Baby, I'm Yours Page 3

  Catherine slapped the wallet aside. “Dancer,” she corrected automatically, and then could have bitten her tongue in two. Mama had been in denial up until the day she died, and her repeated, stubborn insistence had made naming Kaylee’s occupation thus second nature to Catherine. Blurting it out at this juncture, however, merely made it sound as if she were defending herself. “And it doesn’t say that on her driver’s license, anyhow,” she added, and then grimaced. Weak, Catherine, very weak. You’re making everything worse.

  She gave her wrist an experimental tug, but he didn’t set it free. Instead, he took a step closer, which made Catherine very nervous. “Look,” she said desperately, “let’s go into the house, and I’ll show you my driver’s license. I’ll show you an entire stack of—What do you think you’re doing?”

  He’d abruptly collapsed cross-legged onto the bricks and pulled her down after him to lie facedown across his lap. Holding her in place with one strong, splay-fingered hand, his free hand went to the waistband of her bicycle shorts. In a single economical movement, he had them peeled down. “According to my file, Miz MacPherson, you’ve got a quarter-sized tattoo of little red kissy lips right”—one of his fingers slid beneath the lacy high cut leg of her panties—“about”—he jerked aside the fragile fabric, exposing one rounded cheek—“here.” His callused thumb rubbed across the spot.

  Catherine froze. He was a madman. Then she exploded into a frenzy of motion, reaching back and raking his hand with her nails, knocking it aside and scrambling to her feet. Fumbling to straighten her panties, her shorts, she turned—she feared with all four cheeks blazing—to face him. “My God,” she choked. “What sort of person are you? To think I have an entire curriculum teaching my children that policemen are our friends! I can’t believe you would do something so…my God, so utterly…sleazy—”

  “Oh, give it a rest, will you, Red? You know who I am, I know who you are, so let’s not turn it into an opera, huh? Here, take your purse. We’ve wasted enough time as it is.” He shoved it into her hands and leaned down to grab the suitcase. Then he grasped her hand and hustled her around the side of the house. “I’ve got a schedule to keep.”

  Batting a trailing vine out of his way, Sam rounded the corner of the house and emerged into the front yard, dragging his prisoner an arm’s length behind him. What the hell did she take him for, he wondered moodily, a complete moron? The woman had obviously seen far too many soap operas.

  Sam’s mother used to watch the soaps. Lenore McKade had sat around their dingy, fourth-floor walkup for hours on end, glued to the programs on their small-screen TV. With a mother who much preferred daytime fantasies to coping with reality, Sam was more familiar than he wanted to be with the old evil twin/angelic twin story line. He hadn’t bought the concept when he was a kid—he sure as hell didn’t buy it now.

  Did MacPherson think he’d just fallen off the rhubarb truck? Hell, it wasn’t him who was the dim bulb around here if she seriously believed she could render herself unnoticeable simply by scrubbing off her makeup and brushing out her hair until it was smooth and shiny instead of big and fluffy. He’d give her credit for making an effort to tone down the flamboyancy—even if it was only done as a self-serving attempt to blend into her sister’s middle-class neighborhood. But get real. While her nondescript blouse did its best, the conservative garment hadn’t yet been designed that could effectively disguise a hootchie-kootchie body like that one.

  “You’ve got to listen to me,” she yammered at him, dragging against his hold on her wrist. “Kaylee’s in big trouble. She overheard a contract being put out on a woman who has since disappeared, and if the body’s been buried where she heard them say it was going to be, she’s in a position to bring to justice both the man who committed the murder and the man who ordered it done. That means she’s in serious danger.”

  Oh, for Christ’s sake. Sam hauled her over to the car parked at the curb and jerked open its passenger door. “Watch your head,” he advised, placing his hand on the crown of her head to protect it while he assisted her into the sedan. Her hair felt hot and slippery beneath his fingers, and he pressed against her skull to get her moving. He wanted her inside the car so he could take his hands off her. He didn’t like the impulses that ran through him every time he touched her.

  Catherine didn’t budge. Refusing to cooperate, she instead pivoted to glare up at him. “Dammit, mister, will you listen to me?”

