The Renegade Steals A Lady

Aw, hell.

Just before the sound welled out of her, he crushed her to him and stopped the noise.

Paige’s lungs burned with the need for air. When her head began to swim, she bit the hand Marco had clamped over her mouth. He flinched, but didn’t let her go. His other hand caressed the nape of her neck, stroking maddeningly.

A promise, or a threat?

Two sets of footsteps crunched across the gravel behind her, then receded into the darkness. A car door thunked, and an engine roared to life. Paige slumped back to the ground at the grind of tires over rock, headed the other way. Dully, she recognized the noise as the sound of hope pulling away. Dignity. For as Marco carried her to her truck and sat her behind the steering wheel, she realized she had none left.

He was going to use her again, and there was nothing she could do about it.

Yet.

Marco put Bravo in the back, then circled to the passenger door, climbed inside and handed her the keys. “Get on the radio,” he said. “Tell them you’re leaving.”

She reached for the microphone with an unsteady hand. “Matt won’t buy it.”

“Make up an excuse. Make it good.” Marco shifted her Glock in his hand, an unsubtle warning. “You don’t want your brother coming after us, do you?”

Her breath shuddering at that thought, she did as Marco said. “Adam four-niner,” she said, giving her call sign. “I’m ten-six to the vet’s office. Sorry, guys.”

“Adam four-niner, S-six. Where the hell have you been?”

“Ah…” She looked at Marco. “I must have slipped out of my grid. Got a little lost.”

“Why weren’t you answering calls?” Matt asked, sounding suspicious.

Paige poured confidence into her voice. She couldn’t live with herself if Matt was hurt because of her. “My hand-held went on the fritz. I’m in my vehicle now.”

There was a moment of silence, then Matt’s deep voice rumbled across the radio again. “What’s up with Bravo?”

“S-six, he stepped on some glass. I don’t think it’s serious, but I’m going to have it checked out.”

Matt sighed. “Roger, four-niner. Get him back out here later if he can work. We need all the help we can get.”

“Will do.” Paige returned the microphone to its clip with more than a little relief pouring through her.

Until she looked at Marco.

He smiled at her sickly. “Piece of cake.” Shoving the Glock back into his coat pocket, he said, “Let’s go.”

As soon as they cleared the search perimeter, Marco insisted on pulling over so that he could drive. They were twenty minutes down the highway before either of them spoke again.

“Where are we going?” she asked, rolling her forehead off the passenger-side window to look at him. The green lights of the dashboard gave his face an eerie cast.

“You still have the Miata?”

“Yes.” Her head ached too much to see any advantage in lying.

“Then we’re going to your place.”

He turned his eyes away and was quiet, his expression strangely serene, given the circumstances. She wondered if he was remembering, as she was, the first time he’d ridden in her bright blue convertible, the night they made love.

She’d been aware that Marco had been watching her off and on for nearly a month when they’d ended up working a narcotics bust together. Marco had been cuffing a prisoner when the man pulled an ice pick from beneath his belt and slashed Marco’s hand, then ran. Paige and Bravo gave chase, with Marco gaining ground behind them, bloody palm and all, yelling for her and her “poodle” to back off.

Determined to make the collar herself, to show the almighty narcotics detective what the poodle squad could do, she followed the suspect up a hay elevator and into a dilapidated barn. She’d pounded ten feet across the loft before realizing the floor was only half there.

Bravo had his man already, standing over him in the corner.

Breathing hard, Marco had rushed into the barn below her. “Don’t—”

She didn’t. But the floor collapsed, anyway. A second later she found herself sprawled across his chest, chaff from ancient bales of hay dancing in the sunbeams all around them.

“—move,” he’d finished dryly.

He needn’t have worried. She couldn’t, paralyzed as much by the feel of the muscled male body beneath her and the dark eyes boring into her as by the fall.

That night, as she lay in bed with a mystery novel, trying to banish the memory of his heat and the sudden, searing connection between them, she’d heard a tap on her window. Angelosi had stood outside throwing pebbles like a teenager, for goodness sake.

She’d met him in the driveway, her aqua-colored robe locked around her like a suit of armor. He was leaning against her new Miata, an indulgence, the first nonsensible thing she’d bought in years….

“What,” she asked sharply, irritation mixing oddly with excitement in her voice, “are you doing here?”

“This yours?” He stroked the hood, and her mouth turned to cotton.

She nodded.

“Put the top down and let’s take her for a spin. See what she can do.”

“It’s late.”

He laughed. “Yeah, and the breeze is warm and the stars are out. So what’s the problem?”

She fingered the neckline of her robe. “I’m not dressed.”

Leaning close, too close, he fingered her robe just the way she had, picked it back just far enough to see the lacy edge of her nightgown curved over the mound of her breast. “You look fine to me.”

Her breath caught at the rough edge to his voice. She jerked back, her mind spinning. She must be crazy. Insane to even consider this. At the moment, though, insanity—in the form of a tall, dark Italian-American looking at her like the wolf must have looked at Little Red Riding Hood—sounded pretty appealing.

“Give me five minutes,” she said, and ran to the house. She might just be crazy enough to go driving with him in the middle of the night, but she wasn’t lunatic enough to do it in her nightgown.

They drove out of the city, to the rural ranching counties. The stars glittered overhead like a mirrored ball at a dance hall as they streaked down country lanes that smelled of fresh-cut hay and livestock.

“Faster,” Marco urged, and she couldn’t say why, but she found an empty stretch of road and pressed the accelerator down until the wind whipped tears into her eyes and she felt like she was flying.

Far from being afraid, Marco threw his head back and laughed.

Breathless and exhilarated, she pulled back into her apartment complex just before midnight and invited Marco in, where he laid her down on her wide four-poster bed and took her for a ride every bit as breathtaking….