with abrasiveness.
“You’ve got six other white shirts just like the one you’re wearing now—short-sleeved and polyester, because they’re practical and you don’t care how you look as long as you’re presentable. You don’t know the names of your co-workers’ spouses. You volunteer to work Christmas. You get to the gym at least three times a week. Did I miss anything?”
“Just that I always carry a spare key for my handcuffs.”
His voice came from directly behind her. Spinning around in shock, she saw crystal-gray eyes looking coldly down on her, saw the automatic she’d taken from him at the diner firmly gripped in one big hand.
“Aside from that, I’d say you were dead-on, lady,” he said harshly. “So seeing as you know me so well, this part shouldn’t be a surprise, either.”
Even as Tess’s lips parted in a gasp, Virgil Connor’s mouth came down hard on hers.
Chapter Three
It wasn’t a kiss. It was a storm, a hurricane, a lightning strike that immediately shorted out every last electrical impulse in all her nerve endings at once, but it wasn’t a kiss. Virgil Connor didn’t know how to kiss, Tess thought disjointedly. He probably didn’t know how to make love. All the man knew was raw sex.
But he knew everything there was to know about that.
One big hand was spread wide against the back of her head. His other arm was hanging loosely at his side. He was making it clear that if she wanted to she could pull away from him easily enough.
She swayed toward him. Connor shifted his stance automatically, his hand spreading wider and his fingers beginning to slide through her hair as he moved in closer. Through her own half-closed lashes she saw his—dark and thick, drifting down to shut off that brilliant gray gaze.
Suddenly she felt him stiffen. He lifted his head and took a step back, his hand falling from her.
Tess blinked. The next moment appalled horror raced through her, and she took a stumbling step backward herself. Something flashed behind the mirrored gray of his eyes. A muscle moved tightly at the side of his jaw as he spoke.
“That’s one for the books.” His tone was flat and dead. “You’d better report me for this when they take you in. I won’t contest your statement.”
Her mouth felt so swollen and hot she had the impulse to bring her fingertips to her lips. “Why?” Her voice came out in a croak. She tried again, putting more force behind her words. “Why did you do that?”
“I don’t know. But it won’t happen again.” He began to turn away. “I’m going to call my area director and have him send someone to escort—”
“No!” Incautious fury spilled through her at his dismissal of the situation he’d created. She grabbed his arm, noticing as she spun him back to face her that the muscle beneath her grip was rigidly hard. “You’re going to tell me what just happened here, for God’s sake!”
Suddenly remembering Joey, she cast a swiftly contrite glance in the direction of the bed. He was obviously too deeply asleep for anything short of an earthquake to rouse him, but she lowered her tone nonetheless.
“Is it how you get off, Agent Connor?” With a shaky hand she pushed a stray curve of hair off her cheek. “Do you try something like this with all of the women you flash your badge at, or did you just figure you’d give it a shot with me?”
She tightened her grip on his wrist. “You’d better believe I’d report you if I had any intention of letting you take me in, but I don’t. I’m leaving here with Joey, and the only way you can stop me is by using that gun you’re holding. My opinion of you right now isn’t the greatest, but I don’t think you can bring yourself to shoot an unarmed woman.”
Releasing him abruptly, she picked up her purse from the dresser beside them and stalked over to Joey’s backpack, on the floor beside the bed. She bent stiffly and grabbed one of its straps, but as she lifted it the flap opened and the contents of the bag tumbled out onto the floor.
Tess squeezed her eyes shut against the sudden prickling of tears she could feel behind her lashes. They were tears of anger and frustration, she told herself. They weren’t tears of fear or worry. This wasn’t working out the way she’d planned, but in a few minutes she could still be on her way with Joey. In a couple of hours they would be on Navajo Nation land, where Virgil Connor’s bullying tactics would slam up against a solid wall of red tape when he attempted to—
“I’m not going to shoot you, Tess.” He didn’t sound bullying, he just sounded tired. “For what it’s worth, it won’t come to that and you know it. Look at me.”
She ignored him. Squatting down on her heels, she began to gather up the collection of small-boy treasures that had fallen from Joey’s backpack, replacing them as carefully as she could manage with her trembling fingers.
There was a dog-eared collection of baseball cards, held together by a doubled-over elastic band. Joey was obviously a baseball nut like she was, Tess thought, trying to distract herself from the man standing silently beside her. It would be something they could talk about on the drive ahead of—
“Look at me, Tess.”
There was a reluctantly hard note in his tone. Her fingers closed around a carefully folded piece of paper before she unwillingly raised her eyes to his.
“Don’t bother.” Despair washed over her. “I know what you’re going to say.”
A muscle moved in his jaw. “I’d better say it anyway, just so we’re clear here. I’m a big man. You’re what…five-three? Five-four?”
“Three,” she answered him tonelessly. “I get it, all right?”
He went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “I wouldn’t even have to try, Tess. But I don’t want it to go down that way and I don’t think you do, either. Hand me the car keys.”
He needed the keys because she’d left her own gun locked in the glove box. Tess understood he wasn’t going to let this situation get out of control again.
That was what Virgil Connor was all about, she realized. He liked well-defined boundaries, smooth-running operations, everything falling into place the way it should. He could react to the unexpected, the illogical, but his immediate response was to bring it back under control, which made his actions with her a moment ago all the more inexplicable. Despite her accusations, she knew instinctively he’d crossed a line with her that he’d never crossed before in his life.
And that knowledge was supremely unimportant. All that mattered was that she’d failed a small boy who’d thought she could protect him. She looked at the paper in her hand, recognizing it for what it was before she began unfolding it.
“They’re in my purse,” she said flatly. “Get them yourself.”
In the creased newspaper photo she was dressed in some kind of pseudo-camouflage outfit and standing in a desert. The wonders of computer graphics, she thought briefly. The picture had been taken in the Eye-Opener’s parking lot, her figure superimposed against a generic desert scene later on. The tabloid’s photo-tech had also punched up the Rambo-like smeared grease under her eyes and the fake blood soaking
