"Better?" he said, as the elevator slowly creaked its way to the third floor.
"Much," she said on a sigh.
She snuggled closer still, running her hands up and down his back. She exhaled, her breath warm against his chest. "Mmm. You feel so good."
He could have stood here forever, just like this, if it weren't for the fact that he was hot and hard and his jeans were growing more uncomfortable by the second and he wanted to make love to her right now.
The elevator ground to a halt and the doors opened. Wolfe pulled his keys out of his pocket. In his haste, he fumbled them a little, but managed to get the apartment door unlocked. Wendy slipped inside and headed straight to the bedroom.
By the time he had locked the door and followed her, he found her on the bed, wearing absolutely nothing. The sight of her sprawled out naked sent a jolt of desire tearing right through him.
He yanked off his jeans and boots, opened his dresser drawer, pulled out a condom and put it on. He lowered a knee between her legs and dropped his palms to her sides.
"It has to be now, sweetheart," he said. "And I mean right now."
She didn't say a word, just grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him forward. He slipped into her, falling to his elbows at the same time. She wrapped her legs around him and he began to move inside her, deeper with every stroke, even as he fought to hold back. But she felt so hot and wet already, her inner muscles gripping him so tightly, that restraint was nearly impossible. Passion spiked inside him so quickly that he had to stop and drop his head against the bed to wait for the moment to pass. Easy, he told himself. Easy…
"Wolfe, please … oh, please don't stop."
Her words were little more than a plaintive moan, urging him on. To his surprise, the moment he gathered himself and thrust inside her again, she let out a strangled gasp and arched against him. For a split second she froze, her fingertips digging into his shoulders, and then a wild shudder of satisfaction rocked her entire body.
Astonished at the suddenness of her climax, Wolfe began to move in a hot, fierce rhythm, blinded by the feeling, plunging inside her as if he couldn't get enough, would never get enough. He couldn't remember a woman who had ever made him feel like this, who drove him crazy with need, who stripped away any pretense of control he might have had and drove him to a climax that stole his breath away.
Later, as he came back to earth again, he felt Wendy's hands on him, stroking his shoulders, his neck, his face, kissing him gently and whispering nothing words in his ear. He gathered her in his arms, and as he held her in the quiet darkness of his bedroom, her small body curled up next to his, he knew without a doubt that she'd stolen more than his breath away.
She'd taken his heart right along with it.
* * *
The next Sunday afternoon, Wolfe and Wendy sat on the sofa, the paper scattered out on the coffee table. Wendy noticed that Wolfe picked up the Metro section first, while she always went for Texas Living. Not to be left out, Weenie jumped up on the table and spread his considerable bulk over the remainder of the paper. Consequently, when Wendy finished her section and exchanged it for the front page, she had to shove the cat aside to get to it. There had been a time when he would have hissed and fled, but now he merely gave her a go-to-hell look and reorganized himself into another goofy cat position.
After a while, Wendy stopped reading the paper and thumbed through the copies of Entertainment Weekly and Premiere she'd bought so she could keep up with what was going on in movies and TV. She'd called her agent a few times to insure he was still keeping her in mind. In the past five weeks, she'd managed to save almost fifteen hundred dollars now, so it wouldn't be long before she could be on the road to Los Angeles and back on track with her career.
But as the minutes passed, the strangest feeling came over her. She stopped reading. Lowered the magazine. Looked around her. Then she turned to Wolfe. After a moment he sensed her watching him and glanced up.
"What?"
She stared a moment more, then looked away. "Nothing."
No. Something. To her complete astonishment, she realized that even though she'd spent only a little over a month with Wolfe, this life felt normal. She was with a man who, at one time, she couldn't have fathomed having a civil conversation with, and here they were, lounging on the sofa, reading the Sunday paper together as if they'd been married for twenty years.
And sleeping together as if they were still on their honeymoon.
Wolfe looked back down at the newspaper. "Another murder and two armed robberies. Not to mention all the break-ins. Will you look at these crime stats for the month? Good God."
"I guess that eventually means more work for you, huh?"
Wolfe gave her a look of disgust. "I'd just as soon have to find another job for lack of work."
That reminded Wendy of something Ramona had told her, and she put down her magazine and moved closer to him, resting her arm along the back of the sofa. "Tell me about your brother."
"David?" He sounded surprised. "Not much to tell."
"Well, there is that story about how you came to work for Ramona."
Wolfe sighed. "Ramona has a big mouth."
Wendy rested her chin on her arm. "What was it like when you were growing up?"
He shrugged. "It wasn't bad when I was younger. The neighborhood was actually pretty nice."
"And when you got older?"
Wolfe kept looking at his newspaper, but she could tell he wasn't reading. "The older I got, the worse it got."
"How?"
Finally he let the paper fall to his lap. He just sat there a moment, as if he was thinking back, and when he spoke, his voice had a faraway quality to it.
"The storefronts gradually became abandoned. Drug dealers and prostitutes hung out on every street corner. Gangs ruled the neighborhood."
"If it was so bad there, why didn't you move somewhere else?"
