by Tara Janzen
“A man with such a beautiful wife should take better care of his health, no?” Dr. Varria smiled, all toothy and idiotic, and yeah, Kid knew why. Nikki had that effect on men. She’d slam-dunked Smith, and C. Smith Rydell was a rock when it came to women. He loved them; he was just never in love with any particular one.
Which was just one more reason why Smith should be the guy taking her home.
Goddamn. He sucked in his breath, when Dr. Varria stabbed him again with the needle.
“Absolutely,” Nikki said, coming to a stop next to where he was sitting on the edge of the examining table with nothing but a good-size paper towel over his lap. His pants were hanging around his ankles, so the doctor could rebandage his leg. “A man with a wife should take better care of his health. So what happened here?” She lightly touched his right shoulder.
“Another bullet wound,” Dr. Varria announced with authority. “Obviously healed.”
“And here?” She touched his jaw, and Dr. Varria lifted his head and looked closely at the stitches.
“There’s some cauterization, so whatever cut him was very hot.” The doc flashed her another toothy smile. “Your husband lives a dangerous life.”
“Yes, he does,” Nikki said, not sounding any too happy about it, and Kid wondered what she thought she was doing, besides confusing him. “What about these?”
Her fingers landed on the scars marking his upper left arm, and it took everything Kid had not to grab her hand. She wouldn’t understand about the scars, but the doctor did. His question proved it, and the fact that he switched back to Spanish to ask it.
“¿Fueron a propósito?” Were these on purpose?
The look Kid gave him said it was none of his business and to back off—now.
Varria got the point.
“Knife wound,” the doctor said abruptly, turning aside and busying himself with the suturing tray, obviously not wanting any more to do with the dangerous life Kid led.
Perfect, Kid thought. That was just what he needed, a nervous doctor sewing him up. But Varria was right. The scars had been deliberate, and they’d been made with a knife: three horizontal lines incised into his skin in remembrance of a brother who’d borne the same marks.
“You didn’t have these last September,” Nikki said, tracing the scars—and Kid did grab her hand.
“Don’t,” he said.
“I’ve seen these exact markings before, on someone else, and he wouldn’t tell me what they meant either.”
That got Kid’s attention. Only one other person alive had the same scars. They’d been cut into Creed Rivera by the NRF bastards who had butchered J.T.—Creed, who had cut them into Kid’s arm over a smoky fire on the side of a mountain in Peru, a legacy of blood and brotherhood.
She was right. He was a savage.
So was Creed, and Nikki had obviously seen the jungle boy without his shirt, maybe without anything, considering that it was Nikki McKinney.
“Don’t tell me you painted Creed.” Or he was going to go ballistic. First she slept with Rocky Solano, then she stripped the jungle boy down to his skin?
Kid couldn’t take it.
“As much of him as I could,” she said, doing the exact opposite of what he’d just asked. “Skeeter set up the shoot for me, but Creed wouldn’t take his pants off. He just flat-out absolutely refused.”
Kid felt a wave of relief wash through him. He should have known he could count on Creed. He’d counted on Creed for everything during those last weeks of their search-and-destroy mission in South America.
“Hawkins did, though,” Nikki added. “Everything.”
Kid felt Dr. Varria putting in his stitches, the prick and pull of the needle and suture going through his skin. He heard the doctor muttering about the mess he’d made of himself, but he didn’t take his eyes off Nikki.
Of course, Christian Hawkins would have taken his clothes off for her. Superman was fearless.
Still . . . still, this was Nikki, and Kid was . . . was—
“He’s exquisite, more muscle definition than ten other guys, and the tattoo, my God, have you seen it?”
Of course, he’d seen Superman’s tattoo. But didn’t she know they had real problems here, and dragging more naked men into the picture wasn’t helping?
“He is the angel, Kid, the very first.”
“Hawkins, an angel,” he said bluntly, not buying it for a second. Christian Hawkins had the kind of reputation that would give an angel a heart attack, and he had that reputation in places no angel would ever go, the real hellholes of the world.
