He looked up from staring at her shimmering lips and found the foggy outline of her eyes behind her dark lenses. “So is texting while driving,” he fired back. “And if touching up your makeup while driving isn’t already illegal, it certainly should be. Don’t you think?”
An outraged chuckle burst out of her mouth. “You know, I think that what should be illegal,” she said without missing a beat, “is driving around in a pimped-out monstrosity, hiding behind tinted windows while you terrorize every other vehicle on the road. Don’t you think?”
His head started shaking in denial right around the time that she referred to his baby as a pimped-out monstrosity, and it was still shaking when he said, “Not quite every other vehicle on the road, just little toy ones being driven by Barbie dolls who can’t stop looking at themselves in the rearview mirror long enough to properly operate them.” That pimped-out monstrosity crack had stung.
Her mouth dropped open, snapped closed and then dropped open again. The process was fascinating to watch.
“Excuse me? I’m not the maniac who rammed into the back of someone else’s car. You are.”
“I think you might be using the word rammed a little loosely here, because—”
“You did ram my car! Are you denying it?”
“I don’t think so and no, I’m not denying that there was some contact between your vehicle and mine. What I’m saying is that I merely tapped your rear bumper. I didn’t ram it.”
“There’s a scratch.”
“No, there isn’t.”
“Yes, there is.”
“I don’t believe you. Show me.”
“Are you kidding me? You can’t seriously believe that I...that you...that...” She floundered visibly, then stopped short, throwing up her hands in defeat and sucking in a slow, steady breath. “You know what? Whatever. This is pointless,” she said, waving a dismissive hand in his general direction and then spinning around on her skyscraper heels. “I’ve already called the police, and they should be here soon,” she tossed back at him over her shoulder as she walked off. “I’m going to wait for them over there. You stay here.”
Her butt was a work of art. “Fine,” he called after her, staring at it.
“Fine!” she yelled back.
Okay, so maybe the Barbie doll crack was a low blow. But it wasn’t like she was the only one who had a reason to be irritated. Visiting the Midwest in late February had to rank in the top five on Broderick’s personal list of things that would never occur to a sane person. Yet here he was, and the circumstances that had brought him here weren’t even close to being the best. There were no guarantees on how long he could actually stay, so every second counted. It stood to reason that he hadn’t bothered to factor time into his already-tight schedule for dealing with distracted women drivers and the traffic accidents that they inevitably caused.
And now that his schedule was shot to hell because of one such driver, she was giving him attitude when he was the one who should be furious? What the hell ever. She was over there right now, inspecting her bumper like it was in danger of falling off. Taking picture after picture of it with her laptop-sized cell phone, from as many different angles as she could manage, in case he was thinking about running back to his Hummer before the police arrived and fleeing the scene. She had no idea that, as far as traffic accidents went, she should’ve been happy that he was the one who’d rammed her toy car and not some psychotic maniac, because a scratch on her bumper could’ve ended up being the very least of her worries.
Just last month, his firm had been called in to investigate a kidnapping that had gone horribly wrong long before someone thought to refer the young woman’s distraught parents to him. After nearly a week of local police and FBI involvement, it had taken his men just over two days to find the girl, but by then the only thing that their discovery could offer her parents and local police was closure. That and the identity of her kidnapper—a psychopath who, among other things, had regularly staged minor traffic accidents to lure unsuspecting women into his sadistic trap. It was how he’d gotten their daughter, his last victim.
Minor traffic infractions just like this one. And unsuspecting women just like the one snapping pictures right now.
Where the hell were the police, anyway?
Against his better judgment, he walked over to where she was leaning back against the passenger door of her Jaguar, working her cell phone like a speed demon, to find out. When his shadow fell over her, she looked up, saw him standing there and uttered the sexiest sigh that he’d ever heard. Somewhere along the shaft of his semi-sleeping penis, a nerve yawned and stretched.
Tongue in cheek, he said, “Excuse me, but when you said you’d already called the police, you did mean today, right?” He didn’t need to actually see her eyes to know that she rolled them.
Hard.
“Of course I called them today. Trust me, I would not be standing here indulging your obvious mental instability if I wasn’t absolutely certain that they were on the way.”
The tiny diamond stud in her left nostril was a sparkling stranger in a landscape of even tinier cocoa-colored freckles sprinkled across the bridge of her nose. It, unlike her forked tongue, was attractive, he thought as a grin played with his lips. “I’m sorry, but did you just call me unstable?”
“I believe so, yes,” she said, dropping her cell phone into her purse and then taking out a makeup compact. She flipped it open and inspected her lip gloss critically. “If I’d known exactly how unstable, I would’ve locked myself inside my car from the very beginning and called in the National Guard, instead.”
“Which reminds me,” Broderick sniped back at her without missing a beat. “In situations like this, that’s precisely what you should do. Another time, you might consider staying inside your car while you wait for the police or anyone else to arrive. I’m just saying,” he quickly added when she bristled visibly. “If I were, say, a serial killer, you would have just walked right into my trap.”
“Are you a serial killer?”
He wished he could see her eyes. “Fortunately for you, no, I’m not.”
“Well, that’s a relief.”
“Isn’t it?”
* * *
Five months, Broderick suddenly remembered as he watched her lips form the words that she spoke. That’s how long it’d been since he last made time in his schedule or room in his bed for a woman. Five months.
Crazy work hours, dangerous working conditions and near-constant travel. They were all to blame for his forced celibacy. Mostly, anyway. In his line of work, maintaining a relationship was like being burdened with a second job, especially since he was never really off duty from the first one. There was no such thing as a typical assignment, set time frames or guaranteed outcomes, and he liked it that way. Women? Not so much, especially since those same improbabilities applied to his personal life, as well. He had long since made peace with the fact that his career choice meant that he’d probably die a lonely old man, but in the meantime, he’d been known to occasionally carve out a little time for a no-strings-attached fling.
He
