Kitabı oku: «The Merciless Travis Wilde», sayfa 2

CHAPTER TWO

AN HOUR BEFORE she walked into Travis Wilde’s life, Jennie Cooper had been sitting in her ancient Civic, having a stern talk with herself.

By then, it had been close to nine o’clock, the evening wasn’t getting any younger, and she still hadn’t put her plan into action.

Ridiculous, of course.

She was a woman with a mission.

She was looking for a bar.

Really, how difficult could it be to find a bar in a city like Dallas?

Very.

Well, “very” if you were searching for just the right kind of bar.

Dallas was a big, sprawling town, and she’d driven through so many parts of it that she’d lost count.

She’d started with Richardson and though there were loads of bars in that area, it would have been foolish, better still, foolhardy to choose one of them.

It was too near the university campus.

So she’d headed for the Arts District, mostly because she knew it, if visiting a couple of galleries on a rainy Sunday qualified as “knowing” a place—after eight months, she was still learning about her new city—but as soon as she got there, she’d realized it, too, was a bad choice.

The Arts District was trendy, which meant she’d feel out of place. A laugh, really, considering that she was going to feel out of place no matter where she went tonight, but it was also a neighborhood that surely would be popular with university faculty.

Running into someone who knew her would be disaster.

That was when Jennie had pulled to the curb, put her wheezing Civic in neutral and told herself to think fast, before her plan fell apart.

What other parts of Dallas were there?

Turtle Creek.

She knew it only by reputation, and that it was home to lots of young, successful, rich professionals.

Well, she’d thought with what might have been a choked laugh, she was young, anyway.

Rich? Not on a teaching assistant’s stipend. Successful? Not in Turtle Creek terms, where the word surely referred to attorneys and doctors, financial gurus and industrialists.

What kind of small talk could she make with a man who was all those things, assuming such a man would look twice at her?

Assuming there’d be any small talk because, really, that wasn’t what tonight was all about.

The realization sent a bolt of terror zinging along her nerve endings.

Jennie fought against it.

She wasn’t scared.

Certainly not.

She was—she was anxious, and who wouldn’t be? She’d spent weeks and weeks, planning this—this event.

She wasn’t going to add to that anxiety by going to a bar in a place like Turtle Creek on a Friday night when—when singles mingled.

When singles hook up, Genevieve baby, her always-until-now-oh-so-logical alter ego had suddenly whispered.

“They mingle,” Jennie had muttered. “And my name is not—”

Except, it was. For tonight. She’d decided that the same time she’d hatched this plan.

Good. You remembered. You’re Genevieve. And you’re trying to pretty things up. Tonight is not about mingling, it is about—

Jennie had stopped listening.

Still, there was truth to it.

Nobody could pretty this up.

Her plan was basic.

Find a bar. Go inside. Order a drink. Find a man she liked, flirt with him …

Forget the metaphors.

What she wanted was to find a man she liked enough to take home to bed.

Her teeth chattered.

“Stop it,” she said sharply.

She was a grown woman. Twenty-four years old just last Sunday. That she had never slept with a man was disgraceful. It was worse than that.

It was unbelievable.

And the old Stones song lied.

Time wasn’t on her side, which was why she was going to remedy that failing tonight.

“Happy birthday to me,” she said, under her breath, and her teeth did the castanet thing again, which was ridiculous.

She had thought about this for a long time, examined the concept from every possible angle.

This was right. It was logical. It was appropriate.

It was how things had to be done.

No romance. This wasn’t about romance.

No attachment. That part wasn’t even worth analyzing.

She didn’t have time for attachment, or emotion, or anything but the experience.

That was what this was all about.

It was research. It was learning something you’d only read about.

It was no different from what she’d done in the past, driving from New Hampshire to New York before she wrote her senior paper so that she could experience what had once been the narrow streets where Stanton Coit had established a settlement house for immigrants long before there were such things as social workers, or the trip she’d planned to see the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum in Chicago …

Her throat constricted.

Never mind all that.

Her days of academic research would soon be meaningless.

What she needed now was reality research, and if there wasn’t such a branch of study, there should be.

And she was wasting precious time.

Jennie checked both rearview mirrors, put on her signal light and pulled away from the curb.

She headed south.

After a while, the streets began to change.

They grew narrower. Darker. The houses were smaller, crammed together as if huddled against a starless Texas night.

