by Ryanne Corey
“You’re talking like a bodyguard or something.” Miffed, Julie withdrew her hand, folding her arms across her chest. “You should meet my brother. I’m sure the two of you would be the best of friends.”
Billy opened his mouth to tell her he was nothing like her damn brother, then put a choke-hold on the words. “Whatever.”
“You say that a lot.”
“What?”
“Whatever. And you say it kind of like you’re growling, like this— ‘Whatever.’”
Billy looked at the face she was pulling, at the way she wrinkled her nose and drew her eyebrows together fiercely. She was completely unselfconscious, oblivious to the disarming expression on her face, doing her very best to imitate a growl. A little blond pit bull in this instance, just another side of her personality to add to the fascinating repertoire.
He couldn’t help himself. He turned his attention back to the road, smiling just a little. No, this was bad…he couldn’t afford to lose his perspective. Never mix business with pleasure…or anything else, for that matter. She was business. Business, business, business.
His smile grew to an irrepressible grin, despite the lecture he was delivering to himself. He allowed himself a quick look, his eyes following the line of her cheekbone, the soft curves of her parted mouth. She had no idea he was staring. She had no idea how her hair drank in light, didn’t realize how lush and ripe her baby-bowed mouth seemed to him. She even smelled like an unfamiliar delicacy, the fragrance subtle, lingering in the close confines of the car like music. Billy’s blood was zinging through his veins like 98-proof adrenalin.
“Of all the damn things,” he said softly, staring straight ahead.
“What?” she asked innocently, pulling her attention from the butterball moon hanging in the sky straight in front of them.
“Nothing.”
Julie sighed, dropping her head back on the seat. “First it was whatever, now it’s nothing. Has anyone ever told you that you’re not particularly good at communicating your feelings?”
“Actually, no. Usually I’m quite good at communicating my…feelings. At least that’s what I’ve been told.”
“I expect you’re not talking about verbal communication.”
“I expect I’m not.”
Julie closed her eyes, fighting a sudden and overwhelming fatigue. She wasn’t used to all this excitement. Her petite figure looked incredibly defenseless against the unrelenting darkness of the window beyond. “I think…” She yawned, covering her mouth as if a lady should. “I think you’re probably…sorry…you’re stuck with me…”
He waited, and when she didn’t continue, he realized she had fallen asleep. Just like that; one minute she was chattering like a trained parrot, the next she was sleeping like an angel. He allowed himself a longer look this time, fascinated for some strange reason by the way her hair looked caressing the long line of her throat.
“I expect I’m not sorry,” he whispered.
She awoke to music—loud, thumping, migraine-promoting music.
“There’s a nasty wake-up call,” Billy said, amused.
Blinking her eyes, she looked around, realizing they were at a truck stop. Billy had pulled up to a gas pump, and on the other side of the pump, a low-rider Toyota truck jumped and rocked with deafening noise. Underneath the truck, fluorescent purple lights glowed brightly.
“Have I been asleep long?” she mumbled, sitting up and stretching her arms. “Where are we?”
“You were asleep about an hour,” Billy said, turning off the engine. “And I haven’t the faintest idea where we are. We’re just lucky we stumbled across a gas station that’s open in the middle of the night. This Rent-a-Wreck was about dry.” Since he didn’t want Julie to know he had a cell phone in the glove box, he was relieved to see a pay phone inside the small convenience store. He was itching to call Harris and assure the poor guy his sister was safe. “Look, I have to visit the rest room. Why don’t you fill up the car while I’m gone? I’ll borrow a gas can while I’m inside.”
He was gone before she had time to form the words: I’ve never filled up a car before.
Which was probably good, Julie reasoned. Billy was already under the impression she was a mindless idiot; there was no reason to add fuel to that particular fire by confirming it.
All she had to do was add fuel to the car. And how hard could that be?
