Captive Star: the classic story from the queen of romance that you won’t be able to put down

“I figure you’re thirsty.” He walked to her, offered a can. “And you’re not the type to cut off your nose.” His assessment was proved correct when she grabbed the can and drank deeply. “This place doesn’t run to room service,” he continued. “But there’s a diner down the road, so we won’t go hungry. You want something now?”

She eyed him over the top of the can. “No.”

“Fine.” He sat on the side of the bed, settled himself and smiled at her. “Let’s talk.”

“Kiss my butt.”

He blew out a breath. “It’s an attractive offer, sugar, but I’ve been trying not to think along those lines.” He gave her thigh a friendly pat. “Now, the way I see it, we’re both in a jam here, and you’ve got the key. Once you tell me who’s after you and why, I’ll deal with it.”

The worst of her thirst was abated, so she sipped slowly. Her voice dripped sarcasm. “You’ll deal with it?”

“Yeah. Consider me your champion-at-arms. Like good old Herc there.” He stabbed a thumb at the set behind him. “You tell me about it, then I’ll go take care of the bad guys. Then I’ll bill you. And if the offer about kissing your butt’s still open, I’ll take you up on that, too.”

“Let’s see.” She leaned her head back, kept her eyes level on his. “What was it you told your pal Ralph to do? Oh, yeah.” She peeled her lips back in a snarl and repeated it.

He only shook his head. “Is that any way to talk to the guy who kept you from getting a bullet in the brain?”

“I kept you from getting a bullet in the brain, pal, though I have serious doubts he’d have been able to hit it, as it’s clearly so small. And you pay me back by manhandling me, tying me up, gagging me, and dumping me in some cheap rent-by-the-hour motel.”

“I’m assured this is a family establishment,” he said dryly. God, she was a pistol, he thought. Spitting at him despite his advantage, daring him to take her on, though she didn’t have a hope of winning the game. And sexy as bloody hell in tight jeans and a wrinkled shirt.

“Think about this,” he said. “That brainless giant said something about me taking too long, talking too much, which leads me to believe they were listening from the van. They must have had surveillance equipment, and he got antsy. Otherwise, if you’d gone along with me like a good girl, they’d have pulled us over somewhere along the line and taken you. They didn’t want direct involvement, or witnesses.”

“You’d be a witness,” she corrected.

“Nothing to sweat over. I’d have been ticked off about having another bounty hunter snatch my job, but people in my line of work don’t go running to the cops. I’d have lost my fee, considered my day wasted, maybe bitched to Ralph. That’s the way they’d figure it, anyway. And Ralph would have probably passed me some fluff job to keep me happy.”

His eyes changed, went hard again. Knife-edged gray ice. “Somebody’s got their foot on his throat. I want to know who.”

“I couldn’t say. I don’t know your friend Ralph—”

“Former friend.”

“I don’t know the gorilla who broke my door, and I don’t know you.” She was pleased her voice was calm, without a single hitch or quiver. “Now, if you’ll let me go, I’ll report all this to the police.”

His lips twitched. “That’s the first time you’ve mentioned the cops, sugar. And you’re bluffing. You don’t want them in on this. That’s another question.”

He was right about that. She didn’t want the police, not until she’d talked to Bailey and knew what was going on. But she shrugged, glanced toward the phone he’d put out of commission. “You could call my bluff if you hadn’t wrecked the phone.”

“You wouldn’t call the cops, but whoever you called might have their phone tapped. I didn’t go through all the trouble to find us these plush out of-the-way surroundings to get traced.”

He leaned over, took her chin in his hand. “Who would you call, M.J.?”

She kept her eyes steady, fighting to ignore the heat of his fingers, the texture of his skin against hers. “My lover.” She spit the words out. “He’d take you apart limb by limb. He’d rip out your heart, then show it to you while it was still beating.”

He smiled, eased a little closer. He just couldn’t resist. “What’s his name?”

Her mind was blank, totally, completely, foolishly blank. She stared into those slate-gray eyes a moment, then shook his hand away. “Hank. He’ll break you in half and toss you to the dogs when he finds out you’ve messed with me.”

