by Penny McCall
“He was about to get one, Veda,” Ron said, leering at Harmony.
Veda gave Ron a good swat with the back of her hand across his chest. “I bet you’re on your honeymoon, right?”
Harmony held up her naked left hand.
Veda shook her head, abjectly disappointed. “Don’t understand you young kids.”
“Makes me wish I’d been born forty years later,” Ron said.
“That’d only make you a young pervert,” Veda said, “which’d land your cute bee-hind in jail since young perverts can’t get away with near’s much as old ones.”
“You got a point, you old bat,” Ron said with a hoot of laughter.
“You two out for a hike?” Veda asked.
“Nah, they don’t have any backpacks,” Ron said. “Not dressed for it, neither.”
Harmony looked down at her jeans, T-shirt, and walking shoes, still squishing from her unplanned interaction with Lake Erie. Cole was dressed similarly. She wasn’t sure what constituted hiking gear in Ron’s mind, but considering the general direction of his thoughts, she wasn’t about to ask him what she should be wearing.
“We ran out of gas,” Cole said, which wasn’t exactly a lie. For a criminal he was disturbingly honest, didn’t have a devious bone in his body. And now they were stuck with his story.
“Well,” Veda said briskly, “c’mon then, hop in and we’ll take you as far as the nearest gas station.”
Cole gave her a look, realizing his mistake, Harmony figured, and coming to the conclusion there was no getting around it.
“Let’s go, Pinocchio,” she said.
They circled the RV. Veda met them at the door. Harmony stepped up first, hesitating at the entrance. It looked pretty normal inside, typical RV setup: small galley in the center, driver’s and passenger’s seats up front, tiny bathroom and sleeping quarters at the other end. Lots of fake wood paneling, neutral colors, no immediate threat.
It was almost worth the risk, Harmony decided as cool air washed over her. And anyway, what was the chance Veda and Ron would run into FBI agents asking questions?
“Where are you headed?” she asked Veda, moving out of the way so Cole could come in, too.
“Me and Ron are headed to Branson to see Tony Orlando.”
“And Dawn,” Ron put in from the front.
“Dawn isn’t going to be there,” Veda said for what must have been the hundredth time, judging by her tone.
“Then what the hell are we going for? I don’t want to see some old fruitcake singing about ribbons. You promised me backup singers.”
“They’re my age, you old pervert. And it’s not like they’re going to give you a lap dance or anything.”
Now that she wasn’t right on top of him, Ron appeared not to hear her.
“Took his hearing aids out,” Veda said, sliding onto the bench seat at the U-shaped table and gesturing them to join her. “Truth is, I tune him out half the time, too. Dr. Phil’d tell you communication is the secret to a long, happy marriage, but he’s a quack. Lack of communication, that’s the real ticket. Knowing when to overlook your partner’s crap, just like he overlooks yours. ’Course, once in a while you miss something important, but hey, there’s always a downside, right?”
Yep, Harmony thought, there was always a downside, and the downside of riding with Veda and Ron was that Veda never stopped talking. And she had an opinion on everything. By the time they pulled into a gas station Harmony was wishing she had hearing aids to take out. The upside was getting to civilization a lot faster than they would have on foot.
Toledo Express Airport was about thirty-five miles from where Ron and Veda dropped them. Harmony had no intention of walking thirty-five miles. That meant public transportation, and the safest mode of public transportation for them was bus. By and large people who rode the bus were used to minding their own business. Even if they were remembered, Harmony knew odds were low that the information would get to the authorities.
It was after noon by the time the bus dropped them at the airport, but Harmony bypassed the terminal completely.
Cole slowed as they passed the entrance. “There’s probably food in there,” he called after her.
“There’s also security,” Harmony said, despite her own growling stomach.
She headed for the parking lot, and Cole fell into step with her, looking cranky again.
“This is America,” Harmony said, taking her time, looking for just the right car to boost. “There’s a restaurant on every street corner and highway off-ramp these days.”
