Breathless (9 page)

1964
Las Vegas, Nevada

H
is brand-new black Chevy Impala SS with the snazzy red bucket seats sat between them and the far distant road. He and Lenny were in a deep gully. Deep enough that the car would never be seen by the travelers heading for the strip.

Frank LaMotta stood while Lenny sniveled on his knees in the dirt by the left front fender. “Move away from the car.” He gestured with his pistol.

Lenny crawled like the maggot he was. When he got far enough from the Chevy, Frank leveled the gun again—right between Lenny’s bulging eyes. “I don’t wanna have to wash your blood off it. Not when we just drove it off the lot.”

Lenny’s gaze flicked to the car. “You fuckin’ bastard, you knew I’d want to see it.” Cars and women had been a reason to compete for years.

“Where are the diamonds?” The boss didn’t like the idea of his goods being heisted. Lenny should have known better.

“What diamonds?” But Lenny’s lips twitched and Frank wanted to laugh as piss ran into the dirt. Lenny always was a coward. Worse, he thought he was better than everyone else.

“You pissed yourself,” Frank pointed out, enjoying the moment. “If only Loretta could see you now.”

Lenny narrowed his eyes, trying to look like a man again. “You leave her out of this.”

“Tell me where the diamonds are and maybe I will.” He raised his gun hand to indicate the fullness of the broad’s tits, while his other hand held his bulging crotch. “Maybe I won’t.”

Lenny roared and made a lunge for the gun. Frank saw the move coming and smashed the pistol into the stupid bastard’s temple. Lenny sank back, dazed, onto the hard-packed gully floor. “Tell me where you stashed the haul and I’ll leave her be.” He shrugged as if fucking Loretta was the last thing he wanted.

They both knew he was lying. He’d wanted that broad since he’d first seen her onstage. But she’d chosen Lenny first. Frank had been patient long enough.

A wild cunning entered Lenny’s gaze. “I won’t tell you where I stashed the diamonds, Frank.” He put his hands up to implore. “You know I won’t.”

“You’ll tell me or Loretta’s next.” After he fucked her good and hard, just to let her know what she passed up by taking Lenny into her bed.

The stupid bastard still shook his head. “Nah, you wouldn’t hurt her. Not when she told me how she feels about you.”

His cock twitched to life. “Whadda ya mean?”

“I came back for her and she told me. Damn broad! I came
back
for her. If I hadn’t, I’d a been in South America by now. You never would’a found me.”

“What’d she tell you?” Any red-blooded male would focus on Loretta. That woman left him speechless. He almost hated her for it.

“She wouldn’t leave with me because of you.” Lenny shook his head sadly. “Fuckin’ broad. Can’t trust ’em. Never could.”

He and Lenny had talked once about getting out, what it would be like, but fuck it, that dream was as dead as Lenny.

“We’ve known each other a lot of years,” Lenny whined. “Do me one favor.”

Frank nodded, pleased at the idea of Loretta waiting for him, wet and ready. He nodded. “For the sake of the years.”

“Loretta. The boss might figure she knows more’n she does. I never told her anything, I swear.” The knowledge of his death sat clear in his gaze. “I got the feeling the last few weeks there was someone else, so I never told her nothin’.”

Stupid bastard good as told him she’d been thinking about Frank. He stopped a moan at the thought of all that female flesh quivering for him. He could taste her now. He’d keep her name out of it. He’d keep her for himself. “When I’m banging her tonight, I’ll think of you.”

The bullet hit clean. Least he could do for a friend. Lenny slumped, life draining into the dirt, following the track of piss. They’d run together for fifteen years. But now, Frank had a new Chevy and Lenny’s woman.

Today
Seattle, Washington

T
he phone call he never expected to get came at 4:40
PM
on Saturday. Tawny James. Hallelujah.

He tried like hell to keep up with what she said, but images of Tawny flashed into his mind. He saw her legs, breasts, incredible hips, all smooth and lush with those dimples just below the small of her back where her ass filled out her bikini bottom.

