TALL, DARK AND TEXAN

by Jane Sullivan

  He glanced down at the paper. He didn't see the words. Didn't care about the words. He just looked at the way the light shone on the page. Then he raised his head and noticed the way the light shone in Wendy's eyes.

  "Weenie even appears better in this light," Wendy said. "And he needs all the help he can get."

  Wolfe glanced at the cat, who had twisted around to lie upside down with his paws sticking up in the air. "He looks like roadkill."

  "Ah, but now he's well-lit roadkill."

  "Where did you get this stuff?" Wolfe asked.

  "Shame on you. You're not supposed to ask where gifts come from."

  "I thought you were saving money."

  She sat down next to him, tucking her legs beside her. "I am. But Ramona gave me an advance on my salary today, and I thought these things would be nice."

  "But they must have cost a lot."

  "Not when you shop at the Trinity River Thrift Store. Hope you don't mind that they're a little bit used."

  No. He didn't. Not in the least. The items themselves didn't matter at all, because it wasn't about those.

  It was about Wendy.

  She got up suddenly, shoved the coffee table out of the way, then sat down cross-legged on the rug. She ran her palms over it, closing her eyes with delight. Then to his surprise, she yanked her sneakers off, then her socks. She put her hands behind her and rested on her palms, then brought her knees up and dug her toes into the deep pile of the rug.

  "It feels really soft," she murmured. "Wanna try it?"

  "No, thanks."

  "Oh, come on. Take off your shoes and socks." Before he realized what was happening, she'd grabbed his right foot and yanked off his boot.

  "Wendy!"

  She tossed the boot aside and grabbed his other one, tugging it off, too, then went for his socks. He pulled his feet away. "Will you cut that out?"

  "Oh, just be still, will you?"

  She shoved one leg of his jeans up and pulled the sock down, wincing when she caught sight of his bruised shin.

  "Ooh," she said. "Bad bruise. What happened?"

  "A young lady expressed dismay that I was returning her to jail today."

  "I hope that was the low point of your day."

  "Not by a long shot."

  "Ah, then. All the more reason to relax."

  She peeled off both of his socks, then stopped again, staring with surprise. "Damn, you have big feet."

  "You expected them to be small?"

  "Good point." She came to her knees, took his hands and tugged.

  "What are you doing?" he said.

  "Will you just come down here?"

  He sighed with resignation and slid off the sofa to sit on the rug beside her.

  "This is stupid," he muttered.

  "No. You'll love it. I promise. Stick your toes in the rug and wiggle them around."

  Good Lord. If the criminal element of the city of Dallas could see him now, his career would be over. He rolled his eyes, then buried his toes in the deep pile of the rug.

  "See?" she said. "Soft, huh?"

  He turned to stare at her. "Yeah. Soft."

  He wasn't lying. Everything about her was soft—her hair, her eyes, her voice. The rug could have been soft, too, for all he knew, but he couldn't have focused on it right now if his life depended on it.

  He leaned back against the sofa, crossing his ankles in front of him. Wendy did the same, pulling her knees up and wrapping her arms around them. Until this moment when he saw the infusion of warmth that came from the rug and the lamp and from Wendy herself, he hadn't realized just how cold and uninviting this place really was.

  "So what else happened today besides getting your shin kicked?" she asked him.

  "Well, let's see. A drug dealer I was chasing down skipped the country, and while I was handcuffing a teenage burglary suspect, he peed all over himself."

  "You're kidding."

  "Wish I were. It was a real red-letter day."

  She gave him a sympathetic smile. "Don't worry. Tomorrow is bound to be better."

  "Don't bank on that. You know the kinds of people I deal with."

  "Yeah. That's an interesting profession you've got there. How did you end up as a bounty hunter?"

  "Ramona hired me when I was eighteen."

  "And you just started doing the job?"

  "Pretty much. How about you? You want to be an actress. Where did that come from?"

  "Well, first of all, I just wanted to get out of Glenover, Iowa. It's the kind of place that's good to be from."