“I was in jail, not a coma. We had restaurants back in the Dark Ages, eight years ago.”
She saw a man taking a suitcase out of the trunk of a black Ford Taurus, and not one of those little wheeled carry-ons, either. This suitcase had some heft to it.
“That one,” she said to Cole. “Wherever he’s going, he’ll be there awhile. He won’t miss the car for a few days.”
The man headed for the terminal; Harmony headed for the Taurus. She had it unlocked and running in under a minute.
“You want to take the first shift driving?” she asked Cole. “Or should I?”
Cole pulled her out from behind the wheel and shooed her to the passenger side. “My stomach is taking the wheel,” he said.
“Okay by me, but you might want to tell your stomach to stay away from donut places. Just in case.”
chapter 12
FAST-FOOD RESTAURANTS TENDED TO HUDDLE TOGETHER in high-traffic areas and around freeway interchanges. Cole drove as far as the closest conglomeration, loading up on fat and cholesterol, before he pulled into a parking space at the last one and switched places with Harmony.
Surprisingly, he pulled her laptop out of the backseat first, booted it up, and mapped out a route that took them south and west. Then he dug in.
Harmony sipped on a Diet Coke and snacked on fries dipped in chili. Cole reached over and draped a napkin across her front, tucking it into the neck of her T-shirt. His fingers brushed across the upper swells of her breasts, her heart shot up into her throat, and she almost put the car into the ditch.
Cole, when she met his eyes, had a grin on his face. “The shoulder’s far enough,” he said.
She scowled at him, but she didn’t say anything, not when she couldn’t keep what she felt out of her voice. No point letting him know that pulling over to the shoulder was the least of what she wanted to do.
She got the car back under control and steered it up the Highway 24 westbound ramp. Cole kept his hands to himself, and as long as she didn’t look his way, everything was fine. It helped when he fell asleep, not waking up until they hit the outskirts of Fort Wayne, Indiana.
He took the wheel then, steering them around Fort Wayne on I-469, and almost directly south on I-69 toward Indianapolis. Harmony would have stopped there, but Cole insisted on pushing it another two hundred and fifty miles or so to St. Louis. Harmony didn’t object; it was two hundred and fifty miles closer to Richard, and St. Louis was a large city with a lot of suburban sprawl around it. They could get lost there long enough to rest and recharge, and make a real start at putting this thing to bed.
“You don’t have any ex-con friends here, do you?” Harmony asked when they hit the outskirts of the city.
“Not the kind you’d want to run into,” Cole said. “They’re not what you’d call ‘rehabilitated.’ ”
“Neither are you.”
“True, but I’m harmless.”
Not in the ways that really counted, she thought. When she’d cooked up this crazy scheme, she’d factored in things like how difficult it would be to control a man who’d been in prison for eight years, a man who had to hate the FBI for putting him there. When she’d first laid eyes on the nerd-turned-muscleman, she’d almost put the kibosh on the whole thing. Only the fact that she’d gone too far to turn back had kept her moving forward.
Now she was wondering how she would’ve ever gotten this far without Cole. It was more than his cooperation,
more than the comfort of having someone at her side, and it was more than the fact that she desired him. More, however, was a term she couldn’t begin to define at the moment. And it was a term that might never need definition.
Harmony was almost a hundred percent positive Cole was working some angle of his own, some way to keep himself out of prison in case she couldn’t. It stung that he didn’t trust her, but she could live with that as long as he did what she needed him to do.
“This place looks like it’ll do,” Cole said. “What do you think?”
Harmony read the sign in front of the little travel motel Cole had pulled into. “Hurry Inn?”
“They have weekly rates.”
“We’re not staying for a week,” she said, but absently because she was busy looking the place over and deciding Cole was right.
