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And, oh, God, she couldn’t stand the thought of him touching another woman when he’d been her man just three short months ago. From his killer dark eyes to the shoulder-length, silky black waves that would have done an eighties hair band proud, Romero was seriously hot. Even better, he wrote music that was soul deep and complex. His lyrics had seduced her long before the rest of him did.
“If you talk him into it, I’ll slide you a finder’s fee,” Ceily offered while Shannon stared up at the tiled ceiling where a heavy mahogany ceiling fan spun on low speed.
Great. And Shannon could have a bit part in the “babes he’d banged” section of the docudrama. She yanked the headset off her ears to give it a shake.
“Given the way we broke up, I think I’m the last person he’ll want to talk to about his career.” There was a chance she’d been a smidge unreasonable about it in that final fight, telling him he always put his guitar before her. But she’d tried so hard to fit into his life for so long that all the frustrations she’d been stuffing down had bubbled up like red-hot, angry lava. “But for you, I’ll at least mention it.”
“Excellent. And from my memories of the two of you together, I’ll bet he pays more attention to you than you realize.” Ceily sighed with the dreaminess of someone who’d only seen the Shannon and Romero relationship from the outside. They’d fooled a lot of people into thinking they were wildly in love before the bottom fell out of a charade Shannon had nursed along out of pure wishful thinking.
She said goodbye to Ceily before hitting the disconnect button.
Ceily’s false impression of Romero still caring tweaked Shannon’s heart more than she would have liked after this long time apart from the man. And, coming on the heels of the sexual symphony in progress around her, the conversation hadn’t exactly improved Shannon’s mood. She’d really thought Romero could be the one, yet he’d looked as if the breakup was no big deal to him when he’d soaked up feminine admiration and the La Paz sunshine yesterday. He’d never given her reason to be jealous in the past, but she wasn’t foolish enough to think he hadn’t moved on. Women had always—would always—throw themselves at him.
Flopping down onto the pillow-top mattress with her hair wrapped in a towel full of deep conditioner, Shannon squeezed her eyes shut tight and prayed for the next twenty-four hours to be over with as fast as possible. Romero had told her to meet him at ten that morning, but she would be ready to leave in five minutes.
She just wanted to get back home so she could officially end this chapter of her life. Once she moved to New York, she would put her movie career and her too-sexy ex behind her for good.
“CAN’T YOU GO ANY FASTER?”
Romero Jinks tightened his grip on the steering wheel at his ex-girlfriend’s latest request, in a litany that had started at nine o’clock that morning with a wake-up call asking him when he’d be ready to leave.
Who woke up at nine after a wedding reception that had lasted into the wee hours of the morning? But that was Shannon. An early bird, a night owl, and all around too much energy for him to keep up with. At thirty years old, she seemed impossibly young to him even though they were only eight years apart. Blond, blue-eyed and built like a fifties pinup girl, she was too sexy by half, but that was only a fraction of her appeal. He’d been drawn by her energy and enthusiasm when they’d first met. She’d been a spark to his creativity and his life, pulling him out of a long writing drought with her vibrancy. He’d been crazy about her until she’d blindsided him with a wealth of frustrations about their relationship, culminating in the stupidest argument he’d ever been a part of.
How many women picked a fight because their guy failed to purchase a pair of hiking boots for her? When he’d offered for them to spend some time apart until she cooled down, she’d promptly pulled his clothes out of the closet and boxed up everything he owned in an all-night packing craze. After almost a year together, she’d created a drama the whole neighborhood had witnessed as she’d methodically carried the crates out to the curb.
“I’m not going any faster.” Romero checked the speedometer and slowed down—not to purposely piss her off, but because he was already doing eighty miles an hour up the Baja Peninsula to reach the California state line as soon as he could. The last thing he wanted was to extend their time in Mexico with a stint in a stink-hole prison cell.
They’d passed the last town, Insurgentes, long ago in the hunt for a shortcut home. He was seriously tearing up his new car driving this fast on pavement that hadn’t seen a road crew in a decade.
A small price to pay if it shortened the trip. Only a few more hours to go and they could split for good. No more saccharine sweet Valentine weddings to trap them back into pseudocouplehood. Playing the best man to her maid of honor, dancing that requisite dance with the woman who’d once meant everything to him, had been exquisite torture to a nerve that hadn’t fully healed.
Of course, he couldn’t blame this trip on anyone but himself, since he’d scrambled to offer her a ride when her flight had been canceled. He’d seen a chance to salvage her pride, knowing damn well her finances wouldn’t support a last-minute ticket out of Mexico. At least not easily. Shannon had tried to hide her dwindling movie prospects from him, but he knew the last couple of parts she’d taken weren’t worthy of her talents.
