her head like a hippie-chick bandanna, or a wrap for a ponytail if she wanted her hair out of her face.
She was a first-class Hollywood diva on the outside, but there’d been a time when he felt as if he knew her better than that—the down-to-earth woman she could be with him at home. He hadn’t seen that side of her in a long while, but then again, he’d been on tour a lot. And he’d been in the music business long enough to know the people you cared about could change while you were out on the road. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d left one woman and returned to—seemingly—someone else.
He just couldn’t recall it ever bothering him this much before.
“Don’t you think that us having a conversation is a bad idea?” He wasn’t going to fall onto a land mine without an attempt to test the terrain first.
“While I realize talking to me is low on your list of preferred activities, what do you suggest we do for the next hundred and fifty miles of scrub and cacti until we start picking up cell-phone coverage again? Crank the radio and hear one of the sexy songs you wrote about me while I slowly became your untouchable muse instead of your living, breathing girlfriend?”
Romero blinked, trying hard to focus on the road while processing her words. He did not want to fight. Would not fight with her. She was clearly spoiling for another go-round but he had no desire to pick through this latest accusation he only half understood.
Untouchable?
He’d never been able to keep his hands off this woman when they were together, except for the weeks when he’d had to bury himself in his work. Writing drained him the way nothing else did, but he hadn’t realized she took it so personally until that night she’d let loose after the hiking-boot incident.
But, damn it, aside from those times when he needed to write, their relationship had always been hot. And Shannon had as much enthusiasm for sex as she did for everything else in life, a fact he’d better not dwell on now or he’d never make it back to L.A. without pulling over and reminding her how freaking touchable she was.
“How about a neutral CD with none of my songs?” He flipped open the tray in the dash where he kept his music, needing a diversion fast. “We can compromise with some old Aerosmith or Nirvana…” He dug deeper until he found one of her CDs, and even went so far as to offer, “Or we can play some Gretchen Wilson.”
Spearing one manicured hand into the CD tray, she retrieved the jewel case and shoved it into her pink faux-leather satchel. As a diehard vegan, she didn’t do real leather.
“You took Gretchen with you when you left? Bad enough you had to make sexy eyes all through the reception at the fawning groupie who swore she loved you since your days with Jinxed.” Shannon clutched her heart like a devoted fan and raised her voice an octave. “And I saw you in Dallas and Houston and Austin and Shreveport—Geez. I thought for sure she was going to whip off her double-D bra and fling it your way to make her point.”
Romero eased the accelerator down again, deciding eighty miles an hour would be a better option than more hours of this. Any minutes he could shave off this trip would be a good idea.
Besides, there was a VW van behind them that had been riding his bumper for the past five miles. Which was ironic as hell, since there wasn’t another vehicle in sight.
“Sexy eyes?” Having grown up in a household full of argumentative types, he took pride in the fact that he didn’t rile easily. He was a pro at avoiding conflict. But if she kept this up, he didn’t see how he’d keep a lock on his cool.
“Yes.” She made an expansive gesture with her hands that was automatic when she got excited. Or mad. “Men’s eyes turn all hot and bothered when they’re mentally undressing someone.”
The van behind them was still bearing down on the sports coupe, so Romero didn’t address the fact that there was no such thing as hot and bothered eyes.
“What the hell is this guy doing?” he muttered instead.
Shannon turned in her seat to peer out the back window, her long blond hair brushing his shoulder and pooling on the console where his hand rested on the stick shift.
“Can’t you outrun him?” She straightened to look at him, her body close to his the way it had been during that one electric dance they’d shared at the wedding reception.
If anyone made him have sexy eyes, it was this woman. Mentally undressing her was pretty much second nature whenever he couldn’t indulge in the real thing.
“What are we, sixteen years old?” He didn’t plan to drag race with some crappy vehicle a car owner would be only too glad to total for the sake of an insurance settlement.
The van swerved out into the other lane on the narrow road, and for a moment, Romero thought he would simply pass them.
“He’s going around us anyway.” Shannon’s eyes followed the vehicle as it pulled up beside them.
Romero slowed down to let the guy pass, glad to be getting rid of him. But the jackass in the van veered closer.
“Hey!” Shannon yelled, a moment before the van swerved hard into the driver’s side of the Beemer.
The scrape of metal on metal seared through him. Romero yanked the steering wheel hard to the right. His tires squealed and one popped as the rubber raked through rocks alongside the road. Scraggly Joshua trees appeared in front of the windshield and the car went airborne as they sliced nose-first down a steep embankment.
Shannon screamed. His predominant thought as the rocky desert rose up to meet them was that he’d give anything to make sure nothing happened to her. When the nose collided with the gritty ground at the bottom of the slope, bits of plastic and metal mangled and crunched until the impact reached the main frame. The steel encasing them fought back and the car bounced down onto its roof.
Romero reached blindly for Shannon, his brain scrambled and blood somehow in his eye as he turned to look for her. He saw a curtain of long blond hair brushing the ceiling and his heart lodged a little deeper in his throat.
“Shan?” His hand found her shoulder and came back sticky.
She was bleeding. The thin trail of blood seemed to originate at the back of her head.
“Shannon?”
He blinked to try to clear away the red haze in his vision. The scent of smoke and burned rubber stung his nose.
Smoke?
Like a bat out of hell he grabbed for his seat belt to free Shannon before the car caught on fire. He might not have lived up to her expectations as a boyfriend, but he damn well would never let anything happen to her.
2
SHANNON BECAME AWARE of the burning odor slowly.
Her neighbor’s cooking was iffy, but she could never remember anything this acrid wafting from next door in the year since she’d bought a house with Romero. A house Romero didn’t share anymore. Besides, she couldn’t be at home, because her bed was way more comfortable than this. Hard objects speared into her back. Water dripped down onto her face. Her lips.
She ran her tongue along her mouth to catch the droplet,