“He saved my life, when I was about six, at Rabbit Valley. Snatched me from the jaws of death.”
“The jaws of death?” That sounded a bit much, even for Superman.
“A rattlesnake. I didn’t realize I’d wandered so close to one, but there it was, tail rattling, and then there was this guy, scooping me up into his arms, and there were feathers all over him, all over his back, down his arms, inked into his skin, but to me they looked real, and the whole moment just flashed onto my brain, being saved by a dark angel.”
Honestly, nothing about that bit of information surprised him. He knew all about the bust that had landed Denver’s finest crew of car thieves on Doc McKinney’s dinosaur digging team in Rabbit Valley, Colorado, and he’d known Nikki had been there that summer with her grandfather. J.T. had been one of the chop-shop boys. As for Hawkins, hell, he’d never mentioned saving a little girl from a rattlesnake, but he wouldn’t. Saving people’s lives was business as usual for Superman, especially women’s lives, and no woman who had ever met Christian Hawkins ever seemed to forget him, apparently even if she was only six years old, but—
“I think that’s the dichotomy I’m always working with, Kid, being saved by the dark angel, the darkest angel.”
Okay, dichotomy—they’d had this conversation before about the dichotomies in her work, but Kid was stuck in another place right now, and—
“I think that’s why I never know if Travis is ascending to heaven or descending to hell.”
And now Travis? The glowing wonder-stud, who Kid would have put his money on as the guy Nikki would run off with, not some “civilized” fiber artist, but now that he thought about it, maybe there was a little bit of savage in Travis, too, and—
“So I paint him both ways, but the truth, I believe now, is a lot more complicated.”
For all his poking around, Dr. Varria, Kid suddenly realized, had not gotten enough anesthetic into his wound. Dammit. And yes, the whole goddamn thing was complicated, a little too complicated for a guy who was getting stabbed with a needle, over and over again, and yet he did have this one point he needed to make.
“Naked, Nikki? You photographed Hawkins naked?” His head was swimming.
“I do all my models naked, Kid. You knew that from the beginning.”
Right. Right, he’d known that, but that wasn’t helping matters now, especially with—shit!
“You need to numb that up a bit more, Doc,” he said between his teeth.
Varria blanched and reached for the syringe.
“My work couldn’t possibly be why you never came home,” she said, sounding surprised, then unsure. “Or could it?”
“I . . . I need to lie down.” His head really was swimming. There was even a moment when he sort of went blank for a second, and then he was on his back, with Nikki and Dr. Varria hovering over him.
Nikki had ahold of his hand.
He liked that. He liked it a lot, even if he was still so goddamn mad and still feeling as guilty as hell. And yes, he was incredibly grateful she was thinking about something other than what he’d done at the house, anything other than what he’d done—but he was still angry about the whole damn situation.
“Kid?” she said, leaning over him, her expression overly worried. “Kid, are you okay?”
“Yeah.” He was fine. Too much sex and not enough food, he decided. Too much fighting, too many stitches, and not enough taking it eas
y like the doctors in Bogotá had told him to do. “Yeah,” he said again. “I’m fine.”
His head was a fucking mess, but he was fine.
“You were telling me about the three scars you and Creed have on your arms,” she said, smoothing her other hand over his brow, suddenly looking so solicitous, he almost grinned. This was the Nikki he’d fallen in love with, a teasing, I’m-so-in-charge-of-my-world Nikki, the take-no-prisoners Nikki who looked into men’s souls and took what she wanted.
Yeah, that was Nikki, and he most definitely wasn’t in any shape for her to be doing that to him. He wasn’t ready for anything even close to that much of an invasion.
Hell, no.
“No, I wasn’t,” he said, and wished he would just cool out. He didn’t like running hot, being on edge inside. Cool, calm, collected, that was him—with everyone and everything except her. “I was telling you not to photograph Hawkins naked, ever again.” It was none of his business. He knew that. But she had him flat on his back and was still holding all the cards.