"My mother wanted to. Believe me. But like most of the people in that neighborhood, she was so uneducated that she had a hard time finding a job that would even keep food on the table. Looking back, I suppose we were lucky to have a roof over our heads."
"And you were lucky to stay out of a gang."
"I refused to give in to that. But after that first time they cornered me, still I listened to it day in and day out. Blatant enticements sometimes, and other times taunts because I refused to listen to them."
"How did you deal with that?"
"Eventually I just learned to tune it all out. I didn't even hear the insults. I'd just stay in my own mind and keep on walking. It was the only way I could cope with it."
Wendy thought back to that first day when Wolfe had come into the office and Slade had been there. Slade had harassed him with one snotty comment after another, and it was as if Wolfe hadn't even heard him. Ramona had told her that someday she'd understand why.
Now she did.
"From the time I was ten or twelve years old," Wolfe said, "I went to sleep every night to the sound of gunfire in the neighborhood. I hated it. I used to bury my head under the pillow, but still I could hear it."
As if puzzle pieces were dropping into place, Wendy suddenly understood so much more about him than she ever had before. She remembered what Wolfe had told her after she'd screwed up Mendoza's apprehension and the man had pulled a gun. I hate gunfire. Did I ever tell you how much I hate gunfire?
She imagined the child he must have been, lying in bed, listening to his world crashing down around him and not being able to do anything about it.
"Then one day one of those bullets came through our window," Wolfe said. "The guy meant it for me. But David was the one who was hit."
"How bad was it?"
"An abdominal wound. I took him to the hospital. God, you should have seen the blood. I was never so scared in my life. And angry."
"That's when you took the law into your own hands."
"Yeah. I guess I did. That's when Ramona approached me about working for her.
The money was better than what I could have made anywhere else."
Wendy nodded. "So David went to college, and you became a bounty hunter."
"Yes."
"College is expensive."
"Yes. But he got a scholarship. Like I said, he's the smart one."
"Did his scholarship cover everything?"
"Not everything."
"You paid the rest, didn't you?"
"He worked summers."
"And you paid the rest."
"Don't make me out to be some kind of hero, Wendy. It wasn't that much."
She doubted that. "I hope he appreciates what you did for him."
"He does."
"You're a good man."
"Tell that to the people I haul to jail."
"That's part of what makes you a good man."
She rubbed her fingertips up and down his arm. "And then David went on to get married. Have a family."
"Yes."
"Why do you live here?"
"What do you mean?"
"In this secluded place. I can't imagine why you'd want to hide yourself away like this."
"And I can't imagine why you'd want to go to Hollywood and jump right into the limelight. All that glitz and glamour. It's bound to be crazy. And you'd have no privacy at all."
Wendy smiled. "Actually, to me it sounds exciting."
"And to me it sounds chaotic. I couldn't imagine living like that."
Chaotic. He'd used that word more than once to describe precisely the life he didn't want. Here, in this place, he'd found the peace and quiet he'd been denied for so long. He'd found a refuge from people who judged him on sight. But at what price?
He'd done everything he could to give his brother a nice life, yet he hadn't done the same for himself.
He's going to stay holed up in that weird apartment of his, Ramona had said, and then one day he's going to turn around and wonder where his life went. And he's just too good a man for that.
Ramona was so right. He needed more. He deserved more. Wendy realized that even though she and Wolfe spent almost every moment together when they weren't working, they did it mostly within the confines of this apartment.
"Let's go somewhere," Wendy said.
"Huh?"
"You don't get out much. Don't you ever get claustrophobic?"
"No. I get out all the time."
"I mean to someplace besides sleazy bars, the McDonald's drive-through and the county jail."
She sat up on the edge of the sofa, giving Weenie a shove so she could grab the movie section of the newspaper. She flipped through the pages.
"Oh, look! That new romantic comedy just opened. I'd love to see it."
"It'll be out on video soon."
"Video? I want to go to the theater."
Wolfe made a face.
"What's wrong with going to the theater?"
"Some moron always talks through the whole movie."
"But you can get movie popcorn. Far superior to microwave."
"I hate all those ads before the movie starts."
"Yeah, but there are trivia questions, too. I love those."
"Ticket prices are ridiculous."
"If we hurry, we can catch the last cheap show before five o'clock."
Wolfe sighed.
Wendy gave him a hopeful look.
Wolfe's expression twisted with disgust.
Impasse.
"We can sit in the back row and make out," Wendy said.
Dead silence. Slowly Wolfe lowered his newspaper and raised an eyebrow. "What time did you say it was playing?"
* * *
Chapter 15
« ^ »
It turned out to be a pretty good movie—what they saw of it, anyway. Fortunately it was a matinee, the theater wasn't full, and they had the back row to themselves, because even though Wendy hadn't actually been serious about making out in the back row, Wolfe was. By the time the credits rolled, she felt as if she were in high school all over again.
Yep. She'd have to rent the video.
As they were leaving the theater, Wendy ducked into the bathroom. Looking in the mirror, she saw that every bit of her lipstick had been kissed off. She smiled to herself, seriously considering going completely retro with the high-school behavior and enticing Wolfe into sex in the back seat of his SUV.
