Crazy Kisses (21 page)

But he’d fallen for her, the girlie-girl time bomb with diamond studs and silver hoops in her ears, with eyeliner, and shadow, and sooty mascara, with artfully blushed cheekbones, and glossy lipstick on her mouth.

Eight feet, and he knew he was doomed.

Five feet, and she didn’t stop.

Two feet, and he was pressed so solidly back against the door, he felt like the world’s biggest fool.

Then she was standing next to him, so close he couldn’t tell if she was actually touching him or not, until someone jostled her from behind. Suddenly, she was smack up against him, all over, all at once, landing softly on his chest and grabbing on to him for balance.

He caught her with both arms.

Absofuckinglutely zero feet. Less than zero.

Dammit.

“I—are you okay?” He couldn’t believe this.

“No,” she said, her hands pressed against the front of his shirt. Then she laughed, but it sounded nervous, and she shook her head. “No, I’m not okay.”

He tightened his hold on her, something in her voice setting off his warning signals. “What happened?”

A hundred things flashed through his mind, too many of them with Conseco’s face attached, which startled the hell out of him. Is that why he’d come back, instead of leaving from the alley? Deep down inside, did he really think Conseco could have seen a matched set of hot pink, mock-croc luggage in Panama City and figured out that out of all the millions and millions of people in the world, Nikki McKinney from Boulder, Colorado, was having an art show on Saturday night in Denver?

It didn’t make sense.

But the nagging sense of unease was still there. It hadn’t left him all day. He’d missed something. Something subtle. He knew it, but he couldn’t figure out what it was.

That’s why he’d stayed.

“Just that you . . .
oh
.” The sound came out of her suddenly, on a little breath of surprise when her hand accidentally brushed against his shoulder holster. “You’re armed.”

She looked up, and his heart flipped over in his chest. She was so damn beautiful. He’d never seen a face like hers, so perfectly shaped, every feature delicate, balanced, divine. She’d explained it to him once, very matter-of-factly. It was the angles, she’d said, the golden triangles, pleasing proportions to the human eye. Her face was made up of them. She’d measured them out on a photograph once. Travis had a lot of these golden triangles, too.

But not him. Oh, no, she’d assured him. His face was far more interesting, far more beautiful. The exception that broke the rule.

Well, it probably broke something. He’d give her that much.

“Doubly armed,” she continued, peeking under his jacket. “At an art show.”

He let out a short breath.

Yes, he had two guns in a double shoulder holster. His .45 on the right, and his 9mm on the left. No special reason. He’d just felt like he needed plenty of firepower to face the night, whatever the hell that meant. Even he didn’t know. Like she said, he was at an art show, not in a combat zone.

And the thirty-round magazine for the Glock 9mm he’d put in the trunk of his car? Hell, a banana clip on a semiautomatic pistol was so crazy, so much overkill, he thought he better keep that little fact to himself.

Obviously, whatever edge he’d fallen off of in Colombia, he still hadn’t quite crawled back on top of it.

“It’s okay,” he said. Okay for him. Some of the people in Toussi’s might have a problem with it, if they found out.

Tough. He was licensed.

“It’s always like this for you, isn’t it? The guns, I mean, your whole life.”

“Yes.” What could he say? He was never unarmed, and he didn’t see that changing any time soon.

A sigh escaped her. “Kid, those men, the ones last night, they were there because of you, weren’t they, not to rob the house, or, well, anything like that.” It wasn’t a question, and he wasn’t going to lie to her, not now that they were safely out of Panama.

“Yes.”

She withdrew her hands from the front of his shirt, her gaze falling to the floor. “Were they there to kill you? Like they did Martin?”

Now here was where a lie would come in handy, he thought, but he couldn’t bring himself to use one.

“You know the job, Nikki.”

“No.” She shook her head. “No, I don’t. You told me you were a bodyguard, but that doesn’t quite cover it, does it? And as far as the rest of what you all do, nobody tells me anything, not even Regan, not even since Quinn started flying for SDF again.”

