Crazy Hot (8 page)

She probably ought to thank Quinn Younger for being living proof that at one time she had been able to hold a man's attention—except he hadn't been a man yet. He'd been a boy whose threadbare jeans hadn't done nearly enough to hide what she'd done to him. She'd noticed just before he'd turned to walk away, and if he hadn't ducked out of the tent, she might have asked him to stay. Not for sex, she hadn't been ready for sex, but the way he'd looked at her had definitely made her long for a kiss, her first kiss, a French kiss. That's what she'd wanted from him, to feel his arms around her and to look into those impossibly green eyes and taste him, to run her tongue over his oh-so-white teeth and feel his tongue in her mouth. To slide her fingers up into his silky dark hair, to touch his skin and feel his warmth surround her, and maybe to feel safe. Though how she'd thought she'd feel safe with a juvenile car thief doing time with her grandfather was something she'd never quite figured out. When he'd shown up in
People
magazine shortly after her divorce, it had all come back to her, how much she'd longed for the boy he'd been.

Now he was back in her life, and he was pure trouble wrapped around a face she'd been going to bed with every night for the last five years—a situation that made her feel painfully ridiculous. He didn't know, of course, but it didn't matter. Just looking at him made her feel foolish. Physically, he was even stronger, harder, his face still perfect, even with the scar on his cheek and his too-long, mussed-up, windblown hair. Any normal woman would have outgrown her infatuation years ago. But, no, desperate Regan McKinney had clung to hers. What she should have done, she admitted, was take his picture off her closet door a long time ago, instead of letting it become a permanent fixture. Better yet, she should never have put it up in the first place.

Regardless, she'd tracked him down because of Wilson, not out of some timeworn crush. Memories or no memories, she had a responsibility in her current situation, a responsibility she had no intention of forgetting.

Forcing herself to lift her chin, she met his gaze.

“How did my grandfather get involved in this mess? Did you call him?”

He shook his head. “I've been out of action for a couple of weeks. One of my partners must have contacted him.”

“Kid?”

“No. Kid's been with me.”

“Hiding out in Cisco.” Like the outlaw she was sure he still was.

“Laying low,” he corrected, flashing her a grin straight off her closet door—all mischief, pure promise, and too damned familiar for comfort.

“Are you still with the Air Force, then?” If he was looking for stolen government goods, it seemed a distinct possibility.

“Not directly, but we're on the same side, and we will find what we're looking for.”

Okay,
she thought, not precisely appeased by his too careful explanations, but reassured enough to let go of one layer of panic and half a layer of doubt.

“So are you with the CIA or something?”

“No.” He reached for his coffee cup.

“FBI?”

He held her gaze and took a drink, but said nothing.

“Secret Service? U.S. Marshals?” She was running out of ideas.

When he still said nothing, she felt herself floundering. “Police? Sheriff's office?” Silence. “The Boy Scouts?”

His grin flashed again. “Nothing that official, but we're behind the motto one hundred percent,” he said, putting his cup back on the table.

Okay. So they liked to be prepared. Which meant exactly what? she wondered.

“But you're still one of the good guys?”

“I've always considered ‘good' a relative term.” When she glared, he laughed and leaned forward over the table. “Yeah,” he assured her. “I'm still one of the good guys. Kid's one of the good guys, too, Regan, and I really need you to call Nikki and tell her to let him in and to stick with him.”

“Can't you tell me who you
do
work for?” It wasn't too late to warn her sister off—but the thought of Nikki being watched or followed by someone like Vince Branson made Regan very much want to believe in Kid Chaos.

To his credit, Quinn's hesitation was so brief as to be almost imperceptible. “Sure,” he said. “It's a company called Steele Street. We deal in cars, mostly rare iron, Mopar muscle, pony cars, street machines. Porsches when we get a line on a good one. Every now and then we put a car on the track.”

“So you're a used-car salesman who races the merchandise and tracks down stolen government goods on the side?” She couldn't help it, every ounce of her disbelief ended up in the question.

He laughed, a surprised sound. “Pretty much,” he agreed, his grin returning.

Right,
she thought.

“So why do I get the feeling you're not telling me much, let alone everything?”

His smile broadened even more. “Because you're a smart lady,” he said. “It's one of the first things I noticed about you.”

