These Boots Were Made for Stomping (4 page)

When the time came to pack it in and get to bed early—so that she could be refreshed and ready for the meeting Darla had so
kindly reminded her of—Lydia left the shoes right beside her bed. Ready to slip on the second she woke up.

The weird thing was, she woke up with the shoes
on
her feet: a little fact that came to Lydia’s attention when the shrill ringing of the telephone woke her. She leapt out of
bed, landing awkwardly on the heels.

Not that she had time to wonder about her toes’ midnight migration into her shoes; the caller ID identified her office, and
she snatched up the phone and uttered a breathless hello.

“Lydia? It’s Joanie,” announced Mr. Stout’s secretary. “Looks like we’ll have an extra ten heads at the meeting this morning.
Can you swing by a bakery on your way in and pick up a couple of dozen doughnuts?”

“Sure,” Lydia said, eyeing the clock and mentally adjusting how fast she had to get out the door. No problem. She could do
this.

She had to take the shoes off to shower, and weirdly, she actually felt a little bit of a letdown as she stripped them off
her feet. “I’m coming right back to you,” she assured them, leaving the shoes tucked under the foot of the bed. She felt a
little silly talking to her footwear, but since she was alone in her apartment, what did it matter?

Showered and clean, Lydia slid into the outfit Amy had picked out for her and slipped on her fabulous new boots. A nice little
electrical charge zipped through her and—yeah—she felt different. More spunky.

Pretty damn cool.

The bakery on the corner was her absolute favorite, so she grabbed two dozen mixed doughnuts even though she would have to
schlep the boxes all the way into the city, her business tote slung over one shoulder and two boxes in a Twin’s Bakery bag
clutched tight in her other hand. With extreme willpower, she managed to not eat the doughnuts during the train ride, and
she was feeling supremely smug by the time she was a single block from the office with seventeen minutes to spare. Oh, yes!
No way was she getting any grief from Darla today. This was a major brownie-point day in the making.

That’s when she heard the scream.

Lydia froze. Her feet didn’t, though, and suddenly Lydia found herself racing pell-mell into a dark, scary alley, with absolutely
no idea what she’d find there. Or, more important, what she’d do once she found it.

It was the scream that caught Nikko’s attention, and damned if he didn’t try to ignore it.

The sound had come from the west, at least a couple of blocks over from where he was perched, biding his time until that late
that night, when Ruthless was supposed to show up in the alley behind a particularly seedy gentlemen’s club. According to
the Council’s new intelligence source—aka, the rat-fink who’d leaked information and technology to Ruthless—Ruthless had received
a tip from a psychic (honestly!) that the single source of his still-missing component part would be at the club near the
cocktail hour. At the moment, Nikko was insanely early from the anticipated rendezvous, but he didn’t trust the source at
all. Better to come early and stay late. Because this was one assignment he wasn’t taking any chances on.

Still, though . . .

A woman had screamed.

He shifted a bit on the fire escape, the repaired invisibility cloak weighing heavy on his shoulders. True, people got mugged
every day out there in the big, bad world, and Protectors couldn’t be all places at all times. Sometimes, you had to make
sacrifices for the greater good. And preventing New York from shrinking to a size he could shove in his pocket would seem
to fall into that category.

Still, though . . .

A woman
had
screamed. And that was one thing that Nikko couldn’t ignore, no matter how much he might tell himself he should.

“Whhhoooooooaaaaaa!”

Without even thinking about it, Lydia found herself racing into the alley, her discombobulated body aimed straight toward
a greasy-haired fiend with wild eyes and a gun pointed right at a teenage girl’s face.

Lydia tried desperately to head in the other direction. To make her feet turn around and run to find the police. Because only
a fool would jump in front of a hopped-up mugger, and although Lydia was a lot of things, she was absolutely not a fool.

Or, maybe she was. Because even as she screamed, “No, no,
noooooooo,
” her feet propelled her forward. The mugger looked up, apparently misinterpreting her words as a message for him, rather
than a plea to her feet.

Still, the surprise worked in her favor. The victim ducked, and Lydia’s feet went flying. She kicked out hard, managing to
catch the bad guy in the chin and send his head spinning. He tumbled backward, and she gave a shout to the girl:
“Run.”

The girl didn’t waste any time, hightailing it out of there with her school logo–emblazoned backpack smacking against her.

Great for the girl, not so great for Lydia. Especially considering how the thug had decided to turn his attention on her.

“You little
bitch
,” he snarled, clambering to his feet and swinging the gun around at her.

Lydia opened her mouth, but only a squeak came out. Still, her feet managed to rise to the occasion—literally. One foot snapped
up, knocking the gun out of the mugger’s hand even as the rest of her body cringed, wanting nothing more than to crawl under
a Dumpster and hide.

