Hot Pursuit (11 page)

“Trashmen can’t be overworked, you know.”

She made a humphing sound as if she might disagree. Wolf would have to agree with her when she said the boxes were sturdy. It took a bit of muscle to collapse all of them. When they were in a flat stack at his feet, Wolf turned to find the woman leaning next to a door watching him.

She pointed to the Dumpster on the other side of the alley.

“You ask a lot of a stranger.” Wolf lifted the stack of collapsed boxes and took them to the trash.

“A stranger in my town.” Her tone was soft, alluring.

She was possibly five feet and two or three inches. Wolf would wager few people thought of her as short. This woman saw herself as larger than life. Her arms were crossed just under nice-looking breasts. She stood straight and tall, as tall as her small physique would allow, and stared at him head-on. He saw no fear, no hostility toward him, not even mild curiosity. What he did see as she continued watching was confidence, a comfortability in her world.

She was angry. She’d already admitted it. But not at him and she wasn’t the type of woman to lash out at someone because she was angry with someone else. He saw that in her nature as well. This woman was too focused for any misdirected energy.

Wolf managed not to stare at the cleavage swelling from the top of her T-shirt. Instead he focused on a smear of dirt next to her cute, narrow nose. That was another character trait he guessed she possessed. There was no way to know for certain without putting it to the test, and he saw no reason to do that. But this woman wouldn’t tolerate any man treating her as a sexual object. With this lady, it would be mind and body or nothing at all.

Wolf didn’t consider himself an expert on noses. He was rather indifferent to the type of noses women had. Decent boobs, nice ass, and, if he was lucky enough to find out, a tight pussy, and the rest of her might impress upon him if he hung around long enough to find out. Or at least that was how he had been prior to making the mistake of being snared into a relationship. The lady staring at him definitely would go out of her way to show a lack of interest in a man like Wolf.

If she knew him. Which she wouldn’t. It wouldn’t be difficult at all to initiate a conversation with this disgruntled bookstore owner, which he’d concluded because an employee wouldn’t be concerned about receiving a fine. Wolf would sift through any information gained from her and, if he was lucky, walk away with something that might indicate whether the assassin was in Zounds or not.

“M’lady’s task is complete,” he said after tossing the collapsed boxes in the Dumpster. “Oh wait, did the collapsed boxes need to be placed inside the Dumpster in any particular way?”

Her smile was genuine and made her eyes light up once again. Wolf wasn’t much into the poetic beauty of a woman. She was hot, or she wasn’t. This lady, however, held herself in such a way she would be able to make a man beg to change his ways simply to be blessed with her sincere and glowing smile. Wolf instantly wondered what other attributes she might have to make a man beg for more.

“Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be on my way before your husband decides to squash me like I did those boxes.”

“Oh my God! Did you really just say that?” Her laughter was damn near contagious.

Even when it was very clear she was laughing at him. Wolf feigned a look of uncertainty, willing to make her state her accusation.

“Your husband doesn’t squash strange men like boxes?” he asked, keeping his expression somber.

“I have enough hot coffee to share if you collapse the rest of the boxes for me.” She was shaking her head at him as she spoke. “Your question and your assumed accusation don’t merit a response on the grounds that they were a feeble attempt to gain information.” She turned on him and headed to the door that likely led into her shop. “Come on,” she said with a wave of her hand indicating he should follow.

“I’ve had some really good coffee this morning.” He followed her through the open door and into the back room of the bookstore. There were stacks of books everywhere and a lot more boxes. He would be put to work before getting any information out of this woman.

She closed the door to the alley. “I make really good coffee.”

“Better than Betsy’s over at the bed-and-breakfast?”

“Ouch,” she moaned, then fisted her hands on her hips. “A gentleman never plays his best card this early in the morning.”

“I’m not a gentleman.”

Her blue eyes darkened until he swore a torrential storm was about to erupt inside her. She put the meaning he’d intended into his words, and it seemed to leave her breathless. For the first time, her assessment of him changed. It was barely noticeable, but Wolf was watching her every move. When she gave him a quick once-over, there was definitely a spark of interest.

“I have a cappuccino machine,” she purred softly.