He chuckled, infuriated her. “You may have a lover, sugar. You may have a dozen. But you don’t have one named Hank. Took you too long. Okay, you don’t want to spill it and rely on me to work us out of this, we’ll go another route.”

He rose, leaned over. He heard her quickly indrawn breath when he reached down for her purse. Without a word, he dumped the contents on the bed. He’d already removed the weapons. “You ever use that can opener for more than popping a beer?” he asked her.

“How dare you! How dare you go through my things!”

“Oh, I think this is small potatoes after what we’ve been through together.” He picked up the velvet pouch, slid the stone into his hand, where it flashed like fire, despite its lowly surroundings.

He admired it, as he had been unable to in the car, when he searched her bag. It was deeply, brilliantly blue, big as a baby’s fist and cut to shoot blue flame. He felt a tug as it lay nestled in his hand, an odd need to protect it. Almost as inexplicable, he thought, as his odd need to protect this prickly, ungrateful woman.

“So.” He sat, tossing the stone up, catching it. “Tell me about this, M.J. Just where did you get your hands on a blue diamond big enough to choke a cat?”

Chapter 3

Options whirled through her mind. The simplest, and the most satisfying, she thought, was to make him feel like a fool.

“Are you crazy?” She rolled her eyes and scoffed. “Yeah, that’s a diamond, all right, a big blue one. I carry a green one in my glove compartment, and a pretty red one in my other purse. I spend all the profits from my pub on diamonds. It’s a weakness.”

He studied her, idly tossing the stone, catching it. She looked annoyed, he decided. Amused and cocky. “So what is it?”

“A paperweight, for God’s sake.”

He waited a beat. “You carry a paperweight in your purse.”

Hell. “It was a gift.” She said it primly, her nose in the air.

“Yeah, from Hank the Hunk, no doubt.” He rose, casually pushed through the rest of the contents he’d dumped out. “Let’s see, other than the blackjack—”

“It was a roll of nickels,” she corrected.

“Same effect. Mace, a can opener I doubt you cart around to pop Bud bottles, we’ve got an electronic organizer, a wallet with more photos than cash—”

“I don’t appreciate you rifling my personal be longings.”

“Sue me. A bottle of designer water, six pens, four pencils. Some eyeliner, matches, keys, two pair of sunglasses, a paperback copy of Sue Grafton’s latest—good book, by the way, I won’t tell you the ending—a candy bar…” He tossed it to her. “In case you’re hungry. A flip phone.” He tucked that in his back pocket. “About three dollars in loose change, a weather radio and a box of condoms.” He lifted a brow. “Unopened. But then, you never know.”

Heat, a combination of mortification and fury, crawled up her neck. “Pervert.”

“I’d say you’re a woman who believes in being prepared. So why not carry a paperweight around with you? You might run into a stack of paper that needs anchoring. Happens all the time.”

He made a couple of swipes to gather and dump the items scattered on the bed back into her bag, then tossed it aside. “I won’t ask what kind of fool you take me for, because I’ve already got that picture.” Moving to the mirror over the dresser, he scraped the stone diagonally across the glass. It left a long, thin scratch.

“They just don’t make motel mirrors like they used to,” he commented, then came back and sat on the bed beside her. “Now, back to my original question. What are you doing with a blue diamond big enough to choke a cat?”

When she said nothing, he vised her chin in his hand, jerked her face to his. “Listen, sister, I could truss you up again, leave you here and walk away with your million-dollar paperweight. That’s door number one. I can kick back, watch the movie and wait you out, because sooner or later you’ll tell me what I want to know. That’s door number two. Behind door number three, you tell me now why you’re carrying a stone that could buy a small island in the West Indies and we start figuring out how to get us both out of this jam.”

She didn’t flinch, she didn’t blink. He had to admire the sheer nerve. Because he did, he waited patiently while she studied him out of those deep green cat-tilted eyes.

“Why haven’t you taken door number one already?”