Chapter Two

John decided it was a good thing he hadn’t taken that bite of chicken-fried steak. He’d have choked on it. Big-time.

“Excuse me?”

She leaned closer and dropped her voice. “You and me. Sex. Your place. Right now. Yes or no?”

John blinked with surprise. She was blonde, she was beautiful, and she was throwing herself at him. What was wrong with this picture?

As much as he’d like to think it was his good looks and suave manner that had attracted her, he had to face facts. He had a two-day growth of beard, he was shoveling down a meal fit for a lumberjack, and without looking down he couldn’t even say for sure whether his shirt was buttoned right and his jeans were zipped. And he was pretty sure he’d given her his automatic cop look when she first slid onto the stool next to him, a “don’t mess with me” expression so ingrained after years of dealing with the lowlifes of Tolosa that he had a hard time keeping it in check. It had scared away more than one woman before, yet this one seemed undeterred.

He took a quick inventory of the way she was dressed. Jeans, sweatshirt, Reeboks. Hardly the animal-print miniskirt, midriff top, and six-inch platform shoes so fashionable among most Lone Star ladies of the evening. And her makeup was practically nonexistent, allowing a healthy glow to shine through. Instead of sultry and provocative, she appeared to be going for cute, fresh, and innocent looking. He had to admit her marketing strategy had gotten his attention.

“Sorry, sweetheart,” he told her, adding more pepper to his steak. “I’m not in the habit of paying for pleasure.”

Her eyebrows shot up. Was she expressing disbelief that he’d pegged her profession right away, or offended that he’d think such a thing? Then just as quickly she replaced the look with a provocative smile.

“I’ll admit I’d like to get my hands on a lot of things, but your wallet isn’t one of them.”

This was dangerous. John could feel it in his bones. “Then how about one of Marva’s chicken-fried steaks? Best I’ve ever had.”

She laid her hand on his arm. “So that’s what you’d recommend for a woman who’s really hungry?”

John tilted his gaze to Harley, who was leaning his forearms on the counter, watching the scene unfold like a housebound grandma watching a soap opera. Since he hadn’t greeted her by name, as he did everyone else who ventured into his establishment, John assumed she wasn’t a local. Back on the job he’d have said she didn’t fit the profile of the neighborhood, and that was always a reason for a heads-up.

Still, it had been way too long since he’d been with a woman, and physically, at least, this one pushed all his buttons. Big blue eyes, cheeks tinted pink from the brisk October breeze outside, and a mass of blonde hair that was hers by the grace of God and not Lady Clairol. The hem of her blue sweatshirt fell over Levi’s that showcased the soft curves of her hips so enticingly that it was hard for him to tear his gaze away.

“Yeah,” John told her, sticking to the chicken-fried steak theme. “That’s what I’d recommend. And be sure to get a little extra gravy on the side.”

He picked up his fork again. She pressed his arm back down to the counter. “You have no idea what you’re missing. I can make you forget to eat for days.”

John extricated his arm from her grasp. “Sorry, sweetheart. See, I just started in on this steak here, and I know Marva would be insulted if I didn’t finish every bite.”

“Marva’ll get over it,” Harley said.

John shot Harley a “don’t help me” look. Harley held up his hands in surrender and walked down the counter to the cash register. He snagged a roll of Certs and tap, tap, tapped them on the counter, his expression suggesting that perhaps John might want to stop being an idiot and reconsider having a date for the evening.

The woman inched closer, her eyes focused intently on him, eyes that were a deep, endless blue that mesmerized him. Then his cop brain kicked in. A beautiful woman didn’t just walk up to a man and offer him sex with no strings attached. If he were a betting man, he’d wager this woman had enough baggage to fill a 747.

“Tell you what,” she murmured. “Why don’t we go to your place and talk it over?” She glanced out the window, then looked back. “Like—right now?”

