I Got You, Babe (16 page)

Renee stood perfectly still for a moment, his words hanging almost palpably in the air. She opened her mouth as if to speak. Then she clamped it shut again, her expression shifting to a mask of total fury. She slapped both palms against his chest and gave him a hard shove.

“You bastard!”

He stumbled backward. She pulled her sweatshirt down and stalked past him, whacking him with her elbow at the same time. She walked up the road several angry paces, then spun around hotly.

“You really think that’s why I wanted you? To stay out of jail?”

“Hell yes,” he said, buckling his belt as he strode toward her. “And you can give it up, sweetheart. It won’t work. I know plenty of cops who can be bought with far less than a hot female body. Unfortunately for you, I’m not one of them.”

“Excuse me,” Renee said, “but I don’t believe I was the only one participating!”

“But you were the only one with something to gain.”

“So you didn’t really want me. Is that right?”

He gave her a disinterested shrug. Her gaze traveled down his body and stopped at his crotch. “Sorry, John, but your built-in lie detector is telling me otherwise.”

He shifted uncomfortably. She had him there.

“Okay, Renee. I suppose there’s a lot about you to interest a man, in spite of the fact that you’re a fugitive.”

“So it was basically a lust thing.”

Oh, yeah. Lust had been heavily involved. And so had stupidity. Daniels was right: his objectivity was shot to hell, and he probably needed a month of vacation instead of a week, out alone in the wilderness with no law-breaking women to tempt him. He’d been thinking with his crotch instead of his head, and that was a very, very dangerous thing to do.

“More like curiosity, really,” John said. “You promised me all kinds of interesting things to escape Leandro, so I thought I’d see just how far you’d go to keep yourself out of jail. To tell you the truth, it was even farther than I figured.”

“I told you that’s not why I did it!”

“Well, then, suppose you tell me the real reason. Because from where I’m standing, it looks like sexual bribery, pure and simple.”

Her stance was belligerent, with her fists on her hips and her chin thrust forward, but her angry gaze had faltered a little. She blinked several times, and he was surprised to see tears glistening in her eyes.

“Okay! Fine. You want to know the real reason I wanted you? I’ll tell you why. Because where I’m going, I won’t have the opportunity to make love to a man again for, oh, say, the next ten years or so. And since kissing you and...and other things...is not an entirely disgusting experience in spite of the fact that you’re a cop, I figured, why not?”

She’s yanking you around again. Tears and all. Don’t buy it.

“Kind of like having that last cigarette before the firing squad pulls the trigger?”

“Well, I could have done without that analogy, but yeah. Kind of like that.”

“I see.” He shrugged again. “Actually, I suppose kissing you has its advantages. As long as that pretty little mouth of yours is occupied, it can’t be telling me lies.”

“I’ve told you the truth! About everything!”

“Are you kidding? You haven’t spoken a truthful word since the moment I met you! You’ve lied to me, stolen my car,
shot
my car—”

“You big, dumb
jerk
! They actually
pay
you to solve crimes?” Her words shot through the forest, then echoed back at him, doubling the accusation. “Think about it, will you? If I’d really been the one who shot that store clerk, I wouldn’t have shot your car. I’d have shot
you
!”

Stunned, John just stared at her.

“Now let’s get out of here,” she said, wiping her eyes on the shoulder of her sweatshirt and sniffing a little. “I’m sick of this damned forest, and I’d just as soon get all that booking and fingerprinting and strip-searching over with, if you don’t mind.”

She turned and marched up the road, not even bothering to see if he was following. He stared after her, frozen to the spot where he stood.

I wouldn’t have shot your car. I'd have shot you.

He’d been so furious about his car last night that he’d just written her off as loony, never really stopping to think about the reason she’d destroyed his vehicle and not him. Why hadn’t she shot him when she had the chance? Even a shot in the leg would have rendered him incapable of coming after her. She could have hopped into his car and easily escaped. It would have been hours before he could have gotten out of the woods, and by that time she’d have been long gone.

But she hadn’t done that. She’d shot his car instead.