“Before or after I fainted in the barn?” she asked dryly, well aware of a whole day's worth of shortcomings on her part. There was a reason she stayed tucked away safely in her lab. It was safe, quiet, and eminently controllable, just her and some old bones locked in stone. This past year, her grandfather had joined her to coordinate the senior brigade, as they called their older volunteers. Their young and dynamic director, Dr. Houska, was too busy trying to find a
Tyrannosaurus rex
nest in the badlands of Wyoming to spend much time at all in the museum between April and September.

“Way before,” Quinn said, the natural mischief in his smile taking on a whole new meaning.

Oh, brother,
she thought, feeling her stomach tighten. He was doing it again, thinking about the night in her tent, when he most definitely had not been staring at her intelligence.

“Call Nikki for me, Regan,” he said, leaning even closer over the table. His smile faded. “I don't know how you showed up on Branson's radar, but you did, and we need to control the damage. If Kid's with Nikki, she'll be safe. Your only other option is to tell her to run, and that's the last thing I'd want my little sister doing, especially on her own.”

He was right. Regan hated it, but he was right. She had to call Nikki. She had to warn her sister about the trouble headed her way.

God, what a mess. Her gaze slid away from his. Suddenly the faintest curve of a smile threatened the corner of her lips.

Nikki wasn't the only one in for a wild night.

Too bad there wasn't anybody to warn the boy wonder.

C
HAPTER

8

Q
UINN'S CELL PHONE
rang on their way across Jake's parking lot.

“Quinn,” he said, holding the phone to his ear while reaching for the passenger door of the Camaro.

“Kid is more than halfway home, and I've got McKinney with me in a warehouse on the Lafayette exit,” Hawkins said. “Where the hell are you?”

“Vail. How's McKinney? All in one piece?” His hand fell away from the door, and he looked up at Regan. The wind had come up, and she was holding her hair back off her face in an intrinsically feminine pose, the soft curve of her arm limned by the sun. Her eyes, gray and intense, were focused on him.

When Hawkins answered “Fine,” Quinn gave her the okay sign.

“What's Kid clocking in at?” he asked.

“He isn't saying, but he must have pushed one-forty at least once before he hit Glenwood Springs.”

“So there were bones in the crates?”

“Seven tons and nothing else, but don't get any ideas. Dylan wants you out of this, Quinn. Roper Jones is after your head.”

“Cisco is no good.”

“Then stay at Jake's. You still have a key. Hell, everybody from L.A. to Denver has a key.”

Quinn didn't answer, just waited for Hawkins to realize what he'd just said. He didn't have to wait long.

“Hell, even I've got a key. Okay, so Jake's won't work.”

“What about Branson? How did he get into this?”

“McKinney is pretty high profile in the dinosaur business, and Roper is missing a bunch of old bones. He must have put two and two together and taken a pretty damn accurate stab in the dark. I had Skeeter do some checking, and the oldest granddaughter is in the dinosaur bone business, too. Given nothing else to work with, following her must have looked like a good bet to Roper.”

That was the way Quinn had figured it had all gone down. McKinney was
the
dinosaur man. Anyone looking for missing fossils would have put him on their short list.

“Maybe we ought to start getting our intel from Roper's guys. Their batting average looks a hell of a lot better than ours on this deal.”

“Yeah.” Hawkins didn't sound any happier about the fact than Quinn did. “Roper's looking for you hard, Quinn, you and the fricking bones, so find a place and hole up. Give me a chance to get this all sorted out, and—”

“Bullshit.” The damage was already done. It had been done the minute Regan had pulled into Cisco with Branson on her tail—and now he was back in, all the way in.

Turning away from the car, he stuck his hand in the front pocket of his jeans and dropped his gaze to his boots.

“I'm not holing up anywhere. I'm going hunting,” he said into the phone. “Should be good game, if you want to come along.” Inside his pocket, he wrapped his fingers around the tracking device Kid had taken off Regan's Taurus hours earlier. A high-tech GP M21, it was the perfect calling card. All he had to do was pick his place, switch it on, and wait.

Somebody was bound to show up.

Hawkins swore, one succinct word. “Dylan's going to have all our heads if something happens to yours.”

“Probably.” Quinn knew exactly what he was worth to SDF and the rest of the team at Steele Street. He was Dylan's ace up his sleeve, General Grant's national-hero card, something they both could play to put a pretty face on dirty deeds when the feds turned up the heat or some Congressman got his panties in a wad.