John didn’t want to be suspicious. Not when every man’s dream was planted on a stool next to him, offering him a trip to heaven. But while he’d never had a lot of trouble connecting with women if he set his mind to it, even on his best days they didn’t just fall into his lap. Usually he had to take at least a few swings before he could hit a home run, but this woman wasn’t even making him step up to the plate. Something was wrong here, and if he was smart, he’d never get close enough to find out what it was.

“The fact is, sweetheart, I’m here on vacation, and so far it’s been pretty relaxing. I’d like to keep it that way.”

Harley rolled his eyes. He pulled a six-pack from the cooler and clunked it down beside the Certs, giving John an admonishing stare. Breath mints and beer. Harley’s idea of a really hot date.

She eased closer. “Sugar, the last thing I want is for you to be uptight. All you have to do is settle back and let me do all the work. How does that sound?”

It sounded like heaven on earth, but he hadn’t been a cop for eleven years without being able to spot ulterior motives a mile away. “Well, that’s a real nice offer, but I’m doing this vacation solo.”

Over the woman’s shoulder, John could see Harley about to explode with frustration. He gave John a “hey, stupid” look, then reached to a shelf behind him, picked up a beige box, and slapped it down on the counter next to the Certs and the six-pack.

Trojans.

“Whatever one can do,” the woman said, “two can do better. And they can do it all…night…long.”

John had a mental flash of tangled, sweat-sheened bodies glistening in the moonlight, then another flash of morning sunlight streaming through a window, illuminating the condom box. The empty condom box. Very enticing images. Almost as enticing as the warm palm on his thigh, moving in provocative little circles, inching its way toward his crotch.

John caught her hand, pressing it against his thigh, then fixed his gaze on hers in a no-nonsense stare. “What do you really want?”

Her eyes widened for a moment. Then she raised a single eyebrow. “I think that should be pretty obvious by now, shouldn’t it?”

John knew from experience that an obvious explanation and a truthful explanation were rarely the same. But the intensity with which she stared at him, as if she wanted to take him right here on Harley’s counter, made him think there couldn’t possibly be anything on her mind but sex.

“Maybe I didn’t make myself clear enough,” she said, her lips only inches from his ear. “I’m talking about sex that makes your toes curl. Sex that makes your hair stand on end. Sex that wears you out and hypes you up all at the same time and makes you wonder where your next breath is coming from. Sex that’s so raw, so hot, so sinful that you pray it never ends because there’s no way you could possibly experience anything like it again.”

Every word she spoke was like a carnal caress, and every time she said sex John thought about how long it had been since he’d had any. She teased her fingers over his crotch, and he felt himself getting hard whether he liked it or not. And he liked it. No question about it.

Then her lips grazed his ear, and she dropped her voice to a breathy whisper. “Before it’s all over, I’ll have you screaming so loud they’ll hear you in Bangkok.”

John swallowed hard.

Maybe, for once in his life, he should take things at face value. She was a woman looking for a good time. He was a man who had all the time in the world to show her one. Harley had provided the only other necessity. What more did he need to know?

Then, before he could open his mouth to say yes, no, or something in between, the woman slid off her stool, spun his stool around ninety degrees, and moved between his thighs. She took his face in her hands, dropped her lips to his, and kissed him.

John was so startled that for a moment he just sat there and let it happen. He’d been kissed by a lot of women in his life, but never by one who put her heart and soul into it the way this one did. Her lips consumed his with an intensity that almost knocked him senseless, and when she slipped her tongue into his mouth and teased it against his, a shudder of pure lust shot through him. Her words had been pretty explicit, but there was nothing like a little mouth-to-mouth contact to let him know exactly what it was she had in mind.

This was lunacy, of course. He’d have to be a complete lunatic to sit in a backwoods diner and let a strange woman kiss him into unconsciousness. He gripped her arms with the intent of pushing her away, only to have her shift closer, her thighs pressing against his and sending a shock wave right to his groin. At the same time she deepened her kiss even more, filling it with honey and fire and the promise of even better things to come, and he decided that lunacy was a delightful state to be in and wondered why he hadn’t considered it before. The cop side of his brain saw about a hundred red flags, but the regular guy side of his brain was blind as a bat. For once in his career-consumed life, the regular guy side seemed to be winning.

