damn, damn!” She’d have to leave her name and address for the owner. But first she’d better shift the Corona from the path of other traffic. Already a battered gray van was entering the end of the lane.
Quickly she returned to her car, switching the engine on.
The van was nosing into a space farther up the row, but there could be other cars entering soon. Riley grasped the gear lever, then jumped as a dark-sleeved arm reached in the open window and long male fingers switched off the key. At the same time a grim masculine voice said, “Oh, no, you don’t!”
Riley’s strangled yelp of alarm was drowned by her horn as she pressed the flattened palm of her free hand down on it.
The sound was abruptly cut off when strong fingers gripped her wrist and forcibly lifted her hand away. “What the hell—” the man said.
Looking up in panic, Riley had a confused impression of blazing eyes—a startling meld of navy blue and deep, deep gray—close-drawn black brows and a threatening expression, before she realized that his other hand had removed the ignition key with its attendant house keys and large plastic Snoopy tag.
She snatched at Snoopy, but didn’t get a good grip, and the keys jangled to the floor of the car.
Riley tried to close the window with her free hand, but the manual winder was stuck again. Under her breath she cursed the garage mechanic who was supposed to have fixed it.
Twisting in her seat, she fumbled with her free hand for the knob to lock the door. Finding that her face was within an inch of the implacable hand encircling her wrist, she sank her teeth into the man’s flesh, tasting soap and warm, slightly salty male skin.
He let fly a vicious word and pulled back but didn’t release her. Desperately Riley opened her mouth wide and screamed. A loud, aggressive, attention-getting scream.
The mugger muttered something savage and dropped her wrist at last as pounding footsteps made him look away from her.
Riley was hugely relieved to see two large men bearing down on them. Both wore torn jeans and studded belts, and their muscular arms were heavily tattooed. One would have been described as Caucasian by the police. He looked as though he might be on intimate terms with them. His big pale head was shaved bald, and the orange T-shirt stretched over his chest had a foam-fanged, spike-collared bulldog printed on the front. The other man was Maori. Well-greased dreadlocks fell to massive brown shoulders bared by a black bushman’s vest.
Riley expected her attacker to flee. Instead he stood his ground as the unlikely Galahads bore down on him. Riley tried the window winder again without success, mentally vowing to boil the inept mechanic in his own sump oil.
“Trouble, lady?” the bald guy queried, casting a threatening look at the man beside her, who was half a head shorter. His companion moved so that they were hemming him in, glowering down at him.
Before Riley could say a thing the man answered, “She sure is. She damaged my car and was making a getaway. When I tried to stop her she bit me.”
Riley’s mouth fell open. She shifted a hunted brown gaze to the BMW, then back to him, her heart plunging like a stone on the end of a plumb line. For the first time she looked at him properly.
His suit might have come out of the pages of GQ. And with it he wore a white shirt with a fine gray shadow stripe and a tie.
A tie. Probably silk, probably with a designer name hidden somewhere discreetly behind its elegant blue and maroon design. For all she knew, it was an old school tie proclaiming his presumed respectability.
Even his accent was cultured—with neither flat antipodean vowels nor a fruity fake-British affectation.
He didn’t look like a mugger. Not a bit.
Oh, hell!
Her would-be rescuers looked from her to him, and the long-haired one ambled over to inspect the BMW. His lips pursed, and he sorrowfully shook his shining black dreadlocks. “Got a panel beater’s job there, mate,” he said sympathetically.
Riley turned her head to confront her attacker. “Your car?” she squeaked.
“My car,” the not-a-mugger-after-all confirmed, his dark gaze still accusing as he looked down the arrogant slope of his nose.
She closed her eyes for a moment, then flicked them open. “Prove it,” she said, daring to look him straight in the face—a smooth-shaven, stubborn-jawed face, with broad cheekbones and a wide forehead under impeccably groomed black hair that hinted at a firmly discouraged wave. He probably had quite a nice mouth when it wasn’t set in an angry line, the lips well-defined and not unduly narrow.
For a long second he just stared back at her. Then he dug in his trouser pocket and took out a small leather folder, flicking a plastic tag from it and pressing a button with his thumb. “Don’t let her take off,” he said to the bald man.
“I wasn’t going to!” Riley said indignantly as The Suit walked away, pausing to read her number plate on his way toward the BMW. Memorizing it, she supposed.
Another car tooted gently behind hers and swung to go round it. Baldy moved to the front of the Corona and stood foursquare with his arms folded, facing Riley through the windscreen. A blue dragon writhed on his brawny forearm.
Great. Now he was guarding her for heaven’s sake. She glared at him, every bit as belligerent as the bulldog on his shirt.
The other car nudged by with about two inches to spare. Riley wouldn’t have even tried to negotiate that space.
Her watchdog was looking to the other side. She followed his gaze and saw that the BMW’s driver door was open.
The man in the suit slammed it and came back to her window. “Satisfied? Now can we exchange insurance companies and addresses? I’ll see that yours gets a bill for the damage.”
The watchdog and his mate were looking at Riley almost as censoriously as the car’s owner.
“Okay?” Dreadlocks queried her.
“Yes,” Riley conceded reluctantly. “Thank you for coming over. I thought I was being assaulted.” Dammit, she had been assaulted. “He grabbed me!” She transferred her fulminating gaze to the man between them.
“To stop you running away,” he agreed without a blink. “You’re not hurt, are you?” As he spoke he lifted his hand and inspected a row of deep teeth-marks in the pad of flesh just below his thumb.
Riley’s wrist still tingled from his hold, but she could see no sign of the remembered strength of his fingers, not even a slight redness. “No,” she admitted.
“I’m sure we can sort it out from here.” He nodded affably to her two heroes. “Can’t we?” he asked her pointedly. “Thanks, though,” he added to the knights errant, making Riley’s already simmering blood almost boil over.
“Good luck, bro.” Bulldog-shirt grinned.
“Women drivers, eh?” Dreadlocks commented as they turned away. He rolled a look at Riley and laughed.
Riley gritted her teeth. “I was going to drive back into