Which was exactly what she expected would happen. Which was why she’d quit working for him in the first place.

He pulled his head back from where it wanted to go and shoved it back into the conversation. Something she said raised every one of his protective instincts. She was in danger and he’d been doing the teenage fantasy thing about her body. He was such a shit. And she knew it. “A stalker?” he asked. “You’re sure?”

“Some creep’s just gone through my laundry at the Wash ’n’ Suds, Stack. What would you call it if it isn’t stalking?”

“Sick? Perverted?” Stalking, why hadn’t he thought of that? This guy was probably another ex-boss who lov—wanted to get her into bed.

“Me, too, except this is the last straw. This guy’s been in my house.”

“What? When?” And the all-important question: “Where?” He jotted her address, but he memorized it as she spoke. Each syllable stood emblazoned in his skull.

“I’ll come get you,” he said, “and bring you here. If he’s watching, he’ll see you’ve reached out for help.”

“Once he gets a load of your size, that may be enough to make him back off.” She chuckled, low and breathless in that husky way she had that made him think of her breasts, jiggling, and her ass, all soft—

Pull it back, Stack. Now.

“I have a sense he’s some weasel of a guy that I’d never notice in my daily routine,” she explained.

“Not an ex?” Which was the way these things usually went. But the underwear angle didn’t seem right for a love affair gone wrong. Not unless the guy shredded her clothes. Most of Tawny’s clothes deserved to be shredded.

“I don’t have any exes, Stack. Just you.”

“Finish your laundry at my place. I can be there in fifteen.”

“Fine. I’ll be outside.”

“Inside,” he insisted. “I’ll come in for you.” No point putting her on the street where she could be snatched.

“Will do.”

He didn’t replay the fantasy of having Tawny James in his bed until he was sure she’d disconnected. Thirty seconds later, he shook free of the teenager that had him by the ’nads and shut off the office lights as he locked up.

On the way to get her, he thought of a stranger, a man, going through her home, her clothes, her lingerie, touching things he had no right to touch. Learning about her, knowing things he didn’t. The whole idea made him furious. The fact that she’d been scared enough to call him, when he should be the last man she’d want in her life, made him livid.

Someone had scared Tawny James, shaken her sense of security.

Stack Hamilton would make him pay.

Tawny flipped her phone closed and piled her underwear back into her laundry basket. “Damn pervert,” she muttered with a disgusted shiver. She’d have to wash every pair again.

She felt better now that she’d called Stack. He would find this guy and set him straight. She didn’t want any trouble from a weirdo, and she didn’t think the police would be any help.

Not at this stage. She hadn’t been threatened in any way. No odd phone calls or actual proof of anything, but a woman knew when her things had been moved. When her clothing had been pawed.

Tawny kept her drawers neat, her makeup put away. Her thongs and panties were sorted by age and wear. She tossed out the oldest ones before using a newer pair.

The police would need far more evidence of a crime than her gut feeling or the fact that her pile of thongs had been flipped over so that her newest ones were on the top.

But most importantly, Tawny was a nip-it-in-the-bud kind of gal and preferred facing her troubles before they grew.

Unless that trouble was Stack Hamilton, she reminded herself.

Stack.

She’d tried to put him out of her mind months ago but had come to accept Stack Hamilton would always own a piece of her, and that she would always miss him.

Too bad he was such a jerk.

A sexy, desirable jerk. A jerk she wanted so bad she could taste the need.

They’d had a good thing going while it lasted. For the three years she’d worked for him, she had found the job an interesting challenge. For a while it seemed Stack had actually noticed her mind. Together, they were a great team. He was all action, while she kept the office together, the accounts in order, and provided tissues to weepy female clients.

She and Stack had had an easy camaraderie, been friends even.

Then, in a fit of stupid, she’d agreed to go on a stakeout at a public swimming pool. She should have known better, especially after what she’d witnessed the night before in his office.

