shots of scotch and working on a third, had very little to do with the swarthy man he’d been sent to round up and everything to do with a woman who made him think of warm, moonlit nights and dancing along the banks of a tranquil river. Barefoot.
Max took a deep breath before addressing the glass in his hand again. He wouldn’t mind seeing her barefoot. Up to the neck.
“What makes a woman become a bounty hunter?” He was aware that it took effort for him not to slur the last word.
It wasn’t a new question. She’d heard it before. A dozen times.
“Opportunity,” she replied mechanically.
It had been that, pure and simple. She’d spent six months on the Denver police force, feeling hemmed in by all the rules she seemed to always be tripping over, when she spotted the ad in the newspaper, of all places, for a bounty hunter. The notion struck her fancy. She already knew she was a good cop, she was just a bad bureaucrat and not much of what the sergeant liked to call a team player. Becoming a bounty hunter seemed to emphasize all the right things for her.
A new song came on the jukebox. Cara perked up just as Max was going to say something to her. She raised her hand. “Shhh, I like this song.”
Max found himself reaching for the hand she’d raised, folding his fingers around it.
Surprised, Cara looked at him questioningly.
“Like it enough to dance to it?” he asked.
A faint smile played along her lips. “Are you asking me to dance, or taking a survey?”
He got off his stool still holding her hand. “The former.”
“Then yes.” Cara slid off her stool.
Holding her hand, he led her to the tiny, dirty space before the jukebox. His legs felt oddly wobbly, but Max ignored the feeling. The desire to hold this woman came out of nowhere and was suddenly far too great to ignore.
Dancing seemed like the best solution.
Chapter 3
Maybe it was just his imagination gone into overdrive, but it felt as if the beautiful bounty hunter he had in his arms was teasing him with her body. She was teasing him without doing anything more than swaying quietly to the throbbing tempo of the song on the jukebox. It was a love song from the days when couples shared a melody they referred to as “their” song and would exchange secret smiles every time it came on the airwaves.
Max didn’t know if it was him or the room, but one of them seemed to be spinning. He wasn’t sure if he was rooting for him or the room.
Holding Cara’s hand within his, he kept it lightly pressed against his chest and looked down at her. Thoughts he couldn’t quite grasp hold of were crowding into his head. She was petite, though far from fragile. Even so, Max had a suspicion that she wasn’t quite as indestructible as she presented herself. Almost, but not quite.
Maybe if he focused on talking, the spinning would go away.
“So, what else do you like besides love songs from the forties?”
She raised her eyes to his, an enigmatic smile playing on her lips. “Men who don’t ask too many questions comes to mind.”
He laughed softly. The exotic scent she was wearing seeped into his consciousness, arousing him. “Sorry, occupational habit.”
She cocked her head, amused. “I thought detectives were just supposed to detect.”
He stopped dancing altogether and just stayed in place, holding her and pretending to move to the music. “They have to ask questions to do that.”
Cara nodded. “All right, you’re allowed one question,” and then she qualified it. “And I’m allowed not to answer it if I don’t want to.”
Even standing still was beginning to take effort. And it was having no effect on decreasing the velocity of the room.
“Hardly seems fair.”
She raised one shoulder and let it drop. “That’s life.”
She seemed to be swaying more, he thought. Had the tempo gotten faster? “What’s a nice girl like you doing in a job like this?”
Her eyes glinted slightly, though her expression never changed. “Making a decent living the fastest way I know how.”
Her scent was beginning to swirl around his senses. He was having difficulty focusing on the conversation instead of wanting her, but he forged on. “Why not try for something less dangerous?”
She shook her head. “That’s two questions. You’ve exceeded your quota.”
He took a deep breath, trying to steady himself, telling himself that everything wasn’t tilting—the way he could have sworn it was. “It’s an off-shoot of the first questions. Call it 1a.”
“I’d call you conniving.”
He smiled. Or thought he did. It was getting harder and harder to tell.
“I’ve been called worse.” The room was beginning to go at a really dangerous speed. Sweat popped out on his brow. “Is it me, or is it hot in here?”
The look she gave him was purely innocent. “Is that a line?”
“No, that’s—” He lost his train of thought, even as he was attempting to reach for it. “Maybe we should sit the rest of this one out.”
Placing his hand to her spine, he escorted her from the floor. Max’s head was starting to feel as if it weighed a ton. The bar appeared to be much farther away than it had just a moment ago.
Each step back took more and more effort on his part. He found he had to rest his arm across her shoulders just to keep from falling over.
He tried to focus on her face, hoping that would negate or at least balance out the spinning. “What was in those drinks?”
“Just scotch. But the glasses probably don’t always get washed properly,” she guessed. “Maybe there was something else left over from the last…”
He didn’t hear the end of her sentence. The buzzing in his head became too loud.
And then the room around him folded itself up until it became less than a tiny pinprick. The next second, the pinprick had disappeared entirely.
Max thought he was falling, but that might have been his imagination.
Everything stopped.
Nothing looked familiar.
Max had absolutely no idea where he was, only that his head was killing him and the effort to open his eyes cost him dearly. Each lid felt as if it was glued in place and had to be pried open.
When it was, he found the immediate area encased in a milky shroud. Repeated blinking finally made the shroud disappear.
He’d had hangovers
