Caught by Surprise (4 page)

Millie stopped, amazed that Brig McKay had sidetracked her so much that she’d forgotten what he’d said a moment earlier. She thumped her coffee mug down. “You
cannot
call me Melisande,” she told him. “No one has ever called me by my full name. I tried to use it once when I was in elementary school, and pretty soon everyone shortened it to Mel, and then my brothers started calling me
Mel the Hellion
, so I gave up.”

“You’re just plain, rough-tough Millie, then?”

Her chin snapped up. “I’m not plain.”

Brig chuckled hoarsely. “No, I noticed that the first
two seconds.” He also noted that his compliment had just disarmed her anger. She took another sip of coffee and eyed him warily. “You got a fellow?” he asked.

Millie made a soft sound of disbelief. “I won’t ask you about the female who provoked you to punch a state senator and you won’t ask me about my social life. Got it?”

“You’ve got no social life, from what I hear,” he said cheerfully.

Enough was
enough
. “Finish your breakfast,” she said briskly, and stood up. “You’ve got work to do.”

“Oh?”

“We’ve hired you out to a restaurant owner for the next few days. He pays the city the hourly minimum wage, and you get five dollars a day. I hope you like washing dishes.”

“I’ll ruin my hands!” Brig said with grand horror. “I’ll never play the guitar again!”

Smiling, Millie walked toward the exit, then glanced over her shoulder and drawled, “Bullfeathers.”

Raybo opened the door from the other side just as she reached it.

“Melisande!” Brig yelled across the room, “I love it when you talk dirty!”

“
Melisande?
” Raybo inquired. “Talk dirty? What’s going on?”

Sighing, Millie slid past him without explaining.

Brig got into the passenger side of the tan and white Paradise Springs patrol car, pulled his bush hat over his eyes, and slept until Millie stopped the car in the parking lot of the Cajun Queen restaurant.

“Cajun Queen?” he mumbled. “In Florida?”

“Paradise Springs is very cosmopolitan. We even have a Siamese restaurant.”

“Where the rib roasts are still joined at the ribs?”

She couldn’t help laughing. She left him with the manager and promised to come back for him around five o’clock. Brig replayed the memory of her throaty, sweet laughter while he washed dishes.

When she returned late that afternoon, he was sitting cross-legged on the ground outside the restaurant’s back door, surrounded by a group that included the day chef, the kitchen assistant, and the owner, They were listening to stories about show business.

“Charmed them, did you?” she asked when he was Qack in the car.

“No sweat. They could see that I wasn’t a yahoo and they gave me a fair go.”

“I take it that means you had a good day.”

“Yes, my little buttercup.”

Millie’s lighthearted mood dimmed. “Don’t call me that.”

“Yes, my little briar,” he said sweetly.

She tried to suppress a smile, and failed. He laughed lightly, pleased. Lord, she thought, the man had the warmest, deepest laugh. It reached right down to the center of her body and left a glowing ember of itself. If she put her fingertips against his throat when he laughed, she would feel the vibration. His skin would be slightly coarse, delightfully coarse in a way that was sensual, and she’d stroke a path down his chest.…

Millie’s languid musings were interrupted when the patrol car rounded a sharp curve and a car shot past, headed in the opposite direction.

“Bloody fool must be doin’ about ninety,” Brig noted.

“Is your seatbelt fastened tight?”

He didn’t even have to ask what she planned to do. “Yes, my little briar,” he said calmly as she slammed on the brakes and swung the patrol car around in the middle of the road. The tires squealed as Millie gunned the engine, and she flicked the lights and siren on with a skillfully coordinated movement of one hand. The patrol car zoomed after the offender.

“Good on yer, love!” Brig exclaimed.

“Huh?” she managed, her eyes narrowed in concentration.

“Good work!”

“Thanks.”

Brig studied her face as she floored the accelerator.
She had a small, beautifully expressive mouth that could flatten in a line of lethal warning. She had a delicately pointed chin that could jut forward with rigid authority. Her light blond hair curled sexily against the plain, stiff collar of her white shirt.

The contrast of hard and soft in her had never been more evident than at this moment, and Brig realized suddenly that he was sitting in a patrol car, wearing prison clothes, riding along a two-lane road at breakneck speed, and feeling so aroused that he wanted to grin and groan at the same time. It made no sense. Nobody had ever affected him this strongly before, and especially not under such bizarre circumstances.

