Joyride

by Patricia Coughlin

The general gave a small snort. “Don’t be hasty. You might not deem it such a pleasure to meet her if you had the chance. I’m afraid living with me for all those years has left the girl with an aversion to all things military. And uniform or no uniform, my boy,” he concluded with a small chuckle, “you still look like a soldier.”

  “So I’ve been told,” Bolt muttered, meeting Hollister’s grin with a sardonic look as he unconsciously ran his hand over his closely cropped dark brown hair.

  For a while after leaving the military he’d worn a full beard and let his hair grow until it touched his shoulders. He wasn’t sure if it had been a natural reaction to ten years of following orders right down to the length of his whiskers or simply a way of trying to become a new man. A different man from the one he’d once believed himself to be. Whatever the reason, he’d eventually tired of the maintenance involved in all that hair. He spent a lot of time on his boat and in the water, and short was simpler. Bolt liked to keep things simple.

  That was why the general’s request made him wary. It sounded so simple, and he had learned that things that sounded too simple seldom were.

  Bolt dropped his hand to his side. “I guess old habits die hard.”

  “That’s what I’m hoping,” Hollister replied.

  Bolt tensed. “Meaning?”

  “Meaning that several of your old habits make you the perfect man to handle this little matter for me.”

  “I disagree. I hate to drive.”

  “Ah, but this isn’t driving like you’ve always known it. This is a ‘57 Chevy, a convertible, the sort of car every red-blooded American man dreams of taking out on the open road.”

  “Not me.”

  “You will, trust me. It will be Route 66 revisited, the wind on your face, just you and highway, only you’ll be driving north to south instead of east to west.”

  “Sir, with all due respect,” Bolt began, picking his words as carefully as he had once learned to pick his way across a mine field, “driving in any direction is not what Hollister Associates hired me to do.”

  “That’s why I didn’t wait to call you into my office to discuss this,” the older man countered placidly. “I’m talking to you about this on a personal basis, man to man.”

  “I understand that, General, but there are other things to consider here...the firm’s liability, for starters. I’m sure this car we’re talking about is extremely valuable, perhaps even irreplaceable. That means there are insurance considerations involved. And the time factor. Right now I have other obligations...”

  “I’ll handle all that,” Hollister promised with an impatient wave of his hand. “This will take top priority.”

  “There’s also the matter of our agreement that my assignments would be limited to consulting. No active involvement.”

  “Hell’s bells, man, I’m not asking you to pull off anything fancy, simply to do a little favor for a kid just out of college and still wet behind the ears.”

  Bolt stared at the board in frustration and impulsively moved his knight forward. Hollister immediately countered by sliding his king to the right.

  “Check,” he said. “Now, is that all that’s bothering you about this? The question of liability?”

  “Damn,” Bolt muttered. He looked up. “No, that’s not all. It’s probably a standard shift, as well. Do you know how long it’s been since I drove a standard? And the gas problem. Where the hell am I supposed to find leaded gas on the interstate? Not to mention—”

  “Cut the bull,” Hollister broke in. “Are you saying no to the job?”

  “I’m saying it’s out of my line. If you like, I’m sure I could find someone reliable who—”

  “I don’t want someone reliable, damn it,” he snapped. “I want you.”

  Bolt slanted his former commanding officer a wry look. “Thank you, sir.”

  “You know what I mean. Damn it, Bolt, you’re the only man I trust with the safety of my...the safety of this car. I’ve told you how important this is to my niece.”

  “Speaking of your niece, what’s she going to say about being cut out of her own deal?”

  “Cat won’t be a problem, I’m certain of that.” He studied Bolt closely, his steel-gray brows lowering into the fierce frown that had helped earn him the nickname no one ever dared use to his face. Lucifer. “I could make it an order, you know.”

  “You could,” Bolt agreed quietly. “Except that you’re retired and I no longer have to follow orders.”

  “Just because you don’t have to follow them doesn’t mean you won’t. If I was to make it an order, that is.”