  “Oh, I heard you, Red. You can tell that to the judge, too.”

  “I want to see some identification,” she demanded. “And I want to see it now.” Inwardly, she quailed as she watched the sullen cast of McKade’s full mouth and the way his black eyebrows pulled together over those narrowed amber brown eyes. He glowered at her as if he would just as soon snap her in two as look at her. Catherine swallowed hard. “I want to see your ID,” she repeated determinedly and tried to ignore the way heat emanated off his big body in waves.

  He swore under his breath, but his hand slid away from her head to slap down on the roof of the car, effectively penning her between him, the automobile, and its opened door as he reached in his hip pocket with his free hand. He didn’t bother to step back, and Catherine lowered her eyes, focusing on his Adam’s apple while she waited. Was it really necessary that he stand so close? She could smell the laundry soap in his oxford cloth shirt and the faint, underlying suggestion of clean male sweat.

  “Here,” he growled, thrusting his opened wallet in her face.

  She read the identification. Then she blinked and read it again with growing disbelief. “Bail enforcer?” To her mortification, her voice cracked. She took a deep breath, expelled it, and craned her head back to stare up into McKade’s fierce golden eyes. “Why, you’re not a policeman at all,” she accused. Her voice grew louder with each word. “You’re nothing but a lousy bounty hunter!”

  He swore again. Then he muttered, “I don’t have time for this, lady.” In one smooth movement, he pulled her away from the open car door and tucked her firmly under his arm. Slamming the passenger door, he hustled her around to the driver’s side, where he pulled the door open and stuffed her inside the car. He crowded in behind her and, closing his door, activated all the locks from the panel on the armrest. “Buckle up,” he ordered and fit the key in the ignition.

  Catherine panicked at the sound of the engine roaring to life. “Let me out of here, McKade!”

  The look he turned on her had Catherine shrinking back into her corner. “I said buckle up, Red. Or do you want me to do it for you?”

  No way in hell was she providing him with an excuse to put those wide-palmed, long-fingered hands on her again. Catherine buckled up. “You can’t get away with this, you know.”

  McKade snorted. Accelerating away from the curb, he fished a folded sheet of paper out of his shirt pocket. He shook it out and held it up for her to read. It was a certified copy of Kaylee’s bond undertaking. “Traditional common law says this is sufficient evidence to make an arrest,” he disagreed.

  “If I were Kaylee MacPherson, perhaps,” Catherine said through her teeth, as he drove away from her neighborhood. “But my name is Catherine.”

  “Dammit, Red, I’ve heard all I’m going to hear about that. Give it a rest, or I’ll gag you.” He wouldn’t, of course. But if he knew women, the threat alone should be enough. Nothing females hated more than having their power of speech imperiled.

  Catherine stilled. All right. That’s it. Fury surged through her, suffusing every cell in her body. He’ll gag me? Gag me? That is the absolute, final frontier. And he’s just stepped over the line.

  All her life, she had played by the rules. And this was her reward: a cretin who didn’t hesitate to lay his big hands on her or use his strength to intimidate her. Worse, he was just like her father, out to make himself a buck any way he could…and the hell with anyone who got in his way. Well, she was finished trying to convince Mr. Sam-know-it-all-McKade she wasn’t the woman he thought she was. What she i
nstead was going to do, from this moment on, was any and everything in her power to impede their progress to Florida. The specifics of accomplishing that might be a bit vague at the moment, but come hell or high water, she’d find a way. First, however…

  She turned to face him head-on. “You are a pig,” she said, enunciating very clearly. He took his gaze off the traffic a moment to scowl at her, pinning her in place with his whiskey-colored eyes. The muscles in his neck and shoulders grew taut, which made him appear even larger than he had before, but Catherine didn’t back down. She leveled on him all the contempt at her disposal.

  “You’ve made a huge mistake, McKade, and somehow, some way, I will make you pay for it.”

  Sam made a rude noise. “Oh, yeah, I’m gonna lose a lot of sleep worrying I’ve got the wrong woman.” He changed lanes then glanced back at her. “As for making me pay, Red, give it your best shot. The day I’m wrong about someone like you—”

  Catherine bristled. “Excuse me? Someone like me?”

