Jane Sullivan - Tall, Dark And Texan

“Where are you going?” he demanded.

Fueled by sheer adrenaline, she wheeled back around, smacked the last lock and yanked the door open. Just as quickly, he took a few steps forward and grabbed her from behind, wrapping his arm around her waist and pulling her back as he shut the door again. She screamed, a hair-raising, penetrating scream that could easily have awakened any dead bodies he happened to have lying around. He slapped his hand over her mouth, shoving her scream all the way back into her throat. She tried to fight him, but he pressed his body hard to hers, pinning her against the door.

“Will you cut it out?” he said. “You’re not going anywhere!”

She couldn’t struggle anymore. With a ton of bone and muscle wrapped around her, she was completely at his mercy.

“I’m going to take my hand away from your mouth,” he said, his voice low and intense. “Are you going to scream?”

She just stood there, terrified.

“I asked you if you’re going to scream,” he said sharply.

Finally she shook her head. He removed his hand slowly, and her breath came in sharp bursts that seemed to echo forever in the vast expanse of the warehouse.

“If you’re going to do this,” she said in a hushed voice, “then do it now. Get it over with quickly. Please.”

He froze. “If I’m going to do what?”

She closed her eyes. “Rape me. Kill me. Whatever…whatever it is you do.”

For a count of three, he stood motionless. “What did you say?”

She didn’t want to repeat it. She’d barely been able to get the words out the first time. “R-rape me. And kill—”

Suddenly he let go of her. She spun around, her back pressed to the door, breathing hard. He’d retreated several paces, staring at her with disbelief. “What in the hell are you talking about?”

She swallowed hard. “If you’re not going to hurt me, then why are you trying to stop me from leaving?”

“Why am I—?” He stopped short, staring at her as if she’d lost her mind. He pointed toward the window. “Is it thirty degrees out there? Sleeting?”

She looked over at the ice still pattering the window. “Uh…yeah.”

“Are there lowlifes wandering the streets?”

Clearly there were. One of them had made off with her car. “A few.”

“Do you have any idea at all where you are?”

Hell, no. A global-positioning system couldn’t have helped her out of here. She shrugged. “No. I guess I’m not completely sure.”

“Those are three real good reasons. One would have done just fine. But if you’re still determined to leave,” he said, his voice a low growl, “there’s a police station about four miles west. Why don’t you hike on down there and tell them there’s a rapist on the loose?”

She blinked with surprise, startled at this turn of events. Although he was rumbling with anger, she noticed that his dark eyes didn’t seem nearly as evil as they had a few moments ago. Actually, they looked more sleepy than anything. And he’d made a couple of pretty good points about the weather and all those other things.

Was it possible she could have leaped to a conclusion or two?

“Okay,” she said, shrugging weakly, “so maybe you’re not a criminal.”

“Hell, no, I’m not!”

She recoiled at his angry outburst. “Hey! What was I supposed to think? The abandoned warehouse, the guns, the mug shots, the big black Xs—”

“You saw all that? What were you doing in there?”

“I—” She stopped, then pointed to the cat on top of the fridge. “He opened the door. I just…I just kinda looked in.”

“You were snooping?”

Her mouth fell open. “I was not snooping! I was just trying to find out what kind of fire I landed in when I fell out of the frying pan!”

His eyebrows flew up. “Fire? Are you kidding? I bring you someplace warm where you can stay the night, then keep you from running back out there again like some kind of lunatic, and you call that a fire?”

She opened her mouth to respond, then clamped it shut again. He was making more sense all the time.

She nodded toward the other room. “What about the guns you have in there?”

He glared at her. “Those weapons are for my job.”

“Your job?”

“I’m a bail-enforcement agent.”

“Huh?”

“Bounty hunter.”

Bounty hunter?

It took a full ten seconds for the words to register in Wendy’s mind, and when they did, relief swooped through her. The guns, the mug shots…okay. Maybe those made sense now. It still didn’t explain the living accommodations and the half-eaten cat, but…

“You go after criminals?” she asked him.

“Yes.”

“Bad guys?”

“Yes.”

She peered up at him. “Which means you can’t be a bad guy…right?”

“I already told you I’m not a bad guy!”

She flinched. “Oh, come on! What else was I supposed to think? Don’t you think that any sane woman would have come to the same conclusion I did? That you just might be a little dangerous?”

“Dangerous?”

“Yes! Will you look at yourself, for heaven’s sake? You’re big, you’re scary looking, and I’m pretty sure you could bite the head right off somebody’s shoulders if you wanted to. That doesn’t give me a lot of warm fuzzies, you know.”

He blinked and, for a moment, looked surprised. Maybe even a little insulted. Then just as quickly, his expression melted back into the scowl he’d been wearing before.

“Listen, sweetheart. It’s late, I’m tired and I’m fresh out of warm fuzzies. Sleep on the sofa if you want, leave if you want. I don’t give a damn.”

Taking a key from his pocket, he strode over to the door to the war room, pulled it shut and locked it. He disappeared down the hall, turning into what she guessed must be a bedroom.

Then…silence.

Wendy stood there, shivering, swearing she could hear the sound of his angry voice still echoing through the vast expanse of the warehouse loft. Well, she had news for him. He couldn’t be fresh out of warm fuzzies, because he’d never had any to begin with. He’d scared the hell out of her, then acted as if it was her fault.

A bounty hunter. As if she would have guessed that? Ever?

With a few deep, calming breaths, her heart rate slowly returned to normal. At least now she knew she’d live to be broke and homeless another day. And unless she committed a crime and jumped bail, her big, angry roommate probably wasn’t going to be a threat. For tonight, at least, she had a place to stay that wasn’t a cardboard box on the streets of downtown Dallas.

Then she turned, and for the first time, she noticed two blankets and a pillow tossed on the sofa that hadn’t been there before. She stared at them oddly for a moment, wondering where they’d come from.

Then she knew. He had to have brought them out of the bedroom while she was trying to make her escape. She walked over and picked up one blanket, catching the scent of something soft and fresh. Drawing it to her nose, she inhaled. Fabric softener?

Then she saw the shirt.

Sticking out from beneath the pillow was a green flannel shirt. She held it in front of her. From the size of it, she knew it had to be his. She blinked at it dumbly for a moment before the reason he’d left it here finally dawned on her.

He was giving her something dry to put on.

She pulled the shirt against her nose and smelled the same fresh fabric softener. She could wrap herself in it three times over, but it felt so warm…

He was trying to be nice, and she’d called him a criminal. A couple of different kinds of criminal, in fact.

Suddenly she felt bad about that. No, he hadn’t told her exactly who he was, but it had been cold and sleeting, and not knowing how long she’d been out there, maybe he’d just wanted to get her warm again as quickly as he could. The blankets and the flannel shirt attested to that.