Cutting Loose

by Tara Janzen

  He’d saved the free world, and her, and thank God, he’d still had what it took to save himself.

  “Okay, I’ll be here.”

  “I mean right here.” He pulled her closer. “Right here next to me. In the bed.”

  “I don’t think they like that sort of thing,” she said, holding back a smile, resisting the pull of his hand.

  “We saved the free world, at least for now.” He did a little better with his grin. “We can do what we want, at least in here. Come on.” He pulled a little more, and even though her common sense told her not to be ridiculous, she went with ridiculous anyway, and with very little more coaxing, ended up stretched out next to him, drifting off with him into sleep.

  “I…I don’t even know your last name,” she said around a yawn of her own.

  “Prade,” he said, and it was the last thing she heard.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Four weeks later—Chouteau County, Montana

  Zachary Prade—she liked his name.

  “This isn’t Tahiti,” Lily said from where she was sitting next to him.

  “Not even close, babe,” he agreed.

  “I’m just about freezing my butt off.”

  “Hang tight. It just takes a little getting used to, that’s all.”

  She rolled her head in his direction and opened one eye. “You have never done this before in your life, city boy.”

  He just grinned and settled himself deeper into the stock tank. Above them, a windmill turned in the cooling breeze, and beyond the windmill, the Bearpaw Mountains jutted up into the sky, their peaks dusted white even in the middle of July.

  “Definitely not Tahiti,” he said.

  “I don’t think we’ll be seeing Tahiti any time soon.”

  “No, me, either,” he said. They never had tracked down whoever had sent her the plane ticket and the money. It was an unsolved mystery, a loose end. He’d had his old boss, whose name Lily had never heard, from a place he’d never mentioned by name, put somebody on the whole Tahiti aspect of their day with the bracelet, and so far, Zach hadn’t heard anything back.

  They’d speculated a bit between the two of them, though, and the best he’d come up with was a true story about a pair of FBI agents who had worked a successful sting operation by sending criminals free plane tickets to Hawaii. There’d been a bit more to their scam than just the tickets, but the free plane tickets were what had turned the trick. They were bait, plain and simple, and people who took bait got hooked.

  Of course, in Lily’s instance, it had been the criminals who’d been offering the bait. The trouble was, there had been a lot of criminal elements after the bracelet. They’d get them tracked down, though, one way or the other.

  “I think I like ranching,” he said.

  She burst out laughing. “You haven’t been ranching. You’ve been eating steak and biscuits three times a day, fishing in the mornings, trail riding in the afternoons, and today, lounging in a stock tank. You haven’t been hot and sweaty and dirty once since you got here.”

  At that, he arched an eyebrow in her direction, and she burst out laughing again. “That doesn’t count.”

  “We were in the barn, sweetheart,” he begged to differ. “You and me, hot and sweaty and rolling in dust in the haymow. Trust me, it counted.” He leaned over and nuzzled her neck. When he reached the tender skin just below her ear, he stopped and ran his tongue across her skin. “So what do you think of Denver?”

  She leaned back and slanted him a curious glance. He was licking her neck and thinking about Denver?

  “I think Denver is great.”

  He kissed her again, on the cheek this time, and drew her close with his arm around her shoulders. “It’s also about halfway between Albuquerque and Montana.”

  “That’s A-plus geography work.” She grinned, having some idea of what he was getting at. They had hardly been out of each other’s sight in four weeks, and every single day had been the best of her life. They talked for hours, and made love for hours, and somehow, with him, she felt like she’d come home, like there wasn’t any other place she needed to be. There were no siren calls to exotic lands, only the call to be with him.

  It wasn’t a feeling she ever wanted to give up.

  “If this ranching gig doesn’t work out,” he said, “I’m going to go live in a loft in LoDo, a really big loft on Steele Street. If you promise not to use up all the towels and steal all the covers, I think I could get you on at the loft, too. It might be a handy stopping-off place for you, when you’re going back and forth between Albuquerque and Montana.”