Mostly, anyway. A tiny little part of her thought that this kick-ass thing was pretty darn cool.

Not, however, cool enough that she wanted to stick around and watch her feet get her killed.
Nothing
was that cool, and she tried to turn around and race out of the alley before the creep either grabbed her or his gun.

No such luck. Instead, her feet pulled her forward against her will, and she knew—somehow she just
knew
—that she was going to end up kicking this guy in the face again.

Which would have been great if she was, oh, qualified to go around kicking the crap out of people, but her? Lydia Carmichael?
No, no, no.

She’d been way, way,
way
too lucky so far. If she didn’t get out of here—and right now—something was going to go horribly wrong and she’d end up dead.
Or worse.

Although her feet were moving forward, her mind and the rest of Lydia’s body beat a swift retreat. She reached out, grabbing
the iron bar of a nearby fire escape and putting a big old kibosh on the over eager-feet thing.

Unfortunately, that meant she also put a big old kibosh on her balance, and she jerked backward, her whole body in shock from
the internal fight between her feet and her sense of self-preservation.

That’s when she noticed that the guy had retrieved his gun. Worse than that, he had it pointed straight toward her face.

Gulp!

Except it turned out it wasn’t so bad after all. Because all of a sudden the gun melted into a gloppy pile of goo. Her attacker
let out a yelp and jerked his gun hand back as if it were on fire, even as Lydia turned, confused, and found herself staring
at an absolutely gorgeous guy who—

Oh. My. God.

Lydia couldn’t believe it. She stared, blinked, then stared again.

It couldn’t be! It simply couldn’t be happening. And yet it was.

She’d been rescued by the Silver Streak!

CHAPTER FOUR

“Are you okay?” Nikko asked, handily apprehending the gunman even while blatantly staring at the stunning—and obviously stunned—woman.
Her face, so innocent and guileless, was contorted in surprise, and her deep blue eyes reflected both shock and relief.

She’d been falling, her body in the oddest contortion he’d ever seen, almost as if she was trying to run forward even as she
ran away. And he shoved his captive to the ground so that he could zip sideways and hook his arm around her waist, pulling
him close to him, the warm softness of her body wreaking havoc on his senses in a way he hadn’t experienced in a very, very
long time.

Mentally, he shook his head. Yes, he missed having a woman in his life, but he’d been focusing on this mission too long if
the simple press of a woman against him distracted him so much.

Not a mere woman,
a voice in his head argued.
She is
anything but.

Maybe so, but now wasn’t the time. He turned sharply, the girl still in his arms, and pointed an accusing finger at the cretin
on the ground who was even then struggling to get up. “I don’t think so,” he said, and the gunman sank back down, trembling,
his eyes darting between Nikko and the girl.

“You,”
the girl whispered, her brow furrowing to form an adorable vee above her nose.

“I heard your scream,” he said. “I’m sorry I didn’t get here faster.”

“I . . . that’s okay. I—well, she’s safe now, right?”

He cocked his head. “She?”

“The girl. The girl I was trying to rescue. Or . . .” she added, her brow furrowing into thoughtful lines. “Or, at least,
I think that was what I was doing.”

“I didn’t see another girl,” he said, wondering if perhaps she was a tiny bit hysterical.

For some reason, that made her smile. “Then I did it. I really did it.” She met his eyes, hers flashing with amazement and
pride. “I haven’t got a clue how I did it, but I saved her!” She smiled up at him, a dimple furrowing her left cheek. “And
then
you
swooped down and saved
me
. It was amazing—”

“Honestly, it was nothing.”

“Me,” she continued without missing a beat, “rescued by an honest-to-goodness superhero. Rescued by the Silver Streak. What
an amazing day.”

It had been, Nikko thought. Until she said those two little words, it really had been.

Right away, Lydia knew she’d said the wrong thing.

“I’m sorry,” she sputtered. “I . . . I’m just so grateful and—” Amazed. Awed.

In lust.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, but the words lacked the warmth she’d heard only seconds before, and as he turned to bind
the wrists of their captive, all she could think was that she desperately wanted to run and hide. Her feet, however, stood
firmly rooted to the spot. The same feet that only moments ago had been dead-set on running.

Traitors.

Except, of course, they weren’t. For that matter, her feet had the right idea. Because deep down, under that oh-so-familiar-Lydia
layer of scared, all she wanted in the world was to stay there. Near him. Soaking him up, absorbing the essence of him. This
man. Whoever he was.

Because he couldn’t really be the Silver Streak, could he? Sure, he’d seemed to swoop out of nowhere, but she had been a little
preoccupied

And, true, the gun had melted, which was rather out of the ordinary.

And, yes, he did look exactly-freaking-like her comic book fantasy.