He started walking, staying several paces behind her, suddenly smothered in an avalanche of confusion. He’d seen a lot of things in those clear blue eyes of hers, but God help him, a lie wasn’t one of them. It’s just a ploy. That’s all. Take her to jail. Put the bad guys away and you’re done for the day.

This situation was even more clear-cut than most. Renee wasn’t a suspect he had to decide whether or not to take to jail. Some other cop had already made that decision, and judging from the evidence against her, it had been a slam dunk. All John had to do was transport her from point A to point B and his job was over. He had a clear, unequivocal responsibility that was as black-and-white as anything could possibly be. So why, when he looked at Renee, did he see all those shades of gray?

Because for the first time, he was actually starting to believe that maybe—just maybe—she was telling the truth.

It took at least twenty minutes after they’d started back down the road again for the fire-red blush on Renee’s cheeks to fade. She’d never felt so embarrassed in her life. She had never,
ever
thrown herself at a man the way she’d thrown herself at John. And then to have him turn around and mock her, suggesting that she was trying to bribe him with sex, had been the ultimate in humiliation.

No.
The ultimate in humiliation had been when she’d blurted out the whole pitiful truth of why she’d done it.

He’d been standing so close to her, pressing her up against that tree, swearing he was going to take her right then and there, and all at once she’d had a flash of the years of prison that awaited her. Suddenly she’d been desperate to feel something hot and intense and overwhelmingly sexual before they put her away for the best years of her life. All she’d wanted was for John to make good on his threat, to quit being a cop for a few stupid minutes and make her feel the same way she’d felt last night when he’d kissed her. And he had. For a moment. She could still feel his breath warming her neck, his lips engulfing hers, his touch waking up every nerve in her body. Her face got hot all over again just thinking about it.

But at the same time the memory thrilled her, it mortified her, too, because she knew now that it hadn’t been real. But even if he had wanted her, making love with him would have been the most foolish thing she could possibly have done. He probably wasn’t carrying any protection, and she certainly didn’t have anything with her. Would she have done it anyway? Would she have said to hell with all the promises she’d ever made to herself about turning her life around, which included not treating sex as a recreational sport?

Okay.
There were extenuating circumstances. She was about to be put away in some god-awful prison for the better part of her young life without ever experiencing sex with a real live man. All she’d wanted was for John to give her something she could remember during the long years she was facing inside those prison walls, where a man’s touch would be as rare as gourmet meals and bubble baths.

They walked in silence for the next hour and a half, trudging along the dirt road, which soon turned to gravel, then to blacktop. A rusted-out Ford truck passed them once, but even when John waved his arms and practically threw himself in front of it, the driver refused to stop and give them a lift. That had sent John into a fit of grumbling and cussing that used most of the four-letter words Renee had ever heard and added a few new ones to her vocabulary.

It was mid-afternoon by the time they emerged onto the state highway. Without a word, John turned and walked along the shoulder of the road in the direction of that seedy little diner where she’d propositioned him last night. She had no choice but to walk right along with him.

Soon they topped a hill and the Red Oak Diner came into view. She got dizzy with dread as she realized how close they were to civilization and therefore to jail, and for a minute she thought she was going to collapse right there at the side of the road. As soon as they got to a phone, John could call for help and her fate would be sealed.

She wanted to cry. To run. To beg him not to turn her in. To
help
her, for God’s sake, because there was absolutely nobody else on earth she could turn to right then. Instead he walked stoically beside her, his face a mask of cop-like purpose, as if things hadn’t gotten so hot between them a few hours ago that Smokey the Bear had almost been called into action. She could see now that he was a cop through and through, and he wasn’t about to cancel her one-way ticket to jail just because she’d happened to mention approximately a thousand times that she was innocent.

Or because she’d wanted him to make love to her.

They reached the parking lot of the diner, and she couldn’t stand the silence any longer. Sarcasm probably wasn’t the smartest thing to express right about now, but it was about the only way she could get words out without falling apart.

“So what’s the drill now, John? Are you going to find some rope, or tape, or maybe a spare pair of handcuffs lying around so you can subdue your dangerous fugitive again?”

