Up in Flames (11 page)

As sweeping generalities went, it was unfair, but in the blonde’s case, probably true. She was about as unsubtle as she could get.

“This woman who died, she was not like her picture. She also had no pride.”

Sophie whipped her head around. “What do you mean? Did you see her?”

“No, no.” His face tightened with an unmistakable look of regret, and she wondered why. Because he hadn’t meant to let that slip? Or because he hadn’t had the opportunity to chastise Rena the way he obviously wanted to chastise the blonde across the room?

“If she came here, as you say,” he continued, “she could not have pride in herself.” He spoke slowly, seeming to choose his words carefully. “Decent young women don’t belong here, and that is why you should leave. This is a place for a man to drink alone. Or a place where a man might look for other . . . things to do.”

She thought of Zane stopping by here to find one of those things, and was immediately battered by a confusing rush of emotions. She should feel nothing about Zane’s one-night stand with Rena, but instead felt too much—anger, revulsion, regret, and, most disturbingly, a jolt of jealousy that left her staring as if she’d been slapped.

Manny fumbled for words, embarrassed. “I’m sorry, I should not speak of such things to a lady.”

Things like one-night stands? His overblown sense of chivalry served as a splash of cold water on her thoughts, and she laughed. “Please, I’m not that sensitive.”

She’d meant to put him at ease, but instead he frowned in disapproval. Apparently there were no shades of gray with this guy—you were either a saint or a sinner. Since she didn’t want to be lumped in with immoral bar floozies, she stood. “You’re right, I shouldn’t be here. Maybe I’ll see you at work.” For Zane’s sake, she hoped Manny’s other job prospect didn’t pan out.

He stood, too, which she thought was more gentlemanly behavior, but he didn’t look reassured by the announcement that she was leaving. In fact, he wasn’t looking at her at all. His gaze went past her, hard and shuttered. “You see?” he said in a harsh whisper. “You should not have come here.”

She turned, chills already trickling down her spine from his words. Near the door, a large man spotted her at the same time she saw him. Hooter.

A slow grin spread across his face as he walked toward her, his gait as slow as a stalking cat. “Well, well, well,” he murmured. “What have we here?”

Manny had advised her once before on how to deal with Hooter—say nothing. Hitching her purse strap over her shoulder, she stepped aside to walk past him.

Just as smoothly, he blocked her path. His linebacker size was enough to stop her, but he wrapped his fingers around her wrist, ensuring she couldn’t leave. She froze in place as he looked her up and down, her skin crawling everywhere his gaze touched. “Looks like I get a choice of females tonight. Brenda’s okay, but a man likes variety now and then.” He leaned closer, his breath hot against her ear. “I’ll bet you could give a man a good ride, couldn’t you, Sophie?”

“Get your hands off me.” She growled it between clenched teeth, looking him straight in the eyes.

He grinned and tugged her closer. She stumbled against a chair and lost her balance, but his iron grip kept her upright as he pulled her against his side. “I don’t think so.”

Several men had looked her way when the chair scraped. She took advantage of it by repeating her warning in a loud voice, making it clear to everyone in the bar that she was being forced. Witnesses were her best defense. “I said, let go. Now!”

A couple of men turned and watched with interest. One chuckled and called out, “Woo, mister, you hooked a live one!” The blonde, who she assumed was Brenda, leaned a hip against a table and popped a peanut into her mouth, chewing as she watched the entertainment. Hooter’s grip remained tight.

God, how far would they let it go without interfering? A trickle of fear ran down her back as she realized there might be no limit.

With her free hand she dug into her shoulder bag, desperately feeling for something to use as a weapon. Her best one was gone. All those years of carrying pepper spray for late-night classes at college, and she’d never needed it until she came home. A lot of good it did her now, tucked in the back of her dresser drawer.

Manny stepped forward, wedging himself between them without breaking the big ape’s hold. At a full head shorter than Hooter, he barely even blocked the view. “Leave her alone, Hooter.”

Hooter brushed him aside with a casual wave of his arm. “This doesn’t concern you, Man-well,” he said, enunciating his name as if it was an insult. “And I don’t see Sophie’s guard dog anywhere around here.” He shot a look toward the bathrooms, verifying that Zane wasn’t coming to her rescue. “I’d say that makes her fair game.”

