To the Edge (8 page)

Nolan dragged a hand over his lower face. Gezus, she was a piece of work. He'd known her silence had been too good to last. She'd been way too willing, way too docile, in the fifteen minutes since he'd woken her up, hustled her out of the penthouse, and sped across town. He'd known the elements of surprise and confusion had been the only things he'd had going for him, and she'd just maxed out on both.

Too bad. He didn't have the time or the inclination to make nice. Or to wish there'd been a way to avoid dragging her out here. Or to wonder why a woman who drank hundred-dollar bottles of imported chardonnay knew about Ripple wine and fifty-cent draws and why the fact that she did had him fighting a smile.

He didn't have time to analyze that lapse into stag rut on the elevator, either.
Sob
of a bitch did the woman have a body. Dressed, undressed, didn't seem to matter. She played hell with his libido, which had seen a little too much downtime in the past three months if a shrew like her was flipping his switch.

He didn't even like the woman.

We don't have to like her to fuck her
—this from Skippy, his one-eyed wonder snake, who in Nolan's misspent youth had done a lot of his thinking for him and still felt entitled to express an opinion from time to time.

Now was not the time.

"You owe me, Ethan,"
he swore under his breath. Since his brother had pumped him full of caffeine and shamed him into taking this assignment, not one thing had happened to make him think sobriety didn't suck.

''Come on." He pried her fingers off the belt buckle and latched onto her upper arm. "Watch your peach." He covered her head with his hand to protect her from bumping it and dragged her out of the car. Then he ordered himself to ignore the way she smelled and the heat of her skin beneath his hand and the way her breast felt—soft and warm and lush—snuggled up against the back of his knuckles.

"Shut... up," he snapped, more harshly than he'd intended, when she started in again. He forced himself to settle down, dropped his tone a notch, and made an attempt to make her understand.

"This isn't about you, OK? I've got a little something I need to take care of. I didn't plan on it and I don't like it any more than you do, and if it'll make you move, I promise to explain later.

"In the meantime, you cannot stay out here alone and I couldn't leave you in the penthouse. So just cut me a little slack here. Keep your mouth shut, stay where I put you, and I'll have you back in the lap of luxury in no time."

So much for an attempt at diplomacy.

Her green eyes flared fire. And he picked a helluva time to notice—again—that she wasn't wearing a bra beneath that tight little red crop top T-shirt he'd had the bad luck to pull out of her drawer. Christ. Nirvana may be way off the lady's flight path, but the way she was packed into those short shorts with her midriff bare and her nipples poking against that stretchy cotton, she looked like fair game for any knuckle-dragging asshole with a notion that she came with a guarantee to put out. And he was about to haul her into a bar full of them.

Perfect.

It wasn't enough he had to save Plowboy's ass—he had to watch hers as well. And a fine ass it was, he thought, grim faced, as he guided her along ahead of him toward the door. In fact, it was a premium ass. Looked as good in those shorts as it did out of them. No time soon was he going to be able to ditch the picture burned into his brain of her stepping in and out of that shower.

"Will you quit pushing me around?"

He stopped short of going inside, turned her around to face him, and one last time put in a bid for her cooperation. "If there was any way to avoid this, believe me, I would. For the last time, put on the shades, do not open your mouth, and do exactly as I say. Now is there
anything
about that that isn't clear?"

Apparently not. Despite the venomous look she shot him, she finally slapped on the dark glasses and let him lead her into the bar toward what, he had a pretty good idea, was certain disaster.

6

It took a moment for Nolan to get the
lay of the land amid the pall of shifting smoke and the thump of pool balls bouncing off stained and torn felt bumpers. It took another to locate Plowboy. He was slumped over a table in a dark corner—alive apparently, if the heave of his shoulders told the tale. Four tattooed, pierced, and scarred biker types held somber court, flanking him with various levels of grim, combative defiance and bloodlust.