  Bolt met the older man’s gaze silently and didn’t disagree. It was well-known that the general had always inspired in his men a willingness to go above and beyond the call of duty because he went above and beyond what duty required in his loyalty to them. His creed was that he never left a live body behind. Never. A nearly impossible feat in the high-risk world of Special Services.

  Bolt had spent a decade in that world, nearly a third of his life. To him, Hollister was much more than a former commanding officer. He was the role model Bolt had strived to emulate. In spite of the fact that he’d failed miserably, he still felt a loyalty to the general that had nothing to do with active duty or obligation.

  “So,” he said finally, “are you making it an order, sir? Are you telling me my job with the firm depends on my agreeing to do this?”

  “Not exactly. Then, even if you complied, you might resent it, and I wouldn’t want you sliding behind the wheel in the wrong frame of mind. So let’s just call it a favor and leave it at that, shall we?”

  “Why not?” Bolt agreed resignedly as he reached for his king to make the only move left to him.

  The general follow suit. “Checkmate,” he said.

  Bolt nodded, his slight smile cynical. “My thoughts exactly.”

  Chapter Two

  She was graceful and full-bodied, at least compared to the leaner, more angular frames currently in vogue. She had the sort of curves that had first turned Bolt’s head years ago, when he was still as much boy as man. They could still turn his head today, in spite of the fact that such lushness had supposedly gone out of fashion with trend-setting designers.

  Fashion be damned. Just looking at her made his mouth water. He found himself so distracted, in fact, that he nearly forgot to ask himself what the hell she was doing tossing luggage into the trunk of his car.

  He’d arrived in Montreal late last night and had found the Chevy he’d been sent to fetch exactly where the general had told him it would be, in a private storage lot in a part of the city not frequented by tourists or anyone else who had a brain and some choice in the matter. As his very persuasive boss had made clear, Bolt had no choice.

  The lot had been locked when he arrived at five-thirty this morning, eager to get the dratted chore over with. However, even with no attendant on hand to provide him with the key as arranged, there had been no missing a ‘57 Chevy convertible. Cherry red with a white top and white interior, it gleamed as brightly as if it had just rolled off the showroom floor. Wherever the car had been for the better part of the past forty years, it had obviously been pampered.

  It was a real beauty, all right. Bolt was surprised to discover that the animosity he felt about being there didn’t extend to the Chevy. Although he’d yet to have the pleasure of slipping inside, he was beginning to understand what the general had meant about the car being a dream come true. He doubted there was man alive who wouldn’t understand the possessive craving such a car could unleash or who would blame him for already thinking of it as his baby, at least for the duration of the trip. Which brought him right back to wondering who the lady now making herself at home in the driver’s seat might be.

  She’d been nowhere around when he stopped by earlier, of that much Bolt was certain. There would have been even less chance of his overlooking her than the Chevy, he thought, gazing appreciatively across the lot as she fiddled with the outside mirror. He�
��d left to have breakfast and go for a short jog in hopes of working out some of the kinks remaining in his legs from yesterday’s long flight before he began the even longer drive south. When he returned, the Chevy had been moved to the front of the lot, its top rolled down, and this heavenly distraction in snug white shorts and a red tank top was dancing around acting as if she owned it.

  Thanks to the dark glasses that concealed nearly half her face, Bolt hadn’t yet determined whether the woman was as much a classic beauty as the car, but with an innate degree of macho insensitivity that he would never admit to publicly, he could honestly say that with everything else she had going for her, it hardly mattered.

  There was always the possibility that her sitting in the car he was there to claim could be a mistake, some sort of crazy mix-up where she’d been given the keys to a vintage Chevy instead of her own Toyota compact and simply hadn’t noticed the difference. It was possible, especially if even a fraction of the blonde jokes he’d heard were based on fact, but Bolt wasn’t naive or optimistic enough to seriously consider it for even a second. No, somewhere deep inside, he knew even before he began his inexorable move toward her that the woman was trouble.