Her heartbeat shot up several notches as Manny’s hands closed into fists. He was brave to stand up for her, but it wouldn’t work, and she couldn’t let him do it. Hooter would have him flat on the floor without even releasing her wrist.

Palming the only thing she could find, Sophie pulled her hand from her purse and held up her clenched fist, forefinger poised to press the top of the dark blue cylinder peeking between her fingers. “Three seconds,” she warned Hooter, unblinking. “Then you get a face full of pepper spray.” Beside her, Manny hesitated, eyes on her clenched hand. “One.”

Hooter’s gaze flew to the hand she held just out of reach. “You’re lying.”

“Try me. Two.”

His eyes narrowed, nearly disappearing in his big, beefy face as he weighed the risk of calling her bluff.

“Three.” Confidence was everything. She whipped her hand toward his face.

With a disdainful growl, Hooter released her wrist, pushing her away as he did. His upper lip curled into a sneer. “I shoulda figured you for the ball-bustin’ type.”

Keeping her eyes on him, she slipped the blue tube back in her purse, relieved that she wouldn’t have to defend herself with Passionate Peach lip gloss.

He stepped closer, so only she could hear. “That only works once, sweetheart. Next time I see you cruising the bars, you better be prepared to play with the big boys.” He spared a disgusted look at Manny, then shoved a chair aside and wove his way through the tables to an empty one.

Manny’s hand suddenly closed around her arm in a firm grip, jerking her toward the door. Surprised that Manny would put a hand on her, she followed without protest. He pulled her out the door, nearly shoving her into the parking lot, where he released her on the crumbling asphalt. She frowned into the night, disoriented.

“Do not come back here,” he told her sternly. “Not ever.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t,” she muttered, digging out her keys. He stood like a statue, arms folded, waiting for her to go. “Thanks for stepping in.”

He said nothing, but his mouth twisted with whatever bitter statement he held back. The thought occurred to her that he hadn’t wanted to confront Hooter, but had done it because his own moral code wouldn’t let him walk away from a woman in distress, even if, in his view, she’d brought it on herself. He must resent her for making him save her.

An awkward embarrassment heated her cheeks. He’d warned her to leave, but she hadn’t realized it was for his benefit as well as her own. It didn’t seem fair that she should feel at fault, but she found herself mumbling an apology as she got in her Jeep. He was still standing there as she drove off, watching like a disapproving father.

She grumbled her irritation with men as she drove. Irritation with Zane for not letting her handle Hooter on her own, thereby giving the big idiot another reason to target her. Irritation with Manny for being so damned chivalrous that she would have to take his feelings into account before ever confronting Hooter in his presence. And irritation with Hooter for being Hooter.

Manny, at least, had been well intentioned. She could let him off the hook, but not Zane. Zane was looking out only for himself, as he’d frankly admitted, knowing that allowing her to be harassed on the job could open the door to a lawsuit against his company. It must annoy him, having to watch out for her. She could only hope so, because it sure as hell annoyed Hooter, which didn’t help her at all. Tonight might not have happened if Zane hadn’t sent Hooter home for playing a practical joke on her.

It made a nice, full circle in her mind—her confrontation with Hooter at the Moosehead was all Zane’s fault. Steaming over it occupied her enough that she didn’t notice the headlights behind her until they’d stayed with her through two turns onto lesser-traveled roads, leaving other cars behind.

It was almost certainly a coincidence. B-Pass hummed with both locals and tourists on Saturday nights, and she habitually avoided them, taking a longer route into the mountains in order to skirt most of the traffic. The vehicle behind her might be doing the same thing. But her nerves had already been rubbed raw tonight, and it didn’t take much to start an uneasy feeling crawling through her. The mountain roads were unlit and dark as pitch, often skirting steep drop-offs—not the best place to play bumper cars, should someone want to scare her.

Her unease increased. Hooter hadn’t shown any inclination to follow her, and Manny’s self-imposed obligation to see her safely out seemed to end at the parking lot. Had someone else at the bar decided she was easy prey?