  “I’m not going back to Albuquerque.” She’d given it a lot of thought, and a move she’d made to please a husband she no longer had didn’t seem like the best thing to stick with, and she couldn’t bear the thought of going into her house again. She’d have to, sometime in the next few weeks, but Zach had already promised to go with her, and he’d promised her a cleanup crew would have the whole inside looking like new before they arrived.

  “Good,” he said. “Then the loft could be a handy stopping-off place between Denver and Montana…or you could just stop in Denver, and Montana could be a sometime thing.”

  She smiled, loving this conversation. It would definitely go in her diary, if she’d kept a diary: where it had taken place, who she’d been having it with, and she hoped, how it turned out. Love talk in stock tanks was every cowgirl’s dream come true, even more of a dream come true than white-sand beaches, palm trees, and pink sunsets on the ocean.

  She had a smile on her face, a real enigmatic Mona Lisa smile, and Zach was hanging over an abyss, declaring his love everlasting, laying his heart on the line.

  And she was smiling. Enigmatically.

  “You love the idea, don’t you.” It wasn’t a question. She loved the idea.

  Her smile broadened.

  “You’re crazy about me,” he said. And yeah, he figured this was a good tactic. She could smile, naked in a stock tank, freezing her gorgeous ass off, and he’d just live in his little dream world—which, amazingly, looked exactly like his real world. Beautiful naked woman sheltered in the curve of his arm, love in her eyes, and an enigmatic, Mona Lisa smile on her face.

  “Yeah, you’re in love with me, I can tell.”

  She just smiled, and started doing some very nice things with her hand below the water.

  He settled her in closer and kissed her mouth. “You probably want to marry me in this stock tank, before we go back to Denver. You know, just take a chance on me.”

  She just smiled, her hand never stopping its wondrous exploration of his anatomy, and so it went the way it had been going since he’d gotten out of the hospital, crazy hot sex almost every day—and yeah, that was part of the dream, too.

  He didn’t know what Alex had done with the polymer strand out of the bracelet, or how the U.S. government was going to leverage the information. His job had been to get the damn thing, and he’d done it. And the next job he was given, he’d do that, too, but he’d be doing it for General Grant over at the Department of Defense, via Dylan Hart at Special Defense Force, SDF. He was going back to 738 Steele Street. He was going home.

  This whole little sidebar he’d worked for himself, this “saving the woman” part and fulfilling his “sex with a cowgirl” fantasy, that was the extra, that was for him.

  And hours later, when they’d gotten back to the ranch house and warmed each other up in bed, when she finally said yes—yes to Denver, and yes to him. That’s when he realized that from the very first moment he’d seen her, from the moment when he’d felt his world shift a bit on its axis, from that moment onward, the whole “saving the woman” part had actually been about saving him.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  TARA JANZEN lives in Colorado with her husband, children, and two dogs, and is now at work on her next novel. Of the mind that love truly is what makes the world go ’round, she can be contacted at www.tarajanzen.com.

  Want more steamy
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  Steele Street adventure?

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  LOOSE

  AND EASY

  The next book in

  Tara’s action-packed series

  BY TARA JANZEN

  Coming November 2008

  From Dell Books

  LOOSE AND EASY

  ON SALE NOVEMBER 2008

  CHAPTER ONE

  Johnny Ramos knew the sad-looking little hooker limping her way down Seventeenth Street in two-inch black patent-leather platform heels. Her fishnet hose were torn in the back, revealing the bottom curve of her ass under what could only be described as a super-micro-miniskirt. Red lace and leather that had seen better days, the skirt was barely seven inches wide from top to bottom and matched her red lace gloves. The cheap white vinyl tote bag slung over her shoulder looked like it had seen better days, too. The white Lycra T-shirt laminated to her upper body had more heart-shaped cutouts and pink sequins than material. He could see a red pushup bra doing its job under the shirt.

  Esmee Alexandria Alden, he thought, East High School’s valedictorian the year he’d graduated. Jesus, how the mighty have fallen.