She came out of the bathroom to find the lobby far more crowded than it had been when they'd arrived at the theater. Wolfe was sitting on a bench waiting for her, leaning back against the wall, his arms folded over his chest. He wore his standard stony expression, which made him look like a sentry at the gates of hell. She smiled to herself, thinking it might be fun to sneak up on him and tickle him, just so he'd do the unthinkable and smile in public.
Just once. Just for fun.
Several feet away from him, two women stood talking, one of them holding a little girl who was about two years old. The child held a red rubber ball in her fist and squirmed in her mother's grip like every child on the planet who has been held too long and wants to cruise. The mother tussled with her for a moment more before finally giving up and putting her down. The moment she did, the child dropped the ball she'd been holding, and it rolled right between Wolfe's feet.
Wendy stopped and stood along the wall, watching as Wolfe leaned over and picked up the ball. The little girl spied her toy and toddled over. Wolfe held it up, drawing the child's attention, and she took it from between his fingers. Then she spied the cell phone he had clipped to his belt and pointed to it.
Wolfe unclipped it. He held it in front of her and pushed a few buttons. The phone rang. The little girl giggled, then reached for the phone herself. Wolfe held it out to her, pointing to the button for her to push. She did. When a different ring came out of it, she laughed again. Wolfe held the phone while she punched the button at least a dozen times and giggled with every ring.
Wendy smiled. There was something about the sight of her big, bad bounty hunter acting silly just to entertain a child that mesmerized her. And in that moment, she knew what a wonderful father he would be. Kind. Protective. Loving. The kind of man who would be totally devoted to his children and his family. Would she ever have guessed that the first night she met him? Was there any way she could deny it now?
Then she remembered Ramona's words. Wolfe isn't close to many people in this world. But when he loves somebody, he loves them fiercely.
Suddenly the strangest feeling came over Wendy. Her mind flashed forward to a possible future, images hitting her with the power of a hurricane-force wind. She and Wolfe. Living together. Loving together. Having children. Making a family. And all at once, she knew. For the many times she thought she'd been in love before, she couldn't possibly have been, because it had never, ever felt like this.
Love?
Oh, God. She was falling in love with him.
Wendy's knees suddenly felt weak, and she put her hand against the wall to steady herself. No. It couldn't be. How could she have known him for such a short time and feel this way?
Because he was so wonderful in so many ways that she couldn't even count them. He was the single most amazing package she'd ever unwrapped, peeling away his layers to find the real man beneath that gruff exterior.
But love?
The little girl finally toddled back to her mother's side, and Wendy walked over to where Wolfe sat.
He stood up. "Ready to go?"
"Yeah." She nodded toward the little girl. "Cute, huh?"
Wolfe smiled. "Yeah. She reminds me of one of David's kids."
Wendy looped her arm through Wolfe's as they walked out to the parking lot. All the way home, those feelings she'd had for him in the theatre lobby only grew stronger. And later that night, after they'd made love and she was lying in his arms, suddenly she couldn't bear the thought of leaving him. Los Angeles seemed fuzzy and distant, and her goal of stardom a pipe dream—something that thousands attempted but few achieved.
Was that what she really wanted?
&
nbsp; The answer was yes. Of course it was. The very idea of giving up a dream that she'd held so close to her heart for the past several years was unthinkable. She couldn't let anything—or anyone—get in the way of that. Still, lying in Wolfe's arms like this, nothing about her life seemed as black-and-white as it had even two hours ago.
Fortunately, she didn't have to think about it now. It was going to take her at least several more weeks to get the money together she needed to leave for Los Angeles. Until that time came, she decided just to enjoy their time with each other and let the future take care of itself. But no matter what happened, she was always going to remember her detour through Dallas and the man who'd made her feel so wonderful, if only for a few brief moments of her life.
* * *
Wolfe spent most of Monday morning tracking down an alleged embezzler, who he finally discovered had faked an identity and was working at a new job in Fort Worth. He drove the fifty miles there, then waited for the guy to leave on a late lunch hour and picked him up without incident. He only wished all his apprehensions were that easy.
He drove back to Dallas, deposited the guy at the county jail, then headed to Lucky Bail Bonds to pick up a check. Afterward, because he was only a few blocks from Ramona's place, he decided to stop in there. For business reasons only, of course.
He found Ramona sitting at her desk, but Wendy was nowhere to be seen. Ramona nodded over her shoulder.
"She's in the back cleaning out the storeroom for me."
Wolfe stopped short. "Did I ask?"
"Oh, pardon me. My mistake. I thought all your gawking around the room for a certain little brunette actually meant something."
Wolfe wondered if he really was that transparent. The answer was probably yes.
He sat down beside Ramona's desk. "Anything new?"
She laid a file in front of him. "Wendy just got a line on this one for you. She did some calling around and found out from a next-door neighbor that this guy is holed up at his brother's house. He never leaves there. But this neighbor thinks he's alone during the day, so if you can get him out of the house, he's yours. Big bounty. Watch him, though. He's gonna be armed."
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