Watching the rearview mirror as much as the road ahead, she took the first turn back toward town. There was only one safe place to stop—the police station.

Inexplicably, the headlights hung back. She had her first clue as to why when they hit the well-lit streets of Barringer’s Pass—the vehicle following her was a pickup truck, but not Hooter’s black one. It was silver. Despite the fact that there were a few hundred pickups in B-Pass, many of them silver, she had no doubt who it was. The traffic light on Division that stopped them both confirmed it—Zane’s face in her rearview mirror was dim but recognizable. And clearly unhappy.

Well, so was she. The way she saw it, Hooter’s nasty disposition was a direct result of Zane’s interference, and she was tired of it. A logical part of her knew that she couldn’t blame Hooter’s actions on anyone but Hooter, but a larger part of her was itching to yell at Zane. It was bad enough that she kept giving in to the urge to defend him, but he could at least be grateful. Instead, she got “go home and don’t come back.” Then she got Hooter. Enough was enough.

The lecture she intended to give Zane didn’t need to be monitored by the police. She changed direction, heading directly for her small apartment complex. The two buildings were at the end of a quiet street, wedged between a row of duplexes and a rocky hillside. She drove to the far end of the lot, away from open windows and prying eyes, and slammed out of her Jeep as Zane pulled up on her passenger side. She was around the Jeep and in his face the second he stepped out of Will’s truck.

“What the hell are you doing, following me?” she demanded. “Isn’t it enough that you interfere with my life at work? I already have my hands full dealing with the repercussions of your macho strutting and posturing. I don’t need my own personal stalker, too.”

He closed his driver’s door with one hand and stepped into her tirade in the same motion, forcing her to back up. She came up against her Jeep and stopped abruptly. He didn’t, stepping too close for comfort, and more than close enough for her to feel the anger radiating off him like heat waves. The look he leveled at her was pure hatred, his dark eyes flashing with ebony sparks. The lips that she remembered as soft and supple looked hard as they curled into a snarl. “I’m following you because someone has to. You’re obviously too stupid to be allowed outside alone.” He ground it out, letting each word cut into her before saying the next. “Because interfering is
your
specialty, along with turning my life inside out, and shaking it to see what falls out.”

“
Your
life?” Outrage wasn’t enough to distract her from noticing the damp ends of his hair and the smell of soap, as if he’d stepped out of the shower in order to tear off in his truck and track her down. Manny had obviously tattled on her. That was taking protection a little too far, but she’d deal with him later. Right now she had Zane in front of her, freshly scrubbed and mad as hell. “
You’re
the one who dropped everything to follow me,” she accused, “and
I’m
interfering in
your
life?”

His eyes narrowed to furious slits. “Don’t try to tell me the Moosehead is your usual place to kick back at the end of the day.”

“No, it’s yours.”

“And you just had to investigate that, didn’t you?”

“I was investigating Rena Torres, not you.” She gave him a disdainful look. “I’m trying to find other men she might have been with. I don’t care what
you
did there.” Like pick up a woman for a one-night stand. Even unspoken, it hung between them as obvious as the Moosehead’s sign glowing in the night. To shift attention, she added, “Do you follow me everywhere, or did Manny call you?”

“Manny did the right thing. He was afraid I might have to save your ass.”

“My ass is just fine, thank you. I don’t need a watchdog.” She dodged to the right to slip around him, but his hand smacked the hard top of her Jeep, barring her way. Before she could dodge left, his other hand hit the window next to her head, trapping her against the vehicle. She met his eyes, swallowing back her heart, which had suddenly leapt into her throat. “Let me go.” The same words she’d said to Hooter barely twenty minutes ago. This felt entirely different.

He simply looked at her, severe and unflinching, as several seconds crawled by. She shifted her weight from one leg to the other, nervous because she couldn’t tell what he was thinking, and because staring into his eyes in a parking lot lit by only a few overhead lights reminded her too much of staring into his eyes by firelight. When they were both naked. The two realities blurred, and at some point she was sure time stopped completely and the world fell away, all but for Zane, warm and solid in front of her.

“How many times do I have to tell you? Stay out of my life, Sophie.”