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“Who you calling a mope?” the third man demanded. “Who are you, anyway?”
“I’m nobody,” Tyler retorted. “I’m not even here.”
“Yeah, well, you’re in my business now!”
And then he pounded across the floor, and there was the sickening sound of a fist meeting a face.
Tyler’s face? She gasped, almost pitching right off her perch on the sink. Not Tyler’s face!
She knew what she had to do, and she leaped off the sink so fast she skidded into the first stall. It didn’t matter. Her mind honed in on one thought and one thought only.
Save Tyler.
Chapter 5
EMILY RACED out of the rest room and up the stairs before she had a chance to think better of it. A bizarre cocktail of bravado and excitement flowed through her veins, catapulting her up those stairs, and all she could think of was that Emily Chaplin was ready to kick some butt, baby. As she got closer, the sounds of shouting and thrashing got louder, but she wasn’t frightened. The idea that there might be danger at the top of the stairs only spurred her on.
When she got there, she knew she was in the right place. The door had been smashed completely off its hinges, leaving a gaping hole opening into a lavishly decorated apartment. Not her taste—very purple, pretty darn tacky—but hey, it was plush. Since there were full-size posters of Shanda Leer, exotic artiste, mounted on every possible surface, it was easy to guess who lived there.
Although Emily slowed down and proceeded cautiously as she approached the door, no one glanced her way. They were too busy.
Near the doorway, Slab and some guy were rolling around on the floor, grunting and socking at each other. Clutching a skimpy robe around her inflated curves, wearing a pair of spike heels and not much else, Shanda was sort of squealing and trying not to trip over the two of them.
“Stop it! Stop it!” she cried. “You’re gonna wreck my place. You stop it right this minute!”
At the moment, the other guy was getting the best of Slab, pummeling his head into the carpet and creating a minor earthquake. With a shriek of distress, Shanda secured a rickety end table loaded with framed photos and glass knickknacks, all of them shaking with the force of Slab’s head hitting the floor.
Shanda and her knickknacks could fend for themselves—Emily had a more important mission. Steering past the wrestling match on the floor, she went straight for Tyler on the other side of the living room. He was holding up a chair like a lion tamer. Except the lion in this case was a short, stocky man with a twisted face. Tyler’s attacker wore a black pin-striped suit right out of a gangster movie, and he sliced a wicked-looking knife through the air in front of him, making a vicious snick-snick sound.
Knife? Her heart was in her throat as she scanned Tyler from stem to stern, looking for wounds. But all she saw was a thin slash in one sleeve of his leather jacket and a slightly puffy area on his lower lip where he’d presumably been punched. She sighed with relief. All in one piece. No major damage. She’d arrived in time.
“Put down the damn chair and fight like a man!” Mr. Pinstripes bellowed.
Since Tyler had a definite height advantage, Emily would have put her money on him in a fair fight, but the presence of the knife changed the odds somewhat. She wasn’t taking any chances.
Weapon, weapon! She didn’t have a weapon, she reminded herself, then decided she’d figure something out on the way.
Hugging the wall, she snagged one of her new shoes out of the bag and held it in front of her. The men were too intent on macho posturing to notice one small woman brandishing a shoe, so it wasn’t hard at all to sneak up behind the pin-striped creep, rap the back of his nasty little head hard with the wooden base of her sandal, and watch him plop to the floor like a ripe tomato falling off a vine. The knife clattered beside him.
“Yes!” she cheered. “I knew I could do it!”
“Emily?” Tyler yelled. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Rescuing you,” she returned sharply. Seizing the knife, she stuck it and her sandal back into the bag with her new clothes and undies. But she stopped, gaping down at the man on the floor. “I didn’t kill him, did I?”
“Nah. He’s moaning.” Tyler grabbed her hand, backing away. “In fact, I don’t think you hit him hard enough. He’s starting to come around. Let’s boogie, shall we?”
“I’m with you.”
Hanging on to Tyler for dear life, she hopped over Slab, who was lying apparently unconscious in the doorway. The two of them headed straight for the stairwell, not even stopping to breathe or synchronize watches. Tyler let her lead the way down, and she took the steps at a dizzying pace, trying to ignore the sound of pounding footsteps coming after them from above. By the time they hit the ground floor, shoving open a thick door that opened into an alley, she was gasping for breath.
Over the sound of approaching sirens, she shouted, “Rescuing good guys and escaping from bad guys is a lot less strenuous in the books.”
“We haven’t escaped yet.” Tyler’s expression was grim. “He’s not going to let us get away that easily. I suggest we—”
But a flashlight caught them where they stood in the alley.
“You folks okay down here?” a cool voice called to them.
“Oh, yes, Officer.” Emily straightened, putting on her perkiest I-am-a-Chaplin smile, rolling her pearls between her fingers so that the cop with the flashlight would be sure to notice she was a woman of quality and not some alley cat. “We were just wondering what all the commotion’s about. Did someone trip a fire alarm?”
“Nah. Place is busted. Bunch of underage kids getting tattoos. Plus we tripped over a domestic disturbance upstairs. You didn’t see anyone come out this way, did you?”
