bag.
“¡Oh, mi Dios!”
He had a gun.
Teresa instinctively recoiled, but before she could jump off the running board, a big gloved hand anchored her arm to the door with surprising strength. “Let go!”
His fingers tightened around her wrist, trapping her beside him as he pounded her phone with the butt of the wicked-looking pistol, smashing it into pieces.
“Hey!”
And then he turned the barrel of the gun on her. Bleeding Charles tilted his eyes up to the shoulder of the road. His voice was raspy, deep. “That your car, kid?”
Teresa’s answer was a frozen gasp in the cold air. “Yes.”
The gun barely wavered as he pushed open the door, forcing her into the snow. She landed on her butt and slid down the hill a few inches, but her bare hand, numb toes and panic slowed her efforts to scramble back onto her feet. He swung one long leg out, then the other, his black cowboy boots sinking into the snow, his breath hitching when his feet hit solid ground. Leaning against the cab for support, he pulled the duffel bag across the seat and tossed it at her. It hit her square in the stomach, knocking her onto her bottom again.
Judging by its weight and rattle, whatever was inside was heavy and metal and... “Son of a...” More guns.
Teresa shoved the bag away and climbed onto her knees, letting gravity pull her down into the ditch, farther away from the bleeding man, until she could find solid ground and bolt away.
She’d come to the aid of some drug dealer or gunrunner or mass murderer.
She was the one in trouble.
“I’d stop if I were you.”
The ominous double click of a bullet sliding into the chamber of his automatic weapon rang clear in the crisp, frigid air, spurring her to her feet.
“I said stop!”
The deafening report of a gunshot froze her in her tracks. Teresa pushed her hood away from her face and turned her head, lifting her gaze to the tall, pale man with the narrowed eyes and bloody coat.
The mysterious Charles-slash-Mr. Charles was still leaning against the truck to hold himself up. But the gun he’d fired into the tree behind him was steaming in the cold air. The smell of sulfur filled her nose as he pulled the weapon down to aim it right at her. “Don’t get any idea that you’re going to run from me.” His raspy, low-pitched threat was a whispery cloud in the night air. “Now you’re going to pick up that bag and get me the hell out of here.”
Please don’t make me scare you any worse than I have to, darlin’, Nash silently begged. Just do what I say. Take me where I want to go. And then you never have to deal with my sorry butt again.
But those dark brown eyes tilting up to his were wide and frightened and telling him exactly what he didn’t want to see—she was about to run.
“Ah, hell.”
He was already sliding the gun into his holster when she spun around to leap across the bottom of the ditch. He was in no shape to chase anyone down, but she wasn’t leaving him many options.
She landed on her hands and knees, a tangle of turquoise coat and pink scarf in the snow. But before she could find her footing, Nash ignored the protest jolting through his stiff leg and dove after her, using his six feet three inches of height to full advantage. He wasn’t fast, but he was big enough to catch her around the thighs and tackle her. He landed across her legs and bottom, crushing her into the snow beneath him. Pain radiated through his shoulder as he hit the ground beside her, and he groaned.
But she didn’t leave him any time to clench his teeth through the blinding agony or even to catch his breath. With a feral roar, she rolled onto her back beneath him, spitting snow in his eyes and clawing at his neck and face.
“Get off me!”
Nash deflected the first blow. The second caught him square in the nose and made his eyes water. Hobbled by cold and pain and utter fatigue, he was about to be outmaneuvered by the thrashing woman unless he resorted to doing her some serious harm. And since he was still a hairbreadth away from that kind of desperation, he crawled on top of her and let his weight pin her down until the night stopped reeling about him.
She screamed in his ear and shoved a palmful of snow against his cheek.
“Stop struggling.” The icy cold on his skin was like a reviving slap across the face. But when the empty fist arced toward him a second time, his temper flared. He caught her wrist with his good hand and pinned it on the ground above her head. “I said stop!”
For one surprising moment, she went still beneath him. Through the rapid puffs of breath that clouded the air between them, he took in the quick dart of her tongue across her full bottom lip and the halo of long coffee-brown hair fanning over the snow beneath her head. The defensive anger that had spiked inside him gave way to a flash of something wildly inappropriate for a wanted man fighting to survive for a few more days.
He was still processing those quick impressions of curves and heat and spirited beauty when she offered up a husky whisper. “What are you going to do with me?”
Keep your head in the game, Nash. Don’t let the pretty girl distract you.
“Not a damn thing. Look, I don’t want to be a part of your life any longer than you want to be a part of mine.” Running on fumes, he summoned what little energy he had left and went the tough-guy route again. “You can either drive me where I want to go or I can take your keys. But I don’t especially want to leave you abandoned out here on a night like this.”
“Don’t worry about me.” He saw the spark in her eyes a split second before he felt her leg sliding beneath his and sensed her target.
Of all the... Nash pulled his knee between her thighs, beating her to the intimate contact. With a startled gasp, she went still again—long enough for him to release her wrists and unholster his gun. “I wouldn’t if I were you.”
“Those injuries aren’t from any car wreck.” Although her rosy cheeks indicated she was as aware of their intimate position as he was, it seemed nothing could silence that smart mouth. She brought her hands to the uninjured side of his chest, and he let her shove a few inches of breathing room between them. “And that’s body armor. Who are you, Mr. Charles? What did you do?”
“The less you know about me, the better.” Good. He hadn’t slipped and given her his name in his groggy state in the truck. That meant it wasn’t out there on the wire or in cyberspace, flagging his location to the cartel or the inside man who’d set him up.
Nash raised his head and glanced around him, suddenly wary that he’d already spent too long out in the open. That gunshot he’d used to intimidate her when he realized he couldn’t stop her from running might have alerted a nearby farmer or some other fool who was out here in the middle of nowhere on this wintry night. And even though he’d severed her call, the authorities were almost certainly already on their