He had one back home and loved it. Already he was sold. “How many boxes?” he countered.

“All of these,” she said, waving her hand at the stack between them. “I’ll go make cappuccinos. And thank you so much.” She reached out, touched his arm with cool fingers, then hurried out of the storage room, leaving the door to her store open after her.

Wolf peeked after her before taking on the boxes. The bookstore looked a lot larger from this angle than it had looked from the street. He turned his head in time to see her walking quickly toward the counter. Her jeans hugged a nicely shaped ass. He liked a nicely shaped ass on a woman. Something to hold on to when he entered from behind. Wolf didn’t necessarily consider himself an ass man. The whole package had to turn him on. And damn, Miss Bookstore Owner, and he was pretty sure that was who she was, had a mighty fine package.

He respected a woman’s mind, too. Intelligence had its appeal because then gaining her submission was just about as hot as it could get. Something told him this little lady had quite a bit of intelligence. He wouldn’t need her submission, just her compliance in telling him all she knew about who lived in Zounds. It seemed to him he was off to a good start. Already she’d allowed him into her store and was making cappuccinos for them. Turning, he began whistling as he stacked the boxes and hauled them to the alley.

Angel was shaking as she started the machine, then stared at it as it began making the cappuccinos. She would be too wired to think straight if she had a cup after the coffee she’d already downed this morning. Either that or she’d burn out by noon and have a hell of a time keeping the store open during the afternoon. It would serve Cortez right if she closed the store early today. Just thinking about that damned letter Zoey had brought in yesterday got her pissed off all over again. She didn’t want to think about Cortez, his informing her that all trash had to be properly broken down so it wouldn’t fill the Dumpster too quickly, or that an inspector would be stopping by sometime later that day to inspect her store.

Inspect, her ass! Cortez was sending over one of his spies to learn whatever it was he wanted to know about her or her store and was too much of a coward to come out and ask. Not that her store was any of Cortez’s goddamn business. The asshole made her so fuming mad!

The man in her storage room was whistling. He pulled her out of her hateful thoughts, and she glanced over her shoulder. Angel was tempted to go back outside just so she could watch his arms bulge as he broke down the boxes and flattened them. He had stomped on a couple of them, and leg muscles had stretched and flexed pressing against his jeans. She imagined he was strong enough to lift her over his shoulder and toss her body onto her bed.

“Oh crap,” she breathed, and gripped her counter to steady herself.

She was certifiably insane. Not only had she never seen this man before in her life, she also didn’t know his name or anything else about him. Well, she knew he was staying at the bed-and-breakfast and that Betsy Watson made an incredible cup of coffee. And she was pretty sure he was the same man she’d seen in the Escalade the day before. She wondered why he’d been walking today. Maybe it wasn’t his SUV. Maybe he was some worker brought in on a crew for construction and had been driving a boss’s car.

Angel could always call Betsy. The old woman loved to talk, and gossip about someone new in town would be right up her alley.

Angel could hear it now.
Hello, Betsy.… What?… Oh no, I don’t have any more Agatha Christies in. I’m pretty sure you’ve read all of them.… And no, I don’t think they are releasing anymore anytime soon. But I was wondering. That incredibly sexy hunk staying at your place.… That’s right. The one with so many muscles bulging it’s a damn distraction. Well, yes, could you give me his name, please? I just want to know what to cry out when I fuck him senseless.

Oh yeah. That would go over real well. Poor Betsy Watson would finally join her husband, Herb, in heaven. God rest both their souls. Angel was definitely insane.

She tried focusing on her task of making cappuccinos as she stared at the rich-smelling brew filling the two cups. The machine had been a gift from Zoey last Christmas. Angel, Zoey, and Maggie had met at Angel’s store on Christmas Eve, trudged through the snow to the Catholic church in town, then back to her store to exchange presents. Maggie and Zoey were both Catholic. Angel had no preference or any religion at all. But she’d had fun watching the children perform the birth of baby Jesus during Christmas Eve mass. Then the women had walked in the cold back to Angel’s store. The three of them had talked during the entire walk and barely noticed the cold. When they’d snuggled together in a small circle, all of them sitting cross-legged on the floor with Angel’s space heater glowing brightly next to them, they had exchanged gifts. Angel had been shocked over the cappuccino maker. Zoey had cheated. They had all agreed not to spend over twenty dollars a gift and give no more than two gifts to each of them. Zoey had insisted she hadn’t gone over the price limit but had purchased wholesale through one of her father’s vendors. She’d given Maggie a five-piece set of china and matching pots and pans, which Angel knew Maggie needed since she’d complained numerous times about her and her husband eating off of paper plates. When Maggie made the same accusations, Zoey had shrugged, blushed, and murmured there was no harm in taking advantage of what her father had. Angel and Maggie had both shut up. If Zoey had ripped her father off to give her and Maggie such nice gifts, Angel really didn’t have a problem with that.

