ve had it up to here.” He sliced his hand across his neck. “You push and you push and you push. A man has limits, Charlee Champagne, and I want you to know I’ve reached the edge of mine.”

  Okay, she’d snapped him out of his near catatonia but this certainly wasn’t what she’d bargained for. He kept coming, his features a mask of unadulterated ferocity. Her stomach careened up to her throat.

  And Charlee kept backing up, her eyes growing wider with surprise. She raised her palms in a defensive gesture.

  “Now, Mason…” She started to explain why she had been so hard on him but he wasn’t in the mood to listen. “Take a deep breath.”

  “I don’t want to hear it.” Gravel crunched beneath his feet. Crunch, crunch, crunch.

  Her heart slammed against her rib cage like an un-seat-belted crash-test dummy bashing repeatedly into the windshield of a Yugo.

  His teeth were clenched. A vein at his forehead throbbed.

  Charlee slowly edged one foot behind her hoping that if she moved without haste she would defuse his anger. “Settle down.”

  “I don’t want to settle down.” He was utterly pissed. He looked as if he wanted to tear her to shreds with his bare hands, bit by tiny bit. “I’m tired of settling down. I’ve been settled down for twenty-seven years and where has it gotten me? Stuck in the middle of the Arizona desert with an infuriatingly aggravating woman, that’s where.”

  Another sliding step back. Another and another.

  And then her boot heel hit smack-dab up against the outside wall of the diner.

  Nowhere to run.

  Charlee held her breath.

  He slapped his palms against the wall on either side of her head, effectively pinning her in.

  Uh-oh.

  A tiny burst of panic exploded inside her. She’d created a monster. She could feel his pain, see it in his eyes, but there was something more than hurt and anger lurking in those blazing brown depths.

  Passion, desire, and hungry sexual need smoldered there too.

  Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God, she was in trouble.

  Her blood ran hot and her insides were all jittery and jammed up. She couldn’t let him know how she felt. Vulnerable and willing and turned on like a faucet. She sank her top teeth into her bottom lip and curled her fingertips into her palms to stay the rush of her surging emotions.

  She had to lighten the mood. She had to think unsexy thoughts. She had to get her mind off the fantasy of making love to this brown-eyed handsome man. Going on the offensive had only provoked his ire. It was time to try something else. Humor maybe?

  “Ever since I met you nothing but bad things have happened,” he continued to rant. “I’ve been shot at, made fun of by creeps in a bar, had my wallet stolen, been in a crazed car chase, and now the vehicle that’s dear to my heart has been smashed by a giant hamburger.”

  Charlee’s upper lip twitched and an almost irrepressible urge to laugh pushed through her. When you thought about it, their circumstances were really sort of funny. Laughter might offer a wonderful release valve for her, but she had the distinct impression Mason would not appreciate a hysterical giggling fit.

  “But none of those things were my fault,” she squeaked as her mind frantically raced to think of something sarcastic and witty and fitting but she came up empty-handed. The drastic change in him was just too intimidating.

  “Maybe not, but you attract trouble like a television screen attracts dust. I can deal with all that chaos. I can even deal with my car getting crushed. What I can’t deal with is being insulted by a smart-mouthed private detective who thinks she knows it all because she grew up the hard way.”

  “I don’t think 1 know it all,” she denied.

  He ignored her refutation. “Yes, I was raised in the lap of luxury. So sue me. It doesn’t make me a bad person. I don’t have to put up with your derision and your sarcasm and your holier-than-thou attitude.”

  “I…I didn’t…I don’t…That’s not…” she stammered, hardly able to form a coherent thought.

  He narrowed his eyes to slits and he leaned in closer. His lips were almost touching hers. His masculine scent invaded her nose.

  Her breath came in hot, rapid gasps. The pulse in the hollow of her throat throbbed erratically. Heat swamped her body. The flavor of raw sexual desire filled her mouth.

  God, but she was so aroused.

  Charlee had never wanted anyone more than she wanted him right now. Her fingers itched to rip the shirt from his body. Her lips ached to ravish his. Her legs quivered with the urge to wrap themselves around his muscled waist.

  And then, over his shoulder, she caught a glimpse of something that instantly dampened her raging libido.

  A white Chevy Malibu pulling into the gas station behind him.

  Oh, no. Not now. Not when her brain was swamped in hormones and not functioning properly.

  What to do? What to do?

  Think.

  She had to create a diversion. Had to do something to make sure they weren’t immediately spotted by the Malibu goons. She had to buy them some time.

  But how?

  Only one idea occurred to her. One single, awful idea that promised to plunge her even deeper into emotional danger, but it was all she had.

  The men were getting out of the Malibu. The one from the passenger side was glancing around.

