Avenging Angel (4 page)

As reassurance, he knew it was damn little, but it was all he felt like offering. He didn’t want her to like him. He didn’t want her gratitude. He didn’t want her to remember.

He’d broken his cover to save the lawyer Austin had decided was at the root of his crumbling empire. Now he was a dead man on borrowed time. But she didn’t need to know anything about him, except at the end, when she might know he’d saved her life.

“Please . . .” The whispered word came at him in the darkness, surprising him with its intense yearning, and undermining his resolve as no amount of demands could. Her voice was so soft, so husky and sweet, the way he remembered from a long-ago night when she’d whispered that word to him with her mouth almost touching his.

He remembered the silky feel of her skin beneath his hands, the erotic way her breath had caught when he’d moved closer, tempted beyond reason to take what he wanted. Her scent had wound its way around him, increasing his pleasure, heightening his anticipation. They’d been so close, her breasts touching his chest, his hand cupping her face, ready to draw her into his kiss.

Dylan swore under his breath. That had been his first mistake: wanting her beyond reason. His second mistake had been not taking her.

Johanna was a city girl, born and bred in Chicago. She did not particularly care for wilderness, and Laramie, Wyoming, classified as such in her book. For miles she’d seen nothing but dark sky, stars, and rolling prairie, with hardly a light since they’d crossed the Colorado—Wyoming border. There were lights in Laramie, but not enough to calm a city girl’s heart.

Neither was the company. Dylan Jones had gone mute before they’d gotten out of Boulder, and she’d be damned if she broke the silence first, not after her unforgivable moment of weakness. She felt like a fool for pleading with him. It wasn’t like her to plead.

Her gaze slid to him. For a man supposedly trying to save her life, presumably from Austin, he had gone out of his way to make her distrust him, starting with kidnapping her at gunpoint, a crime she would make sure he rotted in prison for committing. He frightened her, too, but she was trying hard not to dwell on the frightening aspects of her situation—or of his personality.

He was silent, eerily so, and as unpredictable as a wounded animal. In one of the northern Colorado border towns, he’d twice pulled off the highway and into gas stations. Both times, after cruising the station at a crawl, he’d gotten back on the highway and driven on down the road. She didn’t know what he was looking for, but he’d found Laramie, for what it was worth.

They stopped at a light on the outskirts of town. The streets were nearly empty and very quiet. The only sound she heard was his breathing, and it didn’t sound good. She hazarded a quick glance in his direction.

The impression of a wounded animal came back to her. He was propped against his corner of the car with the shotgun wedged between the seat and the door. His breathing was ragged, his face pale under his beard stubble and his bruises. Nervous energy radiated off him as it did off a cat.

“Are you sick?” she asked.

Dark eyes, weary and determined, slanted her a brief look. Then he went back to his driving, silent as ever.

Dylan didn’t have the strength to talk. It was taking everything he had to keep driving. He needed sleep, food, and medical attention. His pants were wet with his own blood, the front of his T-shirt saturated. He needed help, he needed a friend, and all he had was a woman he’d abducted with a twelve-gauge.

He spotted the lights of an all-night gas station and convenience store and headed toward them, careful to use his blinker and stay just under the speed limit. His last two attempts to get gas and supplies had been unsuccessful. A cop had been in the first station, standing toward the back of the store by the coffee machine. Dylan hadn’t spotted the squad car, but he hadn’t hung around to look for it either. The second station he’d tried just hadn’t felt right, reason enough to leave.

He pulled into the Laramie station’s parking lot at one end, taking his time in cruising by the front of the store. He made a slow turn at the other end of the lot and came back to park in front of the gas pump closest to the door of the store. He sat still for a minute, watching the clerk inside. The man was young, too young to know much about the kind of trouble Dylan was up to, and too young to know what to do even if he did figure it out. He was also in that gangly, awkward stage boys sometimes went through well into their twenties. Dylan figured he could take him without hurting him, if it came to that.

“Come on. You’re going with me,” he said to the woman beside him. He opened his door and set one booted foot on the pavement. With effort, he got his other foot out and slowly rose to a standing position, supporting himself with the car door.

She got out next to him, with a look on her face he immediately recognized. She was ready to bolt, looking for any chance to lose him.

“Don’t even think it,” he said, angling the shotgun far enough away from his thigh for her to see it beneath his coat.

Johanna looked quickly from the gun to his eyes. “You have a strange way of trying to save someone’s life,” she said, carefully keeping her voice devoid of expression.

“I’ll be more accommodating later. Right now I’m desperate.” He drawled his words either from insolence or exhaustion. “Do you know how to pump gas?”

What she didn’t know about the operation, he explained. She held the nozzle in the tank while he lounged against the car as if he didn’t have the strength to stand up—a condition he proved when she was finished pumping the gas.

“Come here,” he said when she had turned off the pump.

She thought they were close enough and was about to tell him so when he spoke again.

“Come here.” His tone was deep and dark, definitely on the edge again.

Still, she hesitated.

He leveled the gun at her. “
Come here
.”

She stepped closer, vowing he would pay dearly for every crime he committed against her. When she was next to him, he slid his right arm around her shoulders and rested the bulk of his weight against her. Her arm automatically circled his waist to keep them both from falling over, and a plan instantly formed in her mind.

The man was on the verge of collapse. All she had to do was wait for him to pass out, then make her escape. She could just walk away, get to the nearest police station, and the nightmare would be over. His body was trembling with the effort it took to walk into the store. His shirt and pants were damp with sweat. He felt hot and sticky. Lord, he felt like he was dying in her arms, and she was grateful.

She held him as they stumbled and limped down the aisles of the store, cleaning out the first-aid counter, buying prepared sandwiches, milk, juice, sport drink, the store’s meager supply of fruit, instant coffee, and a sewing kit. In the personal-hygiene aisle, he asked her what she needed.