Nikki’s sister, Regan, had married one of the original chop-shop boys, Quinn Younger. Quinn had taken some time off after the wedding, laid low, stayed out of the line of fire, but when Dylan needed him in Indonesia, Quinn came back on board. Kid hadn’t been surprised. Quinn had been living on the edge and running the streets since he’d been thirteen. A guy just didn’t up and walk away from that kind of adrenaline.

“Everything SDF does is either classified or doesn’t officially exist,” he told her truthfully, knowing it wasn’t much, but not having anything else to give her. Those were just the facts. “There isn’t much I do that I can talk about.”

“You killed those men last night. We could talk about that.”

She hadn’t lifted her head, which worked for him. He didn’t want her to see the look she’d put on his face, but
fuck,
he wasn’t going there, not even for her.

Angry, he turned to leave, but she held him with just the touch of her hand.

“I’d never imagined anything like what you did.”

No, he didn’t suppose she had, but he really didn’t want to hear it. He’d seen it on his coffee table, thank you very much.

“Creed talked about how good you are, and then last night, when I saw for myself . . . well, I never saw anyone move so fast, think so fast. You were faster than them, Kid, stronger than the first guy.”

“More savage.” It was a cheap shot, but he took it anyway.

“Yes,” she said unequivocally, lifting her gaze and meeting his square on.

Great. This was just what he wanted to hear.

“Creed wouldn’t have talked about the mission.” No way in hell.

“He didn’t,” she admitted. “But he did tell me how glad he was to have J.T.’s brother at his back when he returned to South America, and that you’d found the men you’d been looking for. I figured out on my own what you probably did to them.”

He narrowed his gaze at her. No, he decided. Impossible. There was no way for her to have figured out what he and Creed had done to the NRF rebels they’d tracked down in Peru.

“No, you didn’t.” He shook his head. No matter what she’d dreamed up, it wouldn’t have been the truth.

“Look at the painting, Kid. The only thing I imagined was what the demon looked like. The rest of it is all Creed. It was in his eyes. I saw it in his body. Everything in him changed when I asked him to tell me about Colombia.”

He hated to think it, that she’d
known
anything, but when he shifted his attention back to the demon-eating angel, he was forced to admit that she might have seen the truth. Nikki McKinney didn’t miss much when she had a guy under her lights, and the jungle boy did not have much subterfuge in him. For anyone who knew him, it was written all over his face, what a freaking savage he could be.

“Kid,” she said softly, her hand coming back to rest on his chest. “You told me what the Colombians did to J.T. You told me Creed was there with him, and I
cannot
imagine that the man in my painting did not repay them in kind, the way you did last night. You need to talk to me, Kid.”

No. Not about this, he didn’t. Not ever.

“I want to understand.”

“I get paid to do a job, Nikki, a job I’m trained to do, a job that I don’t think plays very well in this crowd.” He didn’t have to look around to know he didn’t fit in here tonight, not with her friends or her life. “I’m sorry about what happened in Panama, really sorry, and I should have told you that before I—” he stopped short, suddenly unsure of what he’d meant to say next.

But she wasn’t unsure.

Her hand went back to her side. “Before you dumped me on Skeeter and ran out on me again.”

No. That wasn’t what he’d been about to say. Something along those lines, maybe. Or maybe he’d meant to say something more along the lines of—

“You’re the one who got up in the middle of the night and packed your bags.”

The minute the words were out, he knew he’d nailed them. Yes, sir, that’s
exactly
what he’d been meaning to say to her all day long. He just hadn’t meant to ever actually say it.

Her gaze locked onto his. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

“No, we’re not.” Not anywhere he was willing to go.

Three women negotiated their way past them, chatting excitedly, holding their wineglasses high, and Nikki pressed herself closer to him.

Perfect.

“Damn,” she said under her breath. “Come on.”

He felt her reach around him for the doorknob to the closet, and a little trickle of fear coursed down his spine. She couldn’t be serious. She couldn’t possibly be planning on dragging him into the closet. He didn’t want to be within a thousand feet of the damn closet, which was why, he was sure, it took her all of ten seconds to get him in there, instead of the reluctant, against-his-will thirty it should have.