  If he spotted them…

  Not knowing what else to do, Charlee grabbed Mason by the collar and pulled his face close to hers. “Kiss me,” she demanded.

  “What?” He looked as if she’d asked him to jump into the Grand Canyon buck naked.

  “Kiss me now. Kiss me hard. Kiss me like you mean it.”

  “Huh?”

  “Just do it, dammit.”

  Mason stared at her, his mind a chaotic jumble. Charlee’s chest rose and fell in rapid succession, her breasts rubbing lightly against his inner forearms. Her lips glistened moistly. Her gaze was desperate.

  Was she as turne
d on as he?

  Her sense of sexual urgency surprised him, igniting a fire in him like a blowtorch to ten-year-old kindling. When had his sorrow over losing Matilda turned into all-out desire for the dark-haired, green-eyed woman captured between his arms?

  He pillaged her lips. He was a plunderous pirate claiming his booty. He was a ruthless bounty hunter bringing his prisoner to justice. He was a cold-blooded cutthroat taking what didn’t belong to him.

  From the very moment he had clamped eyes on her in that small dusty detective office, he had yearned to kiss her.

  Years of pent-up feelings surged through Mason. A river of underground sensation. Too long he’d suppressed his basic emotions and now they were tumbling out of him in a pure, explosive purge. Anger mixed with raw sexual desire mixed with sheer shameless need. Burning euphoria mixed with voracious carnal hunger.

  She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him closer. Her hair brushed against his face and he just about came unraveled.

  Mason thrust his tongue past her parted teeth and damn if she didn’t moan and wriggle against him. She tasted like hamburger heaven.

  He stroked the inside of her mouth with his tongue, surprising himself with his bold technique. He ran his hands down her feminine hips to cup her butt in his palms. As he enjoyed what was happening between them, he forgot about everything else.

  The rest of the world was a blur. He forgot about Daphne, his job, his parents. He didn’t think about Matilda or Gramps or the fact that a dozen truckers and cowboys were staring at them through the diner’s plate-glass window.

  He ignored the chugging, wheezing sounds and the choky diesel odors of the eighteen-wheeler engines idling at the gas station behind them. He didn’t care that they were stranded in Nowhere Junction with no way out of here or that he had no money, no ID, not even a change of clothes.

  Time hung suspended and nothing mattered but the silky slide of Charlee’s lips against his. He felt liberated and feral and authentic, as if he had at last unearthed the real Mason. He felt consumed by a shadow self who had been prowling in his subconscious for years, just waiting for the chance to pounce free.

  Charlee moaned into his mouth and her tongue took off on an adventure of its own. His body reacted vehemently, pulling him deeper into treacherous territory.

  He allowed his hands to glide down her spine to her waist and then lower still. Her smallness surprised him. Because she acted so tough, toting that gun and spouting strong talk, she seemed larger-than-life. But right here, right now, in his arms, she felt soft and willing and womanly and surprisingly delicate.

  His fingertips reached the waistband of her jeans and his groin ached with the desire to yank down her zipper and shuck those denim britches right over her hips.

  Just when he was at the point of suggesting something so completely out of character that anyone who knew him would have sworn pod people had taken over his body, Charlee wrenched her mouth from his.

  “Okay. You can quit now,” she said. “They went inside the gas station.”

  “Who did?” Lust-addled, Mason could only stare at her.

  “The men in the Chevy Malibu.”

  “What?”

  She nodded toward the gas station behind them. Slowly, Mason turned his head and spotted the Malibu. Understanding dawned. Charlee hadn’t asked him to kiss her because she was overcome by passion. She’d just been trying to avoid being spotted by the guys in the white Chevy.

  He felt stupid and foolish and thick-witted. To think he’d actually believed Charlee had wanted to kiss him. But it had been nothing but a ruse, a ploy, a plot to keep them from being identified by their pursuers. His pulse kicked hard against his neck vein, embarrassed, ashamed.

  Chagrined, he stepped back from her, lightly fingering his lips.

  “The hamburger is hiding the Bentley from their view but I don’t think it’ll take them long to figure out we’re here.” Charlee gripped his arm.

  “They’re coming after us,” Mason said flatly and stuffed down his mortification. He felt the way you did when someone waved at you from across the room and you waved wildly back, happy to be recognized, only to realize the person was waving at someone behind you.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “What do we do now?”

  “I don’t know. I gotta think.” Charlee bit down on her thumbnail.

  At that moment a chartered tour bus—with the destination sign mounted over the cab spelling out Los Angeles—rumbled into the parking lot. The bus pulled to a stop between the diner and gas station, blocking their sight of the Malibu.

  “Maybe we could talk one of those truckers into giving us a ride,” Charlee said.

  The door to the tour bus whooshed open and the driver got off but Mason didn’t really pay much attention.