  “Easy Alex” hooking in LoDo—Denver’s lower downtown district—it was enough to boggle the mind. Nothing about what he was seeing made sense: that sweet little size-four ass in torn fishnet; the twisted-up pile of ratted and heavily sprayed blond hair he’d only ever seen in tight and tidy braids; the smartest girl he’d ever known turning tricks.

  He slid his gaze over her again, from the shoes to the French twist falling out of its pins. At seventeen, he’d have given anything to get her hair loose and falling down. Those long blond braids of hers had driven him crazy. He’d wanted so badly to undo them. Hell, he’d wanted to undo everything on the girl, from her prim little button-down shirts to her carefully tied and spotlessly white tennis shoes, but there hadn’t been anything easy about “Easy Alex.” That had been the joke. She’d never had a date in high school, not one, not even prom.

  She couldn’t possibly be a prostitute. No way in hell. Back then, she hadn’t known what the word “sex” meant. He knew, because he’d gotten more off of her than any guy in East, and it had taken him weeks of pursuit and most of one hot summer night to even get to second base.

  She’d been sweet. Yeah, he remembered. Sweet and scared, mostly of him, he’d guessed, and of herself, of her reaction to him. He’d been one of the city’s bad boys, and she’d had the lock on the title of Little Miss Goody Two Shoes.

  He’d loved it, loved the challenge of it, but she’d been too good to let him get in her pants, which is where their party had ended that night, with him aching and her panting, and neither of them getting what they’d needed.

  Fifty bucks said he could get whatever he wanted off her tonight. Hell, maybe it would only take twenty, but with her looking rode hard and put away wet all he wanted was the story, the explanation.

  Yeah, that’s what he wanted. No way in hell should Esmee Alden be limping down Seventeenth with her ass hanging out of ripped fishnet. After graduating from high school, she’d been slated for the University of Colorado on a scholarship, full ride.

  She got to the corner at Wazee and started across the intersection, heading toward the Oxford Hotel. When she was partway to the other side, the Oxford’s valet signaled her, and Johnny swore under his breath.

  “Jesus.” She’d been called in to service some guy staying at the hotel, and he had to wonder, really, how many doormen and parking valets in Denver had her name in their little black books?

  He hated to say it, but he would have thought any girl working the Oxford would look a little classier than what Esmee had pulled off tonight.

  None of his business, he told himself, not for any good reason on God’s green earth, and yet he stepped off the curb from in front of the Lizard Tequila Cantina, the bar where he’d been with his friends, and crossed Seventeenth. He wasn’t following her. He was just checking things out, doing recon, getting the lay of the land.

  He’d gotten home from his last tour of duty, this one in Afghanistan, two weeks ago and was still waiting to be reassigned to General Grant’s command, specifically into Special Defense Force, an elite group of operatives based in Denver and deployed out of the Pentagon. Until his official orders came through, he was on leave, on his own, hanging out in his hometown and looking to stay out of trouble.

  Or not.

  A brief grin twitched the corner of his lips. Easy Alex had never been anything except trouble for him, starting in Ms. Benson’s seventh-grade social-studies class, where he’d come up with her nickname and ended up in detention. Decking Freddy Harrell for pushing her up against a locker in a back hallway in East High when they’d all been juniors had gotten him suspended for three days. He’d been protecting her honor.

  And now she was hooking?

  No. He wasn’t buying it. Not the Esmee he knew. Something else had to be going on, no matter how much of her ass he could see—except when she got to the sidewalk, the damn valet handed her a room key.

  Johnny came to a sudden halt. Jesus, a friggin’ room key.

  Okay, this really wasn’t any of his business, and honestly, he didn’t really want to see what she was going to be doing in the hotel, or who in the hell she was going to be doing it with, or doing it to, or any damn thing about Esmee Alden “doing it” at all.

  Which was why it took him another second and a half to get moving again. Goddammit. Inside the hotel, he caught sight of her just before she disappeared up the stairs.