“Would you like me to drive?” She peered across the console of his new BMW coupe, a vehicle he’d picked up shortly before the Mexico trip. He’d ordered it months ago, thinking it would be fun to have for a trip up the coast to celebrate his first-year anniversary with Shannon.
An anniversary that never happened, thanks to her decision to launch World War Three. He’d postponed picking up the car, considering it now represented his failure. He’d been too blind to see what Shannon was feeling until she’d spelled it out in angry detail after it was too late.
“No, thanks.” He figured the less said, the better. That strategy wouldn’t make the time pass any quicker, though.
“What did you think of the ceremony?” she asked, her fingers clutching the silver Celtic knot on a chain around her neck and raking the pendant back and forth across the tiny links.
She looked incredible in her tight jeans and purple satin shoes with high heels that just barely brought her to five foot eight. She wore a lavender cotton tank top with an ivory satin blazer that had big purple rhinestone buttons in the shape of flowers. A skinny silver scarf hung loose around her neck. The scarf didn’t serve a great purpose now, but he’d seen her tie that sort of thing around her head like a hippie-chick bandanna, or a wrap for a ponytail if she wanted her hair out of her face.
She was a first-class Hollywood diva on the outside, but there’d been a time when he felt as if he knew her better than that—the down-to-earth woman she could be with him at home. He hadn’t seen that side of her in a long while, but then again, he’d been on tour a lot. And he’d been in the music business long enough to know the people you cared about could change while you were out on the road. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d left one woman and returned to—seemingly—someone else.
He just couldn’t recall it ever bothering him this much before.
“Don’t you think that us having a conversation is a bad idea?” He wasn’t going to fall onto a land mine without an attempt to test the terrain first.
“While I realize talking to me is low on your list of preferred activities, what do you suggest we do for the next hundred and fifty miles of scrub and cacti until we start picking up cell-phone coverage again? Crank the radio and hear one of the sexy songs you wrote about me while I slowly became your untouchable muse instead of your living, breathing girlfriend?”
Romero blinked, trying hard to focus on the road while processing her words. He did not want to fight. Would not fight with her. She was clearly spoiling for another go-round but he had no desire to pick through this latest accusation he only half understood.
Untouchable?
He’d never been able to keep his hands off this woman when they were together, except for the weeks when he’d had to bury himself in his work. Writing drained him the way nothing else did, but he hadn’t realized she took it so personally until that night she’d let loose after the hiking-boot incident.
But, damn it, aside from those times when he needed to write, their relationship had always been hot. And Shannon had as much enthusiasm for sex as she did for everything else in life, a fact he’d better not dwell on now or he’d never make it back to L.A. without pulling over and reminding her how freaking touchable she was.
“How about a neutral CD with none of my songs?” He flipped open the tray in the dash where he kept his music, needing a diversion fast. “We can compromise with some old Aerosmith or Nirvana…” He dug deeper until he found one of her CDs, and even went so far as to offer, “Or we can play some Gretchen Wilson.”
Spearing one manicured hand into the CD tray, she retrieved the jewel case and shoved it into her pink faux-leather satchel. As a diehard vegan, she didn’t do real leather.
“You took Gretchen with you when you left? Bad enough you had to make sexy eyes all through the reception at the fawning groupie who swore she loved you since your days with Jinxed.” Shannon clutched her heart like a devoted fan and raised her voice an octave. “And I saw you in Dallas and Houston and Austin and Shreveport—Geez. I thought for sure she was going to whip off her double-D bra and fling it your way to make her point.”
Romero eased the accelerator down again, deciding eighty miles an hour would be a better option than more hours of this. Any minutes he could shave off this trip would be a good idea.
Besides, there was a VW van behind them that had been riding his bumper for the past five miles. Which was ironic as hell, since there wasn’t another vehicle in sight.
“Sexy eyes?” Having grown up in a household full of argumentative types, he took pride in the fact that he didn’t rile easily. He was a pro at avoiding conflict. But if she kept this up, he didn’t see how he’d keep a lock on his cool.
“Yes.” She made an expansive gesture with her hands that was automatic when she got excited. Or mad. “Men’s eyes turn all hot and bothered when they’re mentally undressing someone.”
The van behind them was still bearing down on the sports coupe, so Romero didn’t address the fact that there was no such thing as hot and bothered eyes.
“What the hell is this guy doing?” he muttered instead.
Shannon turned in her seat to peer out the back window, her long blond hair brushing his shoulder and pooling on the console where his hand rested on the stick shift.
“Can’t you outrun him?” She straightened to look at him, her body close to his the way it had been during that one electric dance they’d shared at the wedding reception.
If anyone made him have sexy eyes, it was this woman. Mentally undressing her was pretty much second nature whenever he couldn’t indulge in the real thing.
“What are we, sixteen years old?” He didn’t plan to drag race with some crappy vehicle a car owner would be only too glad to total for the sake of an insurance settlement.
