Madalina wanted to protest that no one could possibly be that interested in a woman whose clothing boutique struggled from month to month just to pay the astronomical lease, who had more pairs of shoes than she would ever wear in a lifetime, who thought french fries were a food group, and who lived alone in a tiny house that she rented instead of owned. Expensive jewelry didn’t drip off her fingers or from her ears. She wasn’t politically active, had less than a thousand dollars in savings, and only went out on the town every other Saturday night. What could two men want with someone like her?
“Then we should go—somewhere. Why are we parked?” she asked with a glance his way, temporarily putting her search for enemies on hold. Cole West overpowered the interior of the sleek, classy car. It wasn’t just the breadth of his shoulders, but his larger-than-life demeanor. This was a man confident in his abilities, a man secure with himself and his surroundings. Even when he was currently on the run.
He met her eyes for an electrifying moment. “We need to figure out why they want you. They’re definitely Chinese; I recognized the language during the scuffle. Think. Think about anything odd that’s happened in the last month or so. This looks like a professional job to me, and we need to trace their interest back to the source.”
“How do you know it’s a professional job?” she asked. The more Cole talked, the more nervous she became. She wasn’t nearly recovered from the abduction attempt, and hearing that professionals might be after her caused her heart to flutter in her chest.
“I just do.”
“That doesn’t tell me anything. What about it, specifically, makes you say that?”
“Think, Madalina. Think hard instead of asking so many questions.” He swiveled a look out the window, eyes sharp on the night. “Is anyone in your family a politician? Involved in research? Work for the government? A cop?”
“No, no, no. My mom was a teacher, and my dad worked for an insurance company. No one in my extended family is any of those things.”
“Was? Are your parents deceased?”
“No. They’re retired.”
“Give me a rundown of your life for the last six months.”
Madalina made a noise of protest. “What? No.”
“Do you want to find out what’s going on, or do you want to look over your shoulder for the foreseeable future?” he asked with obvious impatience.
“I work five, six days a week, depending. My schedule shifts so that some days I open, and others I close. I can’t remember anything unusual or different in the last six months regarding work. No odd customers, no threats, nothing stolen. Nothing has woken me in the middle of the night, I haven’t had weird phone calls, and no one unusual came to my door. At work—”
“What do you do again?”
“I co-own a clothing boutique in Los Angeles.”
“And you’re sure nothing strange has happened there?”
“No. We weren’t ever missing money, we paid our bills on time, our deliveries came when they were supposed to. No one threw a fit, got in a fight, or threatened me or Lianne.”
“Your co-owner.”
“Yes. It’s been business as usual.”
“What else? Where did you go? Did you date, break up with a boyfriend, get into an altercation driving?”
Her cheeks flamed with embarrassment. “I only go out a few times a month. Usually Saturdays, with Lianne. We haven’t had any problems that I can remember. And I don’t have a boyfriend.”
“Dates?” He arched a brow.
“I haven’t been on any. Lately.”
“Within the last month?”
“No.” How humiliating. To salvage some of her pride, she added, “I’ve been busy. After my grandpa died—”
“You didn’t mention that. When did he die?”
“Look, Cole. I don’t want to talk about it. He was my grandpa, you know?”
“I know it’s difficult. But when did he pass?”
“Six weeks ago. He left me a very small inheritance, and that’s why I’m here. He knew I hadn’t been on a vacation in a long time, that I’ve been working my fingers to the bone, and wanted me to use a little of it for some ‘me’ time. I decided to take him up on it, and that’s why I came to Vegas.” Madalina tried diligently not to be overwhelmed by emotion. She was already overwhelmed with panic and shock; she didn’t need to wallow in grief all over again.
“How much did he leave you?”
“Cole . . .”
“It might be relevant.”
“Thirteen hundred dollars. Oh, and some strange little dragon that was in the safe deposit box. I don’t think it’s worth anything, but he left it for me, so I’m keeping it.”
“A dragon?” He frowned. “Like one of those cheap jade things?”
“No. Like stone. It looks old, but I think it’s supposed to look old on purpose. You know, how certain collectibles are made to appear as if they’re ancient. It has red beads for eyes.”
“How big is it?”
Madalina put two fingers approximately four inches apart, then three inches high. “That big. Roughly. Not big at all. Why?”
“Did he leave you any information on it? Where he got it, how long he’s had it? And how did he die?”
Madalina rubbed her forehead. Discussing her grandfather’s recent passing bothered her more than she wanted to admit. “He hadn’t been well for a while. Then he got pneumonia and deteriorated quickly. There isn’t any information on the dragon, no. Just the money and that in the safe deposit box. But I’m telling you. I think that dragon is worthless. It means a lot to me, though, so in my eyes, it’s priceless. Lianne convinced me to post a picture of it on one of those antique sites, the ones where they’ll give you a quote about how much it’s worth. No one ever left a note or got back to me. I tried to tell Lianne it was a waste of time.”
“Where is it now?”
“The dragon? I just told you that I don’t think it’s worth—”
“It’s the best lead we’ve got. If that’s the only odd thing in the last month, then we need to look into it.”