Angel carried two cappuccinos around the corner a minute later, careful not to spill the foam. She entered her back storage room, which was in desperate need of some serious organization, and didn’t see the stranger. All of the empty boxes were gone. Then pushing the door to the alley open with her foot, she squinted against the bright morning sunlight and glanced up and down the alley. He was nowhere in sight.

“What the—,” she started to complain. “If he didn’t want cappuccinos, he should have said so,” she muttered.

Maybe he’d walked back to the bed-and-breakfast. The guy didn’t strike Angel as the kind of man too shy to accept gratitude after finishing a job. She looked up and down the alley, her immediate anger shifting into dismay. At least the gorgeous hunk of a man wasn’t after handouts, if he’d left so fast. Holding the two cups in her hands, Angel started feeling foolish. She headed toward the door to her back storage room. He hadn’t been dressed like a bum, she mused. If anything, his jeans had appeared new and his T-shirt—the one that stretched so nicely over all of that brawn—looked clean and pressed.

She wished she had been more attentive to details. Hadn’t she read enough novels to know the telltale items to look for to learn something about a person? Were there calluses on his hands, indicating he’d worked with his hands a lot? Was there a suntan line at the ends of the short sleeves of his T-shirt or at the back of his neck, indicating he might work outside for a living? Angel hadn’t bothered to check.

“I was looking—“

“Oh my God!” she wailed, and almost tripped in the doorway to her shop.

The stranger appeared out of the shadows alongside the end of her building. Had he been there the entire time?

“I was looking at the wiring back here,” the man informed her, his baritone relaxed and serious. “The light doesn’t come on in your storage room. I found lightbulbs,” he added, picking up the four-pack of 75-watt bulbs she’d had back there on one of the shelves forever. “And I tried putting a new bulb in for you.”

“Just because I don’t care to smash down boxes with reinforced siding doesn’t mean I haven’t already tried putting in a new bulb. The light doesn’t work in my storage room, and it’s not because it needs a new bulb,” she said, immediately defensive.

The man turned into the dark shadows behind her door to the alley. “Your problem is back here.”

“Please, take this.” Angel held out his cup of cappuccino and did her best not to bite her lip from her burned hand where some of it had spilled when he’d startled her.

“Thank you,” the man told her, appearing once again from the shadows.

Angel would definitely have a blister from the amount of pain she was experiencing. The man took his cup, and she left him, not caring about the light at the moment. It was one of many things that didn’t work properly in her shop. She got by.

Angel hurried inside to the small half bath in the corner of the storage room. She cranked on the cold water and stuffed her hand into the flow.

“Damn,” she muttered, staring at the small red spot on the back of her hand as cold water rushed over it. This was all she needed today.

“If you have wire cutters, I could probably splice and fix it.” The man filled the doorway of the small bathroom; then suddenly he was next to her. “You burned yourself.”

Angel gave him a look. “You’re quick.”

He returned the same look, which darkened his features. “Actually, I am,” he said in a low growl.

Staring at him turned her insides into electrified need. She looked away and watched water run over the red spot on her hand. No man would control her, not even sexually. There was a raw, rather primal nature about him. That wasn’t her style of man. She wouldn’t ever be some Neanderthal’s little woman. Angel ran her own life, made her own decisions, and had no plans of ever submitting to anyone. Which, of course, was why Cortez made her so damned mad. And proof as to why she was the wrong type of lady for a guy who thought he could turn her into putty in his hands with a look and a low-baritone, rough edge to his voice.