Slow dancing with a texa.., p.2
Slow Dancing with a Texan, page 2
“Wait! I wanted to talk to him.” She swiveled in her seat and glared at the side of Sloan’s head.
“Sorry.” He didn’t turn but continued to pay attention to the road ahead. “The captain said the Houston police want to talk to us, but they’re going to have to wait until tomorrow. It’s too risky for you to show up at one of the substations right now. Too obvious.”
“But you didn’t ask about my sister. I have to know what happened to her…to everyone.” Lainie was unaccustomed to being out of control.
“The most important thing now is to get you out of sight and keep you alive. The shooting stopped back there when you were removed from the scene.”
She took a calming breath and steadied her voice. “So where are we going?”
“We’re going to ground,” he told her. “Find a nice quiet place. Somewhere no one would think to look for you.”
“Home?” That sounded like a great plan to her. No one would think to look for her at the one place where she should be.
His mouth cracked into a near smile. “Not likely, Ms. Gardner. I think you’ve been visible enough for one day.” He didn’t look at her but swung the wheel in another fast exit. “We’re going to find a sleazy little motel so we can regroup and get to know each other better.”
Sloan chuckled when he’d spotted the look of absolute terror on Lainie’s face as he mentioned the sleazy motel. Her wide green eyes were filled with shock. Either she was afraid of stepping down a rung on her social ladder by checking into a fleabag joint, or she was terrified at the thought of getting to know him any better.
But for him, as he’d said the words, a picture had formed in his mind of her looking up at him from a motel bed, glistening with sweat, panting and breathless from having been completely loved—by him. Oh, and he would do a very thorough job of loving her, too. That was a pure fact. But now was not the time for those thoughts.
He forced himself to push aside the lustful images and concentrated instead on trolling the surface streets, backtracking and sidetracking to make sure the tail was gone. Trying not to think about how close she’d come to being killed, Sloan instead considered why a stalker would’ve hired professional killers.
That mode of operation certainly didn’t fit the profile of an ordinary nutcase. Most stalkers who took the time to send a warning letter generally wanted to see the face of their intended victims when they finally made a move.
Nothing about this case added up.
He found what he’d been searching for in a rundown dump located a few blocks off Westheimer in an area that had seen better days. The End of the Trail Motel had a parking lot in back where he could pull in under overhanging trees and hopefully not be spotted.
Cutting the engine, he turned to Lainie and nearly lost his breath. The woman’s sleeves were covered in blood and her hair glittered with tiny shards of glass. He wondered if he should be taking her to the nearest hospital, not to some dirty joint with peeling stucco walls and half-graveled driveways.
“You never answered me before, Lainie.” His voice cracked as he tried to sound calm. “Where are you hurt? Did any of the bullets hit you?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t get a chance to answer you, or even get two words in for that matter. And I’ll be surprised if I’m not totally black and blue from that wild ride. But no…I don’t think I was shot. I just can’t imagine where all this blood came from.”
“Sit quietly until I get us checked in, then. We need to make sure you’re not cut and still bleeding. Try not to move too much.” His heart was beating double time at the thought of leaving her alone, even for a few minutes. But he had no choice.
“Check in here? We’re going to stay at this place?”
“Just long enough to figure out what to do,” he told her as he stepped from the truck. “Now, be still and wait for me. Any more sudden movements and some of that glass in your hair might get in your eyes.” He pushed the truck’s automatic-door-lock buttons and stalked toward the motel’s office.
It took her a long moment to drag in another breath. Glass in her eyes? All of a sudden she realized she was scared. Down-deep, panic-inducing scared.
She was afraid to cry, didn’t even want to tremble for fear of the glass. But it wasn’t the thought of being cut that had her so terrified. No. It was the idea that someone out there truly wanted to kill her.
Worse yet, she simply couldn’t let herself get out of control. Oh, how she wished she had her sister here to talk to. Suzy always had an amazing way of calming her down and seeing the right answers through the haze of conflicting information. But Suzy might be fighting for her life right now. That inconceivable thought was the real reason Lainie was feeling so at a loss.
And now she would have to stay in a broken-down motel with a lawman who seemed like the strong, silent he-man type—and was gorgeous to boot.
Lordy, she was too scared to think straight. What difference did it make what Sloan looked like?
She had to start thinking clearly. She was bright enough and tough enough to outsmart any old stalker. All she had to do was concentrate on the problem and stop being sidetracked.
The truck’s door locks clicked again and Sloan wrenched open the passenger side door. “Your castle awaits, ma’am.”
He wouldn’t let her walk the fifty feet to a room he’d already opened that faced the back lot. Swiftly and quietly he carried her toward the two-story cement building, the one painted a pea-green color.
All the while she worried about him putting his hands on her body. And wondered how in the world she was supposed to concentrate on anything else.
Gently setting her on her feet just inside the door, he shut and locked it behind them. Then he ordered her to close her eyes.
“Why?” Although the cheap motel bedspread and the spot-stained gold carpeting left a lot to be desired, she couldn’t imagine what he wanted to keep her from seeing.