“No, sir, we didn’t,” she said with all due innocence. With Tyler’s hand in hers, she strolled nonchalantly out toward the sidewalk. “Oh, my, look at that.” She lifted an eyebrow Tyler’s way, assuming he’d want to stay clear of the authorities milling around The Flesh Pit. “That’s a lot of policemen, isn’t it, dear?”
“Quite a lot, darling,” he returned smoothly. “Makes a body feel safe, doesn’t it?”
“Indeed.”
Luckily, all the cops seemed to be flooding into The Flesh Pit through the front door, and nobody paid them any attention when they curved around the building and blended in with pedestrian traffic.
“I suggest we make tracks,” Tyler whispered in her ear.
“Agreed.”
Zigging and zagging, they sped up one street and down another, through an alley or two, across a courtyard, doubling back and branching out, finally zipping in the front and out the back of a Chinese restaurant.
“Couldn’t I just steal one little pot sticker off a tray?” she begged. “I didn’t have any dinner. I’m starving. I deserve something for my rescue effort, don’t I? I mean, I was awesome, wasn’t I?”
“Yeah. Awesome.” Tyler scanned the street one more time, for what she guessed was any sign of a pinstripe. “But we don’t have time for pot stickers just yet. Let’s make sure we’ve ditched Mack and his knife before we start celebrating.”
“Mack? Is that really his name?”
Tyler’s gaze was sardonic. “Are you kidding? How would I know his name? I’m not even sure what your name is.”
“That’s not true. You called me Emily,” she said logically. “I heard you. Ergo you know my name.”
“Yeah, but it could be a fake.”
She smiled up at him, slowing down as he pulled her across the street. “Do I look like someone who would use a fake name?” she asked with a laugh. “I mean, come on.”
“Emily, I don’t know anything about you except that you have a strange habit of popping up when I least expect it. Plus I checked you out on the register.” Tyler backed up into a quiet, shadowy park, an oasis of green in the bustling neighborhood. “Emily Bond, huh?” He paused, circling an arm around a tall tree, and she could see the dubious gleam in his eye even in the dim light. “That’s convenient. What are you, James Bond’s cousin? Sister?”
Uh-oh, she’d forgotten about that. “Don’t be silly. Emily Bond is a perfectly normal name. There are a lot of people named Bond in this world besides James.”
“Maybe. But you’re not one of them. The Gap boy said he was looking for ‘Emily Ch—.’ Since when does Bond start with Ch?”
“Maybe he made a mistake. Maybe my middle name’s…Charity.” Emily skipped right past him, out into an open area of grass. Over the tops of the trees, she could see the twin spires of a nearby church, illuminated so that they seemed to float there, up in the sky. The glow they cast down into the park was both beautiful and eerie at the same time.
“Emily.” Unexpectedly, he was right behind her, and she spun around, almost losing her balance. But he caught her and pulled her up against him. He leaned in so close that his warm breath tickled her ear when he whispered, “I know.”
“W-what?” Closing her eyes, allowing herself to melt into him just a tiny bit, she tried her best not to be intimidated.
So what if it was dark and private and incredibly romantic here in the park? So what if they’d just had an amazing escape and she was light-headed from lack of food and too much adrenaline and the heady, unbelievable triumph of bashing a jerk over the head with a shoe?
Out of your league, her inner good girl told her sternly. Having the best time of your life, her inner bad girl countered.
“What do you think you know?” she asked him finally, staring up into those moody green eyes, letting her gaze wander over that tiny, swollen ridge on his lower lip.
Soft, insistent, husky, the sound of his voice spun down her spine, weakening her already thin resistance. “I know you’re lying to me,” he murmured, tipping up her chin. “I know you’re following me. I just don’t know why. But you’re going to tell me, aren’t you?”
So he thought he could seduce her into spilling her guts? She lifted one finger to trace the bruise on his lip. “Does it hurt, where he hit you?”
“Emily, stop trying to distract me.” But he was the one who opened his mouth slightly, just enough to touch the tip of his tongue to the side of her finger, making her tremble and catch her breath. “You do know you’re playing with fire, don’t you?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “Oh, yes. I’m counting on it.”
And he licked her finger again. She felt she had to hang on or she’d fall down, right there in the middle of the park. That tiny touch of his warm, wet tongue against her cool flesh was enough to send her tripping over the edge. Too much excitement, too many reckless emotions in a too-long day. And he was too good at this.
She wound her arms around his neck, lifted herself into his embrace and pressed her mouth into his with all the energy and passion she could muster.
His arms fastened tight and hard around her, pulling her up into him, fitting her curves to the hard angles of his long body. The sensual assault of his lips and tongue was hot, relentless, delicious. He tasted like danger and joy and sin and nothing she’d ever imagined in a man or in a kiss.
If this mind-numbing desire was what she thought she’d wanted, she must have been out of her mind. It was incredible. Addictive. And terrifying.
A hungry little moan escaped her lips, and she couldn’t believe that sound came from her. “I want you,” she murmured, breathless, trembling.