Finally she pulled away, her breath still warm against his lips, her blue eyes hot and hungry.

Blue eyes. Damn. He loved blue eyes.

He dropped his gaze to her kiss-swollen lips, then met her eyes again. “Was that a preview of coming attractions?”

“Yeah. And it’s gonna be a blockbuster. Trust me. Can we get out of here now?”

John thought he actually felt his common sense leave his body, and he wasn’t sure he was even going to miss it. He went to the cash register while the woman waited by the door. Harley swept the goods into a sack and handed it to him, waving away his money. “This one’s on me,” he whispered. “Go get her, buddy.”

John escorted the woman out to the parking lot. He looked around, surprised that he didn’t see a car that might be hers, even though the diner was way out in the middle of nowhere. The only sign of life was a freight train a quarter mile down the road, disappearing from sight.

“How did you get here?” he asked her.

She looped her arm through his and hurried him along. “I dropped straight down from heaven, sugar.”

He decided he was going to believe that. He was going to pretend her headful of golden hair was a halo, and that she was a member of the Angel Adult Recreation Squad sent here to ensure that his vacation was a resounding success. Otherwise he might have to start asking more questions than he ought to and find out things he didn’t really want to know.

He opened the passenger door and let her in, then climbed into the driver’s seat. He dropped Harley’s date-in-a-bag on the floor near her feet, started the engine, then backed out. But as he turned from the parking lot onto the two-lane highway, he was nearly sideswiped by an old Jeep Cherokee pulling in. Smoke wafted out its windows.

He braked quickly and looked back over his shoulder as the smoking car squealed to a halt in front of the store. “What the hell is that?”

“Did I tell you I’m wearing crotch less panties?”

John whipped back around to find the woman smiling suggestively. All at once the thought of her wearing nothing but a little scrap of lace was a whole lot more interesting than somebody’s smoking vehicle.

“No. I don’t believe you mentioned that.”

“They’re red.”

“My favorite.”

“Let’s get out of here.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

He stepped on the gas. In a few seconds he reached the speed limit of forty, then nudged the car to fifty and wished it was seventy.

“What’s your name?” he asked her.

“Why don’t we keep our names out of this?”

Okay. She wanted to play mystery woman. That was fine by him. “Sure, sweetheart. Whatever you say.”

Hadn’t he had this dream before? An out-of-the-way cabin, all the time in the world, and an anonymous blonde in red crotch less underwear just dying to make his dreams come true?

Maybe Daniels was right. Maybe this vacation was just what he needed after all.

Good God. What in the world had she done?

As the Explorer tooled down the two-lane blacktop, Renee hugged the passenger door, her heart pounding like crazy. She had no idea where all that stuff she’d promised this man had come from. What had ever made her say those things?

Desperation. That was what.

Then she had a terrible thought. She sat up suddenly and turned to her getaway driver. “The people in that diner. Do they know where you live?”

“No. Just that I’m on Lake Shelton. Why?”

She settled back onto the seat, wondering how close that information might get Leandro to discovering her whereabouts. “No reason.”

“I’m borrowing a friend’s cabin. Just for a week or so.”

“So you’re not from around here.”

“Nope.”

She nodded, then turned to stare out the passenger window, relieved that he seemed to be a man of few words. The last thing she wanted to do was make small talk.

She couldn’t believe she’d managed to slip out of that diner only seconds before Smokey the Bounty Hunter tore into the parking lot. She glanced into the side mirror every few seconds, relieved that she didn’t see Leandro. She was further relieved when the Explorer veered off the main two-lane highway onto a less traveled road. If Leandro were after them he’d have to make a decision about which road to take, and that could slow him down considerably.

Then a few minutes later, he swung the Explorer off the side road onto a narrow gravel road surrounded by thick forest. Instead of feeling relieved at the convoluted path he drove, Renee started to feel a little uneasy. He took one fork in the road, then another, all of them unmarked. Renee tried to maintain some sense of where she was, but pretty soon her warped sense of direction told her they must be in Oklahoma by now, and she knew that couldn’t be right. Then the gravel road turned to dirt, and she felt a tremor of panic.

