The Renegade Steals A Lady

Aerosol.

Fire ripped through his eyes. Tears streamed down his cheeks, but did nothing to douse the flames. Only the edge of the counter that caught his hip kept him from going to his knees.

He swiped at his face with his free hand, the pain shooting back from his eyes into his brain. Paige tried to jerk away, but he tightened his hold on her wrist and yanked her toward him, growling, “No!”

The hair-spray can clanked to the floor. Paige fell forward. Her sharp cry pierced the curtain of pain blinding him. He pried his eyes open long enough to see her huddled on the floor beside him, grasping her leg. He must have pulled her weight onto her sprained ankle.

Grunting, with one eye cracked open just wide enough to be sure she didn’t have any more tricks up her sleeve, he lifted her from the floor back to the toilet seat. “Don’t move,” he warned.

As soon as she settled back, he fell over the vanity and splashed cold water in his face. The wash cooled the fire in his eyes pretty quickly. The fire in his blood took a little longer. He gave himself a few more seconds. Then, when he had himself under control, mentally and physically, he straightened up, shutting off the faucets and drying his face with the rose-embroidered hand towel hanging over the counter.

“Good try,” he said tightly. “But not good enough.”

“This time.” She angled her chin defiantly, but the tremor in her chest ruined the effect.

“There won’t be a next time.” He bent to scoop the ice he’d dropped back into the plastic bag.

“Why don’t you just get it over with then, and get out of here?”

“Get what over with?”

“Are you having trouble building up the courage, or are you just dragging it out because you’re enjoying torturing me first?”

He stared at her, trying to figure out what the hell she was talking about. Understanding gradually dawned. His throat tightened. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

“You shot at me,” she said.

“If I’d shot at you, you’d be dead.”

She had to know that. He was the Port Kingston Emergency Response Team’s best marksman. At least he had been, once. But that seemed like a lifetime ago.

“You couldn’t afford to kill me. You needed me to get out of the park,” she said.

The cords in his neck pulled so tight he thought they might snap. A headache beat at the back of his skull. “And now I don’t need you so I’m going to kill you?”

A heartbeat passed. Enough time, even for Marco’s watery eyes, to read the confusion etched onto her features. To feel the genuine fear radiating from her. For it to twist through him like a corkscrew in the heart.

His jaw turned to granite. “You know me better than that.”

She turned her limpid gaze up to him. “I don’t know you at all. Not anymore.”

“That’s a lie.”

Mesmerized by the melted-honey swirl of confusion in her eyes, he stepped forward. When he reached out to cup her chin, she flinched—the final blow to his tattered pride—but he wouldn’t let her turn away. He brushed a wayward curl off her cheek, let the myriad feelings inside him boil close to the surface.

“You know me,” he said, reveling in the way her pulse kicked up where he stroked the soft underside of her jaw. “You know every inch of me.”

A tide of color flooded her cheeks. Suddenly disgusted with himself, he dropped his hand.

The water in the tub had nearly run over. Fixing his gaze anywhere but on hers, he pushed past her and twisted the faucets off. Mentally he shut down the flow of his emotions, as well. He couldn’t afford to feel anything toward her. Not anger, not lust and certainly not sympathy.

“If you didn’t shoot me, then…” Her voice trailed off as if she forgot what she was going to say. Her eyelids sagged as if she didn’t have the strength to hold them open. “Then who…?” She swayed left, then right on the toilet seat.

Marco crossed the room in one long stride, cupped the back of her neck and pushed her head between her knees.

“Breathe slow,” he said, squatting down next to her. “Deep.”

Damn. He didn’t think she was concussed, but he didn’t like this dizziness.

After a few moments, she raised her head slowly. Some of her color had returned, but not much. “Oberas? The other prisoner? Was he the one who shot at me?”

“Get in the tub,” he said in place of confirmation or denial.

“Why?”

“How should I know why someone would want to shoot you?” he said, more harshly than he’d meant to.

She looked at him strangely. “I meant why do you want me to get in the tub?”

He sighed, propping his hands on the tank behind her and looking her straight in the eye. “The warm water will keep you from stiffening up after that fall, and some of those cuts and scrapes are deep. You need to clean them out.” He handed her the bag of ice. “You can prop your foot up on the side and put this on your ankle.”

“Every cop in the state is after you, and you’re worried about my ankle? What do you really want from me?”