He was a man of great intuition and quick decisions. He was also a man of quick reactions. That had gotten him into tons of trouble over the years, but just as often had served him well. His feelings for the little blond beauty beside him abruptly crystalized.
Strewth!
Brig thought. This must be
love
. “Melisande!” he said loudly. “I’m falling in love with you!”

She glanced at him askance, then jerked her eyes back to the road. “Did they feed you something odd at the Cajun restaurant?”

Laughing, Brig waved a hand at her jovially. He felt fantastic. “Just drive, Melisande, and I’ll explain later!”

They rounded a curve and sighted the speeding car severl hundred yards ahead. The road straightened as it entered the rolling green pastureland of a horse farm, one of many in the area. Thoroughbreds were as important as oranges to the economy of this part of Florida. Millie pressed the accelerator harder and the white fences that bordered the road became a blur.

“Sic him, love, run him down!” Brig urged.

What on earth kind of crazy man was Brig McKay? she wondered. He yelled that he was falling in love with her in the middle of a car chase. His hearty sense of adventure seemed closely tuned to her own. Something giddy and companionable rose inside her throat, inspired by his charming nonsense.

“Yeah!” she yelled, and pounded the steering wheel. “I like chasing speeders!”

“That’s the spirit, Melisande!”

The patrol car was a few dozen yards away before the other car, a late model luxury sedan, finally began to slow. Within a few seconds it pulled onto the grassy shoulder of the road. Millie parked behind it, turned off the siren, and sighed.

“That bloke gave up too easy,” Brig intoned in a solemn voice. “We were just startin’ to have fun.”

She looked over at him, her green eyes gleaming, her expression sheepish. “It’s wrong to enjoy chasing people.”

He could tell that she shared his disappointment over the driver’s change of heart, but she didn’t want to admit it. “The chase is nearly as much fun as the catch,” Brig insisted. “It’s the same with chasin’ women.” He lifted one brow rakishly.

She punched him lightly on the arm, grinned, and got out of the car. Brig leaned back in the seat, crossed his arms over his chest, and hummed as he watched her walk to the sedan, which appeared to be occupied by only one person, a man.

A few minutes later when she returned to the patrol car holding the man’s license, she was frowning. “Jerk,” Millie muttered as she slid into the driver’s seat.

Brig straightened. “Is he givin’ you trouble?”

“He’s a wise-guy kid, nineteen years old, and
huge
. He looks like a bodybuilding fanatic. A Neanderthal. He not only eats Wheaties for breakfast, he eats the box.”

“Want me to twist his nose a bit?”

She grinned crookedly. “Get serious.”

“Who’s kiddin’?”

Shaking her head, she picked up a radio handset and called for a standard check of the sedan’s license tag. Several minutes later the report came back—the sedan was stolen.

“This
is
gonna be fun,” Brig noted.

Suddenly the teenager shoved his door open. He leaped out, raced across the road, vaulted over the white board fence into the horse pasture, and took off at a run for the forested hills on the pasture’s far side.

“Let’s see,” Millie murmured calmly. “Charlie’s on dispatch today.
Charlie
,” she called into the radio handset. “I’m going to bird dog a six-oh-five on West Grove Road.”

“A six-oh-five! Ohmigod!” the other deputy called back. “Ohmigod! Wait there! I’ll be there in a minute! No, go on, I’ll call Raybo! Wait! I gotta put the bullets in my gun!”

“That bloke does a fair impression of Barney Fife,” Brig observed.

Millie nodded. She quickly pushed her door open, reached under the driver’s seat, and retrieved a holstered pistol.

“You plan to do a little elephant huntin’ with that monster, do you?” he asked. “It’s bigger than you are.”

“Standard police pistol. I’m an expert with it.”

“Puts respect for the law in me, love, you can count on it.”

“Hah. Don’t kid me. You’re fearless.” She gave him a quick, comic salute. “I’m off,
mate
. Stay here and tell Charlie which way I went.”

“Gotcha, sweetheart.”

She left the car and trotted across the road, attaching the gun and holster to her belt as she went. Brig waited as she scaled the fence with graceful movements that would have done a gymnast proud. Once in the pasture, she ran like a gazelle. He decided then that the time was ripe to get out of the car and follow her, and he did.