  “Someone who prances around in a big hat and a couple of sequins for a living.”

  “Oh, as opposed to an upstanding citizen like yourself, I presume. Well, sugar, I hate to break it to you, but you’re not the cream in my bottle of milk, either. You’re just a bottom-of-the-barrel bounty hunter who likes to pretend he’s a real cop.”

  That flicked him on the raw. “At least I’ve got a nodding acquaintance with the truth,” he said stiffly.

  “Oh, that’s rich. You wouldn’t recognize the truth if it bit you on the butt.”

  Sam felt his jaw growing rigid. “Like I was saying, Red. The day I’m wrong about someone like you is the day I’ll eat my shorts.”

  “Well, prepare to chow down then, bud,” Catherine snapped. “Because sometime soon I’m going to serve them to you on a big ol’ silver platter.”

  3

  ONLY HOURS OLD and already this case had disaster written all over it. Mom, it’s a cryin’ shame you’re no longer with us, Sam thought grimly, doing his best to ignore his sulky, curvaceous passenger and focusing instead on the heavy downtown traffic. You would’ve just loved the hell outta this.

  Not only did this situation involve elements straight out of Lenore McKade’s favorite viewing material, it played nicely into her pet defeatist “nobody-escapes-the-niche-they’re-born-in” theory.

  It wasn’t that she’d wished him or anyone else ill. She’d simply never believed that people could improve their lot in life. She’d worked hard, and all it had gotten her were long hours and low pay, an ultimate pink slip with no retirement benefits, and a stint on welfare. In other words, right back where she’d started. So, she’d taken in ironing, watched TV, and warned Sam to resign himself to the fact that he, too, would end up where he’d begun. According to her you could take the boy out of the projects, but sooner or later life would kick him in the head and he’d be back at the bottom again.

  Sam had disagreed. He’d joined the army, become a military policeman, and for more than a dozen years had proven his mother’s predictions wrong. Within the environment of structure and order, he’d thrived. Then his partner Gary Proscelli had taken a bullet meant for Sam and was left a paraplegic as a result.

  And Sam had wondered if maybe his mother wasn’t right after all. Look what he was doing now.

  But damned if he’d just give up, tuck his tail between his legs, and slink off into the sunset. He’d quit the service when he’d learned the brass planned to transfer him to Oakland Army Base. Just who the hell had they expected to get Gary settled if he was sent to the other side of the continent? There had been reams of paperwork that accompanied an army discharge and reams more for establishing disability benefits. Not to mention his friend’s need of someone to help ease the transition into a new way of life.

  God, the guilt of watching Gary struggle to put his life back together had just about eaten Sam alive, and he’d known he had to do something. Once he’d had them situated in a small, ground-floor Miami apartment, he had looked around for a way to realize a dream they’d been kicking around for years.

  They had always talked about putting in their twenty-five years, then taking their service retirement and buying themselves a fishing lodge. Frankly, it had been an ambition that seemed far off in some distant, dimly envisioned future. But when the plan was shot down by the same bullet that paralyzed Gary, Sam had needed a way to make money fast.

  There weren’t a lot of prospects for a grunt with a high-school education and too few college credits. Crime was out, and law enforcement didn’t pay enough, not if he hoped to realize their goal anytime in this century. That was too bad in a way, because he thought he’d like being a cop—he’d sure liked being an MP. But this wasn’t about him. It was about taking care of business so Gary’s future was secure. Bounty hunting seemed the fastest way to make money. The fact that Sam had no desire to become a bail enforcer and had come to hate the job the longer he was in it was immaterial.

  He was dead tired of the daily contact with Miami’s lowest life-forms. But after a year and a half it was paying off for him, for just a few weeks ago the fishing lodge of his and Gary’s dreams had come on the market. It was the site of some of their best times, the vacation getaway in North Carolina they’d returned to several years running. It was a little slice of heaven right here on earth, and they’d never expected to see a For Sale sign on it.