The van swerved out into the other lane on the narrow road, and for a moment, Romero thought he would simply pass them.
“He’s going around us anyway.” Shannon’s eyes followed the vehicle as it pulled up beside them.
Romero slowed down to let the guy pass, glad to be getting rid of him. But the jackass in the van veered closer.
“Hey!” Shannon yelled, a moment before the van swerved hard into the driver’s side of the Beemer.
The scrape of metal on metal seared through him. Romero yanked the steering wheel hard to the right. His tires squealed and one popped as the rubber raked through rocks alongside the road. Scraggly Joshua trees appeared in front of the windshield and the car went airborne as they sliced nose-first down a steep embankment.
Shannon screamed. His predominant thought as the rocky desert rose up to meet them was that he’d give anything to make sure nothing happened to her. When the nose collided with the gritty ground at the bottom of the slope, bits of plastic and metal mangled and crunched until the impact reached the main frame. The steel encasing them fought back and the car bounced down onto its roof.
Romero reached blindly for Shannon, his brain scrambled and blood somehow in his eye as he turned to look for her. He saw a curtain of long blond hair brushing the ceiling and his heart lodged a little deeper in his throat.
“Shan?” His hand found her shoulder and came back sticky.
She was bleeding. The thin trail of blood seemed to originate at the back of her head.
“Shannon?”
He blinked to try to clear away the red haze in his vision. The scent of smoke and burned rubber stung his nose.
Smoke?
Like a bat out of hell he grabbed for his seat belt to free Shannon before the car caught on fire. He might not have lived up to her expectations as a boyfriend, but he damn well would never let anything happen to her.
2
SHANNON BECAME AWARE of the burning odor slowly.
Her neighbor’s cooking was iffy, but she could never remember anything this acrid wafting from next door in the year since she’d bought a house with Romero. A house Romero didn’t share anymore. Besides, she couldn’t be at home, because her bed was way more comfortable than this. Hard objects speared into her back. Water dripped down onto her face. Her lips.
She ran her tongue along her mouth to catch the droplet, since her throat was dry. Only it wasn’t water. It was sweat.
“Shannon.”
“Romero.” Her whole mood shifted as she got her bearings.
She felt him stretched out over her, his hot male body drenched and hard. She couldn’t wait to open her eyes and see it for herself. See him. The man was sex personified.
She reached for him as she wrenched her eyelids open. And, oh, man, Romero Jinks rated high on a woman’s list of faces she’d like to see when she woke up.
He leaned over her, his dark eyes narrowed with concern. His angular face was drawn into stark lines, while a cut oozed blood just below his right eyebrow. He was part Irish and part Mexican, a heritage that had blessed him with inky dark lashes and silky black hair. Women around the globe lusted after him, but for this moment at least, Shannon had him all to herself.
Too bad her head was throbbing with pain at the time she’d managed to snag the honor.
“Are you okay?” His hand skimmed up the back of her neck and the grit against his fingertips made her realize she was lying on the dirt.
There’d been an accident.
Her fingers reached for her Celtic necklace, the only item she wore that meant something to her. She could replace the Louboutin shoes—although perhaps not too soon considering her new budget—but the necklace had been her mother’s. One of the few pieces of jewelry that hadn’t been all about the bling, since cinema sex icon Bridget Leigh had received it long before her life goals involved bringing the men of Hollywood to their knees.
Hollywood had turned out to be a bigger, badder enemy than even her mother could have predicted, driving her to her death before she’d had a chance to overcome her addiction to prescription painkillers. After dealing with a death that had turned into a media frenzy, Shannon had tried to step out of her mother’s shadow and be taken seriously as an actress, a dream that never really took off. And a dream that never would if she accepted film roles like the one Ceily had been waving in front of her nose. Another flesh movie about her mother’s life.
Shannon hadn’t even bothered to read the script.
“I’m fine. How about you? You’re bleeding.” She inched upward before realizing she was practically clinging to Romero for support. Shannon released him in a hurry—she wouldn’t let an adrenaline rush send her back to his arms. Not after he’d addressed her relationship frustrations by suggesting a trial separation. She’d been too devastated by the idea to argue. Besides, the man didn’t argue. He expected people to either be happy with him or, she’d discovered, to be out of his life completely.
“It’s nothing. But you’ve been unconscious for a few minutes. Are you sure you’re all right?” He cradled the back of her head and her nerve endings danced at his nearness.
How many times had he stroked those long, guitar player fingers over her body to elicit soft sighs until he hit just the right note? The temptation to arch up and kiss him, to drag him down to the hard ground with her, was strong.
But hadn’t that been the trouble with them all along? They’d always been so willing to lose themselves in sex, ignoring their problems until they were so monumental that the lack of a pair of hiking boots in a woman’s size six could detonate an entire relationship.