  “We could pay someone to give us a ride.” Instinctively, his hand went to his pocket before he remembered again that his wallet had been stolen. He swore under his breath.

  “Oops, looks like your money isn’t going to help us get out of this one.”

  What was the matter with her? What did she have against money? Or against him for that matter?

  “Don’t worry, big spender. I’ve got it covered.” Charlee unbuttoned two more buttons on her shirt, revealing an eye-popping amount of skin.

  She handed him her straw cowboy hat, then bent over from the waist to brush her fingers through her hair. When she straightened, her curls had a wild, tousled just-rolled-out-of-bed look. She licked her lips to moisten them.

  “What in the hell do you think you’re doing?” he growled and grabbed her elbow as she started to stroll away.

  “Just like you told me. Trying to catch flies with honey.”

  With breasts like that on display and that madcap hair corkscrewing everywhere she could snag every fly on every pair of blue jeans in the diner. Jealousy, mean and hungry, chomped into him at the thought of those men ogling his Charlee.

  “Over my dead body. I’m not going to let you expose yourself in exchange for a ride.”

  “Got any other bright ideas? If so I’d like to hear ‘em. I’m open. Oh, and hurry. I did happen to notice when those goons got out of the Malibu that they were wearing shoulder holsters under their jackets.”

  “You’re saying they’re dangerous.”

  “I’m saying they’ve got guns and we don’t.”

  “Excuse me, folks.”

  Charlee and Mason glanced over to see the beefy, ruddy-faced tour bus driver standing next to them, a clipboard clutched in his hand and a harried frown pulling at his brow.

  “Yes?” she asked.

  “Are you Skeet and Violet Hammersmitz?”

  Mason opened his mouth to deny it and Charlee promptly trod on his toe.

  “Ow.” He glared at her. If he wasn’t so jealous and upset and embarrassed and confused, he might have been quicker on the uptake.

  “Excuse us.” She fluttered her eyelashes at the driver who was busily checking out the cleavage she’d forgotten to button back up. Mason had an irresistible urge to plant his fist in the guy’s face and the intensity of his response shocked him. “My husband and I are having a little tiff. What did you say?”

  Husband? What was the little minx up to?

  “Are you the couple who missed the bus in Tucson and called in to say you’d meet up with us here in Nowhere Junction?” the driver asked.

  “See any other couples around here?” Charlee waved a hand.

  “Well come on then, get on the bus. We’re running late as it is and we got a schedule to keep. We’re supposed to be in L.A. before midnight and it looks like we’re not going to make it before two.” The driver turned and headed back to the tour bus.

  “What in the hell do you think you’re doing?” Mason hissed once the man was out of earshot. “Telling that guy I’m your husband? I don’t like lying.”

  “I’m getting us a ride to L.A., doofus.”

  “Oh.” He paused a minute. “But, Charlee, that�
�s not right. What about the other couple? What happens when they get here and the bus has left without them?”

  “Let’s forgo the ethics for once, Eagle Scout.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with having standards.”

  “Yeah, yeah, it’s admirable and all that but let’s be sensible for once. The other couple doesn’t have armed thugs following them. Plus obviously they’ve got another ride, or how else would they get out here? Don’t worry about Skeet and Violet. They’ll be just fine.”

  “Good point.” He conceded.

  The driver tooted the horn and motioned for them to get a move on.

  “Well?” Charlee angled her head toward the bus. “Which is it? A free ride out of here or a showdown with those two Soprano wanna-bes?”

  Just as she asked the question, the two men from the Malibu stalked into view, heading straight for the diner. With a jolt, Mason recognized them.

  “Hey,” he said. “They are the same guys from the airport. The ones who stole my wallet.” Angrily, he started forward, his intent to challenge them.

  Charlee grabbed him by the belt loop. “Whoa there, where do you think you’re going?”

  “They’ve got my wallet.”

  “And if you confront them you’re gonna end up in the trunk of their car. Trust me on this. I know unsavory characters, and those two are as sleazy as they come. They’ve already stolen your wallet, you wanna add your life to their list of accomplishments?”

  “No.” He hated to let this go. Every male instinct urged him to fight for what he knew was right.

  Charlee inclined her head. “The bus?”

  When she put it like that, the choice was easy. Pretend to be Charlee’s husband on a bus trip to L.A. or end up in some shallow grave in the desert.

  He shot a backward glance at Matilda and his heart tugged. Nothing more he could do for her anyway. Squaring his shoulders, he followed Charlee to the bus.

  CHAPTER 10

  Charlee climbed the bus steps, Mason right behind her. His warm breath tickled the back of her head and the hand he placed at her waist, well wowza. Her head still swam from the power of his kiss. Her lips and cheeks and chin still burned from the abrasion of his beard stubble.