  Sam was going to get it for them. The down payment was steeper than he’d expected, but he had thirty days to come up with the amount needed before their option ran out and it went to an alternate buyer.

  He glanced over at his prisoner, who was moodily watching traffic out the side window. At least this one didn’t have a history of violence, unlike most of the jokers he brought in. He was kind of surprised, in fact, at how high her bail had been set. It was her tough luck to have drawn a judge with a hard-on against the entertainment element, he guessed. But that wasn’t his problem. In fact, from his point of view, the higher her bail the better, since his cut upon delivery was a straight 10 percent.

  First, however, he had to get Red back to Miami without any more screwups like this morning’s. Sam reached for the street map and shook it out.

  Catherine heard him grumbling to himself and glanced over. Whenever they came to a red light, which seemed to be about every two minutes, he bent his head over the map on the console between their seats and muttered extremely rude words beneath his breath. She caught herself staring at the huge hand he’d spread out over the tangle of paper. It was long-fingered and powerful-looking, and she had to hurriedly direct her attention back out the window when she experienced a savage spurt of satisfaction upon seeing the red welts bisecting the back of it. Dear God. She never thought she’d see the day when she’d feel good about inflicting that sort of damage on someone.

  The streets they traveled were cast in preternatural gloom by the buildings that loomed on either side, and for the first time she took note of the scenery that had been passing by outside her window. She’d been too upset to pay attention when they’d exited off the freeway, but realized they were in downtown Seattle.

  Whatever for? SeaTac Airport was a good ten miles to the south.

  Several blocks later, her captor made a rumbling sound of satisfaction deep in his throat and turned the car into a Thrifty Rental Car lot. Within seconds he’d parked their vehicle and had himself, Catherine, Kaylee’s luggage, and his own duffel bag all lined up at the counter inside the miniscule agency shack. While he talked to the counterman about turning in the car, Catherine discreetly attempted to extricate her wrist from the hard fingers that encircled it. Sam immediately stopped what he was doing and turned those piercing golden brown eyes on her, using a subtle shift of one large shoulder to block the counterman’s view.

  “We can do this one of two ways,” he informed her in a low voice. “We can handle it nice and friendly-like, or I can slap the cuffs on you and very publicly drag you kicking and screaming if necessary. Fra
nkly, Red, I don’t give a rat’s ass about your dignity, so the choice is up to you.”

  Catherine’s arm went slack in his hold. Seething quietly, she trailed obediently behind him when he left the rental agency a minute later and strode up the street. Noting the way he favored his left leg, she congratulated herself on at least preventing his job from being a complete walk in the park. Giving him a limp and a scratched hand, however, hadn’t noticeably improved her own situation. He was still dragging her off to…where was he taking her, anyway?

  A block later they paused in front of a tan marble-tiled building on the corner of Eighth and Stewart. When he opened the door to admit them, Catherine came to a dead halt and stared up at the blue-and-white sign overhead. “Greyhound?” she said incredulously. “We’re taking a bus to Miami?”

  To Catherine’s amazement, a dull red flush crept up Sam’s throat and over his strong jaw to the smooth, flat planes of his cheeks. He glowered off at some distant point beyond her left ear, refusing to meet her eyes. His obvious discomfort gave her back something she hadn’t possessed since the moment he’d exploded into her life: a modicum of control. She quirked a brow at him. “What’s the deal here, McKade? Aren’t you big, bad bounty hunter types given a travel allowance?”

  His fingers tightened around her wrist for an instant, but he merely growled, “That’s cute, Red, I’m amused,” before he dragged her over to the ticket counter. Fifteen minutes later, he was tucking their tickets into the chest pocket of his white shirt and leading her to a row of molded plastic seats that were bolted to the floor outside the game room. He dumped their luggage. “Take a load off.”

  “My. How could I possibly refuse an invitation so charmingly put?” Picking out the cleanest chair, she sat.

  He kicked their luggage nearer to her seat, then plunked himself down next to her. Leaning forward, he planted his elbows on his widespread thighs, his shirt stretching tight across his shoulders and his large hands dangling between his knees as he stared down at the gritty red tiles between his feet. His left thigh infringed on Catherine’s space.