Tag, You're It!

by Penny McCall

Alex shouldered her satchel and followed him down the hall, waiting patiently while he swiped the door key. It took him three tries. And he could feel her smirking behind him.

  He tossed his pack into the overstuffed chair and turned a slow circle. The room’s other furnishings consisted of a double bed, a dresser and television, and a table.

  Even if Tag had had the faintest idea how to address the Miss USA issue, she didn’t give him a chance, picking up his field pack and tossing it back to him. “I’d appreciate it if you keep your stuff off my bed.” She dropped her satchel on the table. “It’s only fair, since you got us the room.”

  Conversationally, Tag let the Miss USA thing drop, but he couldn’t help imagining how she’d look in nothing but a sash and high heels. The visual took him a long way back to normal. Which, considering the circumstances, was half aroused. “I don’t suppose there’s a chance you’ll sneak under the covers with me in the middle of the night.”

  “No, and I’m betting you won’t try to cram yourself into the chair with me.”

  “Maybe if you wore your crown.”

  That got a reluctant smile out of her. “If you’re a good boy, maybe I’ll tuck you in. I can probably scare up a night-light and a teddy bear, too.”

  “I generally like something larger and a lot more energy to wrap my arms around.”

  “If you go back down to the lobby, I think you can fill that order.”

  He grinned, gave her a suggestive once-over. “Nothing compares to original equipment.”

  “Not very politically correct, Donovan.”

  “It’s not my job to be politically correct.”

  “You don’t have an actual job.”

  “Then it wouldn’t be fair to lead a woman on, me not being able to support her.”

  Not to mention that earning potential was a long-term consideration, and he struck her as a strictly short-term kind of guy. But she bet it was a hell of a roller coaster ride while it lasted. “I don’t think they’re looking for happily ever after.” She collapsed into the chair, tipped her head back, and closed her eyes. “Yeah, this’ll do.”

  Tag fetched a pillow and a blanket from the closet and dropped them in her lap. “What do you want for dinner?”

  “Room service.”

  “Rather stay in here and avoid your fan club downstairs?”

  She opened one eye and peered at him. “I take it you’re over your remorse since you’re teasing me about it.”

  “You want an apology?”

  The chagrin on his face had her smiling. “All I want is a shower, a meal, and eight hours of sleep. In that order.”

  He opened the room service menu and leaned over her shoulder, making sure there wasn’t an ounce of interest in his voice, expression, or body language. She wanted to sleep in the chair, that was fine with him. He wasn’t about to give her the satisfaction of making a big deal about it.

  “Order me anything,” Alex said, stripping the top sheet from the bed and heading for the bathroom.

  Tag ordered, and pretty soon he heard the water running. Not ten minutes before he’d been all but wrapped around her, and now she was naked not twenty feet away. Sure, there was a closed, and probably locked, door between them, and he wasn’t Superman; he didn’t have X-ray vision. But he had an imagination, and despite the workout it had been getting lately, it still managed to rise to the challenge. And it wasn’t just his imagination doing calisthenics.

  Every muffled splash of the water was torture, and when the water shut off he could almost see her, nothing but smooth, wet skin and sleek female muscles. Miss USA or not, it was a killer combination when his interaction was limited to aural and mental.

  He needed to divert himself, so he pulled out the map he’d stolen from Junior, retrieved Alex’s satchel, and reached in for her map, coming out with something that made him smile, then laugh.

  Yet again, she’d caught him off guard, Tag realized, not a particularly comfortable thought. Whenever he believed he’d sketched her personality completely, there was another facet to her. And it served to remind him that he kept taking her at face value, kept forgetting she was a key part of this treasure hunt. And that if he forgot that at the wrong moment it might cost them both.

  She came out of the bathroom just then, and all he could do was thank god they weren’t in danger at the moment because she made it pretty hard to maintain his focus on the case. The top sheet was folded a couple of times and wrapped around her toga-style, and she had her hair slicked back, making the bone structure of her face even more striking. If she looked athletic with her clothes on, she was amazing half naked. And there was nothing as attractive as a woman who felt absolutely comfortable in her own skin.

