She Thinks Her Ex Is Sexy...

“Shan?” His hand found her shoulder and came back sticky.

She was bleeding. The thin trail of blood seemed to originate at the back of her head.

“Shannon?”

He blinked to try to clear away the red haze in his vision. The scent of smoke and burned rubber stung his nose.

Smoke?

Like a bat out of hell he grabbed for his seat belt to free Shannon before the car caught on fire. He might not have lived up to her expectations as a boyfriend, but he damn well would never let anything happen to her.

2

SHANNON BECAME AWARE of the burning odor slowly.

Her neighbor’s cooking was iffy, but she could never remember anything this acrid wafting from next door in the year since she’d bought a house with Romero. A house Romero didn’t share anymore. Besides, she couldn’t be at home, because her bed was way more comfortable than this. Hard objects speared into her back. Water dripped down onto her face. Her lips.

She ran her tongue along her mouth to catch the droplet, since her throat was dry. Only it wasn’t water. It was sweat.

“Shannon.”

“Romero.” Her whole mood shifted as she got her bearings.

She felt him stretched out over her, his hot male body drenched and hard. She couldn’t wait to open her eyes and see it for herself. See him. The man was sex personified.

She reached for him as she wrenched her eyelids open. And, oh, man, Romero Jinks rated high on a woman’s list of faces she’d like to see when she woke up.

He leaned over her, his dark eyes narrowed with concern. His angular face was drawn into stark lines, while a cut oozed blood just below his right eyebrow. He was part Irish and part Mexican, a heritage that had blessed him with inky dark lashes and silky black hair. Women around the globe lusted after him, but for this moment at least, Shannon had him all to herself.

Too bad her head was throbbing with pain at the time she’d managed to snag the honor.

“Are you okay?” His hand skimmed up the back of her neck and the grit against his fingertips made her realize she was lying on the dirt.

There’d been an accident.

Her fingers reached for her Celtic necklace, the only item she wore that meant something to her. She could replace the Louboutin shoes—although perhaps not too soon considering her new budget—but the necklace had been her mother’s. One of the few pieces of jewelry that hadn’t been all about the bling, since cinema sex icon Bridget Leigh had received it long before her life goals involved bringing the men of Hollywood to their knees.

Hollywood had turned out to be a bigger, badder enemy than even her mother could have predicted, driving her to her death before she’d had a chance to overcome her addiction to prescription painkillers. After dealing with a death that had turned into a media frenzy, Shannon had tried to step out of her mother’s shadow and be taken seriously as an actress, a dream that never really took off. And a dream that never would if she accepted film roles like the one Ceily had been waving in front of her nose. Another flesh movie about her mother’s life.

Shannon hadn’t even bothered to read the script.

“I’m fine. How about you? You’re bleeding.” She inched upward before realizing she was practically clinging to Romero for support. Shannon released him in a hurry—she wouldn’t let an adrenaline rush send her back to his arms. Not after he’d addressed her relationship frustrations by suggesting a trial separation. She’d been too devastated by the idea to argue. Besides, the man didn’t argue. He expected people to either be happy with him or, she’d discovered, to be out of his life completely.

“It’s nothing. But you’ve been unconscious for a few minutes. Are you sure you’re all right?” He cradled the back of her head and her nerve endings danced at his nearness.

How many times had he stroked those long, guitar player fingers over her body to elicit soft sighs until he hit just the right note? The temptation to arch up and kiss him, to drag him down to the hard ground with her, was strong.

But hadn’t that been the trouble with them all along? They’d always been so willing to lose themselves in sex, ignoring their problems until they were so monumental that the lack of a pair of hiking boots in a woman’s size six could detonate an entire relationship.

“I’m fine.” She struggled to sit up the rest of the way, needing to escape the touch that had the power to render her brainless in zero to sixty. “But what was with that guy in the van?”

Romero frowned at her, as if he didn’t believe for a minute she was fine, but at last his disarming fingers fell away from her scalp, and he dropped back to sit on his butt in the sand.

They were in the middle of nowhere. No houses or buildings, no signs or highways. Far above them Shannon could see the edge of the road they’d been on, but the embankment was so steep it would be hell to try to climb back up there. Besides, now that she thought about it, she hadn’t seen any houses or buildings on the route they’d been driving. Apart from the van that had run them off the bumpy back road they’d traveled in the hope of taking a shortcut, she hadn’t seen signs of civilization for miles.