“For now, all I want is for you to get in that bath.”

Liar. He knew what he wanted. Just once he wanted her to look at him like he was something other than a drug-stealing scumbag. He wanted her to look at him like she had looked at him the last time he’d been in her apartment, the night they’d made love.

Dragging his hand through his hair, he lurched to his feet. He couldn’t think straight when he was that close to her.

She stood, balancing on her good foot by holding on to the towel bar, and motioning for him to turn around with her other hand. He complied. He could leave her that much dignity, at least.

One by one he heard the pieces of her uniform swish to the floor.

“I won’t help you again,” she said.

He resisted the urge to look over his shoulder, but he couldn’t stop himself from cutting his eyes to the mirror beside him. The steam put a soft haze over the image, but didn’t completely obliterate the pale curve of her shoulder, the tantalizing taper of her waist or the swell of her hip.

Despite the humidity in the room, Marco’s throat dried up. “I’m not asking you to help me.”

She glanced back at him, angling her naked body toward the mirror. He locked his eyes onto hers in the last clear spot on the glass. Only her eyes. Admirable restraint, he told himself. Not to mention self-preservation.

“I’m just asking you to take a bath.”

Marco closed the door behind him and leaned his head against the wood, waiting. When he heard water sloshing, he retreated to the kitchen. He needed to get away from the bathroom. Away from the thought of Paige’s lithe body sliding into a warm, wet bath, and the memory of his body sliding into a warm, wet Paige.

Every time she’d opened her mouth in there he’d turned a hundred and eighty degrees, from cursing her to wanting to kiss her, and back again.

Not that what he wanted mattered. He was all too aware she didn’t want him. Never would.

Hardening his heart to the loss of something he’d never really had, he mentally listed the things he would need from the apartment. In the hall closet, he found Paige’s extra ammo, along with another prize—a man-size sweatshirt and jeans.

An unwelcome pang of jealousy shot through his gut until he unfolded the sweatshirt and saw the Port Kingston PD logo. From the multicolored spatters on both the shirt and jeans, he’d guess Paige’s brother, Matt, had helped her do some painting.

After a quick change, Marco collected food in a cardboard box, along with towels and soap, blankets, a flashlight and matches. On his way out to stash the goods in the trunk of her car, he spotted a book on the couch. Sue Grafton’s novel O is for Outlaw.

Prophetic, he thought. And kind of sad.

He tossed the novel in the box with the other goodies. Maybe it would entertain her over the next few days.

Realizing what he’d just decided, he stared at the book as if it had bit him. Until that point, he hadn’t let himself think about where he would go from here. What he would do. He’d just concentrated on getting himself and Paige out of the woods alive.

Now his course seemed clear.

Six months ago he’d cut a deal that had landed him in prison. Tonight his partners had reneged on the agreement.

So much for honor among thieves.

He was sorry Paige had to be involved in this, but whether she knew it or not, she was a player in the game. A pawn to be sacrificed for the higher goal.

Him.

Marco couldn’t afford to give them that advantage. There was only one way to keep them from using Paige against him.

And that was to keep her with him.

Pawns could be played both ways. Used for offense as well as defense. She’d already helped him escape once. She might prove useful yet again.

Paige wasn’t going to be happy about being his hostage, he realized. In fact, she was likely to make the next few days pure hell.

He would have to watch himself every minute around her. She was a cop and a woman, and he’d managed to offend her on both levels. She knew how to fight dirty, and he was too easily distracted in her presence. Six months was way too long for him to be without a woman.

Without this woman.

If either one of them was going to survive this, he was going to have to stop thinking about how perfect her breasts were and how long her legs were and how good it would feel to get between them again. Instead, he needed to concentrate on avoiding those who were after him, cops and otherwise, while making sure Paige didn’t put a bullet where it would do the most damage the first chance she got.

He could do that.

Sure.

Still trying to convince himself, he stopped by the kitchen for more staples and loaded the supply box into the trunk of her car. As he walked back inside, he stopped to listen. All was quiet in the bathroom.

Too quiet.

Cursing his own stupidity, he took the hallway in a dead run.

Paige heard Marco coming. She swung her legs over the faux-wrought-iron railing of her balcony, ready to shimmy down to the ground floor, but another wave of dizziness assailed her. The concrete below rippled like moving water. Her vision closed to a narrow tunnel.