Hawkins swore again, and Quinn heard the click of a lighter and Hawkins's quick intake of breath.

“The FBI pulled out this afternoon,” Hawkins said, exhaling. “They don't have much use for dinosaur bones.”

“Neither do we.” Quinn knew Superman wanted Roper as badly as he did. The bastard was a plague on the streets of Denver, which made the problem personal to a couple of guys who had grown up on those streets. The rest of it, the assault rifles, was a no-brainer. Roper had to be stopped. The terrorist market would inhale Uncle Sam's wonder weapon and turn it back on him from every hovel and unmapped back alley in the Third World. It was time to stop playing undercover cop and start playing bad cop.

“So what do you say we give the bones back to Roper,” Hawkins said.

That's exactly what Quinn had been thinking. “I'll stop at Steele Street and pick up one of Kid's trackers.” They could set Branson's tracker in the Lafayette warehouse, drawing the bad guys in, and have Kid's tracker already in with the fossils. After that, piece of cake, they'd follow the bones—hopefully right to the assault rifles.

“We've only got tonight,” Hawkins told him. “The Air Force is coming in tomorrow morning to ship the bones out.”

“Then tonight.”

“What are you going to do with the woman?”

“Take her home.” He glanced up and found the woman in question watching him—
woman
being the operative word. She wasn't a fifteen-year-old girl anymore, and the longer he was with her, the more intrigued he became with the change and the curious but undeniable fact that she still had a powerful effect on him. He was so
aware
of her, of the way the sunlight and the wind played with her hair, of her whole body, her breath, of the intensity of her gaze and her barely hidden distress.

“You could have sent her with Kid in the first place.”

“Could have,” he admitted. But he was glad he hadn't.

“The McKinney house might not be the best place to wait this thing out, not until Roper gets his bones back and calls off his dogs.”

“Yeah. I've been thinking about having Kid and the women check into the Southern Cross Hotel.” He saw her eyebrows rise at the mention of the very expensive resort nestled in the foothills above Boulder. “It's a good safe house, and it keeps both of them out of the way.”

“Good idea. I'm on my way to Roper's now. I'll see what I can find out about Branson and the other guy.”

“What about Doc McKinney?”

“He's finishing up. Johnny's on his way to take over, and I think I'll have the two of them stay at Steele Street for the night. No sense in keeping all our eggs in one basket.”

“Roger,” Quinn said.

Hawkins chuckled. “Right.” Then he hung up.

Quinn flipped his phone closed and slipped it back in his shirt pocket, his gaze going to Regan.

“My grandfather?” she demanded.

“He's fine, practically down the street from your house, in Lafayette.” The big mystery turned out to be no mystery at all, except for whatever reason Doc McKinney had for not checking in with his granddaughters.

“Lafayette?” she repeated, her brow furrowing. Then she tucked her chin, and her hand slid up to cover her eyes. A soft curse left her mouth. “Lafayette.”

“I just confirmed there were fossils in those crates my partners and I took off the Burlington Northern. They're in a warehouse in Lafayette near the interstate.”

She nodded and leaned back, resting her hip against Jeanette, her other arm wrapping around her waist. He'd expected her to be relieved, but he wasn't seeing relief.

“We'll be stopping at Steele Street. Your grandfather should be there by the time we hit Denver,” he said, continuing to watch her. She'd gone very still. Too still inside her makeshift cocoon.

She didn't answer, and after a moment, he realized she couldn't. She was trying too hard to control whatever emotion had caused her to pull in on herself.

“Hey,” he said, moving a step closer and bending his head to better see her face. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” The lie was barely a whisper. A tremor went through her. He saw it in the brief trembling of her shoulders, in the nervous adjustment of her fingers across her brow. “Yeah. I'm fine. Thanks.”

She turned toward the car and reached for the door handle. Her shoulder accidentally brushed against his chest, and the contact brought her to a sudden halt. Her head came up, and their eyes met.

She was close, very close, her scent coming to him on the hot summer air, all overheated woman and soft sweet musk.

Intoxicating.

He found himself breathing deeper just to have more of her.
Crazy, crazy, crazy,
the word went through his mind. He was certifiable, trying to breathe her in—but, God, he loved the way she smelled. He didn't know what to make of the shadowed expression in her eyes.

“What's wrong?” He reached out and gently took hold of her upper arm.