But, really, what did that mean?

Most likely the irritation she heard in his voice stemmed from the fact that dozens of women told him on a daily basis that
he looked like the Silver Streak. Would she like to be told she looked like Wonder Woman?

She frowned. Okay, bad example. But still—

Still,
she told herself firmly, superheroes do exist.
You
know it. Even if no one believed you.

She’d been standing with her mother, holding her hand tight as they prepared to cross the street. That was when the limo had
zoomed by and a baby of all things had been tossed out of the sunroof. Lydia had seen it quite clearly, though she’d later
learned that most passers by had been focusing on the naked woman trying to crawl out of the front window.

Weird.

Weirder still was the man who’d swooped from the sky and rescued the baby—just
swooped
. And he didn’t even grab the baby, not at first. Instead, he’d levitated it up into his arms, looked in Lydia’s direction
with a twinkle in his eye, then soared away, up over the rooftops.

Lydia had told her mother what she’d seen, and had been scolded for making up stories. When she was older, she’d pulled newspaper
reports and discovered that the child had been rescued in a high-speed gangster chase through the use of amazing SWAT technology.

Yeah, right.

It had been a superhero—even if she was the only one who realized it. And here was another one, standing right in front of
her. Amazing.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

She blinked, forcing herself out of her mental meanderings. “Yeah. Um. Yes.” Her feet no longer seemed compelled to run her
life, and she’d survived a mugging and so, yes, by all the standards of polite society she was, in fact, okay.

“I need to get him to the authorities, and then I need to get back to . . . well, I need to get back to a project I was handling
before I heard your scream.”

“It wasn’t my—never mind.” Really, not important.

“Can you get home okay?” he asked, reaching down to grasp her hand and pull her up. She gasped, the touch of his hand against
hers affecting her like a million volts. Or at least the way a million volts would feel if it didn’t kill you immediately.

Honestly, her mind was turning to mush, and it was all this guy’s fault. This sinfully gorgeous, hunk of a male specimen
hero,
who’d saved her life and—she blinked. Did he say
home?

She shook her head, reality crashing down around her in the form of an eight a.m. meeting for which she was now very, very
late. “I’m not going home,” she said, scrambling to her feet, Darla’s warning not to be late ringing in her ears.

“Oh, damn!” she cried, looking at her watch. “It’s already forty past.”

She bit her lip and searched frantically for the doughnuts, but she knew it was futile.

Because unless her new shoes could turn back time, she was screwed. And somehow, Lydia knew that that was simply too much
to hope for.

“But the
guy
, Lydia,” Amy wailed, almost spilling her merlot. “I had to get a babysitter and everything. You can’t dangle a carrot like
that and then not tell me. What about the
guy?
”

“The guy?” Lydia repeated, taking a long sip of her Cosmopolitan. “I tell you that my shoes are turning me into some sort
of crime-fighter. And,” she added, counting it out on her fingers, “that I got
fired
, and all you want to know about is the guy?”

“You said he was a superhero. You said he was the spitting image of the Silver Streak.”

“Yes, yes, yes,” Lydia said in a rush, because she’d already decided that she was an idiot for stupidly hurrying away. Considering
there were umpty-bazillion people in Manhattan, the odds of ever seeing the guy again were slim, and no way was she getting
her hopes up. Better to pretend the encounter was no big deal and push it firmly out of her mind. Except maybe, possibly late
at night with a glass of wine, a bubble bath, and appropriately dim lighting.

Not that she was going to admit that to Amy. Not without another Cosmo, anyway.

“So?” Amy pressed. “The guy looked like the Silver Streak, your major crush for the last two years because—as we have conclusively
established on innumerable occasions—you are a twelve-year-old girl at heart. Though why you’d want to date a superhero is
beyond me.”

Lydia’s eyebrows went up. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Oh, sure, strength and prowess is all good and fine. But he’d be running off to fix some other girl’s problems all the time.”

Lydia forced herself not to smile. “Exactly why
my
fantasy is for a superhero with a domestic side. Strong and sexy, but nurturing, too. The kind of guy who’d fix me a romantic
candlelight dinner and not have it catered. Or breakfast in bed other than Frosted Flakes.”

“That man doesn’t exist,” Amy said with a mischievous grin. “I got the last model.”

“Congratulations,” Lydia said, lifting her Cosmo in a toast. “Guess you’re buying this round.”

Amy laughed, but didn’t drop the ball. “Tell me!”

Lydia sighed, clinging to her forget-about-him plan by her fingernails. “You’re missing the whole point. He was a superhero—
and so was I.
”

Amy, however, seemed less than impressed. “Told ya, didn’t I?”