The one good thing was that there were lots of bars.

Lots and lots of bars.

She drove past them all.

Of course, she did.

None passed muster.

One didn’t have enough vehicles parked outside.

One had too many.

One had the wrong kind.

Jennie’s alter-ego gave an impolite snort. Jennie couldn’t blame her. That made three out of three.

What was she, Goldilocks?

Okay. The very next bar would be The One. In caps. Definitely, The One.

She’d park, check her hair, her makeup—she’d never used this much makeup before and, ten to one, it was smeared …

BAR.

Her heart thumped.

There it was. Straight ahead. A bar called, appropriately enough, BAR. Well, no. That wasn’t its name—she was pretty sure of that—it was simply a description, like a sign saying “liquor” outside a liquor store, or one that said “motel” outside a motel, or …

For God’s sake, Genevieve, it’s a bar!

She slowed the car, turned on her signal light, checked the mirrors, waited patiently for an approaching vehicle a block away to pass before she pulled into the parking lot.

It was crowded.

The last available empty space was between a shiny black behemoth of a truck and a battered red van.

She pulled between them, opened her door, checked the faded white lines, saw that she hadn’t managed to center her car, shut the door, backed up carefully, shifted, pulled forward, checked again, backed up, checked one last time, saw she’d finally parked properly and shut off the engine.

Tick, tick, tick it said, and finally went silent.

Too silent.

She could hear her heart thudding.

Stop it!

Quickly, she opened her consignment-shop Dior purse, rummaged inside it, found her compact and flipped it open.

She’d spent twenty minutes this afternoon at Neiman Marcus, nervously wandering around among the endless cosmetic counters before she’d finally chosen one mostly because the clerk behind it looked a shade less unapproachable than the others.

“How may I help you, miss?” she’d said. “Foundation? Blusher? Eyebrows? Eyes? Lips? Hair? Skin?”

Translation: Sweetie, you need work!

But her smile had been pleasant and Jennie had taken a deep breath and said, “Do you do makeovers?”

Almost an hour later, the clerk—she was, she’d said, a cosmetician—put a big mirror in her hands and said, “Take a look.”

Jennie had looked.

Nobody she knew looked back.

Who was this person with the long, loose blond waves framing her face? When had her pale lashes become curly and dark? And that pouting pink mouth, those cheekbones …

Cheekbones?

“Wow,” she’d said softly.

The cosmetician had grinned.

“Wow, indeed. Your guy is gonna melt when he sees you tonight.”

“No. I mean, that’s just the point. I don’t have—”

“So,” the cosmetician had chirped, “what do we want to purchase?”

“Purchase?” Jennie had said, staring at the lineup of vials, bottles and tubes, the sprays, salves and brushes, even an instruction sheet about how to replicate the magic transformation. Her gaze had flown to the woman. “I can’t possibly …” She’d swallowed hard, pointed to a tube of thirty-dollar mascara and said, “I’ll take that.”

Nobody was happy. Not the cosmetics wizard. Not Jennie, whose last mascara purchase had cost her six bucks at the supermarket.

Had all that time and money been worth it?

It was time to find out.

Even in the badly lit parking lot, her mirror assured her that she looked different.

It also assured her that she was wearing a mask.

Well, a disguise. Which was good.

It made her feel as if she was what she’d been trained to be, a researcher. An observer. An academic who would spend the next hours in a different kind of academia than she was accustomed to.

Jennie snapped the compact shut and put it back in her purse.

Which was why she was parked outside this place with the blinking neon sign.

Upscale? No. The lot was full of pickup trucks. She knew by now that pickup trucks were Texas the same way four-wheel drives were New England, but most of these were old. There were motorcycles, too.

Weren’t motorcycles supposed to be sexy?

And there were lots of lighted beer signs in the window.

Downscale? Well, as compared to what? True, something about the place didn’t seem appealing.

It’s a bar, the dry voice inside her muttered. What are you, a scout for Better Homes and Gardens?

Still, was this a good choice? She’d worked up logical criteria.

A: Choose a place that drew singles. She knew what happened in singles bars. Well, she’d heard what happened, anyway—that they were where people went for uninhibited fun, drinking, dancing … and other things.

B: Do what she was going to do before summer changed to autumn.

C: Actually, it had not occurred to her there might be a part C. But there was.

