so raw from everything that had happened tonight that a scoop of butter brickle ice cream would have seemed ominous at that point.
Her rescuer was way too handsome to be anything but a good guy, with straight, dark blond hair falling over his forehead, and eyes so blue even the scant lamplight couldn’t diminish their vividness. As he made his way toward her into better light, Marnie noted that they were a lucent pale blue, the color and clarity of a summer sky. In contrast to his soft eyes, however, the rest of his face was all dark planes and hard angles. High cheekbones were carved out above lean, tanned jaws. An elegant nose was chiseled above a full mouth that looked as if it had been wrought by an angry god. It occurred to Marnie then that his fierce features gave him the look of not a paladin, but a mercenary. Someone who only came to the rescue when he was being paid for performing the service.
It wasn’t exactly a comforting realization.
Nevertheless, he was tall and strong and sturdy, easily topping six feet, his broad shoulders straining at the seams of his white shirt, his black uniform trousers hugging powerful thighs. He continued to stride toward Marnie until he came to a halt with barely a foot of distance separating them, a position that felt…
Well. To be honest, it felt kind of menacing in light of the episode she’d just escaped. She told herself it was only because her nerves were frazzled from all that had happened tonight. Her rescuer had a nasty scrape on his jaw and a split lip, and his shirt was filthy from having rolled around on the asphalt. Anyone would look menacing under such conditions.
Of course, that didn’t explain why he was looking at Marnie as if she were his most hated enemy….
“Thank you,” she told him, shaking off the impression almost literally. “I don’t want to think about what might have happened if you hadn’t shown up when you did.”
His gaze was fixed entirely on her face, but he said not a word to acknowledge her gratitude. He seemed to be cataloguing her features, as if he were trying to figure out if he knew her from somewhere. But he didn’t, she was sure, unless it was just in passing at the mall. She would have remembered a man like him. For a long, long time. And then she would have dreamed about him. A lot. Probably without clothes. On either of them.
“Um, I guess you need to fill out a report or something?” she asked when he remained silent. And when, you know, her thoughts started to get away from her. “I know this sort of thing doesn’t happen often. I’ve worked at the mall for two years, and I’ve never heard about any woman being accosted in the parking lot.”
Although he still didn’t reply, his expression did at least change. A little. If possible, it became even more furious.
“Uh,” Marnie tried again, “I mean, if you need me to answer any questions, I can.” It wasn’t like she had any plans for the evening, other than to go home, curl herself into a fetal position in the closet and weep with gratitude to still be alive.
“Or if you think it would be better to wait until tomorrow, that’s okay, too,” she added. “I could come to mall security on my morning break. Or you could come to Lauderdale’s at your convenience. That’s where I work, in the, uh—” Gee, she wasn’t sure she wanted to be interviewed by this guy surrounded by women’s underthings. “Well, maybe it would just be better for me to come to security. What time will you be in?”
Two things occurred to Marnie as she asked the question. Number one, that although she knew most of the mall security guards by name and all of them by sight, this guy wasn’t one she recognized. And number two, his uniform didn’t hug his physique so snugly because he was muscular and well-formed—though, granted, he was certainly muscular and well-formed. It was because the uniform was two sizes too small.
She dropped her gaze to the gold-tone name tag each of the security guards wore and saw that his said “Randy Fink.” Which was funny, because he didn’t seem like a Randy Fink at all. Who did seem like a Randy Fink was Randy Fink, a mall security guard who made regular rounds in Lauderdale’s. Him, Marnie knew well. And he was indeed both randy and a fink. The man who stood before her now was neither. Well, not a fink anyway—she couldn’t speak for the other. He wasn’t Randy Fink, though, that was for sure.
Before she could say a word to point that out, her rescuer—such as he was—reached down to unsnap the holster of his gun. Marnie had always thought it a bit extreme for the mall to arm its security guards when the greatest enemy for most of them seemed to be the kielbasa at Hank’s Franks. Now it scared her even more that the mall security guards went around armed.
He spoke then, finally, in a voice that was deep and smooth and even more velvety than her attacker’s. The words he spoke, however, were just as puzzling. “Enough with the games, Lila.” He fingered the handle of the gun that rose out of his holster. “I was hoping you’d come along peacefully, but now I’m not so sure. And I really don’t want to have to do this the hard way.”
Funnily enough, it didn’t scare Marnie this time when a strange—and she meant that in more than one sense of the word—man called her by a name that wasn’t her own. No, this time, it kind of ticked her off. Whoever this Lila was, she really got around. And her choice of men left a lot to be desired. Marnie was sick and tired of being confused with her.
She had infinitely better morals than Lila for one thing. Maybe she didn’t attract a lot of men—or any lately—but the ones with whom she had been involved had not carried weapons, or engaged in fisticuffs, or threatened women, or slunk around in dark parking lots. She did have some standards. Which, now that she thought about it, might explain why she hadn’t attracted a lot of men—or any lately.
But that was beside the point.
The point was…Hmm. Well, she seemed to have forgotten the point. Anyway, it was better to live one’s life alone than to be involved with guys like the ones Lila dated. So there.
“I am not Lila,” she said adamantly for the third time, to the third man, that night. “I don’t know who Lila is, and I don’t know why you guys keep thinking I’m her. But lemme tell ya something. If I were her? First thing I’d do is torch my little black book and start over again. Because the men that woman attracts are just plain odd.”
The faux Randy Fink continued to gaze at Marnie in the same way he had before—as if he weren’t buying any of it. And he remained silent in light of her remarks.
She sighed heavily. “What do you want?” she asked calmly. Because so far tonight, she’d experienced, let’s see…fear, panic, confusion, terror, relief, happiness—oh, all right and a little lust for a minute there when she got that first good look at her rescuer—bewilderment, anger and sarcasm. Yep, calmness was about the only emotion she hadn’t felt tonight. And she figured she might as well just get them all over with, so she could go back to the beginning and begin once more with fear, since she figured fear was what she probably ought to be feeling again.
Faux Randy’s eyes narrowed at her question. “You know what I want, Lila.”
“No, I don’t, actually,” Marnie told him. “The first guy I met tonight wanted to give me this stupid manuscript. The second guy wanted to take it away from me. You seem to want to shoot me. At this point, I have no idea what to expect. So I’m asking you again. What do you want?”
Faux Randy settled his whole hand on the butt of his gun. Uh-oh. She’d been joking about that. Still, he did seem to be weighing the prospect of shooting her against the prospect of answering her question, so maybe there was still hope for a good outcome. Or, at the very least, an outcome that didn’t involve gunfire.
“First,”