She closed the door behind them and threw the lock, which only upped his alarm.

“I need to tell you about Rocky and me.”

Then he really was changing his mind about being in the closet. He didn’t want to hear another damn thing about her freaking fiancé, and by God, he was going to tell her. All he needed to do was get the words out of his suddenly very dry throat.

C
HAPTER

19

Y
OU’VE GOT RATS
all over your buffet,” Travis said, coming up behind Jane and whispering in her ear. It wasn’t the sort of thing anybody would want advertised, even these kinds of Rats. There had been three ravenous teenagers piling their plates high when he’d walked by, and he’d recognized two of them from last night. Plus, he’d just wanted to whisper in her ear.

Jane started, whirling around and practically ending up in his arms. He was that close, but not close enough to suit him, not after having held her, even if it had been in a ventilation shaft.

God, the kiss they’d shared had been so hot. It was all he’d been able to think about all day.

“So how did everything turn out last night?” he asked. “You got home okay, right? I came by about eight this morning, but you didn’t answer.”

“I was still asleep at eight. It was . . . a long night.” Her gaze slid away, which he tried not to let bother him, but it did, just a little. The last thing he wanted, please, was to end up back at square one with her.

Last night had been a turning point in their relationship, from not being anywhere near one, to a kiss. That wasn’t the sort of ground he was willing to give up.

“Thanks for calling Skeeter. She’s the one who finally sprung me.”

“I know. I called her today to make sure you were okay. I’m so sorry about what happened.”

“Don’t be. It wasn’t your fault I followed you.”

She shrugged, as if she wasn’t quite as sure as he was about what was whose fault. Then she went and proved it.

“Trouble seems to be following me around a lot lately. If you want to stay out of it, you might want to stay away from me.”

She was dead serious. He could tell by the tone of her voice and the nonchalant way she tried to downplay the warning. No unnecessary drama for the urban jungle queen. Just the facts. Ignore them at your peril.

He did.

“Actually, I was hoping we
could
spend some time together. Do stuff. Talk.” He ducked his head to get a better look at her. “Kiss.”

To his relief, she blushed. She wasn’t completely immune to him, and she hadn’t forgotten their kiss.

“Suzi was asking for you,” she said, changing the subject. “And Nikki is here, but I haven’t seen her since, well . . .” She looked around the gallery, her voice trailing off.

“Since?” he prompted, curious now. The last time he’d seen Nikki, she’d been in Rocky’s lap.

“Well, since she and this guy disappeared into the storage closet. People are asking for her. A lot of them came just to meet her, and Rocky, of course.”

Travis straightened up, curious. Nikki didn’t disappear with just anybody.

“What did this guy look like?”

“Tall, short dark hair, serious.” She slanted him a small grin, which he was glad to see. “Seriously cute. Not like anyone else here. Watchful. Extremely aware. Maybe some kind of bodyguard. Does Nikki have a bodyguard?”

“If she did, that would be the guy. Kid Chaos Chronopolous,” Travis said, not knowing for sure what to think. He knew the more time those two spent together, the better off they were going to be, but not if Kid was a marked man. Skeeter was afraid he was, complete with a bounty on his head, which didn’t freak her out nearly as much as it did him. SDF wasn’t a social club, she’d told him, then offered to take him up on the firing range again tomorrow.

For a dyed-in-the-wool pacifist, he was amazed how much he liked shooting, amazed at how much he liked all the stuff Skeeter showed him when she wasn’t busy drawing him, all the hand-to-hand combat and tactical pistol techniques, how to call the wind for a rifle shot at a thousand meters. Cool stuff, deadly stuff, the kind of stuff that Nikki had witnessed firsthand last night.

Man, he’d lived his life on the soft side. That was for damn sure. He doubted if a bunch of twelve-year-olds could have tied up Kid Chaos, which was something he’d been thinking about all day, ever since he’d seen those sketches and asked the age-old guy question: Could he have done what Kid had done?

Could he have saved Nikki from those men?

Could he have saved himself?

The verdict was still out, but he was hoping the answer was going to be “not yet,” rather than “no.”

