down,” he instructed.
She nodded, a stiff movement, her gaze riveted ahead.
“What do you want from me?” She sounded calmer, but the ice was still there.
He opened his mouth to answer that he wanted nothing now he was safe, then the thought occurred that a lift to the party would be nice. He smiled with all the charm he could muster in his current sorry state.
The smile didn’t last long.
He slammed into the dashboard as the driver jammed on the brakes.
“Help!” she called. Without even cutting the engine, she leapt from the car. It stalled.
A man on the sidewalk turned at her voice. A uniformed police officer.
“I’m being abducted! This man jumped into my car… ”
The policeman stepped up to the car, leaning in to look at Christian. “You’re Christian Taylor!” He took in Christian’s dishevelled attire and frowned. “You weren’t really trying to abduct this young woman, were you?”
He sounded sceptical. At last – a rational-sounding local. And one who spoke English. Christian breathed a sigh of relief and winced, winded again.
“Of course not.” His voice sounded amazingly stable considering he felt as if he’d been punched in the gut. Twice. “I was attacked by a group of fans and this young lady unwittingly provided the getaway car.”
Saying it out loud made it seem even more bizarre than it was, but the policeman nodded, as if rabid fan attacks were an everyday occurrence in Westerwald.
Perhaps they were.
The policeman opened the passenger door and Christian stepped out gingerly, holding his bruised ribs.
“Oh, you’re hurt!” The young woman hadn’t gone far, though her stance screamed fight or flight.
The policeman’s eyes widened as he took in Christian’s state. “Do you need a hospital?”
Christian shook his head. “I’m fine.” Battered, shaken, but fine. He turned to his rescuer with another of his trademark smiles. “I’m sorry I frightened you.”
He hadn’t noticed before, but she was a real stunner. Classically beautiful, with high cheekbones and blonde hair, almost white beneath the street lights, swept back into one of those elegant twist things. She was dressed in a short, dark swing coat, buttoned up to conceal whatever lay beneath.
Like a model, she was thinner and less curvy than he preferred, but her stockinged legs, revealed now she was out the car, were the clincher. Perfectly shaped legs that went on forever. Legs he could see bare and wrapped around him in his very near future.
He grinned. Maybe he was going to like Westerwald after all.
Her classy attire was in stark contrast with his own, however. He glanced down at his torn suit. There was no way he could arrive at the party like this. It was a charity banquet and there was sure to be a press presence, and he really wasn’t in the mood for lengthy explanations.
Not when there was a much more pleasant diversion available than speeches and shaking hands.
“A lift back to my hotel for a change of clothes would be much appreciated.” And once he got her back to his hotel room…
“I’ll take you,” the woman offered, in lightly accented English. Where she’d looked pale moments before, now she looked flushed. “It’s the least I could do for not giving you a chance to explain.”
The policeman beamed. “All’s well that ends well, then.” His eyes twinkled as he turned to the young woman and addressed her in dialect. “This is your lucky day. Do you have any idea how many women would like to be in your shoes right now?”
Christian flinched. He’d just found out the hard way how popular he was in this little country.
His getaway driver didn’t look as if she felt particularly lucky either, but she nodded and climbed back into the car. Christian followed suit, this time buckling himself in. His ribs couldn’t take any more abuse.
She took a shaky breath, as if pulling herself together, and re-started the engine.
“I’m Christian Taylor,” he said as she put the car in gear and pulled off.
“I gathered.” That touch of ice was still there. So knowing who he was hadn’t melted any of her stiff attitude. “I assume I should know who you are?”
“I’m an actor. And you are?” He smiled, warming up for a charm assault, but she didn’t even glance his way. If anything, she seemed to freeze up even more.
“Teresa.”
Sheesh. Glaciers were warmer.
“Thank you for coming to my rescue, Teresa.”
“Were you really attacked by fans, or were you just pulling some stunt?”
“You didn’t see them – the girls on the sidewalk?”
Her brow furrowed and she pursed her lips, troubled. “Which hotel are you staying at?”
“The Grand. It’s on… ”
“I know where it is.”
He’d never worked such a hard crowd. But there wasn’t a woman he couldn’t seduce when he set his mind to it. He upped the smoulder. “I thought you recognised me. Who did you think I was?”
“I don’t watch much television, but the story’s been all over the news lately… Two prisoners escaped from their transit van on the way to court. I thought you were one of them.”
Another punch to the gut – an emotional one this time. “You thought I was an escaped con? Why – because I’m black?”
“Of course not.” She turned her head to look at him, as if seeing him properly for the first time.
He was a little mollified she hadn’t judged him by the colour of his skin. Even in his adopted homeland, which had made him far more welcome than his own people ever had, that still happened all too frequently.
But this woman, looking down her regal nose at him, had still judged him and found him wanting. Something started to sizzle inside him, something old, dark and unhealed.
They paused at a traffic light. “I knew I’d seen your face somewhere before,” she said.
“Which of my movies have you seen?”
“I don’t know, but I suppose I must have seen one once.”
One once? His face had been on the cover of more magazines than he could count, he was a household name on at least five continents, and she’d seen one once?
“I told you, I don’t watch much television.”
Nor