  He didn’t hesitate. Taking the damn things two at a time, he easily made it to the second landing in time to see which door she opened with the key—number 215. She slipped inside the room and the door closed behind her, and there he stood, like an idiot at the end of the hallway, wondering what in the hell he was thinking.

  The seconds ticked by, and he was still standing there. When a whole minute had gone by, he knew he should leave—but he didn’t, he just kept staring at the door to room 215 and telling himself not to go anywhere near it. Good advice he might have taken, if he hadn’t heard a loud thump come from inside the room, a sound like somebody falling or getting knocked over.

  None of his business—right—except it was Easy Alex in there, and he didn’t want to be reading about her in the morning papers. He’d “been there, done that” with too many people in his life, so better judgment be damned, he started down the hall.

  When he got to the door, he could hear some guy spluttering in indignation and anger from inside the room.

  “You…you…goddamn schickse. You…you can’t do this to me.”

  Johnny pressed his ear closer. None of his business, absolutely none—dammit. He wasn’t cop of the world, not here. He should be enjoying the reprieve, not jumping in the middle of a fifty-dollar trick.

  “Schickse yourself, Otto,” a cool, sweetly feminine voice replied. And yes, it was definitely Easy Alex. He remembered the slightly cultured accent, the honeyed tone, the instinctive edge of authority. Christ. She’d always had the edge of authority, usually with her hand in the air, fingers waggling, her arm stick-straight, going for all the height she could get—Hey, hey, teacher, I know the answer, I know the answer. Hell, she’d always known the answer.

  “That’s not…this isn’t,” the guy kept spluttering, his voice starting to sound a little strained. “This isn’t what I asked for…I wanted Dixie. I was told to ask for Dixie, and…and you’re not Dixie.”

  No, Johnny thought, a little taken back. She most certainly wasn’t. Anywhere in Denver north of the Sixteenth Street Mall, the name Dixie bandied about in that tone of voice by some guy in a hotel could only mean one thing, a diminutive forty-five-year-old dominatrix with a quirt. She’d been a permanent fixture of the city’s nights for as long as Johnny could remember, which did nothing to answer the questions of why Esmee Alden was taking one of Dixie’s calls, and what in the hell she’d just done to the German in room 215.

&nb
sp; Somebody in the room let out a strangled sound of distress, and he knocked, twice, hard and solid, a pure knee-jerk reaction that clearly said “What in the hell is going on in there?”—and the room went silent. He could have heard a frickin’ pin drop in the hall, and he could just imagine the two of them frozen in some sordid S&M act, their gazes glued to the door, wondering who in the hell had knocked.

  “Housekeeping,” he said, loud and clear. “We have your towels.”

  Towels?

  Esmee tightened her grip on the handcuffs she’d used at Otto Von Lindeberg’s request to secure his hands behind his back. He was facedown on the floor, her knee planted firmly and deliberately in his back, pressing hard. Her other hand had a strong grip on the dog collar the German had also been so kind as to provide already in place around his neck. She had the attached leash tied to the bed frame—and there was somebody at the door, somebody she’d bet didn’t have any towels.

  Dammit. Releasing her hold on the collar, she swiveled on Otto’s back and quickly flex-cuffed his ankles, then used one of his other leashes to hog-tie his ankles to his wrists.

  Geez. Germans and dogs—it was always the Germans with the dog paraphernalia. She’d seen it half a dozen times in her line of work, which despite her outfit didn’t have a damn thing to do with prostitution.

  Esmee Alden, Master of Disguise—yes, sir, that was her, all right, when the situation called for it, and old Otto had laid himself wide open to get taken by a hooker tonight. She’d known he would, and she’d known exactly what kind of girl he’d be looking to hire. Six months of investigation hadn’t gone for naught, and fifty bucks to the parking valet had done the rest. The call for Dixie had come to her instead. She might have to make up the missed trick to the aging dominatrix, just to keep peace on the street, but a couple hundred bucks ought to cover it, which left her with the night’s profit margin hitting close to a thousand percent.