Skeeter could have done it. He knew that much. The girl had mad, mad skills.

“Does Nikki need a bodyguard?” Jane asked. The question had a real curiosity behind it, almost like a professional curiosity—this from a girl who ran wild on the streets of Denver alone in the middle of the night with a silver switchblade in her pocket.

“Maybe.” And he hated even thinking it.

Someone jostled him from behind, and at the same time, a man walked between them and stopped, completely unaware that he was literally in the middle of their conversation.

Travis grinned at her over the guy’s shoulder, and for a second, she grinned back. Then the man moved on, and her smile faded.

She was definitely nervous around him, and not in a good way, he didn’t think.

“There are way too many people in the gallery tonight,” she said, looking around, scanning the crowd.

Travis followed her gaze. She had a point.

There were a lot of people in Toussi’s, some of them on the strange side, but in truth, nothing wilder or more outlandish than at a few of the parties he and Nikki had gone to in New York and L.A.

“Yeah, there’s a lot,” he agreed.

“Raymond is here. Outside,” she said, then gave a small shrug, as if the news wasn’t as awful as it sounded. “That’s why the Rats are inside. They’re scared.”

“Are you?” He remembered Fast Jack talking about Raymond, the gang leader he wanted Jane to meet with tomorrow at Connie’s Bagels.

“No. Concerned,” she said. “But I wouldn’t mind if there was some professional muscle around.”

Travis brought his gaze back to her. Something told him she was more than “concerned.” He remembered one night on the street when he’d wished he’d had some professional muscle around.

“If it’s Kid with Nikki, he’s about as professional as it gets, and he’ll be armed.”

“Skeeter Bang carries a pistol, too,” she said. “I noticed the other night, and she’s here.” She was still scanning the crowd, checking things out—avoiding his gaze.

Yeah, and Skeeter could kick butt, but if the night had reached a point where Jane thought she needed Kid and Skeeter to kick butt, it was time for a reality check.

“Katya and Suzi usually have a rent-a-cop at these things. Do you want me to go find him?”

“And what? Tell him there are Parkside Bloods cruising LoDo in black Escalades?” She let out a little snort. “There are always Parkside Bloods in black Escalades on the streets. The cops probably know where they are better than I do.”

She had the most amazing way of making him feel like an idiot and incredibly naïve about how her life worked, with Rats and Raymond and street gangs.

“I have a friend, a cop in Boulder. I could call him if you like, tell him what’s going on. He won’t ask for incriminating details, but he can tell us what he thinks.”

She didn’t say anything, just shrugged again, which left the field wide open for him to compound his idiocy.

“Or would you rather I minded my own business and left you alone?” He truly didn’t know. She’d kissed him, yeah, but that was just one kiss, one moment of acknowledging his existence out of weeks of completely ignoring him. Maybe, for that one moment, she’d thought he was somebody else, somebody who ran from the cops and hid in old buildings, somebody living on the edge of danger, though he hadn’t found Weisman to be all that dangerous.

“No, I don’t think we should call your friend,” she finally said. “The cops and I—well . . .” She let her sentence die unfinished, but he got the gist of it. What he had to offer didn’t have any worth in her world, and if he’d just get a clue, he could figure that out.

It frustrated him, this culture gap that seemed to open up and swallow him with damning regularity every time he tried to get close to her.

“Jane, I don’t go around bullying children, or trying to shake down old people on the street, and I have never once in my life hit someone with violent intent, but that doesn’t mean I can’t understand the problem you have here or that I can’t help you with it. I may be a regular, boring, nice guy, but guys like me make good friends.”

Her gaze finally shifted to meet his. “You’ve never hit anybody? Ever?” She sounded dumbstruck by the concept.

Well, now he’d gone and done it, he thought, confessed all his sins and shocked her with his lack of depravity.
Christ
. Didn’t she know any regular, nice guys? Or were all the guys in her life Fast Jack hustlers and capped homies? He hoped not. She deserved better. He knew she wanted better for herself, or she wouldn’t be here tonight, trying to do her job, trying to fit in. She’d be out on the street, running with the Rats and trying to stay out of Raymond’s clutches.

