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“Someone important?”
“No.”
She leaned forward and fished the phone out. “Julie? With a heart? Looks important to me.”
He didn’t say anything. For reasons he preferred not to delve into just then, he just hoped she wouldn’t answer it.
She didn’t.
He let out the breath he was holding.
Her amused expression told him she’d caught his reaction. “I think you’re lying to me.” She waved the cell at him. “How do you suppose Miss Julie-with-a-Heart would feel about your kissing another girl?”
“I don’t have to suppose. It would piss her off.”
She smiled then tossed the phone to the desk to lie next to his wallet. “I figure I have another five minutes, tops, before you break that restraint,” she said. “Which means I’ve got two minutes to get something else. Be right back.”
He watched her leave the office and climb a set of dark, steel stairs to a catwalk he guessed must lead to her upstairs apartment.
Damn.
She was right. It would take him at least another few minutes to free himself.
She was back in one.
She planted one of the old boots she wore between his legs, nudged his knees farther apart and then moved what he guessed was a steel toe closer to his family jewels than he was comfortable with. She leaned over so she could secure the pair of police-issue steel handcuffs she’d brought down.
Aw, hell.
As irritated as he was growing, he couldn’t help but peer down the front of her shirt as she worked, her breasts swaying ever so slightly in a shiny, black bra, a thin, glistening sheen of sweat on her smooth skin from her recent efforts. She smelled of something sweet and sexy that made his mouth water in a way that would only further piss off “Julie-with-a-Heart.”
What was he talking about? It was pissing him off. The last thing he wanted was to feel attracted to a woman who had taken him hostage when he was supposed to be hauling her in instead.
She finished then stepped back, taking what appeared to be a toaster pastry from where she’d been holding it between her lips and chewing silently. She held it out toward him. “Bite?”
“What are you planning to do?” he asked, ignoring her question.
“Now? In the immediate future?” She waved the pastry. “Eat this.”
He had to admit, she wasn’t boring.
Although he’d much prefer it if their roles were reversed.
“And after that?”
Her chewing slowed and she used a pinkie to swipe a crumb from the corner of her mouth. “Sleep.”
Sleep …
The word wound around his mind even as he watched her toe a bedroll she’d brought down along with the restraints and what appeared to be documents of some sort folded and stashed in a small, blue plastic bag he sometimes saw newspapers delivered in. She popped the last of the pastry into her mouth and opened the sleeping bag, stuffing the documents inside before stretching out on top of it. It was only then he recognized the signs of fatigue: the dark smudges under her green eyes, the paleness of her skin, the lethargic lag of her movements.
Hell, if this was what she was like at half speed, he’d hate to see her at full.
She’d positioned the bedroll so it was far enough away that he couldn’t reach her, but between him and the door, close enough that if he awkwardly tried to escape, he’d have to step over her.
He eyed the open door.
She looked up abruptly then reached to slam the door. There was no mistaking the auto lock that clicked home.
Swell.
“How long you plan to be out?” he asked.
“As long as my body dictates. Try anything stupid and …”
He hadn’t realized she’d brought a gun down with her.
Oh, wait: she hadn’t. That was his gun.
Damn.
It was going to take him a while to live down this one. Not that he planned on telling anyone. No. But it was going to take a while for him to get over this.
The sound of her soft snores a moment later told him she was out like a light.
Jon drew in a deep breath and felt around his own restraints.
The way he saw it, all he had to do was wait until she decided what to do next before he figured out his next move.
He could only hope that hers didn’t include putting the muzzle of his own gun to his head and shooting, much the way she had assassinated the good prosecutor she was wanted for murdering….
3
“I’M HENRY THE EIGHTH.”
Mara fought against the irritating words determined to yank her from a solid sleep.
He sang the words louder, apparently convinced she hadn’t heard him the first time.
She put her hands over her ears and moaned.
No, no, no …
“Oh, hi,” her annoying hostage said. “Sorry … am I bothering you?”
She cracked open an eyelid and glared at him, noting how close the 9 mm was … and how easy it would be to do away with the annoyance.
“By the way?” he said, his long, denim-covered legs casually crossed at the ankles of his cowboy boots, looking as though he was there by choice and not by force … and appearing a little too cheerful for her liking. “You already know from reading my license, but we haven’t been properly introduced. My name is Jonathon Reece, Jon to my friends. But I’ll let you call me that if you want …”
She glanced at her watch. She’d only been asleep for a couple of hours. She reached for the gun and dragged it closer to her side.
“I’m thinking it’s been a while since you’ve gotten any decent sleep, huh? Actually, I’m guessing it’s been nearly forty hours. You know, the time that prosecutor bit it …”
She squinted at him, sorely tempted to pull the trigger.
“That’s a long time to go without rest. It messes with the system, big-time. Throws you off your game.”
