Czytaj książkę: «Virgin Promise»

Chapter One

Angela cursed three times, stamped her foot and beat on the windshield glass with her fist, but her temper tantrum did nothing to change the situation. First her car had refused to start. Then, when she’d stomped off to find a phone to call her motor club, she’d locked her keys inside the car. She was out here in the clinic parking lot at a quarter past nine in the evening, and everything she owned was locked inside, including her purse. She didn’t even have thirty-five cents on her to make a call from a pay phone. All she had going for her was that things couldn’t get worse.

As the full wretchedness of her situation dawned on her, she became aware of a rumbling that grew louder. Whirling around, she saw a man on an awesomely big motorcycle slowly approaching. Suddenly her situation seemed a whole lot worse than it had just seconds ago.

She should run, she thought, though her feet remained stubbornly planted to the asphalt. Her eyes were riveted on the broad shoulders of the biker, the way his faded denim shirt stretched across his chest. His powerful thighs, covered by yet more denim, gripped the bike, and his black-leather-gloved hands held the handlebars in what looked like a gentle caress.

A tinted visor across the front of his helmet hid his face, but Angela knew he was looking at her. Staring, in fact.

Though a stranger in a dark parking lot represented unspeakable danger, Angela was fascinated. She couldn’t turn her gaze away, much less run. A tightness claimed her chest and a slight queasiness assaulted her stomach. The feeling reminded her of riding the Ferris wheel at the State Fair—exhilarating, but scary.

The bike pulled up beside her. The rider pulled off his helmet, revealing a full head of thick, black, wavy hair, a bit shorter than she’d expected. He smoothed it off his forehead in a fluid gesture, all the while staring at her.

Then she saw his eyes. They were a piercing blue, so vivid she could easily detect the color even in this dimly lit scenario. They almost glowed, as if they had a light of their own. They were topped with steeply angled, dramatic eyebrows and rimmed with thick lashes. His long nose might have been aquiline once, but it looked as if it had been broken a few times. His cheekbones were razor sharp, his lips full and sensual, his chin square as a brick and just as stubborn looking.

She took in all of his features instantaneously, though for a moment it seemed time stood still as they stared at each other.

“Problem?” he asked in a deep, almost gravelly voice. A whiskey voice. She’d read that in a book once, but only now understood the meaning of the phrase.

Somehow she found her own voice. It even managed to come out sounding fairly normal. “It won’t start. Then I locked my keys inside.”

“Double trouble,” he said, turning off the bike. He swung one leg behind him and dismounted. His innate animal grace made Angela’s mouth go dry. In two strides he was very close, and for one agonizing moment she thought he was going to grab her. Instead he stepped around her, leaned down and peered into the driver’s window.

“Yeah, there they are, all right.”

“You didn’t believe me?”

“I like to see things for myself. What’s your name?”

“Angela,” she blurted out. God, what was wrong with her? She shouldn’t give out her name to a perfect stranger.

“Angela,” he repeated. Her name coming out of his mouth had an erotic turn to it she’d never heard before. “Well, Angela, got a coat hanger?”

She noticed he didn’t offer his own name in return. “No. Actually, I think I’ll just go find a phone and call someone…” As she spoke, she edged away from him, overwhelmed by the overt maleness of him. He wasn’t huge—she’d give him six foot one—but there was something about him, a barely leashed power, a dangerous essence, that made her uneasy even as it fascinated her.

“Hold on, now. Maybe I can help you out.” He sidled past her and went to the trunk, popping it open with one deft movement. “You don’t lock your trunk?”

“There’s nothing in there anyone would want to steal.”

“Just a spare tire and a jack. And—” he grabbed something from her trunk and held it aloft triumphantly “—a coat hanger.” He slammed the trunk shut and immediately began untwisting the wire hanger. Angela watched, utterly enthralled, as he manipulated the pliant metal into a curved hook. He’d obviously done this a time or two, which only added to her uneasiness.

“Maybe I should just go call the auto club,” she ventured, knowing now she’d made a mistake. She never should have let this frightening stranger take control of the situation away from her. Hadn’t she learned anything in her assertiveness-training class?