John pulled her to a halt beside him. “When we go into that diner, I want you to sit down at the counter and keep your mouth shut. I mean shut, as in
absolutely nothing
coming out of it. Is that clear?”

She opened her mouth to snap back at him, but then she realized that something was different here. His words were low and intense, but without all the anger and animosity he’d shown her up to now.

What was going on?

He opened the door to the diner and motioned her inside, directing her to sit on a ragged vinyl stool at the counter. They were greeted by the same man who’d been there last night—a balding, fleshy-faced guy with an entire Goodyear steel-belted radial lopping over the waistband of his Wranglers.

“Well, hey, there, John!”

John’s face broke into a big, congenial smile. “Hey, Harley.”

Renee blinked with astonishment. A smile? From John? She’d assumed his mouth muscles were incapable of moving against gravity, but there it was: a beautiful, dazzling, million dollar smile that made him look thoroughly sexy and engaging, and she couldn’t take her eyes off him. He slid onto the stool beside her with lazy grace, as if he’d just dropped by for a casual cup of coffee.

Harley looked back and forth between John and Renee, flashing them a smile filled with an assortment of teeth in various states of disrepair. “Soooo...you kids have a good time last night?”

The question hung in the air for what seemed like hours. Renee waited for the ax to fall, for John to declare that she was a desperate criminal he was in the midst of hauling to jail. Instead, he shifted that gorgeous smile in her direction, this time filling it with so much sexual suggestiveness that she practically melted from the heat of it. He looked back at Harley with a conspiratorial, one-guy-to-another smile.

“A good time?” John slipped his arm around Renee’s shoulders. “Well, now, Harley. What do you think?”

Renee was so stunned she just sat there, her eyes wide, probably looking exactly like what John was making her out to be—a brainless bimbo racking up points toward the Olympic bed-hopping championship.

“I think you’re one lucky son of a bitch,” Harley replied. “That’s what I think.” He dropped his voice and leaned closer to John. “Looks like she likes the rough stuff, huh?”

John looked at Harley questioningly. Harley pointed to John’s bruised eye, smiling as if he thought a little sadomasochism really pepped things up between the sheets.

“Uh...yeah,” John said, turning to stare pointedly at Renee. “I guess things did get a little rough here and there.” He wasn’t kidding about that.

Harley tapped the counter in front of Renee. “Hey, darlin’. Ever consider an older man? Now, I might not be as pretty as John, here, but what I lack in looks I make up for in experience. You and me could—”

Whap!

Harley spun around, a little shocked, it appeared, at getting smacked on the back of the head with an order pad. “Experience
that,
you dirty old man!”

He rubbed his head. “Marva, you rotten old hag! I oughta—”

“You oughta get your butt into that kitchen and get to work fixin’ that dishwasher so you don’t have to do ’em by hand later.
That's
what you oughta do!”

Harley muttered something nasty under his breath and slunk into the kitchen. Marva turned to Renee with a kindly smile. “Ignore my husband, sweetie. He’s all bark and no bite. Believe me.”

Renee turned to John, feeling a rush of hope. He hadn’t told them. Why hadn’t he told them?

“We had some car problems back at the cabin,” John told Marva. “Had to walk out. I’m going to need a wrecker, so if you’ll just let me use your phone—”

“Why, sure!” She nodded to the phone at the other end of the counter. “Give Stan a call up at the Mobil station in Winslow. He’ll get you fixed right up.”

“Thanks, Marva. Hey, something sure smells good. What do you have cooking back there?”

“Beef stew.”

“Perfect. Why don’t you bring me and Alice some of that?” He glanced at Renee and winked. “We kind of forgot to eat last night.”

Alice? Who the hell was Alice?

Then she remembered. That was the fake name she’d given John last night. What kind of game was he playing?

Marva gave John the phone number of the Mobil station. He went to the end of the counter to use the phone while Marva went into the kitchen and returned with two bowls of stew. Renee was so hungry that it was all she could do not to plunge face-first into the bowl.