Groaning aloud, she rolled smoothly to her feet, taking the gun with her.
“Hey, a movie song isn’t grounds for execution in most states.”
She opened a drawer, looking to grab something she saw in there earlier. “What movie song?”
“The one I was singing. You know, from Ghost? Patrick Swayze sang it to get Whoopi Goldberg to help him. Just call me Swayze Crazy. Isn’t that how the saying goes?”
“I wouldn’t know. Never saw the movie. As for the song, it was written in the early 1900s, and popularized by Herman and the Hermits in the mid-’60s, a long time before the movie in question.”
“Wow. You’re smart.”
The more he talked, the more her trigger finger itched.
She found what she was looking for and made her way back to him.
“Did you learn that in school? That song bit?” he asked.
“No. My father liked to pretend he lived in a time period other than the one he was in. Either that or he was stuck in the wrong time. I don’t know which.”
“What are you going to—”
She slapped a stretch of duct tape across his sexily infuriating mouth. Then just to be sure, she secured another in the shape of an X.
She looked into his eyes, the deep shade of blowtorch-blue, with lashes that were somehow too thick to be on a man, yet were ridiculously attractive.
Damn, but he was hot.
She licked her lips, momentarily recalling how it had felt to have them pressed against his. Her kiss had been a completely diversionary tactic, she told herself. If she revisited the naughty thoughts she’d originally had of him at the airport … well, that was between her and her bedroll.
His expression was altogether too suggestive. Could he be thinking along the same line?
She cleared her throat and sat back on her heels.
“Oh, and there is more to that song,” she said. “It goes …” She quoted him the full lyrics. “Just so you’ll know the next time you choose to annoy someone.”
If she didn’t know better, she’d say he was grinning at her through the tape.
She cocked her head, her gaze drawn to his mouth. She picked up a red sharpie from a nearby tabletop, uncapped it then drew another X over the tape.
There. A reminder of what was off-limits.
Trouble was? She was having a hard time not thinking X marked the spot.
Yes, he kissed that well.
She gave a mental eye roll, checked his restraints—both still firmly in place—then stretched back across the sleeping bag.
She stared at the grimy windows on the other side of the office.
While her attraction to Reece was purely physical, she needed to remind herself that it was another man who had put her in the position she was in now.
She’d been sixteen, had just lost her father, was living with an emotionally unstable and distant mother … and militia member Gerald Butler had smiled that devastating smile at her, offering her what she thought was everything she’d ever need.
She supposed that had been true … for a time. Two years, to be exact. It had taken her that long to figure out that the group and its ideals weren’t any better than the organized government against which they rebelled.
And that the man with whom she’d fallen in love didn’t know the true meaning of the word.
Of course, she understood how young she’d been then, emotionally as well as in years. And she was happy to say it had been a good long while since she’d actually thought about that time in her life.
Until now.
Until she’d been plucked out of Butler’s files and set up for murder.
Oh, she’d read the news that Gerald had been arrested some time ago for charges that ranged from crimes against the federal government to murder. But she’d barely given the news piece a cursory glance and a heart pang before closing the paper and then lighting her welding torch, returning to her artwork, something that never betrayed her, never lied to her, was always there for her.
If she’d worked for twenty hours straight in order to cleanse thoughts and memories of Butler from her mind before finally collapsing into a dreamless sleep … well, that was between her and the sculpture she’d been working on.
Now, she cleared her throat and rubbed her nose. It was one thing to know someone you loved had never really loved you. Quite another to be set up for murder for reasons she knew benefited him.
“You know, you didn’t ask if I did it …” she said quietly to Reece, her body already beginning to succumb to sleep again. “Just saying. If it were me, it would have been the first question I asked.”
He didn’t respond. Not that he could.
“See you in a while, Reece. Don’t try anything stupid …”
HOURS LATER, JON CURSED himself for not keeping a metal handcuff key in the secret pocket sewn inside the waist of his jeans. Then again, he hadn’t expected to need one.
He did, however, have a small pocket knife and had long since taken it out and freed himself from the plastic restraints, which were tighter then the metal ones. He’d blindly tried to pick the metal lock with the blade, only to cut himself on the pad of his thumb. He felt the blood drip from his fingers, but knew it wasn’t anything serious. It did, however, convince him to stop trying to pick the lock for a while, lest he accidentally hit a vein.
At one point, he’d drifted off to sleep himself, leaning against the metal pole he was tied to. While Mara had switched off the ringer to his phone, she’d left it on Vibrate. And he’d listened as it buzzed almost nonstop where it sat on the desk.
Julie, no doubt.
Damn.
He’d like to say his reaction was because he was afraid she was worried about him. Instead, he was more concerned his cell battery would go dead.
He leaned his head against the pole and cursed.
Julie …