“We?” she parroted.
“Unless I’m mistaken, you’re in a fix and need help. I’m offering.”
“You don’t even know me. Why would you want to help?”
“Why haven’t you gotten out of the car yet?” he countered. “Why haven’t you told me to pull over before now?”
Madalina’s mouth opened, then closed. No words came out. Not at first. Why hadn’t she gotten out of the car? They were parked right outside a busy restaurant with a ton of people nearby. She could disappear in the throng and part ways anytime she wished. But she hadn’t and, upon closer examination of her feelings, decided she didn’t want to. At least not here, in the parking lot of a restaurant. Cole, she convinced herself, was the only thing standing between her and her pursuers.
He leaned an inch closer. “I’ll tell you why. Because you need me to help get you home.”
“Once I get on a plane, I’m sure all this will go away. You can take me to the airport.” Madalina studied his eyes, picking out the flecks of fool’s gold that were more mesmerizing up close than she remembered.
“You can’t get on a plane.”
“Why not?”
“They’ll find you before you ever get on board. Going to the airport right now is suicide.”
“I didn’t drive, you know, and it’s a four-and-a-half-hour trip back to Los Angeles.”
“It’s a good thing you’ve got me, right?” He glanced out the back window, then clenched his jaw and threw the car into reverse. “Hold on.”
“What, what?” Ripped out of the moment, she gasped as the Jaguar’s tires barked against the pavement. The car shot forward.
Cole said, “They’re here.”
Cole sped onto the street, glancing in the rearvie
w mirror. He watched a sedan bounce out of the parking lot, hot on their tail. Although he hadn’t mentioned it to Madalina, the restaurant diversion had served one purpose: to bait the Asian men, see how long it took them to make a move. Not long. Long enough, however, for him to learn a little more about the woman clutching her purse for all she was worth. Madalina, with her luxurious dark hair and pale blue eyes, feisty comebacks, and unexpected cleverness in evading the enemy, surprised him on more than one level. He’d pegged her as one of those prissy, picky women who fussed over wet nail polish like it was a matter of life or death and put diamond collars on tiny, tuck-under-the-arm kind of dogs that some people carried everywhere, even on planes. Maybe she did own one of those miniature pets, and perhaps she fussed over her nail polish, but she’d also proven that she could take advantage of the situation when it came to escape. It suggested she wasn’t as gullible as she seemed, nor as fragile. That she was still in his car, putting a sliver of trust in him, indicated that she took her almost-abduction as seriously as she should.
He gunned it through a yellow light and made a hard left turn, taking them farther from the Las Vegas Strip. Smaller businesses—Laundromats, bookstores, take-out pizza, barbershops—dotted the landscape away from the glamour of billion-dollar casinos. The businesses thinned, and residential areas cropped up. Nice tract homes with tall palm trees, stucco exteriors, and manicured lawns. He aimed for I-15 South, tearing up the on-ramp and onto the freeway.
Madalina turned in her seat to stare out the back window.
“Yes, they’re still back there,” he said.
“How are we going to get away? We should have stayed in town.”
“Then the police would have gotten wind, and that might have been a disaster.”
“Why? These men wouldn’t be brazen enough to attack me in front of the cops, would they?”
“They tried to abduct you right out of a casino, Madalina. What do you think?” He switched lanes, keeping a few cars between him and the pursuers. This close to the city limits, he forced himself to maintain a steady speed. Behind, he tracked the black sedan as it wove between lanes and vehicles, closing the distance little by little. After several moments of careful thought, he added, “In all honesty, I wouldn’t go to the police until we know for sure that these men don’t have inside connections. You need to stay off everyone’s radar until we know more.”
“That sounds like an extreme measure.”
“Trying to abduct you from a very public venue was an extreme measure, too.”
“Yes. Yes, it was,” she said quietly. A length of silence followed.
“Unless I’m mistaken, these men are agents. They’re working for someone—I just don’t know who. Professionals of this magnitude make it their business to have inroads to the police, politicians, and other members of society—both legal and illegal. We have to assume the worst, assume that these men can use local resources to help find you.” He gauged Madalina’s reaction to the news. Confusion and angst riddled her features.
“You all right?” he asked when she didn’t respond.
“I feel sick.”
Cole snapped another look sidelong, assessing whether she meant literally or figuratively. She had her head propped in a hand, her elbow braced on the door.
“Throw up in your purse. I don’t have a bag in here.”
“How thoughtful,” she countered in a dour voice.
“If you throw up in the car, the smell will just keep making you sick.”
“And if I throw up in my purse, it’ll stink worse, because I’m not tossing it out the window.”
“You can’t be that attached to the purse.” Maybe she was the prissy type.
“No, but I don’t have anywhere else to put my license and money and credit cards. And my phone, notepad—and other things.”
“No pocket in your skirt?”
“No.”
“Slide some of it into your boot.” He met her withering glance and almost laughed. Almost.
“Because that’ll be comfortable.”
“Comfort doesn’t matter. Puking in the car does.”
“I didn’t mean literally puking anyway. I mean . . . I feel sick over the whole situation. How did this happen?” she asked in a “why me” tone.