All at once it struck her that she didn’t know a single blessed thing about the man she’d just propositioned. For all she knew, he could be one of those reclusive guys who stayed in some primitive, out-of-the-way place so he could murder women and bury them under the front porch. After he dismembered them.

She gave him a sidelong glance. His sharp profile had blurred a bit in the fading evening light, but she hadn’t forgotten the way he looked at her in the diner when she had first approached him—as if he could freeze her where she sat with a single glance. She searched for something sinister about him, wondering if she’d traded a bad situation for one even worse. He didn’t look like a person who smiled much. Maybe he didn’t have much to smile about. Serial killing would do that to a guy.

Looking down, Renee realized her fingernails were leaving little crescent-moon indentations in the armrest. She moved her hands to her lap and took a few furtive deep breaths. She was letting her imagination get the better of her. The worst thing that was going to happen was that she’d be forced to give him what she’d already offered, but even the thought of that made her heart race with apprehension. Especially the thought of that.

The car slowed, then came to a halt, and it took Renee a moment to realize they’d reached their destination. At the end of a short, wooded path, a small cabin sat nestled beneath the trees, with a lake practically at its back door. A light shone dimly through one of the front windows, and the glow of a three-quarter moon reflected off the water beyond.

He turned off the ignition. The silence was so complete she could hear the blood pulsing in her ears. If only she could dissuade him. If only she could take his mind off of sex. If only she could make him forget all those erotic acts she’d promised him, the sexual heights she’d offered to take him to. If only they could break out the six-pack, maybe turn on the TV, have a nice conversation…

And then do each other’s hair, bake cookies, and play Twister. Damn it. Who was she kidding? After the top-notch sales job she’d done on herself in that diner, the only party game this guy was going to be interested in playing was strip poker.

He grabbed the sack and stepped out of the car, then came around and opened Renee’s door. She climbed out, pine needles crunching beneath her feet, the cool night wind lifting her hair off her shoulders. He shut the car door and walked toward the cabin. Renee didn’t move.

He turned back. “Coming?”

For a moment she considered fleeing into the woods after all, but her fear of forest came crashing back to her.

“Uh, yeah.”

Even ten paces away, he exuded a powerful male energy that seemed to fill the space between them, smothering her with thoughts of how big he was and how big she wasn’t. He had to be at least six two, and while she stood nearly five eight, still he outweighed her by a good seventy pounds. His tall, lean-muscled body made a forbidding silhouette in the near-darkness, and the thought of following him into that cabin made her shiver. A few minutes ago she’d been desperate only to be anywhere Leandro wasn’t, but now all she could think about was what she’d promised this man and how desperately she wanted not to go through with it. Then she took stock of her situation and realized she might not have a choice in the matter.

Her purse was still sitting in room fourteen of the Flamingo Motor Lodge, which meant she had no cash and no credit cards, which meant she couldn’t get a hotel room. Her phone was still charging in the room. She didn’t know a solitary soul within two hundred miles. There wasn’t a twenty-four-hour anything open in this part of the world she could hang out in, even if she could get him to take her back to civilization. The forest was deep and dark and cold and scary. She had no choice but to stay there tonight, and if he insisted she make good on her promise, there wouldn’t be a thing she could do to stop him.

He opened the door to the cabin and stepped aside for Renee to enter. It was the size of an efficiency apartment, with even fewer amenities. A kitchenette lined one wall, which was nothing more than a short counter with a hot plate and a coffeepot resting on it, a stainless-steel sink, and a few knotty pine cabinets with a dull, scratched-up finish. At the end of the counter sat a small refrigerator which was, thank God, not nearly big enough to store body parts.

A stone fireplace sprawled along an adjacent wall, and facing it a sofa in an earth-tone plaid rested on rough pine floors. The room smelled of raw wood and smoke and country air, and despite the obvious lack of tender loving care, under any other circumstances she might have thought it rustic but homey. Now it just looked small. Way too small. With nowhere to hide.