The Hurry Inn looked like one of the once-charming little travel motels that had popped up along the route west in the fifties, when Mom, Dad, and the kiddies took vacations in faux-wood-sided station wagons. It ran at a forty-five degree angle from the road, with a little business office in front. All the rooms had outside entrances, and there was just enough parking for the residents.
The building was showing its age, some of the brick needed repointing, and the wood trim could’ve used a coat of paint. But the parking lot was clean and it didn’t seem to be a by-the-hour place. It wasn’t filled with families, either, but with weekly rates it probably appealed to single men on the low end of the pay scale.
Harmony handed Cole a hundred-dollar bill. “Go in and get us a room. In the back would be best.”
He looked at the money then at her.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” He got out of the car, went into the little office at the front, and came back a couple minutes later. He drove to the far end of the motel, parking in front of the last room on the end.
Harmony took a deep breath and levered herself out of the car, following Cole into the room. It didn’t surprise her to see a double bed instead of two singles. That’s the way her day had gone. “The accommodations are going to be a problem.”
“Anything else would have been suspicious,” he said, “and requesting two beds would have defeated the purpose. You sent me into the office alone for a reason.”
“So I did.” She pulled her wallet out of the duffel and went back outside. “I’m going to find some food that doesn’t come in a paper wrapper,” she said. “I’ll be back in a little while.”
But she didn’t get into the car.
Cole went to the door and looked out at her. “Don’t worry. I’ll be here when you get back.”
“If I didn’t know that, I wouldn’t have given you money, and I wouldn’t be leaving you alone here.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“Nothing,” she said. They both knew it wasn’t the truth, but there was no way she was telling Cole that she wanted him to trust her in return.
Things got worse from there. Measurably worse. Cole dug into the steak, baked potato, and asparagus she brought back like a man who’d been starved. For sex. He moaned, he groaned, he closed his eyes and let his head fall back. Harmony checked below the table while she had the opportunity. No obvious bulges. Okay, so he wasn’t that excited about the meal, but he made a good show of it.
Harmony did a lot of restless shifting in her chair and concentrated almost desperately on her chicken, rice, and broccoli. It tasted like cardboard.
“What’s for dessert?”
His deep voice struck a sympathetic chord on her already overworked nerves, all but jolting her out of her chair. She slid a smaller take-out box over to him, already regretting its contents even before he opened it and said, “Lemon meringue pie. I’m touched.”
“I owed you,” she said, getting to her feet before he could open the take-out container. “Don’t read anything into it.” She snagged her duffel and headed for the bathroom, pulling out the last clean item of clothing she had with her, a pair of running shorts. She slipped them on, and bolted out of the bathroom, straight through the room, and out the door to the parking lot.
The idea was to exercise herself into a stupor. She didn’t have much hope either cardio or yoga would work. As tense as she was it would take the Dalai Lama himself to meditate her into a state where she had any hope of sleep. Since she doubted he’d come down from his mountain to help her work off a case of hormonal overload, a couple hours of exhausting exercise might do the trick. Or it might not. Maybe the only thing that could help her work off this much tension was the man who’d caused it.
Cole Hackett, however, was the one remedy she didn’t dare try.
HARMONY JOLTED AWAKE, GROGGY, HEART POUNDING, a scream echoing in her ears.
Richard.
She stared bleary-eyed around the room, dimly lit by the fluorescent parking-lot lights leaking through the thin drapes, and tried to shove the nightmare out of her mind. Except it wasn’t a nightmare. Richard was being held captive somewhere, hurting and afraid for his life. She couldn’t do anything about it, at least not by herself, and there was a price to Cole’s assistance that she hadn’t expected.
Take tonight, for instance. After her run she’d taken a shower and popped into bed, without sparing Cole a word or a look. Back off, she was saying, keep your distance. She couldn’t have sent a clearer message if she’d written it on his boxers with a Sharpie.
But did he back off? Did he take the chair or the floor and leave her in peace? No. He’d climbed into bed with her some time after she drifted off to sleep, and now there he was, the jerk, right beside her, looking all warm and sexy. And here she was, wide awake and afraid to breathe for fear the sight and the smell of him would lure her into doing something she’d regret later. And she wasn’t just talking about sex.