Do Not Prevaricate.

And she was prevaricating.

She put away her compact. Opened the door. Stepped from the car. Shut the door. Locked it. Opened her purse. Put her keys inside. Closed the purse. Hung the thin strap over the shoulder of her equally thin-strapped emerald-green silk dress, bought from the same consignment shop as the purse, the Neiman Marcus tag still inside.

Assuming you could call something that stopped at midthigh a dress.

She knew it was.

Girls on campus wore dresses this length.

You’re not a girl on campus, Jennie. And even when you were, back in New Hampshire, you never wore anything that looked like this.

And maybe if she had, she wouldn’t be doing this tonight. She wouldn’t have to be looking for answers to questions that needed answers, questions she was running out of time to ask …

“Stop,” she whispered.

It was time to get moving.

She took a breath, then started walking toward the entrance to the bar, stumbling a little in the sky-high heels she’d also bought at the consignment shop.

She was properly turned out, from head to toe, to lure the kind of man she wanted into her bed. Somebody tall. Broad-shouldered. A long, lean, buff body. Dark hair, dark eyes, a gorgeous face because if you were going to lose your virginity to a stranger, if this was going to be your One and Only sexual experience, Jennie thought as she put her hand on the door to the bar and pushed it open, if this was going to be It, you wanted the man to be …

Was that music?

It was loud. Very loud. What was it? She had no idea. Telling Tchaikovsky from Mozart was one thing. Telling rock from rock was another.

She caught her bottom lip between her teeth.

Maybe she was making a mistake.

Yes, the place was far from the university. She wouldn’t see anyone she knew, but what about the rest? Was it a singles

bar? Or was it—what did people call them? A tavern? A neighborhood place where people came to drink?

Such a dark street. Such an unprepossessing building. That neon sign, even the asphalt because now that she’d seen it, close-up, she could see that it was cracked …

That’s enough!

She’d talked herself out of a dozen other possibilities. She was not talking herself out of this one.

Chin up, back straight—okay, one last hand smoothing her hair, one last tug at her dress and she really should have chosen one that covered her thighs …

Jennie reached for the door, yanked it open …

And stepped into a sensory explosion.

The music pulsed off the walls, vibrated through the floor.

The smell was awful. Yeasty, kind of like rising bread dough but not as pleasant, and under it, the smell of things frying in grease.

And the noise! People shouting over the music. What sounded like hundreds of them. Not really; there weren’t hundreds of people at the long bar, at the handful of tables, but there were lots of them … And they were mostly male.

Some were wearing leather.

Maybe she’d made a mistake. Wandered into a gay …

No. These guys weren’t gay. They were—they were unattractive. Lots of facial hair. Lots of tattoos. Lots of big bellies overhanging stained jeans.

There were a few women, but that didn’t help. The women were—big. Big hair. Big boobs. Big everything.

People were looking at her.

Indeed they are, Genevieve. That’s what people do, when a woman all dressed up walks into a place like this.

Oh, God. Even her alter-ego thought she’d made a mistake!

Her heart leaped into her throat. She wanted to turn around and go right out the door.

But it was too late.

A man was walking toward her.

Not walking. Sauntering, was more accurate, his long stride slow and easy, more than a match for his lazy smile.

Her breath caught.

His eyes were dark. His hair was the color of rich, dark coffee. It was thick, and longer than a man’s hair should be, longer, anyway, than the way men in her world wore it, and she had the swift, almost overwhelming desire to bury her hands in it.

Plus, he was tall.

Tall and long and lean and muscled.

You could almost sense the hard delineation of muscle in his wide shoulders and arms and chest, and—and she was almost certain he had a—what did you call it? A six-pack, that was it. A six-pack right there, in his middle.

A middle that led down to—down to his lower middle.

To more muscle, a different kind of muscle, hidden behind faded denim …

Her cheeks burned.

Her gaze flew up again, over, what, all six foot two, six foot three of him. Flew up over worn boots, jeans that fit his long legs and narrow hips like a second skin, a T-shirt that clung to his torso.

Their eyes met.

Tall as she was, especially in the stilettos, she had to look up for that to happen.

He smiled.

Her mouth went dry. He was, in a word, gorgeous.

“Baby,” he said in a husky voice. “What took you so long?”

Huh?