“I don’t know, but he had a California state license plate, and you’d better believe I’m going to report his ass to the insurance company.” Romero drew in his long legs, dropped his elbows onto his knees and speared a hand through his hair. “But I don’t have a clue how we’re going to get help.”

“You tried the cell phones?”

“Not yours, but mine doesn’t work and the navigational system in the Beemer is out, so I’d say there’s no coverage here.”

Shannon patted her pocket for her phone and couldn’t find it. “Mine must have fallen out of my jacket when we flipped.” She started to stand. “I’ll go check—”

“No.” He gripped her arm tightly, holding her next to him. “The car smelled like something was burning. You’d better give it time until we’re sure nothing could ignite.”

Sinking back to the sand beside him, she tried to ignore the feel of his hand on her, the warmth of his palm penetrating her jacket to the skin beneath. The firm hold did something dizzying to her senses. She wasn’t some hard-core S and M chick, but she loved to be dominated. It was a fantasy she’d felt safe enough with Romero to share. A fantasy he’d been incredibly skilled at indulging to just the right degree.

Apparently, he’d been sharing some of her thoughts, because his gaze heated for one sizzling second before he released her, turning his attention back to the smoking car.

A wise woman would do the same.

She shoved aside images of Romero pressing her up against their bedroom wall and wrenching her clothes off in a fevered frenzy. Instead, she focused on the BMW perched on its roof, the front end smashed beyond recognition while the radiator hissed steam. A bold blackbird landed on one tire, undeterred by the potential for an explosive situation.

“Thank you for getting me out of there.” She couldn’t show her gratitude by covering his gorgeous mug with kisses, so she settled for the old-fashioned method. “I don’t remember us landing or you pulling me out, but you must have.”

Her heart squeezed at the thought of how close they’d come to death. If the car hadn’t been so well engineered they might not be sitting here right now.

“I’m glad you’re okay.” He shot her a sideways look. “Even if I am a self-absorbed bastard with no appreciation for anyone else’s feelings.”

She recalled the accusation, one of many she’d launched at him during their fight. One of many he’d simply accepted and hadn’t argued about. The fact that he didn’t care enough to argue, to fight for their relationship and her, that had hurt her far more than the lack of hiking boots, or his inconsistent schedule that dragged him away for months on end, then planted him back home for weeks straight, only to hide out in his basement recording studio.

“Yeah, well, clearly you’re having a good day.” She rose to her feet, unwilling to face more reminders of their breakup. The loss of him was still an open wound for her even though he’d been able to roll right on with life without missing a beat. “If that car hasn’t exploded by now, I’m not going to worry about it. I’ll see if I have cell coverage so we can get out of here.”

Shannon wobbled on her heels in the sandy terrain, her unsteadiness as much from her head injury as her impractical shoes.

“Are you in that much of a hurry to leave me?” he called after her.

“I’m not the one who likes to run away when the going gets tough.” She shot the accusation over her shoulder. “But I think you’d agree we’ll both be better off when this trip is over and we can go our separate ways.”

SHE HADN’T TOLD HIM anything he didn’t already know.

Romero was well aware that she’d had enough of him. That had been abundantly clear during the daylong rampage when she called his bluff on the trial separation idea and moved straight ahead to removing him from her life completely. She’d still been spoiling for a fight when he’d pulled out of the driveway with a bag in hand. But he couldn’t help a twinge of regret that she still harbored some resentment toward him even now, when they’d nearly died. Would she have shown up in front of St. Peter’s gate with her score sheet in hand of all the times Romero had ticked her off?

“You’re a hard woman to please,” he muttered, and got up, unwilling to let her be blown up in the hunt for a cell phone that wasn’t going to work anyhow.

“I disagree,” she replied as she hunkered down near the open window of the Beemer and peered inside. “I’m an easy woman to please for people who are willing to engage in the occasional disagreement to work through problems in a relationship.”

Romero’s head pounded with frustration about the car, the accident and the long walk he feared was ahead of them, so Shannon’s latest slam seemed poorly timed.