The teenager was muscled, but he wasn’t fast. As soon as Millie entered a dense pine tree grove, she spotted him a hundred yards ahead, dodging between tree trunks and slowing down.

She chased him at a lope, keeping one hand on her holstered gun. Once in the navy she’d had to shoot a sailor in the leg. He was belligerent and drunk. He’d trashed a bar near the base. When she and her partner arrived, the sailor broke her partner’s arm and came
after her with a switchblade. Wounding him was the best option; a completely acceptable one, regardless of her size and gender. Nevertheless, the more pigheaded among the men in the shore patrol had gossiped that only a woman would use a gun in such a situation.

Now she wouldn’t pull her gun unless the offender pulled one first. The teenager didn’t have a gun, that was obvious.

He was dressed in torn army fatigue pants and a dirty white T-shirt. Millie heard him gasping and cursing as low pine branches snared his face and arms. Moving swiftly and breathing hard, she closed in on him.

“Halt! Sheriffs deputy!” she yelled.

He stumbled to a stop, turned around, assessed her with a smirk, then yelled an obscenity.

“Ouch. My tender ears,” Millie muttered under her breath. The teenager continued on his escape route, and she trotted after him. They crested a hill and the pine grove ended unexpectedly at the edge of a steep six-foot drop. His arms flailing, the teenager couldn’t stop in time. He flopped out of sight and Millie heard a loud splash.

She slid to a stop at the edge of the drop and looked down on a watering pond. Flat pasture land met the pond on three sides; the hill formed the fourth side. Up to his waist in dark green water, the teenager lumbered toward the pond’s edge.

Millie knew that this was the advantage she needed. She holstered her gun, took a deep breath, and jumped in after him.

“Don’t you ever give up?” he growled as she landed with a splash and started toward him. His voice shook and he looked at her as if she were an alien creature in the form of a little woman.

“No,” she answered flatly, and dove for his waist.

Millie felt a stinging blow as he caught the side of her head with the flat of his hand. She clawed for something to hurt, and luckily found that something in his most tender spot.

He howled with surprise and pain, then shoved her head under water. Millie punched at his legs fiercely, but he had the strength of a bull, and he held her under easily. For one second, she allowed herself to wonder if he intended to drown her.

Then his hands left her suddenly and he fell backward with a violent motion. Sputtering, Millie flung herself upright and gasped for air. Then she gasped again. Brig was standing a few feet away from her, soaking wet, his hands on his hips. The teenager was gone.

“Where is he?” she demanded breathlessly.

Brig shifted as if he had trouble keeping his balance. “He’s eatin’ mud.”

“What?”

“It’s an old aborigine trick. I’m standin’ on his head. Takes just the right technique, you see, otherwise he can get up.”

She realized abruptly that the water was churning around Brig. “Don’t drown him!”

“Aw, I’m just havin’ a bit of fun with him.”

He stepped back and the teenager rose slowly to the surface. The parts of his face that weren’t covered in sticky pond mud were a robin’s egg shade of blue. He slumped over and braced his hands on his knees, heaving as he caught his breath. Millie saw the look change in Brig’s gaze. He eyed the huge teenager with quiet, icy fierceness. The jovial, carefree McKay had another side—a deadly one.

“Make a move, you mangy baby, and I’ll rearrange your face,” he said in a soft tone. “If you’ve got a notion to hold somebody else under water, give it a go with me instead of the lady.”

“No, no.” The teenager could barely stand up. “Forget it.”

Millie wasn’t accustomed to being defended, and she should have bristled at Brig McKay’s insinuation that she needed protection. Instead, she smiled at him until her lips hurt. He was wonderful.

“I knew you didn’t need much help,” Brig told her
gallantly. “But I figured you’d be out of breath by the time you finished chewing his legs off under water.”

Millie pulled the teenager’s hands behind his back and cuffed them. Her eyes hardly left Brig’s. “You hellion,” she said without much malice. “You were supposed to stay in the car.”

The gaze he gave her was so possessive that she lost what little remained of her train of thought. She read a proud message in his blue eyes: He’d never intended to let her chase a car thief alone.

“You look real good, even wet and dirty,” he told her.