Nobody knew she’d been coming here tonight. She hadn’t even known it herself, until she’d pulled into the parking lot.

“Excuse me?”

His smile became a grin. Could grins be sexy and hot? Oh yes. Yes, they could.

“Only if you ask real nice,” he said, and then, without any warning, she was in his arms and his mouth was on hers.

CHAPTER THREE

TRAVIS LIKED WOMEN.

In bed, of course. Sex was one of life’s great pleasures. But he liked them in other ways, too.

Their scent. Their softness. Those Mona Lisa smiles that could keep a man guessing for hours, even days.

And all the things that were part of sex …

He could never have enough of those.

He knew, from years of locker-room talk, that some men saw kissing as nothing but a distraction from the main event.

Not him.

Kissing was something that deserved plenty of time. He loved exploring a woman’s taste, the silken texture of her lips, the feel of them as they parted to the demand of his.

Women liked it, too.

Enough of them had mingled their sighs with his, melted in his arms, parted their lips to the silken thrust of his tongue to convince him—why not be honest?—that he was a man skilled at the act.

Tonight, none of that mattered.

The blonde was attractive—the ruse wouldn’t work if she weren’t—but there was nothing personal involved.

Kissing her was a means to an end, a way to get him out of a confrontation in a Dallas dive to a boardroom in Frankfurt without looking as if he’d gone ten rounds in a bar exactly like this one.

The key to success? He’d known he’d have to move fast, take her by surprise, kiss her hard enough to silence any protest.

With luck, she’d go along with the game.

Far more exotic things happened in bars everywhere than a man stealing a kiss.

Besides, a woman who looked like this, who walked into a place like this, wasn’t naive.

For all he knew, she was out slumming.

A kiss from a stranger might be just the turn-on she wanted.

And if she protested, he’d play to his audience, pretend it was all about her being ticked off at him for some imagined lover’s slight.

Either way, he wasn’t going to give her, or them, a lot of time to think about it.

He’d kiss her, then hustle her outside where he could explain it had all been a game and either thank her for her cooperation or apologize for what he’d done … or maybe, just maybe, she’d laugh and what the hell, the night was still young.

Bottom line?

Kissing her was all he had to work with, so he flashed his best smile, the one that never failed to thaw a woman’s defenses, reached out, put his arms around her, gathered her in …

Her eyes widened. She slapped both hands against his chest.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

Travis showed her.

He captured her lips with his.

For nothing longer than a second, he thought he was home free. Sure, she stiffened against him, said “Mmmff” or something close to it, but he could work with that.

The problem?

She went crazy in his arms.

It would have done his ego good to think she’d gone crazy with pleasure.

But she hadn’t.

She went crazy the way he’d once seen his sister Em do when she’d bent down to pick up what she’d thought was a compact and found herself, instead, with a handful of tarantula.

The blonde in his arms jerked against him. Pounded his shoulders with her fists. Said that “Mmmff” thing again and again and again …

Somebody laughed.

Somebody said, “What the hell’s he doin’?”

Somebody else said, “Damned if ah know.”

What Travis knew was that this was not good.

“I’m not trying to hurt you,” he snarled, his mouth a breath from Blondie’s.

“Mmmff!”

She struggled harder. Lifted her foot. Put one of those stiletto heels into his instep and it was a damn good thing he was wearing boots.

He put his lips to her ear.

“Lady. Listen to what I’m saying. I’m not—”

Big mistake.

“Help,” she yelled, or would have yelled—he could see her lips forming the sound of that “h”—so, really, what choice did he have?

He kissed her again.

This time, her knee came up.

He felt it coming, twisted to avoid it, then hung on to her for dear life.

The crowd hooted.

Jeez, was he going to be the night’s entertainment?

“Lady sure do seem happy to see you, cowboy,” the Mountain shouted.

Everybody roared with laughter.

Okay.

This called for a different approach.

Travis thrust one hand into Blondie’s hair, clamped the other at the base of her spine, tilted her backward over his arm just enough to keep her off balance and brushed his lips over hers.

Once. Twice. Three times, each time ignoring that angry Mmmff.

“Don’t fight me,” he whispered between kisses. “Just make this look real and I swear, I’ll let you go.”

No mmmff that time. Nothing but a little sighing sound …

And the softest, most delicate whisper of her breath.