“Just close your eyes and be quiet a minute,” he replied. “Before we do anything else, I’ve got to remove a few tiny bits of glass that have fallen onto your eyelashes.”
“Oh.” Closing her lids carefully, she decided to quit fighting and let him do what he needed to do.
Sloan opened the first-aid kit he’d taken from the back of his pickup. He ripped apart the packaging on the cotton sheeting and used it to gently pick a few slivers that had shattered onto her face and neck. As he did, he couldn’t help but notice her soft, milky complexion.
Working close, he was fascinated by a faint smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose. In his mind those slight imperfections only made her more interesting.
Trying to concentrate on the glass, he gently swiped the cotton across her thick eyelashes. Without warning, the urge to kiss the tender skin on her closed lids made him nervous and hesitant to touch her again.
He wanted to watch while she opened her eyes, focusing on his face. Sure that he would find passion in that gaze, he could already taste his growing need.
Sloan barely remembered the last time a woman affected him this way. It had been months since he’d even bothered with a date. Women just weren’t a big priority in his life. Never had been. Until now.
He gritted his teeth and kept on working. When he ran the cotton over her hair, he noticed that the blood there and on her clothes had dried. If she’d been bleeding once, the flow had stopped.
Knowing she didn’t need an emergency room helped to calm him down. But then he suddenly found himself fighting off the desire to dig his fingers through luscious, intense-red strands of hair. He gritted his teeth and carefully brushed the glass away instead.
“That’s the best I can do,” he said at last. “Do you want help getting out of your clothes?”
“Excuse me?” Her hot-green eyes popped open.
Oh, man. He desperately tried to find something else to concentrate on until he could stop imagining her naked.
“You have to get out of those things so we can check you over for cuts,” he finally directed.
“I think I can handle it, thank you,” she told him with a wry smile. “But first I need to make a phone call, if you don’t mind.”
“No calls.” He went to the phone, ripped the cord from both the wall and the phone itself and stuffed the wiring into the pocket of his heavy jacket.
“Hey!” She started toward him with a murderous look in her eyes. “What’d you do that for?”
“Who do you need to call, Lainie? A boyfriend?” That wasn’t what he’d meant to ask, he chided himself. What business of his was it if she had a boyfriend?
“No. I don’t have a boyfriend. I stay too busy for such things.” She made a sudden move to grab his arm. “It’s my sister. I have to know if Suzy is all right.” A horrified look spread across her face. “I’ve just realized…if this isn’t my blood, it must be hers. I never should’ve left her there.”
“You didn’t leave her. I took you. The shooting was directed at you, not her. With all the madhouse there, the only way to make sure no one else caught another bullet meant for you was to remove you from the scene.”
Once more he searched his pockets for the mobile phone. “Take a shower and check for any nicks that might need attention. I’m going outside to phone the captain again, let him know you’re not in any immediate danger. I’ll ask about your sister.”
Then, without really knowing why it seemed so important, Sloan searched for a way to take the fearful expression from her face and to calm the near-hysterical sound of her voice.
“Why the hell didn’t you stay in your office and wait for me like you were told?” he asked with a pretend snarl. “Anyone with half a brain would know not to stand out in the open and in such a public place while they were being stalked and threatened.”
That remark seemed to do what he’d intended. Instead of fear, anger sparked across Lainie’s features.
She narrowed darkened emerald eyes at him and propped her hands on her hips. “So I should’ve cowered in my office, waiting for some big-shouldered man to come save me? Is that what you’re saying?”
He’d hoped she had a temper, and it sure looked like he’d been right. The red hair was a dead giveaway.
“Look, lady. From now until we catch the guy, you will do exactly as I say. No more waltzing around in plain view. I’m here to see to it you stay alive.” He waited for the fire to reach her eyes again. “Now be a good girl and get those clothes off.”
She took a menacing step in his direction and clenched her fists. The lights in her eyes were stunning, and for just a moment he was paralyzed with need. He should have thought of what this diversion might do to him.
Instead of hanging around, though, Sloan made a strategic retreat from the motel room. He was out of there quicker than a brushfire could burn through a parched field. And he didn’t take another breath until he was in the parking lot and away from the temptation of all that passionate heat.
Not once in his entire career had he considered that he might become anyone’s bodyguard. In fact, he wouldn’t be doing it now except that the man he most respected in the world had asked him as a personal favor. He should be out of state, fulfilling a deathbed wish with this leave of absence from the Rangers—not baby-sitting a fiery, hot-tempered woman.
Sloan fought his reaction to the flaming lust Lainie’s anger had brought out in him. Gulping down the last remnants of desire, he swore under his breath.
The assignment to protect Lainie Gardner’s body might just turn out to be a lot more difficult than he’d ever imagined.
Two
Sick to her stomach and madder than all get-out, Lainie tossed a string of bad words toward the back of the motel room door as it closed behind Sloan. Being angry at him was the only way she could survive her conflicting emotions.
She hardly ever used curse words, however. And she had no idea where she’d learned a few of the ones she’d just thrown out. What was the matter with her?