Though she was only inches away from Cole, she felt alone, lonely, and uncertain and anxious. It would be so easy to roll over and steal a little comfort. It would have been a lot more tempting if she hadn’t known he’d take it as an invitation—and as much as she’d like to offer one, she couldn’t. She needed to keep her distance, and not just for her own self-respect. Mike Kovaleski, heck, everyone at the Bureau thought she had trouble separating her emotions from her work. But she could. It just took a little self-control . . .
Cole rolled over and draped his arm over her waist, sliding his hand around her butt and snugging her against him. Okay, she amended, a lot of self-control. And willpower.
She tried to shove him off, but he only slung one of his legs over hers and wrapped himself around her so she was well and truly trapped, her face against his neck, drawing him in with every breath she took so she couldn’t even escape into herself and find peace. She made a last-ditch effort to push him off, but he was deadweight, sleeping the sleep of a man with a full stomach and a clear conscience. Well, maybe just a full stomach. He didn’t deserve a clear conscience.
For the first time in days she felt good. Comfortable, safe, protected. The tension drained out of her muscles, and her mind went fuzzy, sliding down into exhaustion. She fought it. There was no way she intended to wake up wrapped in Cole’s arms.
She attempted to muster up some outrage over his criminal past, but the most she could manage was mild irritation. He had an abrasive personality, she reminded herself. He was high-handed and sarcastic, and borderline chauvinistic. None of that worked either. Even the normal sexual buzz wasn’t enough, and the next thing she knew it was morning, and she was surfacing from the best sleep she’d had since Richard had been snatched.
She resisted full consciousness because she was having the best dream of her life. She stretched, sighed, her breasts aching and the kind of tightness deep inside that made her move restlessly, needing . . .
“Keep that up and we won’t be getting out of bed for a while.”
Harmony went still. She kept her eyes shut, reaching out with one hand and encountering firm, resilient flesh. Cole’s flesh. Worse, she was draped half ove
r him, one of her legs nestled between his, his thigh riding high against her center. And that wasn’t all. His mouth was on her neck, his hands were on her bottom, and there was something hard poking her in the side. And she liked it. All of it. She wanted more. In fact, she wanted that mouth to keep moving over her skin, and she wanted that hardness deep inside her, and clearly she was getting that message across loud and clear because he skimmed his hand up, along her ribs, heading for territory she couldn’t allow him to explore, at least not while she was awake. If he touched her breast, she was going to climb the rest of the way on top of him—after she took off what little she was wearing.
She scrambled off him and kept going until she was completely out of bed. Cole had turned the air-conditioning unit up to arctic last night, so it was cold, especially on all the places her body was damp. That wasn’t why her nipples were still peaked, though. It was the way he was looking at her. And the fact that she still wanted him to do more than look.
She crossed her arms over her breasts, expecting him to make some smart comment. But he wasn’t laughing, and the look in his eyes . . .
“I thought you’d take the chair,” she said, feeling a need to defend herself.
“If I knew you were going to climb on top of me then back off, I would have.”
“I was sleeping.”
“So was I.”
“Not when I woke up. If you were a . . .”
“What? A gentleman? If I was a gentleman, I’d have taken the chair.” And Cole got out of bed, still hard and even more magnificent.
He knew she was looking, too, and she must have done a pretty poor job of hiding her feelings.
“Your choice,” he said.
“It would be a mistake.”
“Women,” he muttered, as he walked by her. “Always screwing up sex with emotion.”
He dug through Juan’s parting gifts and came up with a clean pair of jeans and a T-shirt, disappearing with them into the bathroom and leaving Harmony stung. But only because he’d hit a sore spot. It had nothing to do with the fact that he could have sex with her and feel nothing beyond physical gratification. Wanting him to feel something meant she was feeling something.