But the James women weren’t smart when it came to men, and when decision time had come for her, she’d gone the way of her mother and grandmother. Her flapper great-grandmother had been widowed young when her rum-running husband had been shot during a smuggling job.

Oh yes, Tawny came from a long line of gullible, love-struck women. She’d been stupid that day at the pool because she was angry, jealous, and blinded by the idea of vengeance. Stack had come to her, desperate for another pair of eyes at the pool, a woman’s pair of eyes. Tawny, angry with him for what she’d witnessed the night before, had wanted Stack to understand what he’d been ignoring all the time they’d worked together.

Hadn’t he seen her humor, her brains? Her devotion to his business, to him? Apparently not.

But once his eyes had set themselves on her, that had been the end of Stack liking her mind. One look at her in her bathing suit and he’d gone all male need, and their friendship had gone down the tubes.

She was out of there, heartsore and tired. She’d been jealous and all kinds of stupid. She’d known her logic was flawed, but what did a woman’s heart know of logic?

Just like all the generations of James women before her, as far back as they could track, the women she was descended from had made bad choices in men.

She’d hoped she’d broken free of the curse, but obviously falling for Stack was as bad as any other choice a James woman had made.

The man was a hound when it came to women, and she had the evidence, the memory. She shut her eyes, but it only brought the images to mind again.

She deliberately placed a sunshine-dappled meadow scene over the images of Stack and the blonde. She sighed deeply, drinking in the serenity she conjured. A buck and doe wandered into the meadow, increasing the pastoral beauty. The buck nuzzled the doe and she nuzzled back. Very sweet. The buck swept his nose along her side, down her flank. He was gentle, caring, and she turned her head to give him a lick with her long dark tongue.

She lifted her tail to offer the buck the chance to sniff her there too. His ears pricked up at the action, and he moved to the rear and covered her back. When the humping started, Tawny popped her eyes open, back to the laundry and the chatter of the women around her.

It was no use; the moment she thought of Stack, she thought of sex. Even now, months after leaving his employ and his easy friendship.

She could never forget the way he’d stared at her when she’d walked out onto the pool deck. He grabbed a towel to cover his crotch without a moment’s hesitation as his eyes had gone wide, then dropped from her face to her chest and stopped there for a long moment. She’d seen the flush on his neck from where she stood ten feet away.

By the time he’d taken a full inventory of her body, she’d known there was nothing left of the friendship they’d enjoyed. From that moment on, she was a woman to be conquered. Like all the others he’d had, Tawny would be another woman to brag about.

As soon as she got the scratch together she was going for a boob job. The smaller the better, she thought as she tucked her bras under a couple of towels in the basket. She didn’t want to remind him of what she kept under her long, heavy dresses. Firing up Stack’s libido was the last thing she wanted. It would be wrong.

It would be stupid.

Encouraging Stack would be just what her mother and grandmother would do. Going with her feminine instincts, letting her libido rule her actions, was what had created this chasm between them.

When she’d walked out of Hamilton Securities, she’d walked out on one of the best friendships she’d ever had.

She twisted her fingers together in an old habit she hated. Untangling her hands, she slipped her palms beneath her thighs and kept them there while she waited.

She glanced at her laundry basket again and noticed the tag on one of her bras was hanging out of the open plastic weave. She wedged her bras farther down in the pile. Across the top she spread a dishtowel with the picture of a rooster dead center.

Another word for rooster was cock.

Sheesh. It wasn’t Stack’s libido she was afraid of.

It was hers.

She turned the dishtowel over.

She took her seat again and waited for her knight in tarnished armor to appear. She didn’t need rescuing, and she could probably handle this weasel on her own, but instinct told her this was more than your average pervert. A real pervert would steal her panties or worse, use them to masturbate into and leave them behind for her to find. But to paw through it all and do nothing made no sense.