  Apparently that hadn’t always been the case.

  He held up the item he’d found in her satchel, a photo of Alex decked out in full Miss USA regalia, a stalking mountain lion by her side. “ ‘Beauty Queen Crusades for Beasts,’ National Geographic, October 2004,” he read off the cover. “No wonder you went to such trouble to hide it from me when you showed it to the librarian—not that I realized you were hiding it.”

  She stopped in the act of pawing through her duffel, just her head turning. Her gaze shifted from the magazine to his face, and her temper went from zero to fuming. “You went through my things? Never mind, stupid question. You’ve invaded every other part of my life, why not my privacy?”

  “I was going to look at the maps and I pulled this out of your satchel by accident.” He gave her a once-over. “Is this woman in there somewhere? Or have you killed her off entirely?”

  “You should be glad it’s me. You couldn’t even get close to that woman.” Alex plucked the magazine out of his hand and stuffed it away. “I’m not ashamed of my pageant days,” she said, and if her voice was tightly controlled, he thought he’d seen her shoulders relax at least a little. “I kept it to myself because it was hard enough to get respect from the people in Casteel. A woman with a career, living alone in the woods, is strange enough to them. Add in beauty queen and it would’ve been hell.”

  Tag didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to.

  “See? You’re thinking about it, aren’t you?”

  “Trust me, I have no illusions about who you are and who I’m going to bed with.”

  “Just the going to bed part is an illusion,” she said.

  More along the lines of a fantasy, Tag thought. One that kept getting better and better. He hated to admit it, but she was right about the Miss USA thing—beauty, a killer body, and purity, the kind of combination that made every straight man want to do her, and every other man want to be her. Tag might’ve tried the former if he’d thought there was any chance she’d say yes. And if it wouldn’t have proven her right.

  “When is the food going to get here?” she asked. “I’m starving.”

  Tag shrugged, contemplating gravity, his eyes on the top of her sheet.

  “You’re still thinking about it” she accused.

  “I’m sorry, all right? I can’t help it. The whole Miss USA thing caught me off guard.”

  “You don’t sound sorry. You sound angry. And I told you at the cabin,” she reminded him. “It’s your own fault you didn’t believe me.”

  “You said it like it was a joke.”

  “Because it was a joke. Not the pageant. Me being Miss USA. I did it for all the wrong reasons, and when I figured that out, I stepped down. Unfortunately that was after I got engaged to the biggest ass on this continent or any other. I dumped him right after I dumped the title. I thought I was doing him a favor, since it was the title he wanted to marry in the first place, that and…” She ran both hands through her choppy hair, flashed him a look, dismayed and slightly embarrassed to have said more than she’d intended. “I went back to college where I belonged, got my PhD, and came out here, and that’s all I’m going to say about it.”

  Perfect timing, since a knock signaled the arrival of their meal. Tag was doing a pretty good job of behavi
ng himself, but the waiter wasn’t quite as immune to Alex’s bedsheet, so Tag hustled him out of the room, shuttling the food to the table himself.

  Alex took the silver dome off her dinner, barely paying attention when Tag did likewise. She dug in, eating with the same kind of disinterest she’d show tossing logs into her fireplace. And when she was full, she stopped. She didn’t toy with the food, didn’t pick at the remnants. She shoved her plate away and sat back.

  To Tag, eating was like sex. Both were sensual experiences not to be rushed through.

  He’d been attracted to Alex from the moment he set eyes on her—or at least since the moment he remembered setting eyes on her. She was a striking, physically appealing, and self-confident woman, and he’d never doubted that sex with her would be an intense experience. But he was beginning to wonder if the reality would live up to the advertising. She kept herself so tightly controlled, he wasn’t sure she’d be able to let go.