“That I was going to be able to kick serious butt if I bought these shoes? And that the shoes would be calling the shots?”
Lydia asked, kicking her feet up into the air and drawing a few stares from the other bar patrons. “Um, no. I don’t think
those words actually left your mouth.”

Amy lifted a shoulder. “Maybe you just weren’t listening.”

Frustrated, Lydia leaned forward and banged her head on the table three times. When she was near to concussing herself, she
looked up at her friend’s amused expression. “You know you’re hopeless, right?”

“I’m deaf to everything you have to say until you tell me about the guy.”

“And I’m not telling you about the guy,” Lydia said, “until you have appropriately consoled me over the fact that Stout fired
my sorry butt.”

“Okay,” Amy said, looking contrite. “The guy will hold. Tell me what happened.”

“Total unfairness is what happened,” Lydia said. “And nobody—
nobody
—bothered to consider the fact that maybe I was out there trying to make the world a better place. Honestly, Good Samaritans
have a hell of a time these days.”

“The story, Lyd,” Amy said, apparently not caring about the plight of the Samaritans.

“It all started with the guy,” Lydia began. “Or, actually, it started before the guy. But it
really
started when I sat on the doughnuts.”

Amy’s face squished up as she bit back a laugh. To her credit, she managed to keep it at bay. Lydia took that as an invitation
to continue, and launched herself full-blown into the story of her humiliation, publicly rendered in front of the entire staff.
Absolutely mortifying at the time. Now, after three Cosmopolitans and with one more on the way—she signaled the waitress to
make sure—she was beginning to find the hidden humor. It was waaaaaaaay down there, hiding under the lemon twist, swimming
in a puddle of alcohol-laced cranberry juice, and shouting dire predictions of one whopper of a hangover in the morning.

Lydia ignored her inner responsibility and continued to sip. She’d met the guy of her dreams, lost the guy of her dreams,
and gotten fired, all within a two-hour time frame. She deserved a bender.

“I was already late,” she said, “so I couldn’t stop to get more doughnuts. So not only did I race into the conference room
a full forty minutes late, but everyone was staring at me because they had assumed I was running late because I was waiting
for the snacks—like I’d stand in line at a bakery instead of getting to a meeting on time.”

“So what happened?” Amy pressed, twirling her hand as if that would make the story come faster.

“I stood there. Except, I didn’t. I
wanted
to stand there, all cowering-like in the doorway. But my feet had a mind of their own and they marched me to my seat. So now
I was standing by my chair instead of by the doorway.”

“You sat down, right?”

“Nope,” Lydia said. “I was going to, but Mr. Stout called me back to the door. And even though my feet didn’t seem really
keen on going, I managed to get moving in that direction.” The whole feet thing was rather bizarre, actually, and Lydia wasn’t
sure she liked it. Ever since she first put the shoes on, the shoes seemed to be leading the show.

“He totally read me the riot act for not getting to work on time, for not turning in the report on time, and for forgetting
a simple task like the snacks.”

“But you did turn the report in on time,” her loyal best friend replied, suitably indignant.

“And I tried to tell him that,” Lydia said. “I had this whole long spiel about how the report had been on his desk for hours
yesterday, and that he was the one who’d made me stay late even though I’d done all my work, and that it was completely unfair
of him to assume that I’d blown off getting doughnuts when, in fact, I’d been saving a girl from being mugged.”

“No way! You go, girl!”

“No, no,” Lydia rushed to correct. “I said I
tried
. It was all there in my head, but I couldn’t quite get it past my lips.”

“Lydia!”

“Well, I tried.”

“You’re telling me you raced into an alley to fight a guy with a gun, but you couldn’t tell Mr. Stout to go jump in a lake?”

“Pretty much,” Lydia said miserably.

“So then what?”

“Then he had me sit back down, I went through the whole stupid meeting, went back to my desk and finished two projects, and,
as I was shutting down my computer, Mr. Stout came by and fired me.”

“No way.”

“Way,” Lydia said.

“And you
still
didn’t say anything?”

Lydia shook her head, looking down at the floor. “I’d taken off my shoes and was kind of sitting there relaxing, you know?
And I couldn’t open my mouth. He fired me and I just sat there and took it. I even thanked him.” The memory washed over her,
making her shudder.

“You didn’t!”

“I totally did. I’m such a dweeb.”

“You are not. You rescued that girl. That has to count for something.”

Lydia cocked her head and crossed her arms over her chest, leaning back in her chair as she examined her friend. “Yeah, it
counts for the fact that I have good taste in shoes.” She pointed at the things. “
These
guys did it. Not me.”

“
Phhhbtt,
” Amy retorted, calling on her cunning intellect to draw up that snappy comeback. “Shoes can’t make something out of nothing.
It’s in there.” She leaned across the table and tapped Lydia on the chest. “It’s in you.”