Have Bride, Need Groom

How ridiculous, Jenny thought. As if footwear had anything at all to do with a pregnant woman’s health. Then her brain lurched, stopped and backed up.

Pregnant?

“What baby?” she asked.

“Yours.”

“Mine?” Jenny’s palm slapped against the open V of her neckline. “I’m not going to have a baby!”

“Of course you are.”

“I think I would know if I was pregnant, for heaven’s sake.”

“Then what was all that stuff about you have to get married?”

He loomed over her. Jenny’d never had occasion to use that word before, not even to herself. Yet there was no other way to describe what the tall, angry-looking bounty hunter was doing. But then, she decided, he probably couldn’t help looming. He was awfully tall.

She tilted her head back slightly in response, but didn’t lower her gaze one fraction. “I said I had to get married. I didn’t say it was because of a baby.”

“Well, why else?”

“Because of my grandmother.”

One second passed, then two, then three. Jenny waited.

Nick threw his hands high in the air in mock surrender. “Forget it, lady, I don’t want to know.”

“But you have to listen,” she said, and followed him as he started for the car door again.

“No, I don’t. And don’t try crawling back up on the damned car. This time, I might just take off anyway.”

Hurrying in those heels was a mistake. Jenny realized it just before her foot caught in a hole and she pitched forward to land on the hot, dirty asphalt. She managed to break her fall with her hands instead of her face, but sharp, stinging pains stabbed at her knees and palms.

“Oh, for...”

She felt rather than saw him move. Then his hands were at her waist and he was lifting her up from the parking lot and setting her on her feet again. He didn’t release her immediately and Jenny deliberately ignored the warmth soaking into her body from the press of his fingertips at her waist.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“I think so.” She took a step back from him, glanced down at her knees and groaned. Through the torn, black, diamond-patterned stockings, she saw that her flesh was scraped raw and bloody. Bits of gravel clung to her knees and the palms of her hands looked no better.

Before she knew it a sheen of tears had welled up in her eyes. She blinked furiously, trying to keep them at bay. Nothing was going right. Absolutely nothing. And it was all her own fault.

Nick sighed and asked, “Where’s your car?”

“I don’t have one,” she answered, rubbing the back of her hand across the tip of her nose.

“Perfect.” He paused, then asked, “Where are you staying? I’ll get you a cab.”

“I don’t want a cab. I want to get married.” Her knees were beginning to throb and the palms of her hands felt as though she’d taken a cheese grater to them.

“Your groom has other plans,” he answered. “What hotel are you in?”

She sniffed, bent over and plucked at her ruined stockings, pulling them away from her battered knees. “Sinbad’s.”

“Jeez!”

Jenny straightened abruptly. “What is it now?”

“You want to marry Jimmy Baldini and you’re staying at Sinbad’s?” He shook his head slowly. “Lady, you’re asking for trouble.” Grabbing her elbow firmly, he dragged her to the rear door on the driver’s side, muttering to himself with every step. “I ought to just let you go on back to that dive. Take your chances. None of my business where you stay-Hell, I don’t even know you!”

Jenny winced as pain stabbed at her knees.

“But then I’d probably see you on the news tonight,” he went on, still talking to himself. “‘Tourist with scraped knees murdered in her bed at Sinbad’s Sin Shop.’ Nope. Can’t let you do it.” Nick shrugged. “Guilt would keep me awake all night and I already told you—I’m tired.”

Yanking at the latch, he pulled the door open and gestured for her to get into the back seat.

“Sinbad’s Sin Shop?” Jenny asked, standing her ground, however wobbly it felt.

“Worst place in Vegas,” he told her solemnly.

“It looked perfectly respectable to me this morning.”

“Sure it did. Cockroaches come out at night.” He jerked his head toward the car. “Just look at ol’ Jimmy here.”

“Hey!” A clearly insulted, disembodied voice floated out to them.

“You shut up,” Nick snapped.

Jenny looked up at him and watched as the desert wind ruffled his dark hair. In his U.N.L.V. T-shirt, blue jeans and battered cowboy boots, he looked completely at ease.

A sharp stab of envy sliced through her as she realized that she’d never once felt that comfortable in her surroundings.

Maybe, she told herself, she should simply give up on the wedding. At least for tonight A quick glance at her still-bleeding knees reminded her that things didn’t seem to be going her way at the moment.

Still, a small voice in the back of her mind whispered. Would you be any safer getting into a car with a total stranger?

Humph! Only half an hour ago, she was going to marry a total stranger. And Nick Tarantelli certainly looked more trustworthy than Jimmy the Lip Baldini!

“Well?” he said impatiently. “Are you going to get in? Or would you prefer to ride on the hood?”

“Shouldn’t your prisoner be in the back seat?”

“I was here first,” Jimmy reminded her hotly.

“Nah,” Nick said, ignoring the other man. “He’s harmless. Besides, I want him where I can reach out and grab him if he decides to make a run for it.”

“I never run,” the prisoner snapped.