“When you see the painting I did of him, you’ll change your mind.”
Yeah, he knew that, too. She was an amazing artist, and for a while tonight, when he’d first seen her at the Sandovals’, he’d thought she was still his.
Unbidden, his gaze went to her left hand, but the ring wasn’t on her finger.
Oh, Christ. Had she lost it at the Parrot? Thrown it out with her tissues or some damn thing?
No. Impossible. His luck couldn’t be running that good.
“Where’s your ring, Nikki?”
She followed his gaze, and for a moment she looked confused, then stricken. “I . . . I forgot about it. Oh, geez. I didn’t think, I mean it’s in my luggage, back at the house. I took it off and put it in my jewelry bag when I packed, but in the rush, those men, I don’t—”
He tightened his hand on hers in warning, and she fell silent, but looked distraught, which he didn’t blame her for, not a bit. The ring had to be worth a fortune. But the important thing, the really so-help-him-God important thing, was that she’d taken the damn thing off and packed it in her luggage.
“You put it in your suitcase?” he asked, his voice very serious, as if buck-ass naked he was conducting some sort of investigation into the missing ring, which of course he would if it proved necessary—but mostly he just wanted to hear that part again.
“Yes, in my big pink suitcase. I took it off, and—” she paused for a moment and her gaze locked onto his. “Yes, Kid,” she repeated. “I took it off. After tonight, how could I wear it?”
He didn’t know the answer to that, because, frankly, he didn’t know how in the hell she’d worn it in the first place.
“We need to talk about this,” she said, her voice very solemn. “There are things you need to know.”
Or not, he thought, feeling a cold sweat break out on his brow.
Great. This was perfect. Racing heart. Cold sweat. What was next? Hyperventilation?
“I know how angry you are, Kid.”
No, she didn’t. Not even close.
And excuse me, but was his breath getting a little short?
Fuck.
“Don’t worry, Nikki. I’ll get the ring back for you,” he said. It was a promise—and didn’t that just make the whole screwed-up night complete? There he was, filleted like a fish with a paper towel covering his dick, going into panic mode for God only knew what reason, and promising to get back the ring that said she was engaged to marry another man.
He needed his head examined.
A knock sounded on the door, and one of the DEA guys popped in. “Five more minutes, max, if you’re going to make that plane.”
Kid nodded and completely ignored the guy’s quick glance at the paper towel and his shit-eating grin. There was no way in hell they were going to miss that plane, not if he had to finish sewing himself up on the tarmac—and honestly, five more minutes of this situation was about four and a half more than he thought he could take.
CHAPTER
10
Denver, Colorado
TRAVIS WATCHED SKEETER slip out the back door in a flurry of snow and a gust of wind.
Damn. The storm was turning into a blizzard, and getting colder. The temperature had dropped even since the boy, Kondo, had left.
He threw the dead bolt and turned back around only to find Jane looking right at him. For as quiet as she was, she never hesitated to meet his gaze straight on when she wanted to, and twice she’d just about leveled him with an intense sidelong glance from across the gallery. She wasn’t quiet because she was shy. Oh, no. She just had nothing to say to him. He’d gotten that message the same way he was getting the message she was sending now, which was “If you’re finished for the night, why don’t you go home?”
It was amazing, really. He was no mind reader like Skeeter, but he was starting to feel like one with Jane, or Robin, or whatever she wanted to call herself.
He was also starting to feel a little annoyed with himself and frustrated with the situation, two emotions he usually found useless. The only other girl who had ever blown him off so completely was Skeeter herself. So his batting average with hot, streetwise women was exactly zero. Girls like that were obviously looking for something else, but he’d be damned if he had a clue what. Lots of different kinds of guys came on to Skeeter, from lawyers and FBI agents to gangbangers and downtown hustlers, and he’d watched her shut each of them down every single time.