A pair of strong arms snagged her waist.

“Are you trying to break your neck?”

“I’m trying to save it!” She squirmed in Marco’s grasp, her fists landing ineffectual blows on his hips, his shoulders.

“Then get in here.”

“Let me go!”

“If I do that, you’re going to splatter your pretty little brains all over that parking lot down there.”

All the writhing and motion made Paige’s stomach turn. Her limbs softened to rubber. She moaned.

Marco scooped her up and lifted her over the railing. She felt the warmth and strength of his hands even through the cotton T-shirt and bike shorts she’d put on while he’d been in the kitchen. Hating the weakness that left her incapable of fighting, she sank against the strong, broad wall of his chest.

He plopped her down in the bathroom again, this time in front of the toilet instead of on it. He lifted the lid.

“I am not going to be sick,” she said between clenched teeth.

“Good.” He wet a washcloth and pressed it to her forehead. She pushed his hand away, holding the cool compress in place herself.

Somehow, she held her stomach. Spite, she figured. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of watching her vomit. After a few minutes, he took the washcloth from her and eased her into the tub.

She had to admit the warm water felt heavenly, even with all her clothes on. Sinking back, she closed her eyes. Marco fished her injured ankle out of the water and propped it on the side of the tub, then laid the ice pack over the swollen joint. The odd combination of hot and cold made her skin tingle. Her breasts pulled tight.

She opened her eyes and realized the bathwater wasn’t the only thing making her tingle. Marco’s dark gaze wandered lazily up her body from her toes to the tips of her ears.

He was squatting next to the tub, a tube of antiseptic cream in his hands and something much more sinister in his flinty eyes. One hand dipped into the tub and tested the water. “Too hot?”

Way too hot. The water he stirred lapped at her chest. Her breasts grew heavier. The T-shirt she wore stretched across her nipples, chaffing, confining. She followed the trail of his gaze to the dark aureoles showing through the wet fabric.

Why in heaven’s name did a white T-shirt have to be on top when she’d reached into her dresser for something to wear?

She was still pondering that when he began to dab at her with the antiseptic, his expression impassive. He cleaned up her head wound first, then worked on the various cuts and scrapes, which seemed to be everywhere. He dabbed a little antiseptic on the side of her neck, like cologne.

A second later it started to burn. She hissed. Leaning forward, Marco blew on the wound. The cool stream of air pulled her skin tight. Her eyelids drifted shut.

She heard, felt, him swirling his hand in the water again.

“You feel it, too, don’t you?”

“No.” She would not feel anything for this man, attraction or otherwise.

“It was different between us. Special.”

Her heart knocked against her hands, which she’d folded across her chest. “It was a mistake.”

“Maybe.” He pulled his hand from the water, rose and stepped over to the sink, where he cleaned his own wounds, starting with the bite on his forearm. “Maybe not.”

She had no idea what he meant by that. Wasn’t sure she wanted to know. She was tired of his riddles.

She opened her eyes. Modesty be damned. She was getting out of here. Grimacing, she pushed herself up on one foot.

“Careful,” he warned. “Not too fast.”

Holding on to the wall for support, she tried to hop out of the tub. She might have made it, if the floor hadn’t suddenly tilted and her stomach hadn’t raised up into her throat, blocking her air. The room went as dark as if someone had turned out the lights. Then starbursts exploded behind her eyelids. The swaying floor tossed her off balance and she fell.

Right into the last pair of arms she wanted to catch her.

“What happened?” she asked when her vision cleared. The steady thump of Marco’s heart—maybe a notch faster than it ought to be—comforted her cheek.

“You fainted,” he replied roughly.

She straightened. Carefully. “I don’t faint.”

“Okay.” He sat her on the rim of the bathtub. “You took a little nap standing up—or falling down, rather—in the tub.”

“I mean it. I don’t faint.”

“I said okay.” He’d wet another washcloth for her forehead. Once he’d applied it, he tilted her head back and stared deeply into her eyes. This time there was nothing sensual about the gaze. “Maybe you’ve got a concussion, after all.”

She pulled the cloth from her forehead. “I’m fine.”

“You don’t look it.”

“Why don’t you just go away and leave me the hell alone?”

“I can’t do that.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means—” he pulled a towel off the bar and snugged it around her shoulders “—that I’ll be going, all right, but I won’t be leaving you alone.”