  He stopped beside the half open driver’s door, lowering the black canvas duffel that contained several days worth of clothes and other essentials to the ground by his side. The battered leather flight jacket, that was as much old friend as clothing, remained slung over his shoulder. The lenses of his sunglasses were dark enough to hide the direction of his gaze and he wasn’t near noble enough to keep from letting it follow the movement of her soft, smooth thighs as she experimented with the clutch.

  “Morning,” he said. Might as well approach this civilly.

  She tossed her head back as she turned to look at him, distracting Bolt all over again with the way her hair glittered in the morning sunlight. It was the same deep rich gold as good ale, and long, the way he believed a woman’s hair ought to be, fanning across her bare shoulders like a see-through cape.

  “Good morning,” she said. “Are you the mechanic the motor club sent to check out the clutch?”

  “Not exactly.”

  Elegant tawny brows arched above her dark glasses, registering her amusement. “Do you mean they didn’t exactly send you or you’re not exactly a mechanic?”

  “Both.” Bolt frowned and peered into the car, her long, tanned legs forgotten in his instantaneous rush of concern over the clutch. “What’s wrong with it?”

  “I think it’s sticking.”

  “Mind if I have a try?”

  “That depends. You did say you’re not from the auto club?”

  “That’s right. But I do know about clutches. And I’m here—their man isn’t.”

  She caught her bottom lip between her teeth as she glanced toward the glass-walled booth, where the young attendant was talking on the telephone, and then down the narrow street that ran alongside the lot. There wasn’t an auto club truck in sight.

  “All right,” she agreed, sliding from behind the wheel. “I suppose it can’t hurt for you to take a look.”

  Wordlessly, Bolt dropped his jacket on top of his bag and took her place, using his right foot on the brake and depressing the clutch pedal with his left. He let it up slowly, frowning.

  “See what I mean?”

  He nodded curtly. He depressed it a second time, again letting it up in small increments, cocking his head to the side like a safecracker listening for the proper fall of the tumblers. He pumped it hard several times and looked up at her as she leaned over the open door to watch.

  “It sticks,” he announced.

  Her brows arched eloquently once more. “Thank you for confirming my diagnosis, Doctor. Any suggestions as to what I should do about it?” Her voice was soft and a little raspy in an almost girlish way, so it took a few seconds after she delivered her one-liner for him to realize he’d been zapped.

  Without replying, Bolt reached for his duffel bag from where he sat and unzipped one of the numerous side pockets to pull out a can of automotive spray lubricant. He didn’t care how much it was worth or how well it had been pampered, an old car was still an old car. Things were bound to stick and grind a bit here and there, and he had come prepared to at least handle the sticking.

  Swinging his legs from the car, he half crouched, half laid across the wide front seat and liberally sprayed the metal shaft that disappeared into the opening in the floorboard, being careful not to get any lubricant on the clutch pedal itself. There was no telling how rubber that old might react to a chemical assault.

  After giving the spray a few seconds to work, he twisted upright behind the wheel once more and again pumped the clutch, then turned to her with a grin.

  “Feels good. I think it’s going to live a little longer.”

  “Thank goodness,” she exclaimed. “I was afraid I’d gone and broken the darn thing before I even started it up.”

  “Broke it?”

  “Right, you know, the car.”

  Bolt nodded. “I just never heard it put quite that way before, as if breaking a car was about the same as breaking a lamp or a window.”

  “Isn’t it?” She shrugged. “Cosmically speaking, that is. Anyway, thank heavens it’s working...and for doctors who make house calls.”

  As she spoke she leaned over the door and reached across him for her purse, laying on the passenger seat. Her long wavy hair spilled across his forearms in a silky tickle. The delicate sensation coupled with the scent of flowers that clung to the woman made Bolt light-headed in a way he wasn’t accustomed to feeling so quickly or unexpectedly. Sure, women turned him on, but these days it was at his convenience, only when he was in the mood to be turned on and never when he had something much more pressing on his mind. Like now.

  “What do I owe you?” she asked him.