The same way Jane was shutting him down now, with a look that said he simply didn’t register anywhere on her radar.
“Well, I’ll just be heading on home now,” he said, reaching for his coat where it hung next to hers by the back door.
What the hell, was what he was thinking. He needed to start getting interested in women who were interested in him, instead of driving himself crazy with hot dreams and wild fantasies about Jane Linden.
Jane, who, naturally, didn’t say a word. As a matter of fact, she wasn’t even looking at him anymore. She’d gone back to shuffling the envelopes, lining them up, and she’d conveniently stationed herself between him and the rest of the gallery, sending another silent message for him to leave by the back door and not let it hit him in the ass on his way out.
Man, oh, man, he’d never seen anybody work the body language the way she did, all of it saying “closed, keep out, no trespassing.”
“I’ll see you tonight then, at the show.”
Oh, Christ. Had he just said that? He couldn’t believe he’d just said that. The woman did not want to talk to him, and she didn’t give a flying leap if she saw him tonight at the show. What did it take—a neon sign flashing over her head?
He was stuck in perpetual nice-guy mode, and she was all about attitude with a big, silent “A.”
He let himself out the door, thank you very much, and closed it solidly behind him. He didn’t move away, though, until he heard the dead bolt slide home—just more stupid nice-guy stuff. He was the king of it.
Glancing across the alley, he swore under his breath. His Jeep looked frozen, like a metallic ice cube, cold and heartless, and like maybe it wouldn’t get him home tonight.
Great. Just great, he thought, stepping off the stoop. From out of nowhere, a small form darted out from behind him, and his heart jammed up into his throat.
Geezus! He jumped to one side.
The kid was fast, like a streak of lightning, disappearing down the alley and around the corner almost before Travis even registered that he’d been there.
How in the hell hadn’t he seen the little bugger? He must have practically stepped on him when he’d come out the door. And sonuvabitch—there was another envelope, lying on top of the snow.
He bent down and picked it up, already knowing what it would say: Castle Import Rug Company, with the words Robun Rulz scrawled across the front.
Robun? This one couldn’t even spell, and where in the hell did these kids keep coming from? It was damn cold out tonight, almost
morning. Shouldn’t they still be tucked into their beds or something? Who was taking care of them? Nobody?
He shoved the envelope in his pocket, not about to go back inside. He’d give it to her later, her tribute. It was all starting to bug the hell out of him. Where were all these kids coming from? And why were they running around in the middle of the night?
If he’d thought he could have gotten any kind of answer at all out of Jane, he would have gone back inside and asked for one.
Geezus. He needed to go back to his real life in Boulder and stop getting wound up in all the urban angst of a landscape he didn’t understand—street life, pickpockets, girls with crews, girls like Jane, except she wasn’t a girl anymore. She’d grown up, gotten a job in an art gallery, and moved on.
He dug the envelope back out of his pocket and looked at it again. Tribute.
He’d seen how hard she worked. Toussi’s was a big gallery. Besides crating and uncrating pieces for shipment or show, she cleaned the place and worked with Katya in the office. Katya had two other part-time employees and Suzi Toussi, the original owner of the gallery, to help her with the customers, but she was probably going to work Jane into it—unless the girl got involved with the Castle Rats again.
Sure, Christian Hawkins knew what she’d been, but Travis knew what Katya expected her to be, and it didn’t include taking tribute from pickpockets.
None of which was his problem, he reminded himself. Jane had kicked him out, after another night of brilliantly ignoring him. He needed to get a clue, and right now wasn’t any too soon to start.
By the time he got his frozen piece of crap Jeep running and turned onto Seventeenth Street, he’d decided he was done banging his head against a wall. Then he realized he’d left his backpack. Dammit.
Swearing under his breath, he pulled over in front of the gallery. He hated to disturb her, really he did, when she was probably so damn sure she’d finally gotten rid of him, but since he wasn’t coming back, he needed his stuff.