She walked to the window and stared out into the night, at one pine tree after another standing tall against a pale, moonlit sky. It was the most inhospitable sight she’d ever seen. “Do you have any neighbors?” she asked him.

“Oh, yeah. Lots of squirrels. Maybe an armadillo or two.”

“Any two-legged ones?”

“Across the lake.”

So they were alone. Really alone.

Silence. Then the sound of the sack clunking against the floor. That was a bad sign. A man who didn’t refrigerate a six-pack clearly had something more pressing on his mind.

He moved up behind her. She met his gaze in the window reflection, those piercing eyes of his staring back at her with an intent so clear he might as well have spray-painted it on the wall. He closed his hands around her elbows in a gentle but possessive grip. He ran them slowly up to her shoulders, then back down again, and she felt a million nerve endings jump to life. She rested her palms against the windowsill and continued to stare out into the night, afraid to turn around, afraid to do anything that might look like encouragement. No matter what she’d said, she knew nothing about the kind of sex that resulted in broken commandments and global screaming.

She had a feeling this man did.

He ran his fingertip down the length of her hair, blazing a path down her back, then picked up a strand and twirled it around his finger.

“Beautiful,” he whispered.

She shivered at the low, velvety tone of his voice. He moved closer and circled his arm around her waist, pulling her against him. Her back met his chest. She felt something rock-hard just beneath the small of her back, proof positive that talking him into having a beer instead of having sex probably wasn’t going to be an option.

He rested one hand against her abdomen, and with his other hand he brushed her hair away from the side of her neck. The cool air of the cabin washed over her exposed skin, sending shivers down her spine, which rewarmed instantly when his hot breath fell against her neck.

“Tell me again,” he whispered.

She froze. “Tell you what?”

“Exactly what kind of sex we’re going to have.”

Before John knew what had happened, his hot little blonde had slid from his grasp and flown halfway across the room. It was as if he’d touched her with a cattle prod.

He stared at her, dumbfounded, and she stared back, those blue eyes wide and her mouth hanging open as if she wanted to say something but couldn’t find the words.

“Is something the matter?” he asked.

“Uh…no. I just…I need to go to the bathroom.”

John took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He felt like a skydiver on the verge of a free fall who’d just gotten yanked back into the plane.

“It’s in there.” He pointed to the only separate room in the primitive cabin, and she scurried inside and closed the door behind her. He heard her fumbling with the door handle, probably looking for the lock that wasn’t there. Then silence.

John snatched up the sack from beside the front door. He deposited the beer in the mini refrigerator in the kitchen, tossed the Certs on the counter, then stared at the box of condoms. He knew it was too good to be true.

This woman was obviously hiding something. She had no purse, no coat, no car, no phone. It was as if she had come out of nowhere. He’d seen all the signs, but he’d chosen to ignore them. He should have trusted his instincts. He should have stuck to naked women with staples in their navels instead of dragging home the real thing.

He tossed the box of condoms into a kitchen cabinet, then collapsed on the sofa, which was a little uncomfortable to do when a certain vital organ of his was inflated to twice its normal size, still trapped inside a pair of jeans that suddenly seemed two sizes too small. As hot as she’d been for him in that diner, when they got into his car he’d expected to feel her hands roaming all over him and seductive words whispered in his ear, and when they made it back to the cabin he’d expected to have his clothes ripped off before he even had a chance to pull out the sofa bed.

Expected it? Hell, he’d prayed for it. Instead, for reasons he couldn’t fathom, his tigress had morphed into a baby kitten.

She wasn’t completely inexperienced. That much he was sure of. She had to be at least twenty-five, maybe older, and no woman could kiss like that if she hadn’t been around the block a time or two. Still, while he had no idea what she wanted, he had a pretty good idea it wasn’t sex. But she’d sure been motivated to make him think that was what she wanted, and it was time he found out why.

Calling her bluff would likely do the trick.