She got out of the car, wincing as the music from the Toyota hit her full-force. It wasn’t Chopin, but it was all part of the experience. She watched intently as a whip-cord-lean teenager jumped out of the truck, opened the little door to the gas tank and stuck the nozzle inside. Voilà.
The teenager looked over at her, his clean-shaven head glinting like a cue ball beneath the overhead lighting. “Hey,” he said.
“Hey what?” she asked curiously, fiddling with the door to the gas tank.
He grinned. “Just hey, Blondie. Are you having a little trouble there?”
The little door wouldn’t open. “No,” she muttered, pulling at it with both hands. “It’s just…stuck a little, I think.”
He sauntered over, bringing a heavy aroma of cigarette smoke with him. “You can’t open it from out here, or everyone would be siphoning your gas. Pop the safety latch inside.”
She bit her lip, trying to translate this into Palm Beach language. “Pop what?”
“You’re kidding, right? The door to the gas tank. Hell, haven’t you ever filled up a car before?”
“Not this particular car,” Julie said honestly. Nor any other car, but that was none of his business. “Could you show me where to…pop it?”
“I’d show you anything you want.” He looped his skinny arm around her shoulders, guiding her over to the driver’s side of the car. “You open the car door—like this—and pull that little lever—like this—and it pops the door to the gas tank open. Now pay attention and I’ll demonstrate.” He guided her back to the pump. “Pull the hose out. Twist the cap on the tank, put the hose in and push Start. See? It’s that easy. What’s your name?”
Julie was watching the gas pump intently, afraid the thing was going to overflow. “My what? Oh…Julie. Thank you for your help.”
“I’m Jeff.”
“Goodbye, Jeff.”
“What’s a pink and fluffy thing like you doing out here at 2:00 a.m.?”
“Is this thing going to stop on its own?”
He chuckled. “Poor baby. Whoever let you out alone after dark made a big mistake. Yeah, it will stop.” His fingers kneaded her shoulder. “You owe me something, don’t you think? Have you got a phone number?”
“Everyone has a phone number,” Julie said irritably, twisting away from him.
“What are the chances you’d give it to me?”
“The chances of my adopting you would be greater,” she said, tossing her hair back and staring him down as she would a fly, moth or any other insect annoying her. “Goodbye, Jeff.”
“Not interested, huh?”
“No,” Julie said with an overdose of sincerity, “but I’m sure I’ll have wonderful memories about you for the rest of my life.”
He held up both hands in surrender. “Your loss, Blondie.”
“Let’s talk about loss,” Billy said.
Julie hadn’t seen him approach, as most of her focus had been on the mysterious gas pump and the worrisome gurgling noises it was making. He was carrying a dented old gas can, which he put down directly in front of Jeff. “There are all kinds of loss,” Billy went on, with a smile that didn’t even begin to reach his eyes. “You can loose teeth, for one thing. That kind of loss is really painful. You don’t want to lose any of your teeth, do you, kid?”
There was something about Billy’s expression that made Julie plant herself between the two. “This isn’t necessary. He was showing me how to make the gas pump work.”
“What-ever,” Billy replied, in his best growling fashion.
“Hey man, she needed help,” the teenager said, qui
ckly backing up as he talked. “She couldn’t figure out how to fill the car up, so I helped her. Ask, if you don’t believe me.”
Billy raised one eyebrow at Julie. She nodded and he seemed to relax almost imperceptibly. “Okay, kid. You can leave.”
Jeff didn’t need a second invitation. The fluorescent laces on his combat boots flashed as he sprinted inside the truck stop to pay for his gas. Billy never took his eyes off Julie, not for a second. A muscle in his jaw was working hard and fast. “You really don’t know how to fill up a car, do you?”
“If I did, would I embarrass myself like this?” Julie threw back, cheeks flaming. “He was just a baby, you didn’t need to scare him. You were a baby once…or were you?”
“Never,” Billy snapped. He was so frustrated, he wanted to kick something. Harris had just answered his private line when Billy had looked outside and seen Julie in what appeared to be yet another sticky situation. He’d hung up on the man to come to her rescue. “What is it with you? Didn’t you learn the first time? Don’t talk to strangers!”