“Good girl,” Travis murmured, and he changed the angle of his mouth on hers …

God, she tasted sweet.

Slowly he drew her erect. Put both hands into her hair. Kissed her a little harder.

She tasted like sunshine on a soft June morning, smelled like wildflowers after a summer rain.

His arms went around her; he gathered her against the hardness of his body, felt the softness of her breasts and belly against him.

The crowd cheered.

Travis barely heard them.

He was lost in what was happening, the feel of the woman in his arms, the race of her heart against his.

An urgency he’d never felt before raced through him.

He was on fire.

So was she.

She was trembling. Whimpering. She was—

Sweet Lord.

The truth hit. Hard. She wasn’t on fire for him, she was terrified.

She hadn’t acquiesced to his kisses, she’d stopped fighting them.

What kind of SOB did this to a woman? Scared the life out of her, and all to save his own sorry ass?

All at once, the trip to Frankfurt lost its meaning. He was a financial wizard but what he really was, was a gambler. He’d lost money before; he’d lose it again.

Millions were on the line.

So what?

When had winning become so important he’d use someone—not just “someone” but a woman—to make sure the dice rolled the way he wanted?

He lifted his head. Looked down into the face of the woman in his arms.

His gut twisted.

Her skin was pale, the color all but completely drained away. Her breathing was swift; he could see the rapid pulse fluttering in her throat. Her eyes—her eyes, he knew, would haunt him forever. They were beautiful eyes, but now they had turned dark with fear.

“Oh, honey,” he said softly.

She shook her head. “Don’t,” she said in a tiny whisper. “Please. Don’t—”

He kissed her again, but lightly, tenderly, his lips barely moving against hers.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I never meant to frighten you.”

There was a whisper of sound behind him. He was giving the game away. Screw it. Screw whatever would happen next. All he wanted was to get that look of fear off the blonde’s lovely face.

“Lovely” didn’t come close.

That cloud of silken hair. The dark blue eyes. The soft, rosy mouth.

She was still shaking.

No way was he going to let that continue.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said. “I never intended to hurt you.” Her face registered disbelief, and Travis shook his head. “It’s the truth, honey. This was never about you. Not the way you think.” He framed her face with his hands, raised it just a little so he was looking directly into her eyes. “I ran into a problem. With some people here.”

“Damn right,” the Mountain growled.

Travis heard him hawk up a glob of spit, heard it hit the floor.

The blonde looked past his shoulder, her eyes widening. She looked at Travis again. Two slender parallel lines appeared between her eyebrows.

“See, I told them I was waiting for my date—”

“Thass what he said,” one of the Mountain’s pals said. “But we knew he was lyin’—an’ we know what to do with liars.”

A loud rumble of assent greeted the proclamation.

The blonde’s gaze swept past Travis again. Her eyes filled with comprehension.

“And then,” Travis said, ignoring the interruption, “then, the door opened and you walked in. One look and I knew that you were right for me, that you were perfect, that you were—”

“The woman you’d been waiting for,” the blonde said, very softly.

He smiled, a little sadly because there was no question how this was going down. The only thing he needed to do now was get her safely out of here because however she’d come to be at this bar tonight, she was definitely in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“Exactly right, honey. You were just the woman I’d have waited for, and—”

The blonde put her finger over his lips.

“Of course I was,” she said, her voice louder now, loud enough to carry to the men behind Travis. “How foolish of you to think that I wasn’t going to keep our date, just because I showed up a bit late.”

This time, Travis was the one whose eyes widened.

“What?”

“I was angry, I admit. That quarrel we had last week? About—about me thinking you’d been with another woman?” She smiled. “I know I was wrong. You wouldn’t cheat on me, not ever.”

For mercy’s sake, man, say something!

“Uh—uh, no. I mean, you’re right. I wouldn’t. Cheat on you. Ever.”

She nodded.

“But I couldn’t just admit that.” Another smile, this one half-vixen, half-innocent. “It’s against all the precepts of male-female genetically-transmitted courtship behavior.”

The what?

“So I decided to keep you waiting tonight. Let you cool your heels a little, kind of wonder if I was going to show up.” Another smile, this one so hot and sexy Travis felt his knees go weak. “And you did wonder, didn’t you? About me and how I’d deal with our date this evening.”

Travis tried to answer. Nothing happened. He cleared his throat and tried again.