  "What's wrong with it?"

  She shrugged. "Nothing, I guess, as long as you don't mind working in a gum factory."

  "Gum factory?"

  "Yeah. As in chewing gum. It's where my parents work. And my brothers and sisters and just about everyone else in Glenover. My father got me on there right after my high-school graduation. I'm the fifth child, so by the time my turn came, working in the factory was a family tradition. I hated every minute of it."

  "A lot of people these days are just happy to have a job."

  "Not me. I'd rather die than be tied down to a place like that for the rest of my life. Ever work on an assembly line?"

  "Nope."

  "Boring. Mundane. One face in a crowd of thousands. It's horrible. But it's what almost everyone in Glenover does."

  "Only, you wanted to be an actress."

  "Yeah. It all started when I was in a play in high school. I loved it. I couldn't get it out of my mind, especially when I stood on an assembly line for eight hours every day. So one day I took my life's savings, packed up everything I owned and headed to New York."

  "But that didn't work out."

  "It's like I told you. In New York theater, there's only so far you can go so fast. So after beating my head against that wall for a few years, one day I thought, Hey, stupid! What are you doing here? You should be in Hollywood! So off I went."

  "And then you got sidetracked in Dallas."

  She smiled. "Yeah. Just a little. But that doesn't mean I've taken my eyes off the prize." She held up her palm. "But I'm not delusional, either. I'm certainly not expecting to get any major roles right off the bat. But I promise you that one of these days, my face is going to be on the cover of People or Entertainment Weekly. That's my benchmark. That's when I'll know I've made it."

  "You sure are aiming big."

  "That's my motto. Go big, or go home."

  "And home's not an option."

  "Exactly. But it's never going to come to that. I'm a pretty good actress, and I've got the right look. Almost, anyway. And some people say my smile is just like Julia Roberts's. That can't hurt, right? If I add big boobs and blond hair, I've got a shot at the big bucks. It's the Hollywood formula."

  "So where are you hiding yours?"

  "What?"

  "Your big boobs and your blond hair."

  She waved her hand. "Oh, I can get those. All it takes is money. My dark hair is a big handicap, but that's what a good salon is for. To take up the slack where nature blew it."

  He wondered where she'd come to the conclusion that nature had blown anything where she was concerned. That gorgeous dark hair flowed over her shoulders like a sheet of rainwater, and the very thought of attacking it with chemicals made him cringe.

  "There are brunette actresses," he said.

  "Sure. I could make it with this hair. But I'll make it faster as a blonde."

  "Your eyes are dark brown. That's gonna look funny."

  "Nah. As long as my hair's blond, my eyes could be purple for all anyone cares. But if it becomes an issue, there are always colored contacts."

  Wolfe couldn't help looking at the second part of the equation, the one she was a little shy on. As soon as his attention slid south, she cleared her throat.

  "Up here, Wolfe."

  His gaze shot back up, and she rolled her eyes. "Men. They think we don't see them staring, but we always do. And the answer to your question is breast augmentation."
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  He blinked with surprise. "You're kidding."

  "Nope. I lie down on the operating table. When I wake up, instant sex appeal. Small price, big rewards." She paused. "Well, it's not a small price, I guess."

  That was when he knew. "So that's what the five thousand dollars was for."

  "Yes."

  He made a scoffing noise. "Then you're lucky it was stolen. You look fine."

  "Oh, come on! Why do men do that? They say, 'Oh, no, honey. I like you just the way you are,' and then when a double-D walks by they can barely stuff their eyes back into their heads."

  "You don't need double-Ds."

  "Oh, yeah? You see two women. The one has brown hair, and her chest looks like the plains of West Texas. The other one is a blonde with boobs the size of the Goodyear blimp. Which one attracts you the most?"

  He pondered that for a moment. "Is either one of them naked?"

  She let out a breath of disgust. "Go with me on this, will you?"

  He shrugged. "You can ask all day long, but it's still no big deal to me. Just keep what nature gave you."

