If She Dares (Contemporary Romance) (21 page)

Tony joined her in the car with a strained smile. Oh yeah, they were driving off in a car that neither of them owned.

“Did we steal this car last night?” she asked through clenched teeth that hopefully looked like a smile to the waving Mike and Betty.

“I’m going with we just borrowed it from a new acquaintance, since no one I know drives a ladybug car.” He glanced up from the map as she shifted the car into Drive and headed down the gravel path. “I’m assuming none of your friends do, either?”

She shook her head.

“According to the map, this is a private road that winds through the trees for about a mile. Pull over when you no longer see Betty and Mike’s fence line.”

Hayden drove another quarter of a mile until the friendly white fence turned to barbed wire. “Maybe we stashed our phones in the glove box,” she suggested as she pulled off the main road and put the car in Park.

Tony twisted the knob and as the glove box sprang open, dozens of green bills plopped onto his lap. “Holy shit.” Several more stacks of neatly piled cash remained in the glove box. “There has to be at least two thousand dollars in here.”

“I’m hoping that’s yours,” she said, afraid to hear the answer with the way their morning began. Her bank account currently sat at a nice, minimum-deposit requirement of fifty bucks.

He shook his head. “Nope. Your guess as to where this came from is as good as mine.”

Her throat began to tighten. “We’ve got to ditch the car. Wipe it down. Remove all trace evidence we were even here,” she told him, desperately trying to recall helpful hints from every crime movie she’d watched in the past decade. “Maybe we can give the rest of the cash to Mike and Betty so they forget they even saw us.”

Tony reached for her hands and drew them into his. “Hayden, would you normally steal a car?”

She exhaled in a deflated hiss. “Well, no.”

There was that reassuring smile of his again. “Something weird happened to us last night, but we wouldn’t do one-eighties on our personalities.”

She relaxed against the seat cushion. That was the first really good news she’d had since the coffee.

“Our phones aren’t in the glove box. Maybe we put them in the trunk to keep them safe,” he said, as he reached for the door handle.

“If we weren’t worried about stashing the money in the car, I doubt we would have been worried about the phones.”

“True, but I’ll check anyway.”

She popped the trunk so he could search. A minute later he crouched outside her window. “Nope, nothing.”

The sun glinted off his dark hair. She really wanted to touch it. Run her fingers through it. It would help to take her mind off their situation. Of course it also helped that he was such an easy distraction. What was it he’d said about himself? Couldn’t fault his taste? Yeah. Same here, buddy.

“Tony, I might steal a car if the circumstances really warranted it.” Where had that sobering thought come from? Wherever it had originated, she wanted to shut that part of her brain down before her mind added any other irritating revelations.

“Only after you left a note and promised to return it with a full tank,” he told her with a wink.

She pulled a piece of fluff off her shorts. “Well, that goes without saying.”

“Hayden.”

His voice gently urged her to look up. She raised her gaze to his and sucked in a breath. Something heated and elusive stirred inside her.

The humor faded from his eyes and he stiffened. “You feel it, too.”

She could only nod, and twisted in her seat so she could stare down the road and not at him. Her heart raced and her mouth was dry; she was having a serious case of want.

Hayden’s grandma was fond of sayings about closed doors leading to open windows—this morning had felt very much as if she’d run into a closed door, but that smile of his was like a fresh breeze through an open window.

“Hayden, I don’t want to get back to the city and forget all about this...this thing between us. I don’t know what it is, but I know it doesn’t happen. At least not to me.”

“Me, either,” Hayden admitted. She glanced his way, memorized every part of his strong profile because she didn’t want to forget this beautiful man. But then she didn’t really have to. She wasn’t playing the avoidance game this time. Last night, call it instinct or lack of inhibitions, but
something
had drawn her to this man. And so far that hadn’t been misplaced; he’d proven to be concerned for her and had given her space when she’d needed it.

Oh, Hayden could tell herself she’d stick with Mr. Abs because it was an adventure or that she wanted to make sure there weren’t any, er, indiscreet pictures that could derail her career, but if she were being truthful, intuition also told her she didn’t have to be guarded around this man.

She got out of the car to stand beside him. “Let’s find out what happened to us,” she said.

He flashed her that amazing smile of his and her skin grew warm. Memories of waking up in his strong arms and feeling the heat of his naked body against hers flooded her senses. Made her nipples tingle. But she had no memory of kissing him, breathing him in and tasting him. She wanted to change that. Right. Now.

“We could always do the old trick of making out to jog our memory,” he suggested, his voice playful.

She lifted a brow. “That’s an old tactic, is it?”

He nodded. “Tried and true, dates back way before the Jazz Age—”

Hayden cut off his words with her lips. He stood there rigid, his mouth unmoving. Then his arm encircled her waist, drawing her flush against his body. She pressed against him, and he groaned. His lips parted and she slipped her tongue inside his mouth, tasting coffee and pumpkin and something delicious that could just be Tony.

“You taste good,” she whispered against his lips.

“So do you. Amazing. Um...not that I’m complaining, but
that
came out of nowhere.”

“Not that you’d believe me, but I don’t usually indulge in my impulsive side. But any guy who uses the Jazz Age as an excuse to make out is a man I’d try to jog my memory with.”

“Actually I know all kinds of history,” he told her with a wink.

“All except ours. Speaking of...? Did you remember anything? I got nothing.”

He made a faux flinching movement that was too charming. “You got nothing? Surely I was better than that.”

She patted his arm. “Oh, you were a lot better—okay no. I’m not falling for that ruse. I’m keeping my opinions of your kiss to myself.”

“How will I know if I’m doing it right?” he asked, all innocence. Yeah, like this man held any doubts about his technique.

Hot. Sensual. Carnal. And those were just the first three words that popped into her head to describe the kiss. “I’ll tell you what, if I come back for more, then you’ll know if you’re doing it right.”

“Fair enough.” He eyed the front seat. “As uncomfortable as this car is, I think I should drive.”

“Why?” she asked.

His eyes softened, and a rueful smile touched his lips. “Because if we’re caught I can make them believe you had no idea I’d stolen the car. Only one of us gets arrested.”

It was strangely chivalrous. Hayden reached up, sank her fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck so she could draw him nearer. The reality of his kiss was way better than the fantasy.

“Besides,” he said, his gaze dropping from hers to study something far off in the distance. “I’ve been in jail before.”

Copyright © 2015 by Jill Floyd

ISBN-13: 9781460386149

If She Dares

Copyright © 2015 by Tanya Michna

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