A squeal of brakes announced Stack Hamilton’s arrival. He climbed out of his Escalade and rounded the hood, eyes scanning every direction as he moved with determined strides to the front door of the Wash ’n’ Suds.

She stood and watched his approach. Man, he was big. Bigger than she remembered. Bigger than she liked, she lied to herself. Broad shoulders, long black hair under a black cowboy hat, Stack Hamilton was sin on two legs.

The kind of man to ruin a woman’s best intentions. She’d hired on with him because he’d been desperate for help. Bills and his unpaid invoices had cascaded from his desk when she’d walked into his office. He wasn’t much for paperwork, he’d said, and he’d soon be in deep shit if he didn’t get some of this cleared.

Cash flow had all but stopped because he was too busy to collect his accounts receivable.

“I’m good at that,” she’d said.

Stack had said, “Good is what I need. ’Cause I’m all kinds of bad.”

She should have heeded his warning. But then that’s what the James women had done whenever their good sense warred with desire. Good sense lost to bad boys every time.

But not this time. Not with Stack. This time, Tawny James would break the cycle. She pinched her tongue between her teeth to keep it from lolling out of her mouth as he pulled open the Laundromat’s door and stepped into the scent of detergent, bleach, and fabric softener.

He slid his shades to sit just above his brows and swiveled his head to face her. His eyes cut down her body and flared with humor. Of all the things she liked about him, his sense of humor was the one thing she’d never been able to resist.

“Ready?” Two strides brought him to her filled and stacked baskets. He picked them up, arms bulging, and turned for the door.

“Nice to see you too. How you been, Tawny? Goooood,” she snarked. “How you been, Stack? A jerk you say, how nice,” she muttered as she followed him to the waiting SUV. “This thing must be killing you at the gas pumps.”

He opened the back door, then slid her baskets in one at a time. “Get in.”

“Wait, my bike’s there.” She went to the bicycle rack and unlocked her bike. It was a new commuter bike and she couldn’t leave it. “It’s my only transportation.”

He snorted and stood guard over her while she unhitched the trailer. His shades were back down to cover his eyes, but she knew they weren’t on her. He watched the street for signs of the pervert. That’s why she’d called him.

His total focus on a job was the
only
reason she’d called him. In the time they’d worked together, she’d never seen him distracted from the job at hand. Stack was the ultimate professional at what he did. He was tough, knowledgeable, and a straight shooter.

He offered security services and detective work. He could blend in, or not, intimidate people with his sheer bulk, or sweet-talk a child into giving clear eye witness statements.

The man could do it all with a clarity of focus she appreciated. Had come to depend on.

The only time she’d ever seen him shook up was when he’d seen her in that damn bathing suit. When he’d tracked every line and curve of her body with his eyes, she’d melted into her panties and run like hell out of his life.

She’d hoped she’d finally found a man who appreciated her mind rather than her body. She’d thought she’d found a friend.

If she hadn’t been freaked at seeing him the night before
hip deep
in some other woman, she’d probably still be his right-hand gal.

She’d still be dressed in a sack and hoping he’d finally notice her warm eyes, competent hands, and bright humor.

But in the end, Stack wasn’t a friend, he was a man.

A big, bad-ass, shit-kicker of a man.

And he’d wanted to fuck her, just like every other big, bad-ass, shit-kicker she’d ever known.

He picked up her bike trailer and slid it into the back of the SUV, then took the bike from her. “Climb in,” he said again.

She hoisted herself to the passenger seat and buckled up without a word.

He pulled out into traffic. “So, what’s going on? Full detail.”

“Yes, I know the drill. I guess I should have taken notes when I first felt someone’s eyes on me, but I shook it all off.”

Just like all the other people she’d run across during her time with Hamilton Securities. She, like their clients, had waited until the situation could no longer be ignored.

She felt foolish. With a sidelong glance at Stack, she saw his agreement in the set of his hard lips and the tilt of his chin as he focused on the road. He thought she should have known better.

“I should have known better,” she admitted. “I saw it often enough when I worked for you.”