“Yeah, there they are, all right.”
“You didn’t believe me?”
“I like to see things for myself. What’s your name?”
“Angela,” she blurted out. God, what was wrong with her? She shouldn’t give out her name to a perfect stranger.
“Angela,” he repeated. Her name coming out of his mouth had an erotic turn to it she’d never heard before. “Well, Angela, got a coat hanger?”
She noticed he didn’t offer his own name in return. “No. Actually, I think I’ll just go find a phone and call someone…” As she spoke, she edged away from him, overwhelmed by the overt maleness of him. He wasn’t huge—she’d give him six foot one—but there was something about him, a barely leashed power, a dangerous essence, that made her uneasy even as it fascinated her.
“Hold on, now. Maybe I can help you out.” He sidled past her and went to the trunk, popping it open with one deft movement. “You don’t lock your trunk?”
“There’s nothing in there anyone would want to steal.”
“Just a spare tire and a jack. And—” he grabbed something from her trunk and held it aloft triumphantly “—a coat hanger.” He slammed the trunk shut and immediately began untwisting the wire hanger. Angela watched, utterly enthralled, as he manipulated the pliant metal into a curved hook. He’d obviously done this a time or two, which only added to her uneasiness.
“Maybe I should just go call the auto club,” she ventured, knowing now she’d made a mistake. She never should have let this frightening stranger take control of the situation away from her. Hadn’t she learned anything in her assertiveness-training class?
“They’ll take forever to get here,” the stranger argued as he returned his attention to the locked door, then felt expertly along the edge of the window for just the right point of entry. “It’s St. Patrick’s day. Drunks all over Dallas are running out of gas, flattening their tires on broken beer bottles and losing their keys. Trust me, you don’t want to be out here alone.”
He had a point. Angela stood back a few feet, ready to flee at the slightest provocation. But the stranger, frightening as he was, hadn’t made any threatening gestures or comments. Then again, he didn’t have to. His mere presence was intimidating enough.
He made several tries at the lock, then pulled the hanger out and reshaped it slightly.
“You’ve done this before,” she said.
“Yeah.” He inserted the hanger again. “Hell, there’s not a car made I can’t get into.”
Oh, that was comforting.
“Comes from a misspent youth. Hah!” He gave the coat hanger one final yank, and the door lock gave. In seconds he had the front door open.
She was so relieved, so anxious to retrieve her precious keys, that she forgot to be cautious. She slid right past him, only belatedly realizing her body would brush against his. She received a brief impression of heat and hardness before she gained the relative safety of the driver’s seat. His physical allure was undeniable.
She refused to look at him, afraid of what she would see in those luminescent blue eyes. Mostly she was afraid she would see acknowledgment of what she felt—awareness. Awareness on a totally physical, sexual level.
It was a preposterous thing for her to admit, but it was true. She’d felt desire before. She’d even been tempted, at least mildly, to break the celibacy habit. But for her, physical awareness had always followed emotional closeness. She’d never just looked at a guy, heard his voice, watched his hands and felt a rush of heat wash through her like liquid fire.
All wrapped up in this crazy flush of lust was her fear. She was completely vulnerable to him. He was big and undoubtedly strong, and he could have her under his control in a heartbeat. Her smartest course of action, she knew, was to get the hell out of there. Grab her purse and her keys, lock up her car and flee.
“Thanks so much for helping me out,” she said in an attempt to end the encounter. “I don’t know what I would have done…”
He wasn’t listening to her. He leaned through the open car door, and for one glorious, hideous moment she thought he was going to kiss her. Then he sank lower, leaning in farther, and her engine hood popped open. He’d been searching for the release lever.
“Really, you don’t have to—”
“It’s no trouble,” he said, withdrawing, but not before Angela got a noseful of his scent—clean, like soap, but with a hint of musk. He probably hadn’t showered in the past thirty minutes, but the essence was enough to convince Angela that the man had good grooming habits. That didn’t exactly fit the Hell’s Angel image given off by the rest of him.
Resigned, Angela climbed out of the car with her purse and car keys firmly in hand—in case she decided to run away after all. But despite his daunting appearance, the man had been nothing but helpful so far, she reasoned. If he’d wanted to do something terrible, he’d probably have done it already.
With that comforting thought in mind, she stood passively by and let the man try to fix her car. She didn’t normally allow fate or luck to dictate her behavior, but tonight she felt powerless to divert the freight train of events barreling along the tracks in her personal universe.
She was taking an enormous chance by trusting this man. Yet she didn’t seem to have any choice. For the first time in her life, Angela Capria had been swept off her feet.
And the guy wasn’t even trying! Imagine the results if he put a little effort into it.
WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING? Vic Steadman thought, as he fiddled pointlessly with the woman’s car engine. The distributor cap had been unscrewed, a fully deliberate effort someone had made to disable her vehicle. With a twist of his hand he could have her engine running and send her on her way.
That’s why he’d come, right? To make sure the woman wasn’t stranded all alone in a dark parking lot? But he didn’t fix the car. Instead he checked fluid levels, disconnected and reconnected hoses, checked points and plugs, all in an effort to buy himself some time. What did he really want to do here?
He’d never expected Angela Capria to be so gorgeous.
A few hours ago, when his rookie partner, Bobby Ray Allen, had lain on the gurney getting stitched up in the Parkland E.R. after an unfortunate confrontation with a beer bottle, he’d confessed his problem to Vic. It seemed he had a blind date, and there was no way he was going to make it out of the E.R. in time to meet her. Would Vic pinch-hit for him?
Vic had considered this a very peculiar request. Normally Bobby had plenty of female company and didn’t need fix-ups. Also, Bobby was territorial about his girlfriends. He seldom introduced any of the guys on the force to his various women, much less invited one of his buddies to fill in for him on a date. If Bobby hadn’t been lying there bleeding, Vic would have suspected he was being set up.
“Why can’t you just call her?” Vic had wanted to know.
Then Bobby had explained the unusual circumstances, and Vic had been stuck. Apparently this woman refused blind dates. So her friends had covertly set her up. They’d sabotaged her car, and Bobby was supposed to rescue her, then sweep her off her feet with a dark, dangerous, sexy persona.
If Vic hadn’t filled in, the poor woman would have been stranded out here alone in a questionable neighborhood.
He’d originally planned to identify himself as a Dallas cop so as not to scare her, then fix her car and send her on her way. But that was before he’d seen her.
“Do you see the problem?” the woman asked anxiously.
“Not yet,” he lied.
From the way Bobby had talked about her, he’d been expecting some homely, sexually repressed spinster.