Rush (3 page)

The air hung heavy with the heat of the dying day. The last rays of the sun slashed the sky orange and red, foretelling another day of oppressive summer tomorrow. They could hear the crowd on the other side of the building, sending up cheers after everything Cookie Dixon said through her megaphone. Mi tried not to let the negativity and hatred get to her, but it was hard when so much of it was often directed at her as one of the faces of
Pleasure at Home
.

Lucas held out his hand. “Give me your keys.”

“Why?”

They’d reached Mi’s car, a compact sedan that looked like every other vehicle in the parking lot, and faced off on the driver’s side of the car.

“I drive,” Lucas insisted.

“This is my car.”

“For me to do my job I’m going to need you to do what I say. Sometimes I’ll be able to give you a reason, sometimes not.”

“So what’s your reason?”

He looked at her for a moment like he wouldn’t answer, challenging her to go along without having to give her a reason. Then he seemed to come to some kind of decision. “I’d feel weird having you drive me around.”

She dropped the keys into his palm. “That’s as good a reason as any, I suppose.”

He walked her around to her side of the car and opened the door for her. She saw him flick a look at the car seat in the back and cringed inside, anticipating his questions. Instead he closed the door without comment, which felt almost like he’d closed off a part of himself.

He climbed into the driver’s seat with difficulty, his knees up near his chin. Mi smothered a laugh. He finally got the seat adjusted as far back as it would go, but his legs were still too long.

“Damn compacts,” he muttered.

This time Mi didn’t bother hiding her chuckle. “I can drive.”

“We’ll be taking my truck going forward.”

He pulled out of the parking space. They drove around the building and got their first look at the mass of people gathered outside the gates of the parking lot. Cookie stood on something to make her taller than the crowd that jabbed picket signs in the air, shouting in response to the things she said. There were more than ever before and their signs were more sophisticated. This was a new kind of crowd—organized and more dangerous than the Sunday school teachers and PTA parents who usually protested.

Suddenly a loud crack rent the air. The back window exploded behind them, pelting them with glass.

“Get down,” Lucas ordered, shoving Mi’s head between her knees. He hit the gas pedal, sending them straight at the crowd blocking their exit.

CHAPTER TWO

Mi braced for an impact that never came. Lucas finally took his hand off the back of her neck, allowing her to sit upright. She blinked, taking in the street they were driving on. One she didn’t recognize. She looked back at the smashed window. Glass bits dotted the backseat and a large rock sat in the infant car seat. Her heart fluttered like a caged bird in her chest.

Lucas stared straight ahead, his mouth pressed into a hard line. “You all right?”

Mi looked down at herself, then again at the back of the car. “Yes.” The breeze from the rear window sent pieces of her hair dancing around her face. A tidal wave of emotions she couldn’t delineate rose within her, threatening to consume her whole. She closed her eyes on stinging tears, willing them to go away. She hadn’t cried thirteen years ago and she wouldn’t cry now. Tears were a luxury for other people.

“I’m fine,” she said, then again more forcibly. “I’m fine.” She repeated it like a mantra inside her head, hoping if she said it enough times it might actually become true.

Lucas risked a sideways glance at Mi to be sure. She hadn’t resisted when he forced her head down and had stayed down until he let her up. She looked a little shaken, but otherwise okay. At least she wasn’t crying.

“Where are we going?” she asked, her voice calmer than he expected.

“Your place.”

“But this isn’t the way.”

“It’s not the most direct way.”

Mi gave him a curious glance, but didn’t question him. He was really starting to like that about her.

He’d narrowly missed hitting a couple of protesters back there. The looks on their faces as they’d leapt out of the way at last minute would stay with him. He was sure of it. Thinking about what to do next, he rubbed the heel of his palm over the ache in his right thigh. It was a reminder of an injury bad enough to earn him an honorable discharge from the Navy. He wasn’t sure anymore if he rubbed it to relieve the pain or out of habit.

