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Deliberately, he ignored the thought.
“Are you nuts, lady?”
“It’s Jenny. Jenny Blake.” She held out her right hand.
He took it instinctively and tried not to notice how his own grip seemed to swallow her much smaller hand. Nick released her quickly and shoved his hand into his pocket.
“Well, Jenny Blake,” he started, telling himself to keep his eyes safely away from the swell of her breasts and his mind off the fact that his right hand still tingled from her touch. “Instead of making such a stupid request, you ought to be thanking me for stopping that wedding.”
“You don’t understand.”
“No, Jenny Blake,” he countered, leaning one elbow on the dirty roof of his car, “you don’t understand.” Jerking his head toward the direction of the front seat, he said, “Ol’ Jimmy in there would’ve married you, stuck around for the wedding night and then been gone by first light, carrying anything of yours that was worth ten cents.”
She flushed and even in the half-light of a Vegas twilight, Nick saw the telltale red creeping up her neck and cheeks. Unbelievable. A woman who actually blushed! And she wanted to marry Jimmy of all people!
“There isn’t going to be a wedding night,” she insisted.
“You’re damn right there isn’t.”
“Mr. Tarantelli, you don’t understand.”
“Right again, honey. I surely don’t.” He straightened, reached for the door handle and opened his car door. “Even better, I don’t want to understand.” Glancing back at her over his shoulder, he added, “Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to turn Jimmy over to the cops, then take myself home for some sleep.”
“But you can’t take him.”
Nick told himself it wasn’t any of his business. It wasn’t his fault that this crazy woman actually wanted to marry a louse like Jimmy. And it most certainly wasn’t his fault that the look on her face reminded him of all the desperate kids in every Lassie movie he’d ever seen.
Gritting his teeth, he deliberately looked away from her, climbed into the car and shut the door firmly. The sooner he got home, the better. Rolling down the window, he rested his left forearm on the door top and said quietly, “Goodbye, Jenny Blake.”
Then he slipped the gearshift into reverse, half turned to look over his shoulder and started backing up.
“Uh, T....” Jimmy said quietly.
“You shut up,” Nick told him. “If you hadn’t escaped from me this morning, none of this would be happening.”
“But T.—” the other man ventured again.
“Enough, Jimmy.” Nick shot a quick look at his prisoner. “God knows, I can’t figure out how you keep getting women to marry you, but I am not one of your fans. So stick a sock in it for a while, okay?”
Jimmy shrugged but kept quiet.
Nick sighed and finished backing out of the parking slot. Turning around, he slipped the gearshift into drive, looked through the windshield and cursed.
“I tried to tell you.” Jimmy laughed, but stopped quickly enough when Nick glared at him.
Slamming the shift into park, Nick threw the car door open wide and stepped out. The fast-idling engine rumbled dangerously, and Nick’s temper was boiling at the same rate. Balled fists at his hips, he stared down at the woman sprawled across the hood of his car.
Two
Jenny’s fingers curled around the windshield wiper as she held on tight. Her right hand was cupped over the front of the car, her fingers digging into the hood latch. Her back was arched over the hump in the hood and her head shook in time with the hot, vibrating engine beneath her.
She stared up at Nick Tarantelli and swallowed heavily. Even though his image wavered with her shaking head, he looked furious. Well, she told herself, this wasn’t how she’d planned to spend her evening, either.
“What in the hell do you think you’re doing?” he shouted.
“Stopping you.”
“way?”
“I have to get married!”
He didn’t answer right away and she chewed at her lip nervously. A thoughtful, almost sympathetic expression crept into his brown eyes. A flare of hope burst into life in Jenny’s chest. Perhaps everything would be all right after all. Maybe the bounty hunter wasn’t completely without a heart. Surely he could see how important this wedding was to her.
Oh, heaven knew Jimmy the Lip wasn’t anyone’s idea of a wonderful husband. But she was out of time and out of options.
Although, a voice in the back of her mind whispered, did a marriage to a bigamist count?
Jenny frowned and pushed the annoying voice aside. A marriage was a marriage. The rules didn’t say it had to be a good marriage.
Nick Tarantelli reached a decision then and walked back to the driver’s side of the car. A moment later the engine stopped and Jenny sighed in relief. She didn’t move, though, reluctant to give up the hold she had on his car until the bounty hunter promised not to drive away with her groom.
Then he was back, staring down at her, and Jenny felt her mouth go dry. Strange, she hadn’t noticed before just what a lovely shade of brown his eyes were. In the chapel they’d simply looked dark. But here, in the uncertain twilight, they looked more the color of fine brandy.
She shook her head and told herself she was being fanciful. It was probably nothing more than the weird desert light playing tricks. Besides, what difference did it make what color his eyes were?
“Why didn’t you say so?” he asked suddenly.
“Hmm?”
“You should have said something about the baby.”
“Baby?”
“Hell, you shouldn’t be crawling onto moving cars,” he said, and reached out to pull her off the hood. “You could get hurt.”
When her feet hit the gravel parking lot, she wobbled uncertainly for a moment. She grabbed his forearms to steady herself, then released him and straightened. He smelled of Old Spice and something else she couldn’t quite identify.
Old Spice. She’d always loved that scent but she hadn’t thought there were any men left who appreciated the old-fashioned cologne. Most men these days were more into buying French fragrances that battled with and usually overpowered ladies’ perfumes.
But the Old Spice seemed to suit Nick Tarantelli. Maybe it was just the brainwashing of those old commercials, but he reminded Jenny of the swashbuckling type of male she’d always associated with that cologne.
Now she was being fanciful, she told herself and dismissed her wayward thoughts.
“You probably shouldn’t be wearing those high heels, either,” Nick told her.
“Why not?” she asked, glancing down at the three-and-a-half-inch heeled sandals she’d bought the week before.
“The baby, of course. Everybody knows pregnant women should wear flats. That way they don’t lose their balance.”
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.