  And then he took the cover off the dessert tray and something came over her face he’d never seen before. Desire. Pure, intense, unadulterated longing.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “Chocolate mousse.” He poured her a glass of wine, and she picked it up and chugged it without taking her eyes off the two little glass dishes in the center of the table.

  Tag chose one, spooned some up and put it in his mouth, watching her eyes follow the spoon. “Not having dessert?” he asked, taking another bite. “Or would you rather just watch?”

  She looked away, but when he deliberately clinked the spoon against the glass she flinched. And Tag smiled. It had been impulse, really, an afterthought that had him ordering dessert. “You told me to order whatever I wanted.”

  Alex shrugged.

  “You had a stash of candy bars at your cabin.”

  More shrugging, still no looking.

  “You must like chocolate, so why are you turning your nose up?”

  Her head turned, and she started to say something bitchy. Tag shoved a spoonful of mousse in her mouth.

  Her eyes closed, her head fell back, her breath came out on a long, moaning sigh, and Tag didn’t wonder anymore if having sex with her would be amazing.

  She took her time, savoring that single mouthful of chocolate like it was all the pleasure she’d ever need. It was Tag who wanted more.

  If she looked like that, and he felt like this, after just one spoonful, he didn’t know if he could survive watching her take another taste, especially sitting all the way across the table from her. But he’d never been very good at self-denial. He slid the other bowl across the table; Alex met him halfway, clamping a hand around his wrist.

  “I don’t think this is a good idea,” she said. Her voice was even smokier than usual; her eyes, when she lifted them to his, were dark, sexually hazed, and slightly crazed. Quite the turn-on.

  “I’m going to take a shower,” he said, almost as surprised to hear those words come out of his mouth as she was. He didn’t mind shocking her, but that wasn’t why he’d said it.

  He took his turn in the bathroom, and okay, he had to run the water cold. But he knew he’d been right to hold off when he came out and found Alex pacing, keyed up, needing to work off some energy and looking for a handy way to do it. He didn’t want to be handy. They were going to hook up sooner or later. He’d be damned if he gave her a built-in excuse to blow it off the morning after, and it was clear as glass that to Alex chocolate was the same thing as getting drunk.

  “I’m turning in,” he said, getting into bed before she could notice that the cold shower was wearing off.

  “I’m not tired.”

  “No problem. Just keep it down, if you don’t mind.”

  “Sure,” Alex said, and then she added cracking her knuckles to her pacing routine. She turned on the television, shut it off, and continued to prowl the room, opening drawers and checking the closets.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Looking for something to read.”

  “I thought you were going to be quiet.”

  “That was quiet.”

  He gave her an oh-right look.

  “I’m doing my best.”

  “Your best sucks,” Tag said. “It wouldn’t have anything to do with the chocolate, would it?”

  “You know it does,” she said. “You knew it when you shoved that dish over in front of me, and now I’m all…” She waved her hands, “Nervy.”

  “Nervy?”

  “Worked up.”

  “And nowhere to go with it?”

  She was still wearing the sheet, pacing back and forth again, her bottom lip caught between her teeth.

  Tag nearly jumped out of bed and took over for her.

  “Does this hotel have an exercise room?”

  He looked at the clock, trying to hold on to the ragged ends of his self-control. “Probably closed by now.”

  “I don’t suppose you have any other suggestions?”

  “You could go for a walk.”

  “Hmmmm. I hear chocolate is an aphrodisiac,” she said.

  His gaze tangled with hers. “I’ve heard that too.”

  “I could be convinced—”

  Tag was out of bed, his mouth on hers before she could finish the sentence. She kissed him back wildly, her teeth nipping at his bottom lip before she gave him the heat and softness of her mouth. Her hands rushed over him, tearing his shirt from him pants and burrowing underneath.

  He bore her back to the bed, rolled her underneath him, and staked her wrists to the mattress. He wanted some skin left on his back when they were through.

  “You have a condom?” she asked, her breath coming in hot little pants, her eyes frantic on his.

  “We won’t have to worry about it if I can’t get through this sheet,” Tag said.