At first Lucas had thought their car had been shot at, but the rock sitting in the baby seat told him otherwise. His only thought had been to get Mi out of there in one piece as quickly as possible. He stole another glance at her. She leaned back in her seat, the slanting sun casting a golden light on her face, illuminating the freckles sprinkled across her cheeks and nose. Her eyes glowed gold, fixed on a point in the distance. The only emotion she showed was the worrying of her bottom lip between her teeth.

He thought about the protestors. What people did in the privacy of their home was nobody’s business. He didn’t watch porn or have pictures of half naked woman pinned up like the other guys in his unit. He believed in marriage, fidelity and straight up sex between two people, no gadgets or gizmos and certainly no—fuck, what did they call them—dildos. One prick in the bed was all he could handle.

He darted his gaze back to her. He couldn’t help it. He’d been surprised by how different she looked without all that makeup. Fresh. Nothing like the TV screen siren she portrayed. It pissed him off that he was interested in her with or without the costume she wore for the show. Even now, looking about eighteen, she stirred something in him. More than just his dick, which seemed attuned to her every movement. He wanted to touch her. Trace the line of her jaw, gather her hair in his fist, hold her hand.

She turned, catching him peeking at her. She jabbed a thumb at the back seat. “Shouldn’t we report this to the police?”

“We will when I get you safely back to your place.”

Her brow buckled. “How do you know where I live?”

There was no reason not to tell her he supposed. “It was in the file Cal gave me.”

“He gave you a file on me?” Her voice took on a cautious tone. “What’s in it?”

“Just the basics.”

“
What
basics?”

Something about the way she asked that last question sent up a flare for him. She was hiding something. And he was definitely going to find out what that something was. He told himself it was for her own good. The more he knew about her the more he could help her. Whatever she was hiding could be behind the threats she’d been getting or why she was being followed.

“Your name, address, associates, and a brief history of what’s been happening,” he answered, sneaking another glance at her profile.

“That’s all?”

“Pretty much. Is there something I should know that wouldn’t be in the file?”

She shook her head. He caught the movement out of the corner of his eye and realized he’d been holding his breath. He stole another glance at her. She was working that lip again, her head turned partially away. They were almost to her house. As soon as he got a moment, he was going to look into whatever it was she was keeping from him.

“Do we need to stop anywhere on the way to your place?” he asked.

“No. I don’t need anything.”

“You have a sitter at home?”

She whipped her head toward him so fast it made her seat move. “What?”

“Look, I don’t mean to pry.” He did actually. He meant to pry into just about every part of her life. “But I noticed the baby stroller in the picture earlier, and I can’t miss the baby seat with the rock in it back there.”

“There’s no sitter at home.” She reached over and turned up the volume of the radio. Some kind of my-wife-left-me-and-that’s-why-I-drink song came on, cutting off any further conversation.

Lucas drummed his fingers in time with the tune, but his mind was breaking down everything she’d said. And hadn’t said. They turned the corner onto her street, but he drove past her house.

Mi reached over and turned down the radio. “You missed my house.”

“I wanted a look at it first before we pulled in.”

“Why?”

He hitched a shoulder, feeling surly about her not answering his questions. “Just being cautious.”

He drove around the block, scanning the streets and sidewalks for anything unusual. They pulled into the driveway of a small house with no garage and faded trim. The lawn needed to be cut, but other than that it looked like every other house on the block. For a woman with such a high profile job, Mi seemed to choose surroundings that ensured she blended in—her car, her house, even her clothes. All were about as vanilla as they could be. To Lucas’s mind her efforts were wasted. She’d stand out in a crowd of look a-likes.

As soon as Lucas stopped the car, Mi had her door open. She needed the privacy of her home, the comfort of her things. Being cooped up in such a small space with such a large, overwhelming man had her nerves on edge. Not to mention the rock through her window. She bit her lip, worrying about how she was going to come up with the money to cover the insurance deductible.

“You’re going to chew a hole through it,” Lucas said as they reached the front door.

“What?” Mi blinked up at him.