"About damn time," Char grumbled from behind the bar, where she nervously wiped a damp, dingy rag across the scarred surface. Through the smoke drifting from the cigarette dangling at the corner of her mouth, the blowsy blonde gave Jillian a squinty-eyed look. "And what have we here?"

"Your temporary charge." Nolan dug into his hip pocket, pulled out his wallet, and slipped out a Ben Franklin.

When Char reached for it, he held it out of her grasp. He ripped the hundred in two pieces and gave one half to her. She promptly tucked it into her very there cleavage while Nolan stuck the other in the waistband of Jillian's shorts.

"When this is over," he told Char, "it's yours ... but only if she doesn't have a scratch on her."

Then, ignoring her squeal of surprise, he swung Jillian into his arms, lifted her up and over the bar, and deposited her on the other side by Char.

"Stay," he ordered, and dug into his waistband for the little popper he'd filched from Jillian's nightstand.

He checked the chamber of the .22, then held it out to her. "Tell me you know how to use this."

She was still catching her breath, but her mind and her mouth were in full working order. "Stand still for two seconds and I'll give you a demonstration."

She just didn't quit. He couldn't help it. He laughed. "Hold the thought while I take care of a little business. In the meantime, anyone tries to scale the bar, you aim it right at their heart and give 'em the same look you're giving me now. Yeah, that's the one. They'll run like hell."

"You aren't running."

Those green eyes flared with fire and he just couldn't ignore the challenge. "Yeah, well. I know something they don't."

"You think I won't pull this trigger?"

"Oh, you'll pull it. You just won't pull it on me."

"And you think this because?"

He leveled her a look. "Because you want to get in my pants."

That shut her up.

"Char," he said, keeping his eyes on the bloodthirsty redhead he may have just provoked into filling him full of lead, "grab your bat and stick to her like glue. I'll try to make this quick."

"As long as your mouth's hanging open, you just as well drink something."

Jillian looked from Nolan, who was walking into a sea of sweaty long-haired, earring-wearing, beer-swilling thugs, to the
shot the bartender had plunked down in front of her. She didn't even consider refusing it. She picked up the glass and downed it, no questions asked.

Then she prayed for sudden death for the second time in as many hours.
Firewater
took on a whole new connotation as the liquor burned like hot razor blades all the way down to her toes.

When she could breathe again and her eyes had quit watering to the point where she could focus, she looked for Nolan. So she could shoot him for making that asinine remark, if nothing else.

Because you want to get in my pants.

Arrogant bastard.

The smoke was thick; the sunshades were dark. The first man she saw when she pulled things into fuzzy focus was not Nolan. And one look had her tightening her grip on her gun, thankful she'd saved her bullets for the real threat.

The man looked like a scripted character from every bad biker movie ever made. He was also staring at her like she was a piece of fresh meat and he hadn't gnawed on anything but motorcycle parts in days.

Black hair streaked with gray and slick with what could have been motor oil was pulled sharply back from a face that had clearly enjoyed watching and doing things she couldn't begin to imagine. That he'd lived hard, lived long, and could give a rat if he lived longer was etched deep in every crease, crag, and crevice on his face and flared in the wildness of his dilated pupils. He was bare to the waist but for a few strips of fringed leather and a loop of heavy chain linked by two nipple rings.

My God, that had to hurt.

When he caught her staring, he flexed his left pec and the tattoo on his chest of a naked woman with a witchy red mouth and humongous breasts wiggled her hips.

"Rule number one: Never make eye contact."

Jillian whipped her head toward Char, who was watching her with cynical amusement. She couldn't help it. Fascinated, she swung her gaze back to biker man. He licked his lips, grabbed his crotch with one hand, and made an equally lewd gesture with his pool cue with the other.

The air deflated from her lungs in a rush. "Oh God."

"You did it again." Char slammed her bat in plain view on top of the bar. "Do
not
look at the animals," she ordered for good measure. "Unless you want to feed 'em."