“You mentioned that nothing interesting has happened to you in a while. Now it has.”
“This is hardly interesting,” she retorted. “Horrifying, yes. Interesting? No.”
Cole tracked the sedan again as it moved a car length closer. Only two vehicles separated the Asians and the Jaguar now. He switched lanes and sped up, anxious to leave the city behind. The traffic began to thin out as the road snaked into the desert toward the state line.
“We’re going to speed up here in a minute. You buckled in?”
“Speed up? Yes.”
“We can’t lose them on this highway, so we’ll have to outrun them.”
“How did you learn to do this? Get away from pursuers, fight off attackers?” she asked, her features outlined by the glow the radio cast into the interior.
“It’s part of my day job,” he said, accelerating until the sedan fell back, the headlights growing smaller in the rearview mirror.
“Your job? What do you do? Are you a cop?”
He snorted. “No. I’m a personal bodyguard. It’s necessary to know how to drive well and defend yourself.”
“A bodyguard? Are you serious? Like for famous people?”
“More like the superrich. The ones who don’t always prefer the spotlight. Famous people are too much of a pain to deal with.”
“I’ve never met a bodyguard before.” After a moment, she asked, “Am I going to have to pay you for this? Is that why you’re helping me?”
He laughed again, a low rumble that didn’t last. “No. I’m helping you because you don’t deserve what’s happening, and because you need it. Remember?”
“I guess.”
“You don’t drink much, do you?”
“Every other Saturday night,” she said. “Just one drink, though, because I hate hangovers.”
“That makes two of us. Why every other Saturday night? Why not every weekend? Going out, I mean.” He distracted her with nonsensical details while he put more distance between them and the sedan. When they came out of a bend, he couldn’t see the sedan’s headlights at all. The speedometer read ninety-five.
“Honestly, Cole, it’s because as much as I like to go out, I wind up realizing how hard it is to find someone you really click with. Someone you can actually talk to, who doesn’t automatically want anything in return. I admit—I was doing that in Vegas. I didn’t want anything more than someone to wile away the time with while I played another round of roulette. Back home, though, it’s different. When you’re not wanting the fly-by-night boys you’ll never see again, it seems that’s all you attract.” She peered into the side mirror, then took a deep breath.
Cole caught her expression and the exhale in quick glimpses. He didn’t want to take his eyes off the road too long. Driving into a ditch was a real possibility here.
Not expecting Madalina to be so honest and up front, Cole considered her reply. He wasn’t the talk-to type. Cole avoided the harder truths about himself both because it was necessary and because he wasn’t looking for a long-term commitment. Finding women who didn’t want that, ultimately, was both easy and hard. He’d been burned by what he considered the fake-out—the girl who swore she was a one-night stander, no strings attached, only to sob and beg when he didn’t call back after the third night. He didn’t want to settle down, didn’t look farther into the future than tonight and tomorrow.
“I know what you mean,” he said, and it wasn’t a lie. It just wasn’t how he lived his life. He was the type who wanted one thing and one thing only. If he hadn’t been so set on getting her back to California, Cole wouldn�
�t have hesitated to take her to bed. But he wouldn’t be drawn into deep discussions on life, children, and whether or not to purchase a house with a white picket fence.
Isn’t that what you’re doing? He grunted at the internal thought. Yes, he was picking into her personal life, into her past. Because he had to.
Headlights flared across the rearview mirror, drawing his attention. He glanced and glanced again, frowning when he realized the car was gaining.
The Jaguar surged, the speedometer climbing to one hundred.
CHAPTER THREE
Madalina could tell by Cole’s hesitant, cautious reply that he wasn’t the type to get deep. He wasn’t the guy to delve too far into a woman’s wants and needs, wasn’t interested in anything other than how loud he might make her scream. She had no doubt he could do exactly that, too, and chided herself for the carnal thoughts that continued to plague her. He’d offered his help, and right now, she was grateful for his intervention at the hotel. Otherwise, she might be . . . God knows where. What Cole did in his personal life didn’t matter one whit.
She’d had one long-term relationship, a year of heaven and hell, a year of falling hard for “the One,” only to walk in on him with another girl three days after their anniversary. Madalina had taken it hard and measured every man she went out with to the One, looking for similar traits so she could run away as fast as her legs could carry her. The problem had been that many men were adept at making her believe they wanted a serious relationship, when most only wanted easy sex until the next babe came along. Maybe she was more jaded than she realized. Maybe, too, she needed to stop looking for Mr. Right. She might be happier with men like Cole. Take the sex, the “relationship lite,” and concentrate on other things that made her happy.
“Alcohol makes me so melancholy. I hate it.” It wasn’t until Cole rumbled a laugh that Madalina realized she’d spoken out loud.
“That’s probably closer to the real reason you don’t get bombed on the weekends, huh?” he asked.
Discomfited by the turn in conversation, Madalina directed her attention to the dark landscape. The Jaguar provided such a smooth ride that it wasn’t obvious at first they were doing 105 miles per hour.
Escaping Vegas (The Inheritance Book 1) Page 3