“They’ll take forever to get here,” the stranger argued as he returned his attention to the locked door, then felt expertly along the edge of the window for just the right point of entry. “It’s St. Patrick’s day. Drunks all over Dallas are running out of gas, flattening their tires on broken beer bottles and losing their keys. Trust me, you don’t want to be out here alone.”

He had a point. Angela stood back a few feet, ready to flee at the slightest provocation. But the stranger, frightening as he was, hadn’t made any threatening gestures or comments. Then again, he didn’t have to. His mere presence was intimidating enough.

He made several tries at the lock, then pulled the hanger out and reshaped it slightly.

“You’ve done this before,” she said.

“Yeah.” He inserted the hanger again. “Hell, there’s not a car made I can’t get into.”

Oh, that was comforting.

“Comes from a misspent youth. Hah!” He gave the coat hanger one final yank, and the door lock gave. In seconds he had the front door open.

She was so relieved, so anxious to retrieve her precious keys, that she forgot to be cautious. She slid right past him, only belatedly realizing her body would brush against his. She received a brief impression of heat and hardness before she gained the relative safety of the driver’s seat. His physical allure was undeniable.

She refused to look at him, afraid of what she would see in those luminescent blue eyes. Mostly she was afraid she would see acknowledgment of what she felt—awareness. Awareness on a totally physical, sexual level.

It was a preposterous thing for her to admit, but it was true. She’d felt desire before. She’d even been tempted, at least mildly, to break the celibacy habit. But for her, physical awareness had always followed emotional closeness. She’d never just looked at a guy, heard his voice, watched his hands and felt a rush of heat wash through her like liquid fire.

All wrapped up in this crazy flush of lust was her fear. She was completely vulnerable to him. He was big and undoubtedly strong, and he could have her under his control in a heartbeat. Her smartest course of action, she knew, was to get the hell out of there. Grab her purse and her keys, lock up her car and flee.

“Thanks so much for helping me out,” she said in an attempt to end the encounter. “I don’t know what I would have done…”

He wasn’t listening to her. He leaned through the open car door, and for one glorious, hideous moment she thought he was going to kiss her. Then he sank lower, leaning in farther, and her engine hood popped open. He’d been searching for the release lever.

“Really, you don’t have to—”

“It’s no trouble,” he said, withdrawing, but not before Angela got a noseful of his scent—clean, like soap, but with a hint of musk. He probably hadn’t showered in the past thirty minutes, but the essence was enough to convince Angela that the man had good grooming habits. That didn’t exactly fit the Hell’s Angel image given off by the rest of him.

Resigned, Angela climbed out of the car with her purse and car keys firmly in hand—in case she decided to run away after all. But despite his daunting appearance, the man had been nothing but helpful so far, she reasoned. If he’d wanted to do something terrible, he’d probably have done it already.

With that comforting thought in mind, she stood passively by and let the man try to fix her car. She didn’t normally allow fate or luck to dictate her behavior, but tonight she felt powerless to divert the freight train of events barreling along the tracks in her personal universe.

She was taking an enormous chance by trusting this man. Yet she didn’t seem to have any choice. For the first time in her life, Angela Capria had been swept off her feet.

And the guy wasn’t even trying! Imagine the results if he put a little effort into it.

WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING? Vic Steadman thought, as he fiddled pointlessly with the woman’s car engine. The distributor cap had been unscrewed, a fully deliberate effort someone had made to disable her vehicle. With a twist of his hand he could have her engine running and send her on her way.

That’s why he’d come, right? To make sure the woman wasn’t stranded all alone in a dark parking lot? But he didn’t fix the car. Instead he checked fluid levels, disconnected and reconnected hoses, checked points and plugs, all in an effort to buy himself some time. What did he really want to do here?

He’d never expected Angela Capria to be so gorgeous.

A few hours ago, when his rookie partner, Bobby Ray Allen, had lain on the gurney getting stitched up in the Parkland E.R. after an unfortunate confrontation with a beer bottle, he’d confessed his problem to Vic. It seemed he had a blind date, and there was no way he was going to make it out of the E.R. in time to meet her. Would Vic pinch-hit for him?

Vic had considered this a very peculiar request. Normally Bobby had plenty of female company and didn’t need fix-ups. Also, Bobby was territorial about his girlfriends. He seldom introduced any of the guys on the force to his various women, much less invited one of his buddies to fill in for him on a date. If Bobby hadn’t been lying there bleeding, Vic would have suspected he was being set up.