Yes, she was scared beyond all reason, and near hysterical at the thought that her sister might be injured—or worse. But none of that accounted for the lust she’d felt as Sloan stood there with that teasing grin on his face. The flashes of heat and weakness his look created pushed pure old-fashioned desire trembling down her spine. The anger had actually turned her on.
She was mad again just thinking about it. How stupid could one supposedly smart woman be?
Her shakes started once more. She felt them move up her wobbly legs and spread across her body. Good grief.
Was her body betraying her need for Sloan? She prayed that her reaction to him was just some weird kind of delayed stress related to her crazy predicament.
Desperately wanting to regain the control and determination she’d become famous for, Lainie fought her own emotions. She was always in charge of every situation and this one should be no different. The danger was over. It was time to start thinking instead of feeling.
And all she could think of was the arousal in Sloan’s chestnut-colored eyes as he’d headed out the door? Oh dear Lord, help her. The stress must be driving her totally insane.
Lainie wasn’t the kind of woman who was normally disgusted by the thought of good healthy sex. Far from it. She’d had a couple of great experiences with that very thing in her checkered youth. But that was long ago. Besides that, she simply did not jump into bed with total strangers—not even ones who’d just saved her life.
Struggling to even out her ragged breathing, she ordered herself to stop all this idiotic emotional stuff and to start thinking. Just close her eyes, clear her mind and rationally consider her options.
When she finally managed to close her eyes for a few seconds, they popped right back open as the shaking began again. Instead of waiting for the trembling to stop this time, she focused on her surroundings, and the reality of the room hit her with a sickening rush. It stopped the shakes but gave her a headache instead. What a truly awful place to pick to hide.
Using her vivid imagination, she could tell that forty or fifty years ago these furnishings might’ve been someone’s idea of fashionable. The avocado walls, gold carpeting and dreadful flower-print bedspread looked as if they’d seen much better days.
A cheap chair, a metal rack with two wire hangers and a TV set with an old-fashioned rabbit-ears antenna were the only items besides the bed in this cramped room. The place smelled of stale cigarettes. And the heavy rubber-backed drapes over the one lone window contributed to a depressing atmosphere.
Lainie checked the bathroom and found two plastic cups wrapped in little paper jackets, a green-glass ashtray and the smallest bar of soap she’d ever seen. All of it had been crammed onto the edge of a single cracked sink.
Two yellowed towels sat folded on the back of the toilet, while the plastic shower curtain hung crookedly off its metal rings. Boy oh boy. The lap of luxury.
As much as she hated the thought of stripping down in this joint, she hated the idea of having glass slivers embedded in her skin even more. With a careful sigh, Lainie grabbed a towel and fitted it over her hair. The tiny thing wasn’t big enough to cover her head, but it would have to do while she took off her clothes and stepped into the shower.
Sloan balanced the two soda cans in one hand while he pulled the motel room key from his pocket with the other. He carefully inserted the key in the lock and waited for either the chain to stop him or for a heavy object to come flying at his head. Neither thing happened, so he pushed the door open and walked into the room.
He’d given her a full half hour, hoping that she’d use the time to calm down and take a shower. Actually, the idea of a cold shower had sounded pretty good to him when he’d last walked out of here.
The bathroom door stood ajar and he could hear the water running. Guess she’d decided a long, cold shower was just what she’d needed, too.
“Lainie! It’s me,” he called out, hoping not to frighten her.
“Wait. Hold on.”
After a few seconds the water stopped. She appeared in the bathroom doorway. And suddenly he couldn’t have moved if his life depended upon it.
Her hair had darkened with wetness and hung down to her shoulders, dripping water over her bare skin—all of that totally naked, glistening skin.
She’d apparently just stepped out of the shower, because she stood there looking up at him with an exasperated look on her face. And nothing to cover her nakedness except a postage-stamp-size towel that she was trying to spread out over her important parts.
He let his gaze shoot down her body to the long, slender legs and nearly bit his tongue. Dang, but he’d surely love to be able to touch all that soft skin. It was everything he could do just to drag his eyes back up to meet hers.
“Uh…” he stuttered. “Sorry. I thought you’d be out of the shower long ago. I can go away and come back in later.” That was…if he could force his legs to propel him out the door.
Lainie shook her head. “It won’t help. My clothes had so many specks of glass that I decided to rinse them out in the tub.” The edge of the towel slipped as she talked and she was forced to hang on with both hands. “But I’ve just realized that it’ll be tomorrow before they’re dry enough to put back on. What am I going to do?”
He could think of about a half-dozen things that she could do while she waited. And every single one of them involved him—and most of them involved the bed.
But she looked so forlorn, so annoyed with herself, that he felt a grin coming on. Sloan opened his mouth to make a smart remark but the irritated look in her eyes pulled him up short. She was the subject of his mission, not the object of his desire. And he’d better start treating her that way.
“Did you try wrapping up in the bedspread?”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “It’s too heavy. I couldn’t walk with it around me. Think of something else.”
“I have a raincoat out in the truck that’ll cover you up. It won’t be high fashion, but I suppose it’ll do.”
For a second he got lost in those startling green eyes again. He wondered if he could make them turn as dark as they’d been when she’d been so angry before. Would passion turn them that same depthless color?