Shock raised gooseflesh on her arms as his meaning registered. He couldn’t— He wouldn’t—

One look into his shuttered black eyes, and she knew with dead certainty that he could. Most certainly would.

“I’m taking you with me,” he said.

Chapter 4

“This is a felony!” Paige twisted her fingers in the sweatshirt beneath Marco’s open coat.

Purposely withholding his gaze from hers, he set her down on her good foot in the shadows outside her door and fumbled the key into the lock. Inside, Bravo barked like a maniac at being left behind.

Bravo, however, wasn’t the reason Marco didn’t look Paige in the eye. She had damned near passed out again when he’d told her he was taking her with him. Since then her eyes, the pupils large and dark, had held such stark animosity that he hadn’t been able to look at them.

“It was a felony the minute I forced you to drive me away from the search area,” he said, as much to convince himself as her.

“You’ve always been a renegade, but this is going too far. You can’t just…steal me away as if no one will notice. You’re making it worse for yourself, Marco.”

“How much worse can it get?” With the door locked, he hefted her into his arms again. Even through the thick down of her navy-blue ski jacket, he could feel her heart race like a startled rabbit.

“People could get hurt,” she insisted, kicking her blue-jean-clad legs and almost wiggling out of his grasp. One of her sneakers bounced off his hipbone.

He gritted his teeth. “No one is going to get hurt if you cooperate.”

“Cooperate? Is that what you think I’m going to do? Just give up? Be a good little hostage and do whatever you tell me?” She flung her fists at his back as he started down the stairs.

“No,” he said, flinching as she landed a blow on his sore shoulder. “I suspect you’re not going to do a damned thing I tell you.”

“Then why are you doing this? Why not just leave me here?”

He stopped. “Because I can’t,” he said simply, but his gaze, now that he’d finally looked at her, must have said more. He felt the pull between them, the memories their bodies shared even when their minds refused to acknowledge their past, and he knew she felt it, too.

Color flooded her cheeks. Far from being unsightly, the blush added to her sensuality, her vibrancy. He found the look infinitely appealing. He always had.

Slowly he peeled his gaze away.

She looked over his shoulder toward the door, where Bravo’s barking had dissolved into long consonant howls. “Wh-what about Bravo?”

“What about him?”

“You can’t just leave him.”

“Watch me.”

“But—but… He knows something’s wrong. That’s why he’s howling. And he’s hungry.”

“Someone will come looking for you soon. When they find you gone, they’ll take care of him.” He started down the stairs again. Starving a dog would be the least of his sins before this was over.

“Marco!”

“Forget it, Paige—”

She surged halfway out of his arms, nearly knocking him off balance on the stairs. “So help me, if you take one more step, I’m going to scream.”

He scowled at her. “Don’t do this here, Paige. Too many innocent people could get hurt.”

She raised her chin. “Then get my dog.”

“No.”

“If you’re lucky, that excuse I gave Matt about taking Bravo to the vet will buy you a couple of hours. Maybe a little more,” Paige said. “But if he keeps up that ruckus, one of my neighbors is going to complain. When they see the Expedition here, but can’t get me at home, they’ll call the police station, and you’re going to lose half of that time.”

Bravo’s howls hit a particularly shrill note. Marco’s skin prickled like someone had scraped fingernails over a blackboard.

“You could shut him up.”

“I could, but I won’t.” Her eyes narrowed. “And don’t you even think about hurting him.”

Marco almost grinned. She had a backbone of steel. He knew that. It was one of the things he liked about her. All that strength in such a small, pretty package. She wasn’t going to back down, and she was right about Bravo’s barking costing him time.

Still, he’d rather walk over burning coals than take the poodle with him. At the moment, though, he didn’t see where he had much choice.

He gave Paige a long-suffering look. “You’re really going to make me take the dog, aren’t you?”

She smiled smugly. “Are you going to just stand here all night, or are you going to get Bravo so we can get out of here?”

He studied her curiously. “Let me get this straight. Now you want me to take you with me?”

Somehow, even while he was carrying her in his arms, she managed to look down her nose at him, wearing an expression of regal superiority that would have made Queen Elizabeth proud. “As long as I’m with you, I haven’t lost you.”

He almost laughed. Backbone of steel, indeed. More like titanium. “Still figure you’re going to take me in, huh?”

“I know it.”

“And you aren’t the least bit worried about your safety?”

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