“Why can’t you just call her?” Vic had wanted to know.

Then Bobby had explained the unusual circumstances, and Vic had been stuck. Apparently this woman refused blind dates. So her friends had covertly set her up. They’d sabotaged her car, and Bobby was supposed to rescue her, then sweep her off her feet with a dark, dangerous, sexy persona.

If Vic hadn’t filled in, the poor woman would have been stranded out here alone in a questionable neighborhood.

He’d originally planned to identify himself as a Dallas cop so as not to scare her, then fix her car and send her on her way. But that was before he’d seen her.

“Do you see the problem?” the woman asked anxiously.

“Not yet,” he lied.

From the way Bobby had talked about her, he’d been expecting some homely, sexually repressed spinster. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Angela was in her mid-twenties, slender, with rich dark hair pulled into a loose braid and shapely curves that not even her sexless nurse’s whites could disguise. Her breasts were high and full, more than a handful, and her hips were gently rounded beneath the white slacks. He wasn’t sure what color her eyes were, other than that they were dark, but her mouth was incredible—full, moist and pink.

As he thought about that mouth and all the things it might be persuaded to do, Vic felt a stirring inside him, like a sleeping beast opening one eye. Though the foreignness of the feeling concerned him, he couldn’t help but smile at the imagery that had come to mind. Him? A beast? He was reliable, steady Steadman.

Incredibly, his police badge never came out of his pocket. Instead, during that split second he had to assess her, he racked his brain for everything Bobby had told him about her. Massage therapist…repressed…needs a fantasy man to sweep her off her feet, someone dark and dangerous to take control out of her hands, to push her buttons, to awaken her sexuality.

Without any conscious decision on his part, he’d found himself becoming that dark, dangerous fantasy man. He’d stopped short of actually frightening her, because that wasn’t in him under any circumstances, but he’d definitely taken control away from her.

“Looks like it might be your distributor,” he said, hoping she didn’t know much about car engines. “I could fix it if I had my tools.”

“It’s okay,” she said. “I don’t live far. I’ll just call a friend to pick me up, and deal with the car tomorrow.”

That thought made him uneasy. Any mechanic would immediately spot the sabotage, and she would know Vic had pulled a fast one. He quickly formulated a plan. “If you don’t live far, I’ll give you a lift,” he offered.

The woman’s eyebrows shot up. “On that?” She nodded toward his cycle.

“Sure, why not?”

He could tell she was intrigued. “I’ve never ridden a motorcycle before.”

He shrugged. “Nothing to it. I do all the driving. You just hold on to me.”

She shook her head. “I’d have to have a helmet, and I won’t take yours.”

He sauntered over to his motorcycle, opened the side compartment and produced an extra helmet. He dangled it by the chin strap, almost like bait. “Any more objections?”

Angela licked her lips and cocked her head, still indecisive. She would have to be crazy to go with him, he thought. He hadn’t even offered her a name. But she felt the same sexual pull he had. He’d seen it on her face, in her eyes, during those first few moments when they’d simply stared at one another.

“Do you promise to go slowly?”

“I haven’t had a ticket in years.”

“All—” Her voice cracked, and she took a moment to clear her throat. “All right. I appreciate it very much.”

“Pleasure’s all mine.” He gave her a long look before he climbed aboard the bike. She hesitated another moment, then took the extra helmet and set it on her head. He had to help her adjust the strap. His knuckles brushed against the ivory smoothness of her cheek, sending ribbons of warmth trickling through his body. Damn, if her cheek did this to him, imagine what her other body parts might accomplish.

No, maybe it was better not to think of that. He had no idea how far this would go, but he didn’t imagine Angela would invite him into her bed no matter how powerful the fantasy. He didn’t believe she was that impulsive.

After donning his own helmet, he extended a hand to her for support. She grabbed it and clambered aboard behind him.

That first touch of her hand to his jolted him to another level of awareness. He’d never been so conscious of the feel of a woman’s hand before, the smoothness, the soft pads of her fingers. She wiggled around, settling in, and he nearly jumped out of his skin. He was supposed to be the one in control, yet he was the one whose brain was short-circuiting. He imagined how her cute butt looked wiggling on the black leather seat.