  Bolt, his awakened senses momentarily overriding his common sense, didn’t immediately comprehend. “Owe me?”

  “For fixing the clutch.”

  “Nothing. It was nothing.”

  “That spray you used isn’t nothing. At least let me pay you for that,” she offered, holding a ten-dollar bill out to him.

  Bolt shook his head. “I mean it, I don’t want money from you.” He climbed from the car, carefully shutting the door behind him, and stood with one hip resting against it. “Just your name will be payment enough.”

  She pushed her hair behind her right ear, her mouth curving upward in a smile. Her mouth was gorgeous, full and mobile, giving rise to more politically incorrect thoughts on Bolt’s part.

  “Just my name for payment,” she repeated softly. “How very romantic.”

  Romantic? Bolt didn’t see anything so romantic about trading a shot of silicone spray for information he badly needed to know, but if she wanted to think of it that way, so be it. Just so long as she told him her name and they got this thing settled soon. At this rate the early start he’d hoped for was going to be early afternoon.

  “Your name,” he prodded.

  “I mean it, you’re very sweet to ask, and to go out of your way to help me, but I’m afraid it’s a case of bad timing. Mismatched karma. I’m leaving Montreal this morning. Any minute, in fact.”

  Bolt barely registered the fact that she had mistakenly assumed he was trying to pick her up. All he heard was that she was leaving Montreal this morning. Not a good sign.

  “Where are you going?” he asked.

  “Home,” she replied. “To Florida. That’s all the way—”

  “I know where it is. Your name,” he said again.

  Her smile faded. She studied him from behind her dark glasses for a moment, then shrugged. “Catrina. Catrina Amelia Bandini.”

  She said it defiantly, her chin lifting as if challenging him to dispute it.

  Bolt frowned. She was making it up. She had to be. Who would name a kid Catrina Bandini? He couldn’t recall by what name the general had referred to his niece, if he had even mentioned her name at all, but he was cert
ain it wasn’t Catrina Bandini. So she either wasn’t his niece, after all, or she wasn’t as trusting and foolhardy as her uncle feared. At least she knew enough not to give her real name to a stranger in a parking lot.

  “But my friends call me Cat,” she added suddenly, her smile reappearing as if she couldn’t help herself. “Satisfied?”

  He wasn’t. Not by a long shot. No man would ever be satisfied with just knowing her name, which was why she shouldn’t part with it so easily. Part of Bolt wanted to take off her glasses and look into her eyes, to lean close and see if she really smelled as good as his first impression, to tuck her hair behind her other ear and trace the exposed line of her jaw with his fingertips.

  Another part of him wished she would just disappear into thin air, because while Catrina Amelia Bandini didn’t ring any bells for him, the much simpler Cat had his head chiming like a church belfry on Easter morning.

  Cat. He remembered now. That’s what Hollister had called his niece.

  “No,” he replied, wishing that he hadn’t recognized the name and that the woman before him had turned out to be a car thief. It would have made everything so much simpler. “As a matter of fact, I’m not satisfied. Tell me, do you happen to have an uncle by the name of Henry Hollister...General Henry Hollister?”

  “What is this?” she countered, her lips pursed in bewilderment as she shoved her sunglasses to the top of her head and stared at him suspiciously with eyes the color of wild violets.

  Not beautiful, that was Bolt’s first thought as her glasses came off. Her nose was a little too long and her startling eyes a little too close-set for her to be called classically beautiful. Even her cheeks were a bit on the round side. The expression “baby fat” prickled at the back of his mind.

  But if she wasn’t beautiful, she sure was something. Even when she was frowning and looking riled, as she was now, there was a spark in her expression, a sense of excitement in the tilt of her head and the flutter of very long, very dark lashes that drew your attention and held it.

  She was Hollister’s niece, all right, Bolt could feel it in his gut. And he wished with all his might that she was a thousand miles away, back home where she was supposed to be, where the general was supposed to see to it that she stayed, while he, Bolt, played her errand boy.