“I never talk to strangers! I don’t know any strangers!”
Billy thumped his head with the heel of his hand. “Why do I expect logic from you? Julie, that kid was a stranger. That drunk trying to get in your car was a stranger. Hell, I’m a stranger! You shouldn’t be talking to any of us, don’t you get that?”
“You’re a policeman,” Julie sniffed. “You’re perfectly safe.”
“What if I’m a bad policeman? Have you thought of that? You can’t go around trusting everyone you meet, or you’ll never get home. Learn from your mistakes.”
At that point, Julie knew she was either going to cry or slap him. Before she could lift her hand, the tears were welling up in her soft brown eyes. “You don’t need to talk to me like this,” she sniffed. “I have enough on my mind without taking your abuse. You’re overreacting, anyway. I’m not your responsibility. I know I’m not…familiar with some things, but I’m not stupid, either. Just take me back to my car and you can go on your merry way.”
“And you’ll go home?” Billy persisted, steeling himself against the weeping Bambi look.
“When I darn well please,” Julie tossed back, refusing to be intimidated as easily as poor Jeff had been. “Which could be months from now!”
Silently, Billy counted to ten. Then, quite softly he said, “Get in the car. Now.”
“And if I don’t?” some devil made her say.
He took two steps, bringing his body three inches from hers. He dipped his head, letting the words swirl over her parted lips. “Then I’ll spank the living daylights out of you, right here and right now.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“Ha! Honey, at this point there’s no telling what I’ll do.”
Brown eyes warred with blue for a good ten seconds. Julie gulped, lifted her chin and tried to say something to break the standoff, but the small movement closed the distance between them. For the space of a heartbeat she felt the touch of his lips on hers, no deeper than moonlight. Her body prickled fiercely like awakening flesh from top to bottom. And somewhere in the depths of her unconsciousness, she thought to herself, I want more. Whatever this is, I want more.
And so it was Billy who finally jumped back, Billy who threw open her car door and pushed her inside with barely restrained force. He’d known precisely what she was thinking, not only because she was too inexperienced to hide it, but because he was thinking the same thing.
More.
He decided he wasn’t getting paid nearly enough for this job.
On the positive side, the not-so-good Samaritan was gone when they returned to the cypress jungle where Julie had abandoned her car. On the negative side, so was Julie’s Porsche.
“Oh, my sainted aunt,” she whispered, her jaw dropping. “Did I…could I have…I was so distracted, I may have left my keys—”
“—in the Porsche,” Billy said in a flat voice. If he were an emotional man, he would seriously consider shedding a few tears at this point. He couldn’t think of a time when he’d been so damned exasperated. “This is a real red-letter day for you, isn’t it? In case no one has told you this, people who drive exotic sports cars are not supposed to leave the keys in the ignition.”
“I’m not some kind of dimwit. Whether you believe it or not, I don’t make a habit of leaving my keys in the ignition. I wasn’t thinking straight at the time. That disgusting person who apparently made off with my car really had me rattled.” She paused, blinking away the moisture gathering in her eyes. “What else could go wrong tonight?”
Despite his own frustration, Billy wanted to erase the forlorn look on her beautiful face. “Look at the bright side, kiddo. He left you that fine 1969 Ford pickup for trade. You could sell it for parts.”
A loud sniff. “These kinds of things never happened before.”
“Welcome to the real world. So what now?”
Julie looked at Billy sideways, biting her lip. “Well…I might need another little ride.”
“Another little ride?”
“Just to a telephone,” she assured him. “We could head back in the general direction of Palm Beach and stop at the first telephone we come across. I’ll just call Harris and…you could go on your merry way.”
Billy’s forehead thumped on the steering wheel. “I feel like I’m in a nightmare and can’t wake up,” he muttered. “You’re like a little tornado, creating havoc wherever you touch down. I really feel for your poor brother.”