She tucked her purse between their bodies, but there was still plenty of contact as she leaned forward and wrapped her arms around him in a snug, warm embrace.

Vic could have sat there all night, just feeling her soft breasts pressed against his back. He could even smell her, and she smelled like coconut and almonds. As a massage therapist, she probably slathered scented lotions on her hands all day long.

“Where to?” he asked.

“Oh. On Seymour and Huntington, the Huntington Terrace Apartments. Do you know where that is?”

“I’ll find it.” And if he made a wrong turn by accident, well, a few extra minutes of this exquisite torture wouldn’t kill him. Maybe.

With a turn of the ignition key the bike rumbled to life beneath them.

The evening was beautiful, the air warm but still with the crispness of spring. The streets of Angela’s Oak Lawn neighborhood were filled with St. Patrick’s Day revelers, and he was glad she didn’t have to wander around by herself. Normally the eclectic area Dallas called Oak Lawn was pretty safe—he’d once ridden a beat here as a bicycle cop—but muggings and car break-ins weren’t unheard of, especially when so much drinking went on.

The roar of the cycle’s engine precluded talking, but Vic enjoyed the ride immensely. He was disappointed when he found her apartment building with no trouble.

The building was an old one, probably built in the 1930s, a humble, three-story brown-brick structure with an inviting front porch surrounded by mature trees. Small air-conditioning units protruded out many of the windows, so this wasn’t one of those luxurious renovations with sky-high rents. But it looked reasonably well taken care of. The walkway was lined with daffodils, and pots of orange geraniums decorated the front porch.

He pulled into a no-parking zone right in front and cut the engine.

Slowly Angela released her grip around his middle and eased herself away from him. “That wasn’t so bad,” she said, more to herself than to him.

He was a little surprised to hear her say that. Normally he was a very conscientious rider. Working the traffic division, he’d seen firsthand the devastation that could be done to the human body when it flew off a motorcycle at high speeds. But he’d driven a hair faster than normal tonight—nothing unsafe, but enough to get Angela’s adrenaline flowing.

Enough to add to the aura of danger.

She removed her helmet and handed it to him, her hands shaking slightly. “Thanks for everything. I’d have been in quite a mess if you hadn’t come along.” Her voice was a little bit breathless.

“No charge. I’ll see you to your door.”

“That’s not—”

“I know it’s not necessary. What if there’s a mugger waiting in the lobby?” He didn’t wait for her permission, but climbed off the bike, removed his own helmet and followed her up the steps to the porch. Her hand shook as she stuck the key in the front door lock. She pulled open the door a crack, then turned to face him.

“I’m in,” she said. “Thank you. And good night.”

He could see, now, that he’d made her uneasy. He hadn’t meant to. It was this new, dark and dangerous evil twin inside him that had done it by refusing to let her dismiss him. And it was the evil twin who leaned over and stole a kiss.

He didn’t touch her with anything but his lips. She could have backed off at any time, kicked him in the shins, screamed, whatever she wanted. But she just stood there, passively accepting the light pressure of his mouth against her soft, soft lips. Other than a telltale quiver and the flutter of her tentative hand against his chest, she didn’t react.

But he did. That dozing beast inside him opened both eyes wide and snorted to life. He felt the tightness in his groin, the pleasurable curls of desire warming his belly.

Suddenly Angela lost her balance. The door closed behind her, and she fell against it, breaking the kiss.

For a moment all she could do was stare at him, her eyes smoky with desire but wary as hell. Did he blame her?

“Please…” she said.

“Please…what?”

“I can’t ask you inside.”

He ran one forefinger along her jaw. “You could if you wanted,” he whispered, amazed at his own bravado. He was acting like one of those guys in the movies he hated, the ones who were so damn sure of their sex appeal that it never entered their minds that a woman might not be willing. He considered himself confident when it came to the opposite sex, but not pushy.

“I don’t even know you!”

“But you trust me just the same.”

Unwillingly, it seemed, she nodded. On some level she must have sensed that he was one of those serve-and-protect types, not a taker or a defiler of women, despite his cocksureness.

When she made no further move to escape, but just stared at him with an expression he couldn’t read, he finally figured it out. She was his for the taking. She couldn’t ask him in, because she was a nice girl, and nice girls didn’t ask strange men into their apartments. But if he invited himself, she wouldn’t turn him away.