Jillian threw her a horrified look.

"Didn't think so," she said, cackling.

Carefully avoiding eye contact with anyone, Jillian searched the corners of the bar for Garrett. She'd just spotted
him when all hell broke loose.

A table crashed to the floor, making her jump as another man stood—his young face bloodied and battered—and flashed Garrett a grin so wide, it almost closed the one eye that wasn't swollen shut. To the sound of breaking glass, vicious curses, and a war cry of,
"Hooah!"
he dived into a sea of bikers in a blur of flying fists.

Jillian watched in stunned horror as Garrett, with a smile—a
smile,
for God's sake—calmly picked up a pool cue and waded in toward him.

It all happened so fast that she could barely follow the action. She'd taken a self-defense class once where the instructor had demonstrated how to place a hard kick to the thigh that, in theory, shocked the femoral artery and rendered the attacker unconscious. Jillian had never seen the technique put to practical use. In fact, she'd forgotten about it.
Until now.

In a lightning fast move, Garrett proved the theory on the first
do-rag dull witted enough to come at him with a knife. She sucked in air on a gasp as a beefy, oily biker took a swipe at Garrett's ribs with a wicked and lethal-looking knife. He dodged, spun, and with a well-placed kick dropped his attacker like a stone.

She hadn't even digested the violent stealth of the action when, giving a little come-on motion with the cupped fingers of his left hand, Garrett invited the next comer to experience the brunt of the blunt end of the pool cue. Garrett's precision jab to his diaphragm was followed by a hard, quick strike to his jaw. The Hulk Hogan look-alike folded with a thudding moan.

After that, the not-so-bad-after-all bad boys still standing didn't have much left in them except empty threats and bruised biker egos—not that they didn't continue to make a lot of noise. But for the most part, it was pretty much all over but the obscenities that they hurled like rocks.

All business, completely in control, Garrett snagged the Hooah boy by the back of his shirt and dragged him to his feet. Using only the pool cue as a deterrent, Garrett backed toward the door holding off anyone who might be stupid enough to challenge him. Considering that the amassed IQ of all bikers present most likely topped out around 100, she was amazed when none of them did.

"Get out from behind the bar and head for the car," Garrett ordered her quietly.

Jillian was so enthralled by the skillful and expedient violence he'd used to deal with the situation, and so relieved to be getting out of there without a little up close and personal contact with her crotch-grabbing admirer, she didn't even bother to rail at Garrett for issuing orders and expecting her to hop to—like she was an army grunt or some harpy biker babe who lived to lick his boots ... or get in his pants.

"Not so fast, chickie." Char held out her hand.

When Jillian just blinked, the bartender dug the other half of the hundred out of Jillian's shorts.

"I'll take this kind of easy money anytime, big guy." Char shot Garrett a cheeky grin as she lifted a portion of the bar that Jillian hadn't noticed was hinged. "Go," she said, and shoved Jillian out into the room.

"Go," Garrett repeated, and for once, Jillian didn't argue. She ran for the door.

"And once, in Panama, he—"

"Jase," Garrett cut the young Ranger off with a firm but exhausted patience. "Give it a rest, OK?"

Jillian had been listening to Jason's combat stories with half an ear as she studied Garrett. She wasn't sure when it had happened, but he had a small bruise high on his right cheekbone. The knuckles on the hands wrapped tight around the steering wheel were raw and bleeding. His jaw was clenched. And evidently, the authority in his tone finally shut the young Ranger up.

Sitting sideways in the front seat of Garrett's Mustang as they sped through town toward the airport, she peered around the seat where Jason "Plowboy" Wilson slumped in a splay-legged sprawl. He was bloody and battered and quite obviously drunk enough that he felt only the fuzzy edge of pain. No more than five feet nine or ten, the fair-skinned blond with the baleful brown eyes and military buzz cut personified the term
built like a bull.