God, he hated the image that conjured up.

“Never,” he admitted, then added fuel to the flames. “The Violins for Nonviolence in the Home concert Jack found the ticket stubs to in my wallet? I was one of the sponsors of the event. No kidding. I give money to people to promote not hitting each other. Crazy, huh? I mean, you’ve seen my car. I’m not exactly rolling in cash like this guy Raymond who you’re telling me has a whole bunch of Cadillac Escalades so he can drive around in luxury while he terrorizes little kids.”

“Raymond isn’t my friend. He’s more like an enemy.”

“And I’m so boring, I don’t even have an enemy.”

“You’re lucky.”

“I’m lonely.” It was the truth, and he couldn’t stand there looking at her, wanting her, and losing something he’d never even had without telling her. She’d kissed him, and all those fantasies that haunted his nights had paled in comparison to the reality of holding her in his arms. “I’ve been lonely since the first time I saw you, Jane. It’s crazy, I know, but it’s the truth.”

And how was that for laying his guts out on the line? He’d never done that before. He was usually a little smoother, not much, but a little.

“Last night,” she started, then paused, trying to continue holding his gaze and failing. “The kiss, it was nice.”

Nice?

He was doomed. He’d just confessed his undying fascination with her, and she’d dismissed his kiss as nice.

“But if you knew me better,” she continued, “you wouldn’t have done it.” She paused again, her color deepening with embarrassment. “If you knew me at all, you’d wish you hadn’t.”

Talk about laying your guts out on the line. Every instinct he had told him she’d just made a confession far worse than his. She’d just left out the facts.

“Skeeter told me all about the drug dealing,” he said. “The whole Castle Rat thing when you were a kid.”

“But I bet she didn’t tell you about the man I killed.”

Uh, no.

For a moment, all he could do was stare at her.

“It’s why I got sent up,” she said. “Hawkins knows. He’s the one who got my conviction reduced for self-defense. He’s the one who arranged for me to do my time at the Immaculate Heart School for Young Women in Phoenix.”

“You killed a man.” He was dumbstruck.

“Me and Sandman, yeah.” Her gaze never left the floor.

He remembered Fast Jack talking about Sandman.

“It
was
self-defense, a situation kind of like tonight, with too many Rats on the street and the gangbangers looking for trouble. They grabbed one of my kids, and by the time Sandman and I got him back, the gang guy was dead.”

She came to a halt and glanced up, and he knew it was his turn to say something—preferably something full of understanding and compassion.

But he was blown away for a second, and in the next second, she’d taken a step back.

“Jane.” He reached for her, feeling guilty as hell, but she stepped backward again, eluding him.

“You’re not a regular guy, Travis, not even close.” Something behind him caught her eye, her gaze flickering in that direction. When her attention returned to him, her expression was even more distressed than before. “You’re so much of everything beyond regular, it scares me,” she said, then turned and fled.

He watched her leave, completely nonplussed. Raymond was outside, dogging the streets for Rats, and she was afraid of him, a part-time emergency medical technician and sometimes nude male model? Well, that put him in his place. He was about to go after her, but someone caught his sleeve.

He turned around.
Dammit.
She could have warned him. But it was too late now. He was trapped.

“You’re Travis James, aren’t you?” the woman who had hold of his arm said. “I told my friends it was you.”

Her friends comprised a group of seven other women, a daunting group of well-dressed thirty-something professional women with a certain look in their eyes that told him they’d spent a little too much time looking at him naked.

He smiled on the outside, and swore on the inside, and wished like hell that he’d run off with Jane.

NIKKI
had turned him to butter.

Kid had made a half-assed attempt to talk her into going back into the gallery and getting out of the closet, but instead, she’d sat him down in the chair and started rattling on about the massage techniques Travis used in his sexual imprinting business, and about how he looked a little pale and could probably use a little massage—whatever the hell that meant. He really didn’t have a clue. All he knew for sure was that she’d put her hands on the back of his neck and shoulders and turned him to butter.