  Alex shoved him away, whipped the sheet off, and tugged him back down before he could get a really good look at her.

  “Condom?”

  “Don’t have any.”

  She shoved him off again.

  “The guys on the plane took my wallet. You’re not on the pill?”

  “I live in the middle of nowhere. Alone.”

  And she was armed, Tag thought. He sat up on the edge of the bed and reached for the phone.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Calling the concierge.”

  She slammed her hand down on the phone.

  “No, you’re not.”

  “Somebody in this hotel has to have a condom.”

  “And what? You’re going to go door to door and ask all the Gold Rush conventioneers? Not happening.”

  “I could get dressed and hit the nearest drug store.”

  Alex sighed. “Don’t bother.”

  Tag reached for her.

  She pulled the sheet back around her. “That’s not happening, either.”

  “Then how are you going to work off all that energy?”

  Alex reached over and opened the drawer in the bedside table. Out came the Bible.

  “Do you really think that’ll stop me?”

  “Let’s see, your name is Donovan… Yeah, I think this will work.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  ALEX WAS UP HALF THE NIGHT. SO WAS TAG. TOO bad it was for different reasons. And in different ways. Alex spent some time pacing, some more time poring over the maps and muttering to herself. She finally collapsed facedown on the bed, forgetting she’d intended to sleep in the chair.

  Tag never got to sleep.

  About the time dawn began to show through the curtains he pulled on his clothes and skulked out of the room, staying quiet more to keep in practice than anything else. He could have ridden an elephant around the place and not roused Alex.

  He exited the hotel and made a beeline for the nearest drug store. He wasn’t spending another night like the last one; if Alex got within a foot of chocolate again, he intended to be prepared.

  He should have brought his Ruger instead. Condoms weren’t a whole lot of protection agai
nst the occupants of the long black car that pulled up to the curb just as he was getting back to the hotel. The rear door of the car opened from the inside; the man in the backseat was hired muscle, from the shoulder holster under his cheap suit coat to the clutch piece strapped to his ankle.

  “Hey, Mick,” Tag said, showing the small of his back and both ankles to save himself the public pat-down. He didn’t want to give the Gold Rush attendees the wrong idea about his personal preferences. Not getting shot by Mick was a pretty strong inducement, too.

  When Mick nodded, Tag ducked into the back and closed the door behind him. “Where’s Franky?”

  “Franky still ain’t walking too good.”

  Alex didn’t do anything halfway, even by accident. Tag would have been amused, if they’d left it at that. “That why you pulled a knife on her? Getting even?”

  “Knife?” Mick looked over at him, expression flat. “Nobody pulled a knife. We just threatened her, like we was told. So you could save her.”

  “I got held up by some old man with a thousand questions about the treasure. Lost sight of her.”

  Mick snorted, turned forward again. “She did a pretty good job of saving herself.”

  “She has a habit of doing that,” Tag muttered, mostly because his mind was racing, trying to make sense of this new information. Since there wasn’t a lot to go on, he came up woefully short.

  Somebody had attacked Alex; he’d been expecting that, which was why he’d been following her. But apparently he’d missed the fake attack and stumbled onto a real one. “You don’t know who the other guy was?” he asked Mick.

  “Nope.”

  “Any guesses?”

  “Nope.”

  Shit. This just got better and better. The logical culprit was Junior. When Alex had refused to throw in with him that first morning in town, he must’ve decided to take her out. But how far out, Tag wondered? Would he have been satisfied with Alex hurt and out of commission so she couldn’t guide anyone else? Or had he wanted her dead?

  Tag unclenched his fists, fought to think through the need to feel Junior’s scrawny little throat between his hands. There were holes in the theory, he told himself. The scent of buried treasure did strange things to otherwise normal people. Not that the people in Casteel were all that normal, and the strangers flocking the town ran the gamut from the mildly opportunistic to the downright criminal-minded. Any one of them could have gone after Alex. Or Tag might be about to come face-to-face with the culprit.