  "Hey, the other day you thought I ought to have bigger breasts. Way bigger."

  "You were playing a hooker!"

  "Well, then, you just made my point. That's what it takes to attract men. Big breasts. Ninety-five percent of men love them, and the other five percent are liars."

  "I told you it doesn't matter to me!"

  She smiled. "Welcome to the five percent."

  "Okay!" Wolfe said, throwing up his hands. "You're right. I admit it. I lied. Yes. I love big breasts. I stare at them constantly. I'm a knuckle-dragging Cro-Magnon with no control over my own eyeballs and I think all well-endowed women should walk around topless just to entertain me. There. Are you happy?"

  She sat back with a big grin. "Why, Wolfe. Such sarcasm. I didn't know you had it in you."

  He gave her a mock glare of disgust. "You drive me to it."

  "I drive you to sarcasm?"

  "Actually, that's the very least of what you drive me to."

  She turned and propped her arm on the seat of the sofa beside his shoulder and rested her chin on her hand, her broad smile becoming warm and engaging.

  "Tell me what else," she said softly.

  She looked at him as if there were a hundred different meanings to her words, and he had no idea what to say. He'd spoken the truth. She'd driven him to all kinds of things. To look at himself, at the place he lived, at the life he led, and realize that maybe something was lacking.

  Or someone.

  She looked so beautiful sitting there next to him that his power of speech had completely deserted him. Her slight, willowy figure always seemed as if it was blowing in a gentle breeze. For a split second he imagined making love to her, but she seemed so fragile that he'd be terrified of hurting her.

  No. That would never happen. If fate ever chose to smile on him like that, he'd be so damned careful, always aware of how big he was and how big she wasn't. But it was the body she had right now that he wanted to touch, not the chemically and surgically altered one she swore was in her future.

  "With this acting thing," he said, "have you thought about just being yourself?"

  "You're different for your job. Why shouldn't I be?"

  "What are you talking about?"

  "You play a real badass."

  "No playing there, sweetheart."

  "Yeah, okay. I can see how you might fool some people. But I know better, don't I?"

  Her gaze remained fixed on his. Those dark eyes stared at him without blinking, and he had the most unsettling feeling that she could see right inside him. Then all at once she reached up and touched his cheek, tracing her fingertip down the length of that awful scar.

  "What happened here?" she asked.

  He turned away quickly, wishing to God she wouldn't focus on that. "Gang fight."

  "You were in a gang?"

  "No. I was trying to stay out of one."

  "When was that?"

  "When I was sixteen. One of the gangs in the neighborhood where I lived thought they could use a guy like me."

  "A guy like you?"

  "At sixteen, I wasn't much smaller than I am now. They needed some muscle and wanted me to provide it."

  "What happened?"

  He really didn't want to talk about that. It wasn't a memory he cared to relive in any way, but Wendy just sat there, calmly staring at him and waiting for him to continue.

  "They cornered me one day for a recruitment party. They offered me all kinds of things to join them, from drugs to women to God knows what else. I told them to forget it and got up to leave. They had other ideas. And that was when the fight started."

  "Sounds as if you were lucky you got out alive."

  "Probably."

  "Did they bother you any more after that?"

  Wolfe felt a sudden coldness in the pit of his stomach. He hadn't thought about all that for a long time, filing it away in the back of his mind under the heading of History. But now he was stabbed by the memory all over again, how he'd been caught between looking like a bad guy and trying so hard not to become one.

  "Yeah," he told Wendy. "They bothered me. But it wasn't anything I couldn't handle."

  "But you were just a kid. You shouldn't have had to deal with that."

  "Where I came from, you grew up fast."

  "But what about your parents? Couldn't they do something?"

  Wolfe shook his head. "My father was long gone. My mother worked all the time just to put food on the table. My brother and I were pretty much on our own."

  "You have a brother?"

  "Yeah. He's three years younger than I am."

  "Where is he now?"

