Laurey Bright - Life With Riley

Riley expected her attacker to flee. Instead he stood his ground as the unlikely Galahads bore down on him. Riley tried the window winder again without success, mentally vowing to boil the inept mechanic in his own sump oil.

“Trouble, lady?” the bald guy queried, casting a threatening look at the man beside her, who was half a head shorter. His companion moved so that they were hemming him in, glowering down at him.

Before Riley could say a thing the man answered, “She sure is. She damaged my car and was making a getaway. When I tried to stop her she bit me.”

Riley’s mouth fell open. She shifted a hunted brown gaze to the BMW, then back to him, her heart plunging like a stone on the end of a plumb line. For the first time she looked at him properly.

His suit might have come out of the pages of GQ. And with it he wore a white shirt with a fine gray shadow stripe and a tie.

A tie. Probably silk, probably with a designer name hidden somewhere discreetly behind its elegant blue and maroon design. For all she knew, it was an old school tie proclaiming his presumed respectability.

Even his accent was cultured—with neither flat antipodean vowels nor a fruity fake-British affectation.

He didn’t look like a mugger. Not a bit.

Oh, hell!

Her would-be rescuers looked from her to him, and the long-haired one ambled over to inspect the BMW. His lips pursed, and he sorrowfully shook his shining black dreadlocks. “Got a panel beater’s job there, mate,” he said sympathetically.

Riley turned her head to confront her attacker. “Your car?” she squeaked.

“My car,” the not-a-mugger-after-all confirmed, his dark gaze still accusing as he looked down the arrogant slope of his nose.

She closed her eyes for a moment, then flicked them open. “Prove it,” she said, daring to look him straight in the face—a smooth-shaven, stubborn-jawed face, with broad cheekbones and a wide forehead under impeccably groomed black hair that hinted at a firmly discouraged wave. He probably had quite a nice mouth when it wasn’t set in an angry line, the lips well-defined and not unduly narrow.

For a long second he just stared back at her. Then he dug in his trouser pocket and took out a small leather folder, flicking a plastic tag from it and pressing a button with his thumb. “Don’t let her take off,” he said to the bald man.

“I wasn’t going to!” Riley said indignantly as The Suit walked away, pausing to read her number plate on his way toward the BMW. Memorizing it, she supposed.

Another car tooted gently behind hers and swung to go round it. Baldy moved to the front of the Corona and stood foursquare with his arms folded, facing Riley through the windscreen. A blue dragon writhed on his brawny forearm.

Great. Now he was guarding her for heaven’s sake. She glared at him, every bit as belligerent as the bulldog on his shirt.

The other car nudged by with about two inches to spare. Riley wouldn’t have even tried to negotiate that space.

Her watchdog was looking to the other side. She followed his gaze and saw that the BMW’s driver door was open.

The man in the suit slammed it and came back to her window. “Satisfied? Now can we exchange insurance companies and addresses? I’ll see that yours gets a bill for the damage.”

The watchdog and his mate were looking at Riley almost as censoriously as the car’s owner.

“Okay?” Dreadlocks queried her.

“Yes,” Riley conceded reluctantly. “Thank you for coming over. I thought I was being assaulted.” Dammit, she had been assaulted. “He grabbed me!” She transferred her fulminating gaze to the man between them.

“To stop you running away,” he agreed without a blink. “You’re not hurt, are you?” As he spoke he lifted his hand and inspected a row of deep teeth-marks in the pad of flesh just below his thumb.

Riley’s wrist still tingled from his hold, but she could see no sign of the remembered strength of his fingers, not even a slight redness. “No,” she admitted.

“I’m sure we can sort it out from here.” He nodded affably to her two heroes. “Can’t we?” he asked her pointedly. “Thanks, though,” he added to the knights errant, making Riley’s already simmering blood almost boil over.

“Good luck, bro.” Bulldog-shirt grinned.

“Women drivers, eh?” Dreadlocks commented as they turned away. He rolled a look at Riley and laughed.

Riley gritted her teeth. “I was going to drive back into the parking space,” she told the man still standing by her window, and added distinctly, “before I left you my name and address. We are in the way here.”

In her rearview mirror she saw another car coming slowly toward them. “See?” she insisted as he looked up and behind her.

“Be my guest.” He stepped away to allow her room, and she carefully reparked.

When she got out he was standing between their two cars with a pen in his right hand and a small notebook in his left. He scribbled something on a white business card and handed it to her.

Before she could read it he offered her the notebook, opened at a blank page, and the slim gold pen. “Name, address, insurance company,” he said tersely. “Mine’s all on the card.”

She shoved it into the back pocket of her jeans, taking the pen and notebook.

Hemmed into the space between the cars with him, she could smell his expensive suiting, and a hint of soap or aftershave. Something sort of woodsy, with an undertone of spice. And an over-priced brand name, no doubt.

She lowered her head, pushing back the strands of hair escaping her carelessly fastened ponytail.

“I suppose you do have a license?” he said.

About to write down her insurance company’s name, she looked up. “Of course I have!”

“You scarcely look old enough,” he said skeptically. “Is the car yours or your parents’?”

“I’m twenty-four,” she snapped. “And the car’s mine!”

His dispassionate gaze swooped from her dead-straight, too-fine hair escaping in hanks from its ponytail, to her ancient trainers, on the way taking in the baggy bottle-green T-shirt that concealed small but quite decently shaped breasts, and the comfortable, wash-softened jeans.

When she’d dressed, the jeans had seemed perfectly respectable. Now she was acutely conscious of the fading, thinned fabric at the knees—and the tear, barely perceptible this morning, that had widened when she’d bent to pick up a child who’d taken a tumble at the day care center where she worked.

Still, that was no reason for this stranger to eye her with what she strongly suspected was scorn. Her head instinctively went up in defiance. It was about level with his chin, which meant that he was under six feet by some inches. But the breadth of his shoulders and an unmistakable air of assurance more than made up for the height he didn’t have.

Riley was used to literally looking up to people, but not many of them made her feel this intimidated. He was too big, too damned close, and she had no way of escape. “Don’t crowd me,” she said fiercely as his eyes swept up again to hers.

He stepped back, doubling the space between them to a meter or so. “Are you paranoid or something?”

“I don’t have to be paranoid to be wary of strange men. Especially men who go round abusing innocent women.” She handed back the notebook and pen, unflinchingly standing her ground as he came closer again to take it.

“I don’t.” His gaze this time lingered rather thoughtfully on her as he pushed his hands into his pockets, sweeping back the sides of his jacket. “You’re very small. I suppose you would feel—”

“You’re not exactly Arnold Schwarzenegger yourself, are you?” Riley didn’t like being reminded of her deficient height.