“I’m fine.” She struggled to sit up the rest of the way, needing to escape the touch that had the power to render her brainless in zero to sixty. “But what was with that guy in the van?”
Romero frowned at her, as if he didn’t believe for a minute she was fine, but at last his disarming fingers fell away from her scalp, and he dropped back to sit on his butt in the sand.
They were in the middle of nowhere. No houses or buildings, no signs or highways. Far above them Shannon could see the edge of the road they’d been on, but the embankment was so steep it would be hell to try to climb back up there. Besides, now that she thought about it, she hadn’t seen any houses or buildings on the route they’d been driving. Apart from the van that had run them off the bumpy back road they’d traveled in the hope of taking a shortcut, she hadn’t seen signs of civilization for miles.
“I don’t know, but he had a California state license plate, and you’d better believe I’m going to report his ass to the insurance company.” Romero drew in his long legs, dropped his elbows onto his knees and speared a hand through his hair. “But I don’t have a clue how we’re going to get help.”
“You tried the cell phones?”
“Not yours, but mine doesn’t work and the navigational system in the Beemer is out, so I’d say there’s no coverage here.”
Shannon patted her pocket for her phone and couldn’t find it. “Mine must have fallen out of my jacket when we flipped.” She started to stand. “I’ll go check—”
“No.” He gripped her arm tightly, holding her next to him. “The car smelled like something was burning. You’d better give it time until we’re sure nothing could ignite.”
Sinking back to the sand beside him, she tried to ignore the feel of his hand on her, the warmth of his palm penetrating her jacket to the skin beneath. The firm hold did something dizzying to her senses. She wasn’t some hard-core S and M chick, but she loved to be dominated. It was a fantasy she’d felt safe enough with Romero to share. A fantasy he’d been incredibly skilled at indulging to just the right degree.
Apparently, he’d been sharing some of her thoughts, because his gaze heated for one sizzling second before he released her, turning his attention back to the smoking car.
A wise woman would do the same.
She shoved aside images of Romero pressing her up against their bedroom wall and wrenching her clothes off in a fevered frenzy. Instead, she focused on the BMW perched on its roof, the front end smashed beyond recognition while the radiator hissed steam. A bold blackbird landed on one tire, undeterred by the potential for an explosive situation.
“Thank you for getting me out of there.” She couldn’t show her gratitude by covering his gorgeous mug with kisses, so she settled for the old-fashioned method. “I don’t remember us landing or you pulling me out, but you must have.”
Her heart squeezed at the thought of how close they’d come to death. If the car hadn’t been so well engineered they might not be sitting here right now.
“I’m glad you’re okay.” He shot her a sideways look. “Even if I am a self-absorbed bastard with no appreciation for anyone else’s feelings.”
She recalled the accusation, one of many she’d launched at him during their fight. One of many he’d simply accepted and hadn’t argued about. The fact that he didn’t care enough to argue, to fight for their relationship and her, that had hurt her far more than the lack of hiking boots, or his inconsistent schedule that dragged him away for months on end, then planted him back home for weeks straight, only to hide out in his basement recording studio.
“Yeah, well, clearly you’re having a good day.” She rose to her feet, unwilling to face more reminders of their breakup. The loss of him was still an open wound for her even though he’d been able to roll right on with life without missing a beat. “If that car hasn’t exploded by now, I’m not going to worry about it. I’ll see if I have cell coverage so we can get out of here.”
Shannon wobbled on her heels in the sandy terrain, her unsteadiness as much from her head injury as her impractical shoes.
“Are you in that much of a hurry to leave me?” he called after her.
“I’m not the one who likes to run away when the going gets tough.” She shot the accusation over her shoulder. “But I think you’d agree we’ll both be better off when this trip is over and we can go our separate ways.”
SHE HADN’T TOLD HIM anything he didn’t already know.
Romero was well aware that she’d had enough of him. That had been abundantly clear during the daylong rampage when she called his bluff on the trial separation idea and moved straight ahead to removing him from her life completely. She’d still been spoiling for a fight when he’d pulled out of the driveway with a bag in hand. But he couldn’t help a twinge of regret that she still harbored some resentment toward him even now, when they’d nearly died. Would she have shown up in front of St. Peter’s gate with her score sheet in hand of all the times Romero had ticked her off?
“You’re a hard woman to please,” he muttered, and got up, unwilling to let her be blown up in the hunt for a cell phone that wasn’t going to work anyhow.
“I disagree,” she replied as she hunkered down near the open window of the Beemer and peered inside. “I’m an easy woman to please for people who are willing to engage in the occasional disagreement to work through problems in a relationship.”
Romero’s head pounded with frustration about the car, the accident and the long walk he feared was ahead of them, so Shannon’s latest slam seemed poorly timed.