  "In Houston. He just opened a dental practice."

  "Your brother is a dentist?"

  "Don't sound so shocked."

  "It's just that you seem to have chosen different paths."

  "He had the brains, I had the brawn. You don't fight nature."

  "Do you ever see him?"

  "Sure. My mother lives in Houston now, too, so I see all of them on holidays. David has a nice wife, nice family."

  "Why don't you?"

  "Why don't I what?"

  "Have a nice wife and a nice family."

  Wolfe felt a shiver of longing at the very thought of that. It wasn't something he allowed himself to dwell on very often, but every once in a while when it was just him alone in this apartment staring at four walls, he thought about his brother and his wife, and he wondered how the years had passed and he'd ended up here instead of where he really wanted to be. But he knew the answer to that. When a nice woman pictured the kind of man she wanted to marry, a man like him never came to mind.

  "I don't know," he told Wendy. "I guess it was just never in the cards."

  "Maybe someday, huh?"

  "Yeah. Maybe."

  Wendy nodded, then focused on his scar again, her voice dropping to a near whisper. "I'm glad you told them to go to hell. I'm just so sorry they hurt you like that."

  When Wolfe saw the expression of pity on her face, it made him feel uglier than he ever had in his life.

  "It's no big deal, Wendy."

  "No big deal?"

  "What difference does a scar like this make when you've got a face like mine?"

  She blinked. "A face like yours?"

  He turned away. "You know what I mean."

  "No," she said softly. "I don't think I do."

  She continued to stare at him until he faced her again. She lifted her hand, this time resting her palm against his cheek. She leaned in closer to him, so close he swore he could feel her warm breath quiver in the air between them. Then, to his utter amazement, she touched her lips to his, sweetly, tentatively. Every nerve in his body came alive, his heart pounding wildly.

  She backed away a few inches, her expression earnest and sincere. "Please tell me that was a good thing to do."

  That she even had to ask the question astonished him. T
hat she appeared to wonder what his answer might be astonished him even more. The moment her lips met his, it was as if the black-and-white canvas of his life had exploded into brilliant color, and all of it was because of Wendy.

  He slowly lifted his hand and smoothed it along her shoulder to the side of her neck, then slipped it beneath her gorgeous cascade of hair to rest against the back of her neck. She was soft and sweet and felt like heaven, a dazzling thing of beauty in his stark, isolated existence.

  "It was a good thing to do," he told her, then pulled her forward and kissed her.

  * * *

  Chapter 10

  « ^ »

  The moment Wolfe's mouth fell against Wendy's, she felt a flood of excitement that it was finally happening, that he was finally kissing her, that finally she could touch him the way she'd so desperately wanted to.

  In those few moments right after she'd kissed him, he'd stared at her, his eyes wide, the air between them quivering with invisible question marks, and she thought for sure she'd done the wrong thing. But then he kissed her, gently at first, then more insistently, and all those question marks had vanished. The slick, wet heat of his tongue against hers felt wonderful, and she returned his kiss with an intensity that astonished even her. But this was the man who'd filled her mind with delicious thoughts since the moment she'd met him, and she absolutely couldn't get enough.

  He cradled her head in his hand and tilted it back, dragging his lips from her mouth to her jaw, kissing her there, then easing them over to her neck, where he pressed one kiss after another, adding tiny nips at her earlobe that sent hot shivers sizzling through her whole body. He pushed her shirt aside to kiss the curve of her neck where it met her shoulder, then returned his lips to hers and kissed her endlessly until she almost couldn't breathe, until she felt as if she was drowning in him.

  And suddenly kissing wasn't enough.

  With a single gasping breath, she tore away, rose to her knees, slipped one leg over him and straddled his lap, her palms resting against his shoulders. He tensed with surprise, but she immediately dipped her head to kiss him, and a second later she felt his big hands wrap around her thighs. He stroked them up and down, before moving to her hips and her waist and back down to her knees again in a deep, delicious massaging motion that made her whole body go limp with pleasure.