She hesitated before answering, her gaze dropping. “Nothing. You said you would find him. And you did. Thank you.”

Gratitude. It was a hell of a lot better than wariness, but it wasn't even close to what he really wanted from her.

He slid his thumb along the edge of her sleeve, feeling the silken softness of her skin and the texture of lace, and took another step closer.

“Captain Younger, I—”

“Quinn,” he corrected her. He was going to kiss her. The least they ought to be was on a first-name basis.

“Quinn,” she conceded, making a small dismissive gesture, part shrug, part turn of her hand—but he wasn't about to be dismissed, not yet. “This has been a crazy day. Absolutely crazy, and you haven't exactly made it better, except for actually finding Wilson.” She paused, her jaw tightening for an instant. “I just find it hard to believe I drove halfway across the state and back, and he was in Lafayette the whole time. God, things are bad . . . or worse—” She stopped herself short and her hand came back up to cover her face. “I mean, he doesn't seem to think straight all the time anymore, but I can't believe he didn't call or . . . I don't know what your partner was thinking, to involve an old man in such a . . .”

Now Quinn did know the answer to that. Dylan was thinking of the win, the best way to win. That's what Dylan did. He won. Every time. It was what made him the best, the absolute best.

“Or those damn cars. I should have known better than to let . . .”

He'd opened a floodgate, and he let it all wash up against him, all her barely concealed frustrations and worries, and suddenly he got a glimpse into what it was like being Regan McKinney, all practicality and responsibility, taking care of an old man who was losing his grip on reality.

“. . . and my car, now. Gone.”

“I'll have your car back to you by the end of next week,” he promised her. “You can drive Betty until then.”

“Betty?” Her head finally came up. She'd been mostly talking to his chest and the pavement but he had her attention now.

Women loved Betty. They couldn't help themselves. Hot red leather, all buttery soft, wrapping around them. Hot pink piping to add some flash. A mirror-finish paint job so clean you could put your lipstick on looking in the fender. Whitewalls.

“Betty,” he confirmed, bringing his hand up and smoothing his fingers along the curve of her jaw, letting her think about what was going to happen next for a moment, but just a moment, just long enough for her eyes to widen with the knowledge before he lowered his head and opened his mouth over hers.

She let out a soft gasp, which was perfect, and her hand came up to hold on to his waist, which was even better. She might have been thinking of pushing him away, but he didn't think so, and she didn't do it. In fact, it only took about two seconds flat for her to tighten her grip and sigh into his mouth.

God. He knew exactly how she felt. Her lips were as soft as they looked, the inside of her mouth even softer. She tasted like Coca-Cola and heaven. It was amazing, kissing her.

He turned her deeper into the kiss, pressing her back against Jeanette, wild Jeanette who was hot in the summer sun, hot enough to make Regan McKinney melt into his arms. He hadn't expected such a soft giving way, such surrender, and it went straight to his groin in a wave of pleasure so intense, he groaned.

Cupping the back of her head with his hand, he slowly increased his assault on her mouth, delving deeper with long, lazy strokes of his tongue and feeling her response in the subtle tightening of her body.

Sweet Christ. His fantasies had nothing on reality. For all their wonderful, intoxicating crudeness, he didn't spend much time kissing her in his fantasies. In truth, he didn't spend any time kissing her in his fantasies. He always skipped ahead to the good parts.

Big mistake.

Kissing her was a great part, and if they hadn't been standing in a parking lot with bad guys behind them and bad guys ahead of them, he would have slid his hand up to her breasts to feel their weight and softness, knowing it would push them both a little closer to the edge. If it wasn't for Vince Branson and Roper Jones, he would definitely give in to the urge to press his hips against hers, pinning her more solidly to Jeanette, and he would have kept kissing her—kept kissing her until she was too hot to stop.

Even the thought of it made him hard.

Oh, great
—He stopped, right then, right there. Stopped and for a few seconds didn't move, not an inch, just tried to catch his breath and find his brains.

She didn't move either, just stood with her mouth on his, her breathing ragged, her body trembling—and he knew they were going to make love. For real, real physically, real soon.

She'd kissed him like she was drowning and he was the rope that could save her. And once was not going to be enough, not when everything he'd ever dreamed of shattered in the reality of having her in his arms with her mouth hot on his, her body moving against him, all curves and softness and need.