“My poor brother won’t know I’m gone until the morning.” Julie’s lower lip quivered ever so slightly. “And there’s no need to be insulting. We all have our areas of expertise.”
Despite everything, Billy’s mouth tipped up on one side. “That’s true. I was under the impression you’re in the habit of depending on others, but maybe I was mistaken. Tell me, your area of expertise would be…?”
Julie thought. What on earth was she supposed to say, I’m a pro at using a charge card? “My area of expertise is none of your business. Suffice it to say I have one. Several. I have several areas of expertise.”
He smiled, his mouth curved with a hint of tenderness. He was finding it terribly hard to stay angry with her. He’d thought he had seen everything in his gritty days as an undercover cop, but he’d never come across a woman with so much spirit and so little experience to back it up. Strangely enough, he almost envied her in a wistful sort of way. What would it be like to have so little experience with the world that you expected the best from everyone? The way Billy figured it, if you had no illusions or expectations, they weren’t going to blow up in your face. Though it had never been a conscious choice he’d made, he’d been disillusioned almost from day one. When Billy was two years old, his father had gone out one night for a beer and never come back. His mother had her hands full keeping them both fed and clothed while she worked her way through school to get her RN degree. She’d done her best, but she didn’t have the time or resources to protect him from reality. Five years after she’d achieved her dream and become a nurse, she was diagnosed with leukemia. She had died four agonizing months later, with Billy by her side. The last thing she had said to him was “I’m sorry.” He had the feeling she wasn’t apologizing for dying on him, but for the circumstances under which she’d brought him into the world.
At that point, Billy began charting his own course. He’d decided early on to look at life as a very dangerous game. The more dangerous you were, the more likely you were to stay alive. He always expected the worst from his adversaries and was seldom disappointed. In Billy’s world, innocence was a weakness. Purity was extinct and idealism was a terrible flaw. It could get you killed.
This world was not a pretty place, damn it. Why did spending a couple of hours with Julie Roper make him wonder if he might have missed a rainbow somewhere along the way? He told himself he was an idiot, yet continued to watch her, devouring her with his thoughts. She dropped into the passenger seat of his car and slammed th
e door with a frustrated sigh.
“All I wanted was to go on a drive,” she whispered. “No Harris, no Beau, no chauffeur—”
“Wait a second. Who’s Beau?”
“What? Oh…he’s a friend. I just wanted some time to myself, no one escorting me, no one waiting anxiously for me to come back. Just a ride, that’s all I wanted.”
Just a ride, she’d said, but Billy heard the tremor of loneliness and defeat in her voice. With an odd sense of surprise, he realized he had been wrong about her motives. This wasn’t a joyride or even a small rebellion against a spoiled and privileged existence. This was something quite different. He watched the moistness gather in her eyes, saw the glitter of a single tear rolling down her soft cheek.
Billy was no stranger to a woman’s tears, but more often than not, they came from the wives, mothers or girlfriends of someone he’d locked up. Like everyone else in his line of work, he’d been trained to offer a professional compassion, which stopped short of genuine sympathy. As a matter of fact, he’d been famous for his emotional detachment.
Cool, calm and controlled under any circumstances. Yes, siree.
“Will you please not do that?” he said abruptly, an unusual tightness in his throat.
Julie sniffed loudly. “Do what?”
“That thing you keep doing. Crying.” Billy searched his pockets, coming up with a napkin from a fast-food joint. He was lucky to find that. He was the sort of man who carried a gun, not a nice white handkerchief. “Here. Blow your nose, and…and think happy thoughts.” Hell, he sounded like Mary Poppins.
Julie took the napkin and dabbed her nose, blinking away the tears blurring her vision. “I’m sorry. This is none of your concern. If you…if you could take me to a phone, I’ll call Harris and put an end to all this. You know what they say…try, try again another day.”
“Try what?” Billy asked suspiciously.