“And I want to know what this is all about.”
His harsh tone was like a splash of cold water. She pushed away. “That again?”
“What do you really want, Emily? What are you doing here?” When she made no reply, Tyler smiled. It was a very dark, crooked smile. “Did you really think I’d take this any further when I know you’re still lying to me?”
“I am not!” Emily was furious. Humiliated, dripping with desire, and furious. “Okay, my name is Emily Chaplin. I lied about Bond. Big deal. I sort of ran away from home for the weekend and I didn’t want my mother to find me.” A new thought occurred to her. “Shoot. I wasn’t supposed to use my credit cards, either. But I forgot when I did the Gap thing.”
“Which is why the delivery boy knew your real name.”
“I didn’t say I was good at this. Yet.” She sighed. “Okay, so I already told you I’m a lawyer. That’s true. You also know I’m from Chicago because I was on the same plane you were. What else do you need to know?”
“No, I didn’t know you were from Chicago,” he said tightly. “So you spotted me on the plane and decided to follow me off? You are a stalker.”
“No, I did not follow you off the plane!” Actually, she’d followed him on the plane, which was even worse. “I didn’t see you during the flight at all,” she said, sticking to a grain of truth. “Not until I went to get a cab, and there you were. You remember, the taxi driver grabbed my briefcase and asked if I wanted to share. I came to San Francisco on a whim, I admit that. But I’m not a stalker. And I didn’t have anywhere better to go, so when you said you were going to North Beach, I thought why not? And then the B and B was so wonderful, it just seemed like fate. Like kismet. It even has a Kismet room! So I stayed.”
That sounded plausible, didn’t it? And less bizarre than the real story.
“So that’s when you started following me, after you came to the B and B? You’re saying you just stumbled into this when that guy came through my window?”
She avoided the direct question. “My motives were really very good. I wanted to help you. I could tell you were in trouble and I wanted to help. That is the absolute truth,” she swore.
“Little Ms. Emily Chaplin, lawyer from Chicago.” He ran a careless hand through the dark strands of his hair. “And let me guess—you’ve never done anything like this before in your life, and you decided this was your big chance to attach yourself to a bad boy in a leather jacket and get a ride to the wrong side of the tracks, am I right?”
“No.” She hesitated. “Okay, well, kind of. I mean, yes, I’ve never done anything like this before. But no to the rest of it.”
“Listen to me, Emily,” he told her, putting even more distance between them, stabbing a finger in the air. “I am nobody’s walk on the wild side. Do you hear me?”
“I hear you. But you’re being ridiculous.” She rushed to catch up before he left her in the park all by herself. “I’m not asking for a walk on the wild side. I’m telling you, you need my help.”
He flashed her a very unpleasant look.
“You can deny it all you like,” she persisted, “but we’re a good team. Where would you have been tonight without me? Sliced and diced in Shanda Leer’s living room?”
“I was doing fine.”
“Oh, yeah, right. I saved your adorable butt, Tyler O’Toole, and you know it.” Oops. She was supposed to leave out the adorable part.
His lips curved with amusement.
“Well, it’s the truth,” Emily insisted. “And you owe me.”
He stopped without warning, and she crashed into him before she could put on the brakes. But his hands bracketed her shoulders, holding her steady. “What exactly do you think I owe you?”
The first thing that flashed into her mind was a roll on the leather bed in The Wild One?
Best to keep that thought to herself.
“You at least owe me dinner,” she decided instead. “I really am starving.” In more ways than one. Love, sex, food…she had an abiding hunger for all of them. Best to keep that to herself, too.
“Okay. Dinner it is. Come on.” His long strides sent him down Columbus Avenue ahead of her. “I doubt ol’ Mack or anybody else will think to look for us in a restaurant. At the very least it’ll waste a few hours, and then maybe it will be safe to go back to Beau’s.” He regarded her with a speculative look. “And we can talk, you and I. How about we make a deal? For every question you answer about yourself and what you’re doing here, I’ll take a question, too. What do you say?”
“Deal,” she answered without a moment’s hesitation, positive she had the best of that bargain. The life of boring Emily Chaplin was an open book.
The life of mysterious Tyler O’Toole was better than any spy novel.
TYLER REFILLED her wineglass, congratulating himself on an excellent strategy. After the kiss-and-tell in Washington Square had backfired, he’d switched to Plan B—ply her with pasta, a nice, smooth Chianti, a little more Chianti, and eventually she’d tell him anything he wanted to know.
He now had her entire résumé and then some, including a blow-by-blow account of her trip to The Flesh Pit. Meanwhile, he’d relied on dodging, obfuscation and evasion, and she hadn’t learned one thing about him. Nice girls were so easy it wasn’t even a fair fight.
“What do you do for a living?” she’d asked.
“Nothing at the moment.”
There was a pause. “And what did you do when you still did something?”
He’d shrugged. “This and that.”
Her eyes had narrowed. “What did whatever you did have to do with hookers and strippers?”
That took him by surprise. “Who told you I had anything to do with hookers or strippers?”