“Yes. Right. I surely did. Wonder, I mean, about how you’d deal with our—”

“And you reacted to perfection! Every single DNA-coded response was in evidence. Machismo. Dominance. Aggression. Even an attempt at territorial marking.”

Territorial marking. Wasn’t that about male dogs peeing on trees?

“I am so pleased,” she said, “that you’ve proved the tenets of my paper.”

“Your paper.”

“Oh, yes, exactly! The way you reacted on seeing me, the way you dealt with my less-than-warm greeting …”

There was a hum behind him. Whispers. Snorts. Laughter.

It was, without question, time to move on.

Travis nodded. “That’s great. It’s terrific. But I really think we should discuss the rest of it out—”

“Why, sugar,” the blonde all but purred, “don’t tell me you’re upset by learning you’ve helped my research!”

Not just laughter, but a couple of deep guffaws greeted that pronouncement.

Definitely time, Travis thought, holding his smile as he took the blonde by the elbow and marched her to the door.

Halfway there, Jennie’s alter-ego snickered.

Should have quit while you were ahead, Genevieve, it said.

Indeed, Jennie thought. She should have.

The stranger who’d kissed her was hurrying her toward the door.

Maybe she’d taken this a bit too far.

She had, if the look on the man’s face was any indication.

His eyes were cool. Slate-cool, and a little scary. His mouth—she knew all about his mouth, the warmth of it, the possessive feel of it, the taste—his mouth was curved in what was surely a phony smile, and he was hustling her along at breakneck speed.

Still, he’d deserved that last little jibe.

Saving him from being torn apart by that bunch of—of stone-age savages was one thing, but she couldn’t just let him get away with what he’d done.

He’d scared the life half out of her, grabbing her, kissing her, dragging her up against his body.

And, yes, she’d come out tonight for—for that knowledge of men, of kisses, of hard bodies but she’d wanted it done on her own terms, at her own pace, with her doing the choosing of the man who’d—who’d complete her research.

A man in a suit. A successful executive, someone who could be trusted to be gentle with a woman. Not a—a rough-and-ready cowboy in boots and a T-shirt and faded jeans.

Stop complaining. You wanted gorgeous, and gorgeous is what he is.

Yes. But still—

“Y’all come back soon,” a voice called.

A roar of laughter followed the words.

She felt the cowboy stiffen beside her. His fingers dug into her elbow hard enough to make her gasp.

“Hey,” she said indignantly, “hey—”

He flung the door open, stepped outside, but he didn’t let go of her. Instead he frog-marched her through the parking lot to the enormous black pickup parked next to her Civic.

“Mister. I am not—”

“Are you okay?”

Jennie blinked. There was concern in his voice, and it wasn’t what she’d expected.

“No. Yes. I guess …”

“That was a close call. You were doin’ fine, until the end.” He grinned. “Had to zing me a little, right? Not that I blame you.”

“You? Blame me?” Indignation colored her voice. “Listen, mister—”

“Truth is, we probably got out just in time.”

So much for indignation, which didn’t stand a chance against confusion.

“In time for what?” Jennie said. “What was going on back there?”

“It’s kind of complicated.” The cowboy smiled. This time, that smile was real. “Thanks for digging me out of a deep, dark hole.”

“Well, well, you’re welcome. I guess. I just don’t understand what—”

“It’s not worth going into. It was a mix-up, was all.”

He smiled again. Jennie’s heart leaped. Did he have any idea how devastatingly sexy that smile was?

She told herself to say something. Anything. Gawking at him wasn’t terribly sophisticated. But then, what would he know about sophistication? The boots, the jeans, the hard muscles …

Everything about him was hard.

The muscled chest. The taut abdominals. The—the male part of him that she’d felt press against her belly just before he’d stopped kissing her …

That’s the girl, her alter ego said.

Jennie swallowed dryly.

Her brain was going in half a dozen directions at once.

“You—you really had no right to—to just walk up to me and … and—”

“—and kiss you?”

She felt herself blush.

“Yes. Exactly. Even in the most highly sexualized primitive cultures, there’s a certain decorum involved in expressing desire …”

His smile tilted.

“Is there,” he said.

It wasn’t a question—it was a statement. And the way he was looking at her …

She took a quick step back.

Or she would have taken a quick step back, but the shiny black truck was right behind her.