His dark gaze dropped to her mouth, and the heat in his eyes struck an answering chord that radiated low in her belly. “Your lip.” He reached out, almost touching a fingertip to it. “You should give it a rest. You bit it all the way here.”

“Oh.” She looked up, getting a good look at his face in the dying sunlight.

No, he wasn’t handsome, but there was something there. Something dark and hot in his eyes that gave away the things he’d seen, not nice things. This was a man who’d lived at the edge of life, skirting around the outside. She knew about that. About secrets and always being on the outside looking in.

He cleared his throat and broke eye contact. “Which key is it?”

She looked down at her key ring, sitting in the palm of his hand. She reached for them, sliding her fingers across his palm, taking the keys from him. The contact made them both shift away.

She selected a key and held it out, the others dangling. “This one.”

He took it from her as she expected he would. This was a man who took charge, who’d taken charge of her from the moment they’d met. Mi wasn’t sure if she was just too tired to stop him or if she needed someone else to be in control for a while. Either way she had no fight for him. When she’d handed over her keys to him in the parking lot at the station, she’d—in a sense—handed over the keys to her life. Or at least a part of it.

As he bent to unlock the door, she looked around her neighborhood and wondered what he thought of it. She’d guessed by his clothes that he was used to something finer. This little suburban neighborhood on the backside of middle class prosperity would probably be a step down for him. It wasn’t any one thing he said or did, just a lot of little things. He had money or came from money. She was sure of it.

He drew her across the threshold into the entryway, then tucked her behind the door, leaving it slightly ajar for the light. He held up a hand for her to stay and disappeared, instantly blending into the dimness.

As suddenly as he’d disappeared, he reappeared. “All clear.” He slipped something into his coat.

She gestured toward his jacket. “Are you carrying a gun?”

He closed the door, plunging them into near darkness. “Yeah.”

The dimness settled around them, but neither of them made an effort to find light. She should have been afraid or at the very least nervous. Instead she was intrigued, almost titillated. They were close enough to touch. Close enough that she could smell him, hear his breath, and feel the heat that always seemed to be radiating off him. The buzz she’d gotten when she’d first seen him settled into a quiet purr.

“Do you always carry a gun?” Her voice sounded throaty almost sensual.

He drifted closer without moving. “Yes.”

“Can I see it?”

The air seemed to snap between them, little sparks set off by whatever attraction they shared. She hadn’t had a lot of experience, but she knew chemistry when she felt it. And they definitely had it. She wished she could indulge, have something just for her. But she knew she shouldn’t. Before too long he’d do more than hint at wanting to know her secrets. He’d demand. She didn’t think he was the type of man who would allow the gray in which she lived her life. He was a strictly black or white kind of guy. But oh, how she wished she could reach out, bridging the space between them and bring him up hard against her.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he whispered.

She wasn’t entirely sure he was talking only about his gun. That maybe he’d been thinking the same things she had and had come to the same conclusion.

“No, probably not.” She reached back and flipped on the light, illuminating the small entryway and living room.

It was nothing to look at, she knew. Most of the furnishings had been cobbled together from cast-offs and rummage sale finds. But it was hers. As was the house. She shifted her feet, seeing it through his eyes. No longer charming and homey, it now seemed shabby and worn down. Much like her.

“I’m going to grab my stuff from my truck and call the police,” Lucas said.

“Your truck?”

“The black one parked out front.”

She’d noticed it only to note how out of place a black Cadillac truck was in this neighborhood.

He opened the door and started to walk out.

“Hey, are you hungry? I could make something.”

He turned back to look at her over his shoulder. “That would be great. Thanks. I’ll just be a minute.”

She let out a long breath when the door closed. Wondering what she was going to make for dinner, Mi went to the kitchen and scanned the contents of the fridge. She hadn’t been shopping in a while, mostly because she hadn’t had time. Mom had had one of her episodes day before yesterday, this one worse than the others. Not as bad as the ones she’d had thirteen years ago, but close. Mi wished her brother, Jason, were here. He wasn’t good for much, but he had a way with their mom that Mi didn’t.