“That depends on how long you plan to hold me hostage,” she told him with icy condemnation. He met her gaze, unflinching. “One week.”

“Then what?”

He pushed her forward. “Get what you need.”

She literally had her hands full keeping him upright and retrieving the items he ordered her to put in their basket. She tried releasing her hold on him a couple of times in hopes he’d fall to the floor, maybe even unconscious, but each time he tightened his hold on her and pushed her onward.

In the candy aisle, he came to a stop. “Go ahead and get something.”

She looked at him, confused. “Like what?”

At least a dozen different confections were within easy reach. She didn’t know if he wanted them all, or just a selection.

“I don’t know,” he said, with a brief, pained grimace. “Whatever you want. Something chocolate. You like chocolate.”

“You don’t know anything about what I like,” she informed him coolly.

He actually grinned at that, an expression barely discernible from his grimace except for the teasing glint in his eyes. “I know you like chocolate, Miss Lane. Lots of chocolate. Preferably in gold boxes. But this”—he gestured at the rows of candy bars—“will have to do.”

She did like chocolate, especially chocolate in gold boxes. Austin had kept her in constant supply—a fact Dylan Jones obviously knew. But that he considered her enough to act on that knowledge was what disconcerted her.

When she didn’t make a move toward the candy, he did it for her, emptying a couple of the boxes into their cart.

“I’m trying to make this as pleasant as possible,” he muttered, disconcerting her even more. As outlandish as his claim was, she believed him. Nothing in his manner was ingratiating. He didn’t seem to give a damn whether she liked him or not, which ironically made her feel more secure. He wanted her to have the chocolate, simply because she liked chocolate.

Still, she wasn’t going to let a few candy bars sway her determination. Her last hopes centered on signaling the night clerk for help. As they approached the counter Dylan drew her closer under his arm and nuzzled her neck. She instantly froze.

“Come on, honey.” His words were definitely slurred, spoken in a sensuous timbre she would have thought impossible of him. His lips grazed her cheek in the same instant his gun grazed her thigh.

She lurched forward and began emptying their basket onto the counter, pulling stuff out, letting it pile up and fall over into the cigarette and candy displays crowded around the cash register. Chocolate or no, he didn’t have any right to touch her like that.

The clerk gave them both a big, easy grin, his young face open, friendly, and freckled to match his rust-colored hair.

“Howdy, folks,” he said, fishing a roll of first-aid tape out of the bubble-gum bowl. “Hope you found everything you wanted. These sandwiches were just brought in this morning, guaranteed fresh.”

Neither Johanna nor Dylan commented on the sandwiches. Johanna because she had no intention of eating a smashed, day-old, convenience-store sandwich. Dylan because he didn’t care how old or fresh the sandwiches were—he was going to relish every bite.

“You folks from around here?” the clerk asked, continuing his friendly chatter and ringing up their purchases.

“No,” Dylan said, pressing against her as he dug in the pocket of his long overcoat. Johanna opened her mouth to speak, to say anything to keep the conversation going, but the clerk didn’t need her help. He was talking again before she made her first sound.

“The weather’s been pretty darn hot this summer. Hope you folks have some air-conditioning to keep you cool. Where you heading?”

“To bed,” Dylan said, pulling his hand free of his pocket and sliding three boxes of condoms across the counter.

The conversation died an ignominious death. The clerk turned a bright shade of red, and his gaze skittered from the boxes to Johanna’s breasts, to her thighs, back to her breasts, and finally to the cash register.

Johanna’s face was red, too, but not from embarrassment. She hadn’t seen him pick up the little boxes, but it took more than a condom, or even a dozen of them, to embarrass her. She was angry, plain and simple, and as soon as Dylan Jones was through saving her life and stuffing her full of cheap chocolate, she was going to nail his felonious hide to the wall.

Dylan paid cash for the supplies and nudged her leg with the shotgun. The condoms had done their job of shutting everybody up long enough for the clerk to finish his job, and none too soon. The muscles in his chest and shoulder ached and burned with the weight of the firearm. His head was pounding out a staccato beat of pain. His mouth was too dry to spit, and all he wanted to do was drop to his knees and the floor, preferably in a dead faint. Instead he was acting out a part he was all too familiar with, all too good at—the heavy. He nudged her again when she didn’t move, pressing the barrel of the gun against her knee.

She slanted him a lethal look, her eyes narrowed in fury, and for a moment he thought she might call his bluff. He narrowed his own gaze in warning and pushed her harder.

“Move it, honey,” he drawled. “We’ve got a
long, hard
night ahead of us.”

The clerk grinned, and his gaze dropped once more to Johanna’s breasts, irritating the hell out of Dylan. He said something crude to the kid, two succinct words meant to put him in his place. The kid’s smile disappeared, and he got busy rearranging his candy displays.

Johanna leaned over the counter. “I want to use the phone,” she said loud and clear, getting the clerk’s attention. Dylan had to admire her for holding her ground, but she was also adding to his irritation. She’d called his bluff. Now he was going to call hers.

He took a second to concentrate his strength and take a breath, then he jerked her close, none too gently, and whispered in her ear. “If you drag the boy into this, he’s going to get hurt.”

Johanna stilled at the deadly intent in his voice. His grip tightened around her arm, a distinct contrast to the softness of his breath blowing across her skin. She shivered in an instinctive reaction.

“Let’s move out,” he murmured, and she let herself be half pushed, half pulled out of the store and back into the relentless heat of the night.

Dylan Jones had said he didn’t want to hurt her. He’d said he was trying to save her life. But he’d just made it damn clear that he would brook no interference from a stranger.