Jane Sullivan - Tall, Dark And Texan

“No! You’re not taking my car!”

“Oh, yeah? Is that right?”

He reached beneath his coat, hauled out a gun and leveled it three inches from her nose.

Uh-oh.

She stopped pulling on his leg and stared down the barrel of the gun, breathing hard, wondering why her life wasn’t flashing before her eyes.

“Let go!” he shouted.

She did.

“Back off!”

As she leaned away, her heel slipped from beneath her and her butt landed on the slushy pavement. Her friendly neighborhood carjacker slammed the door, jammed the car into gear, gunned the engine and took off down the street.

Wendy scrambled to her feet, watching her car vanish into the night, willing it to use up its last trickle of gasoline and come to a choking halt.

It didn’t.

She stood there dumbly for a moment, staring at her red taillights twinkling through the falling ice. She couldn’t believe she’d been in town only twenty minutes, and already she was a crime statistic. She couldn’t believe everything she owned in the entire world had just disappeared. She couldn’t believe she was standing in the disgusting part of downtown Dallas at midnight with no coat and it was thirty degrees and sleeting like crazy and her car had just been stolen!

Along with her five thousand dollars.

A sick feeling rose in her stomach. It was gone. And she wasn’t naive enough to think she’d ever see it again. She knew the time would come when she’d probably sob uncontrollably about that, but right now she had a much bigger problem.

Survival.

Anger had kept her momentarily oblivious to the cold, but now reality set in. She hugged herself, her teeth chattering so hard it had to be knocking her fillings loose. The frigid wind seemed to blow right through her, echoing through the empty streets like the mournful howl of a coyote, and she wondered how long she could last out here before hypothermia set in.

She started to walk, chastising herself with every step. If only she hadn’t gotten impatient, she could have waited out the winter storm of the decade and stayed on course through Oklahoma City instead of swinging south through Dallas. If only she hadn’t messed around finding a gas station, she’d be in a cheap but warm hotel room right now. If only the windows of her old Buick were as strong as the Popemobile’s—

Stop with the ifs. Things happen. This is just one of them. A speed bump on the road of life.

Actually, it was more like a speed mountain, one she’d have preferred to hit while driving through Miami. She made a mental note that the next time she decided to move across the country and start a new life, she’d wait until July.

She trudged down the sidewalk, every muscle trembling in the cold, her boots slinging slush. Putting a hand to her head, she realized that her hair was turning into icicles. The longer she walked, the more uptight she became. This street seemed to be going nowhere. For all she knew, she could be walking straight into hell.

Then again, at least hell would be warm.

Then she heard it. The sound of an engine. It was soft at first, building in intensity as it drew closer, echoing off the walls of the abandoned buildings. She turned around to see a man on a motorcycle swing around and come to a halt in the street ten feet away, planting his booted feet firmly on the pavement. The moment she laid eyes on him, her breath caught in her throat.

He wore a fleece-lined black leather jacket, jeans, black gloves, black boots. Even sitting on the motorcycle, she could tell he had to be at least six foot five, with thighs the size of tree trunks and shoulders so broad she wondered if he could clear the average doorway. A jagged scar ran from his cheekbone to his chin, the kind men generally picked up in street fights or in prison, but his dark, short-cropped hair and surprisingly clean-shaven face made him seem almost handsome in spite of it.

No. She was seeing things. This man was not handsome. No man who wore that tense, almost lethal expression, with eyes that could burn holes through steel, could ever be called handsome.

Still…good Lord.

In spite of the situation, in spite of the cold, in spite of the fact this man radiated danger all over the place, a blast of raw sexual awareness overwhelmed her, a prehistoric reaction that even a million years of evolution couldn’t possibly arrest. She’d heard once that power was the ultimate aphrodisiac, and this man exuded it with every breath he took.

He leveled a gaze at her that would have frozen her to the pavement if nature hadn’t beaten him to it. “What are you doing out here?”

His voice was deep and commanding—the voice of a man who expected an answer the moment he spoke.

“I—I was carjacked,” she said, her voice garbled from the cold. “They got everything.”

“Live here, or just passing through?”

“Heading to L.A.”

“Do you know anybody in Dallas?”

“N-no,” she said. “Nobody.”

For the first time, his intense expression shifted. He bowed his head, his body heaving with a sigh.

“Get on,” he said.

She blinked with surprise. “E-excuse me?”

“I said get on.”

Get on? Behind him? A clearly unhappy man who looked as if he ate scrap metal for breakfast? It was one thing to admire the king of beasts from afar, but she wasn’t sure she should be crawling right into the cage with him.

“Uh…sure. Can you take me to the police station?”

“Not tonight. Too far away, and it’s too damned cold. I’ll take you someplace warm and safe.”

Warmth and safety. Currently the two most beautiful concepts in the English language. But was this the man who was going to provide those things?

She looked around, shivering wildly, looking for options and finding none.

He revved the engine. Last call.

She mentally crossed herself, strode over and slung her leg over the back of his motorcycle.

“Hang on, sweetheart.”

He hit the throttle, and only by clamping her arms around his waist was she able to keep from tumbling off backward. And in spite of the cold, the noise of the engine and her massive fear of the unknown, her only thought was that she’d just grabbed the Rock of Gibraltar. Even through the thick jacket he wore, she could tell he was all bone and muscle.

“Where exactly are we going?” she shouted.

No response. Either he couldn’t hear her over the roar of the engine, or he chose to ignore her. As they sped down the deserted street, her icy hair swirled in a frenzy around her head, the frigid strands smacking her in the face. She ducked her head against his back, hoping to keep the ice cubes that had once been her ears from cracking and falling off the sides of her head. He made an excellent wind block, which was no surprise. A man his size could have blocked a category-five hurricane. Even through his jacket she could feel his body heat, and right now, heat from anywhere was welcome. She closed her eyes, resurrected a few childhood prayers and hung on tight.

He seemed to drive forever before finally slowing down, and as soon as he did, he reached into his pocket and pulled out something that looked like a television remote. He pointed it at a large metal overhead door on the side of one of the buildings. With a grinding mechanical noise, the door came up. To her complete shock, he drove right underneath it into the building, the engine noise of the motorcycle reverberating off the walls of the empty warehouse.

She glanced over her shoulder to see the door coming down behind them. That familiar sense of self-preservation surged through her again, but Greta hadn’t addressed what do to when trapped on a moving vehicle behind a man the size of a redwood tree.

“Hey!” she shouted. “Where are you going? Hey!”